When is a package export-import needed?

[A_B_SE]

Hello!

We are looking into the possibility to change our way of working regarding development in ACC. Today we have a dev and a prod environment and we do releases where we export packages for every change we made in dev and import them as xml files to production.

We do not think it is optimal to do so and we would like to do such export-import work just when needed. Do you have input on when we should work with packages and when we can just made manual changes? It feels like we are overcomplicating things right now.

Thank you so much! 

[ParthaSarathy · Accepted solution]

Hi @A_B_SE ,

In general, After a development we would be performing a round of testing in lower environment and we will deploy it in PROD once the testing is successful. So when you export-import as a package, all the modification will be reflected in PROD without missing any items. Whereas by making manual changes in PROD, there might be a possibility of making some human error. So preferring as a package export-import is a best practice.

Consider there is a small data type change in a Schema. Here you can make change directly in Higher environment, but updating the database is mandatory. Whereas as a package deployment, database update will happen automatically (disconnect and reconnecting the console should be done).

In case of workflows, editing a activity (consider you're manually removing a attribute from temp table which you had created in enrichment)  leads to error in next activities. Whereas export-importing as a package from lower to higher environment will cause no issues. So it depends on scenario! But as a best practice, you can always prefer package deployment.

[A_B_SE]

Hello @ParthaSarathy and thank you for your answer.

You are saying that it is best practice but depends on scenario, does Adobe have some guidelines?
We have a lot of cases where we do export packages for changes of for example descriptions/labels of attributes and other small changes but I'm guessing it is just a matter of deciding where to draw the line?

[ParthaSarathy]

Yes, Best practice is to take as a package, but for very minor changes like label / description and so on, depends on the scenario you can make changes in Higher environment. Before making the changes, Make sure that It won't impact other work items and make sure to do the same changes in lower environment as well. Example, If you had a plan to change a Folder's Label in PROD, it is good to change that particular folder name in lower environment as well, so that there won't be any confusions in future.