Legacy version 6 documentation. View current documentation.Legacy version 6 documentation. View current documentation.
After you complete your desktop and are ready to share it with others, the last step is to share your project.
You can share a desktop project in two different ways. The first way is to publish the project. The publishing process creates an installer that you can then distribute to your end users.
When you publish your desktop project, SDD uploads the project files to the Cosaic's cloud servers. There your project is assembled and an installer is made available via URL for your users to download and install.
Note: Currently Finsemble supports only Windows installers.
Steps to publish
Note: Publishing can take some time, upwards of 15 - 20 minutes to upload and assemble.
The idea of your project being stored on Cosaic cloud could perhaps make some people nervous, but it's completely fine. We follow all the security best practices. If you're still worried, you can use our other method of sharing the desktop: packaging it.
Updating a project
After you publish your project, you can still make changes to it. If you decide to update your project, you will need to republish it for changes to take effect. Every time you republish, your end-users will see changes the next time they restart Finsemble.
To update, make any change necessary and click Publish.
Another way to share your project is packaging it. Packaging is different from publishing in two ways. First, this process doesn't create an installer and doesn't upload anything to the Cosaic cloud. Instead, SDD creates a .zip file that you can then share with your devs or ops teams. Typically, you want to export a project for further development so that you can provide advanced functionality and deploy the project to an internal network.
Exporting your project creates a zipped version of your project that a development team can use to customize and deploy. Follow these steps:
Caution: Exporting is a one way operation. After you export a project, you can't import it back into SDD.
Think of exporting as taking a snapshot in time of your project. Because importing it back into SDD is impossible, make sure that you make all the changes and customizations to your project before you package it.
If you package your project and then discover that you need to make further changes, you can still make these changes and export again. But it will be a completely new project. If your dev team already started working on the previously exported version, you will lose that work unless your devs integrate the two now divergent projects. For this reason, it's best to think of packaging as a one time operation only.
Introduction to Smart Desktop Designer