Editing & draft protection
Editing a live App
If you're allowed to edit an App, its actions menu (click the App's name in the title bar) offers Edit App…. Choose it and the builder slides up over the App, loaded with the current version and your previous builder chat, no need to go hunting for an editor elsewhere. Save and the App reloads in place with your changes.
Who can edit:
- The App's owner can always edit.
- Other users need edit access granted through the App's sharing settings.
- Managed Apps (deployed from a developer's project or installed from elsewhere) can't be edited in the builder; they're maintained at the source.
Managed Apps and releasing them
A Managed App carries a small chip next to its name in the App's admin panel (open it with Manage… from the App's actions menu): Deployed for an App published from a developer's project, Marketplace for one installed from a marketplace. The chip is why the Edit action, the rename pencil, and the icon editor are missing. The App still runs, and you can still administer it (access, roles, environment variables, data access) through the admin panel.
Informer locks editing on these Apps because the source, not Informer, is the version of record. A developer's next npm run deploy replaces the App's files wholesale. Anything you changed in the builder would vanish without warning, so Informer declines to let you make the change in the first place.
Releasing a Deployed App
If the source project is gone (the developer left, the repository was archived, or the App was handed over to your team to own from here on), a Deployed App can be released back into Informer's hands. Open the App's admin panel and click the padlock button beside the Deployed chip:
Release for editing? "This app was deployed from a project on someone's filesystem, so the builder can't edit it. Releasing it hands editing back to Informer."
Confirm with Release and the App becomes an ordinary Informer-built App: the Edit action returns, and so do the rename pencil and icon editor.
What releasing does not do
This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth being blunt about:
Releasing does not disconnect the App from that project. If anyone deploys it again, your changes here are overwritten and the App becomes read-only once more.
Releasing changes what you are allowed to do in Informer. It changes nothing about the developer's project, which still holds the App's ID in its package.json and still points at this Informer server. The moment someone runs a deploy against it, the files are replaced, the Deployed chip returns, and your edits are gone.
So release an App only when you're confident nobody will deploy to it again. If the project is still live and you want your own copy to change freely, Copy the App instead and edit the copy. The original keeps receiving deploys, and your copy is yours.
Two more limits worth knowing:
- Marketplace Apps can never be released. An installed App stays connected to its marketplace listing so it can keep receiving version upgrades, and releasing it would leave an App the next sync overwrites. There is no padlock button on these, and no API call or admin action that will do it either. Uninstall the App if you no longer want it managed, or Copy it if you want an editable version alongside the install.
- Releasing needs Admin access on the team that owns the App, the same level required to edit or delete it.
One editor at a time
App drafts are protected by an editing lock, so two people can't silently overwrite each other.
If someone else is already editing, you'll see:
Draft In Progress: "This app is being edited by (name). Only one editor at a time is allowed. Would you like to take over?"
Choose Take Over to claim the draft, or Cancel to leave it with them.
If someone takes over from you, you'll see:
Draft Taken Over: "(name) has taken over editing this app. You can take it back or exit."
A few guard rails worth knowing:
- If your editor loses the draft while you're away, Informer tells you what happened ("(name) has taken over editing this app, the editor has been closed") rather than letting you type into the void.
- Opening the same App's editor in several of your own windows warns you to close the extras ("This app has been opened in N different windows. Close extra windows to avoid conflicts"); your editing quietly follows the most recent window.
- If a draft keeps bouncing between two people, Informer points it out ("You and (name) may be competing for the same draft"), your cue to coordinate before continuing.
Nothing is lost in a takeover: the draft, including its builder chat history, moves whole between editors. The lock decides who may continue it, not who owns the work.