Schema Export and Import

Overview

A schema represents the metadata of every entity and choice set, holding information such as entity fields data type or relationships between entity fields.

By exporting and importing schema, you are able to implement the best practices of an application lifecycle management—development, testing, deployment—considering capabilities such as copying schema between tenants or tracking schema changes through a source control tool of your choice.

Exporting schema downloads a JSON file containing the entity metadata on your local machine. You may share the file to be imported by different developers into their tenants, and you yourself can import schemas developed by the community.

Permissions

The following administrative permissions must be set for users to export and import schema:

Operation	Permission
Export schema	View Schema
Import schema	Customize Schema View Schema

To find out how to set the required permissions, check out the Managing Access page.

Exporting Schema

Note:

Only users with adequate permissions can export the schema.
All entities present in the tenant are exported.
System-built entities and the corresponding system fields are excluded from exporting.

To export the current schema:

Navigate to the desired tenant in Data Service.
Click Import/Export.
Select Export Schema. A pop-up message prompts you to confirm the export.
Click Confirm to trigger the export. A .JSON file containing the schema is downloaded to your machine.

Importing Schema

Note:

Only users with adequate permissions can import the schema.
The imported schema file must be:
- valid
- in JSON format
- less than 30MB
The Created by and Modified by fields of the imported schema are populated with the user that performed the import.
The creation and last modified time fields are populated with the timestamp of the import.
Once started, the importing process cannot be stopped.

To import a schema in your tenant:

Navigate to the desired tenant in Data Service.
Click Import/Export.
Select Import Schema. A window is displayed, allowing you to browse for the schema file and select it.

Note: The schema file must be in JSON format and valid.
If no duplicate is detected, the entities get imported in the target tenant. In case of duplicates, the Entities Import window is displayed, allowing you to either append duplicate fields to existing entities or to not import the duplicates.

Handling Duplicates

The process of importing a schema compares the existing entities, fields, or choice sets in the tenant to those in the imported schema.

For each identified duplicate in the imported schema, the following options are displayed:

Append to existing (default option)

Entity fields and choice sets that do not exist in the target tenant are imported.
Entities containing fields and choice sets with different properties (such as name or data type) are skipped from importing.