Importing and exporting

An application's settings can be exported and stored outside of the Grid in a document. This document can be imported at a later date to any Grid that supports the feature. This can be useful for migration, cloning, or back up of an application's configuration.

Exporting a document

  1. Navigate to Applications.

  2. Click on the application where you want to import the settings.

  3. Select Import/Export from the application details.

  4. Under import, click on the folder icon.

  5. Specify a password in the text field. The password must be at least 16 characters.

  6. Verify the password.

  7. In the Valid Through field, specify the date when the document should expire.

  8. Click Export. A download prompt is displayed. When exporting a document, any sensitive data will be encrypted. The encrypted fields cannot be decrypted after the specified validity date.

Importing a document

  1. Navigate to Applications.

  2. Click on the application where you want to import the settings.

  3. Select Import/Export from the application details.

  4. Under import, click on the folder icon.

  5. Navigate to the document you want to import and click OK.

  6. Specify the password to decrypt sensitive data.

    If there is no sensitive data in the document, you will not be asked to specify the password.

  7. Click Import.

When importing a document, any configuration for the application will be replaced with the data from the imported document. This may remove or add settings for an application, such as bindings, properties, and persisted data. If you want to check the changes to be made in the document, use the diff functionality. The import will not modify anything if it detects that the document contains settings that are illegally configured, but will present the detected errors in a list instead.

Using diff on an imported document with the application's current state:

  1. Navigate to Applications.

  2. Click on the application where you want to use the diff settings.

  3. Select Import/Export from the application details.

  4. Under import, click on the folder icon.

  5. Navigate to the document where you want to use diff and click OK.

  6. Specify the password to decrypt sensitive data.

    If there is no sensitive data in the document, you will not be asked to specify the password.

  7. Click Diff.

Diff is presented as a JSON document containing data from both the settings that are currently in use for the application and the provided JSON document. Any setting that would be removed by an import is marked red. Any setting that would be added by an import is marked green. Any setting that would be changed by an import is marked yellow. Unchanged settings are not marked in any specific way. If you agree with the presented changes, you can click Import.

If the diff shows something unwanted or if there is an error message presented when you import, you may modify the document manually to change any values that should be imported. Before making any changes to the document, it is recommended that you first create a copy of the document that you want to modify.

Grid used to provide a different wizard based Import or Export zip format. This format is still supported and now comes with a converter. The converter allows you to extract the settings for an application and creates a JSON document for it. This JSON document can be imported. The new JSON preserves the password to decrypt sensitive data so you must specify the same password used for the zip in the old import/export tool.

Converting an imported zipped document

  1. Navigate to Applications.

  2. Click on the application where you want to use the diff settings.

  3. Select Import/Export from the application details.

  4. Under import, click on the folder icon.

  5. Navigate to the zipped document that you want to convert and click OK.

  6. Click Convert.