Packages View

Overview

This page describes what you can do in the Packages view in Appian Designer.

To access this view, click Packages in the navigation pane at the environment level or within an application.

When you access this view at the environment level, it displays all packages and releases across all applications in the current environment. When you access this view from within an application, it displays only the packages for that specific application.

Purpose

From the Packages view, you can view and manage packages and releases. This view allows you to view packages across multiple applications, organize packages using releases, and deploy packages. This view is also a great place for development leads and deployment managers to search, filter, and perform bulk actions on packages to streamline your deployment workflow.

What are packages and releases?

• Packages: A set of application changes that a developer can deploy to another environment.
• Releases: A way to group and manage packages of related functionality across applications.

Elements of the Packages view

You can access the Packages view from within an application or for the entire environment. The actions and elements of the view are the same regardless of where you access it from.

Scroll or drag to pan · ⌘+/⌘− to zoom · Esc to close

#	Element	Available Actions
1	Header bar	Learn more about the header bar.
2	Navigation pane	Learn more about the navigation pane.
3	Filter pane	Search and filter for packages in the list.
4	Toolbar	Compare and deploy packages. Export packages. Change the release associated with a package. Add contents to packages. Delete packages.
5	Packages list	View the packages in the list.
6	Manage Releases	From the Manage Releases dialog, you can create, view, edit, and delete releases.

View the packages list

To view the packages list, click Packages in the navigation pane.

The packages list displays information about all packages you have access to view. For each package in the list, you'll see the following columns and information:

Column	Description
Name	The name of the package. At the environment level, this column also shows the name of the application the package is in.
Description	The description of the package.
Release	The release that the package is associated with, if any.
Ticket	A link to the external project management ticket associated with the package.
Last Modified On	The date and time when the package was last modified, as well as the user who modified it.

By default, the packages list is sorted by the Last Modified On column in descending order. To sort by any column, click the column heading.

You must have at least Viewer permissions to an application to view its packages. System administrators can view all packages in the environment.

In the packages list, there may be an icon next to the package name for some packages. This is a release overlap alert and indicates that those packages contain objects associated with other active releases. To learn more, see the release overlap alert section.

Search and filters in the packages list

You can search through and filter the packages list to help you find the information you need.

To search the packages list, enter the package name or description in the search box in the filter pane. You can also search by ticket URL to find packages associated with specific project management tickets.

The powerful filters help you quickly identify a set of packages that you want to take action on. You can use the Release to filter find all the packages in a given release in order to export or deploy them. And the Objects filter allows you to instantly find all packages that include a specific object—whether you're tracking down changes related to a bug or confirming which package contained updates to a particular object.

In the filter pane, use the following filters:

• Application: Filter by one or more applications. This filter is only available in the environment level.
• Release: Filter by a release to see all packages associated with that release.
• Objects: Filter by objects in the package.
• Last Modified By: Filter by the user who last modified the package.
• Last Modified On: Filter by the date when the package was last modified. This filter returns packages that were last updated on or after the FROM date, and all that were last updated on or before the TO date.

To clear all filters, click Reset in the filter pane.

Manage packages

In the Packages view, you can take multiple actions related to packages, such as:

Action	Location
Create packages	Only available at the application level.
Associate packages with a release	Available at both application and package level.
Export packages	Available at both application and package level.
Compare and deploy packages	Available at both application and package level.
Add contents to a package	Only available at the application level.
Delete packages	Available at both application and package level.

When you open a specific package, the package will open in a new tab where you can take more actions related to that package, such as:

• Edit a package.
• Review package contents.
• Share a package.
• Modify package objects.
• Add application configurations.

Review release overlap alerts on packages

When teams work in the same application or environment, multiple developers may modify the same design objects for different purposes and their changes may be intended for deployment at different times. Having visibility into these overlapping changes is critical to avoid deploying in-progress work.

The Packages view provides visibility by displaying a release overlap alert next to the package name when a package contains objects associated with more than one active release. Open the package to see which objects overlap and investigate further to decide if you can go ahead with deployment.

Scroll or drag to pan · ⌘+/⌘− to zoom · Esc to close

Use the following guidance to help you decide if you can move forward with deployment:

1. Review the changes in the object associated with multiple active releases.
2. Talk to the developer who owns the other package.
3. Check to see if their changes can be safely deployed in your release.
4. If their changes aren't safe to deploy with your release, consider reverting to a previous version of the object to ensure a safe deployment. The other developer can then restore their changes by restoring their object's version.

As long as the object is still in packages associated with different releases, the release overlap alert will still show in the packages list. But if you have followed the above guidance, you should be able to deploy safely.

Once you've successfully deployed and are no longer using the release, mark the release as inactive. Inactive releases are excluded from release overlap alerts.

To learn about how permissions impact release overlap alerts, see Security and release overlap alerts.

Deploy packages from the Packages view

You can deploy packages directly from the Packages view at both the environment and application level using direct and manual deployments. But there are slight differences between the deployment experiences in the environment and application levels.

From the Packages view for the entire environment, you can deploy multiple packages from multiple applications in one deployment. From the Packages view for a single application, you can deploy multiple packages from the that application within the same deployment.

There are some variations in deployment actions available depending on the number of packages selected from each application.

For information about deploying releases and packages associated with a release, see the Releases page.

Feedback