🚀 Operate and update an app

Once an app is deployed, everything you do with it starts on its page under Apps. This page walks through the routine tasks; Apps reference has the full list of settings and actions.

Read the app’s state

The header shows the app’s status and the one or two actions that make sense for it: Deploy App for an app that has never run, Start App for a stopped one, Open App and Redeploy App for a running one, and Modify with Kai on apps Kai built. The ⋯ menu holds the rest: Copy app, Automate (add it to a flow), Debug mode, Delete app.

The tabs below the header split the app’s life into views: Overview (description, authentication, code source, App URL), Advanced Settings (environment variables and secrets, theme, data mappings), All Runs (every start attempt), Terminal Logs (stdout and stderr while it runs), Versions (every configuration change), and Drafts while Kai has a draft open. The App Info panel on the right shows the backend version and size, the auto-sleep timeout, the owner, and the App ID.

Ship a code change

How depends on where the code lives; see Two ways to run an app.

• Kai built the app. Click Modify with Kai and describe the change. Kai works in a draft with its own live preview; when you’re happy, publish it to production. The production app keeps serving the old version until you do. Details: Build your first app with Kai.
• Your own repository. Push to the branch the app follows, then click Redeploy App. Keboola clones the branch again, runs setup.sh, and starts the new version; the old one serves until the new one is up. Push alone changes nothing.

Change settings

Authentication, secrets, environment variables, the Git branch, backend size, and the auto-sleep timeout are all edited on the app’s page, and none of them takes effect until the app starts again. After saving, click Redeploy App (running app) or Start App (stopped app). The deploy wizard asks for the backend size and the inactivity timeout every time; keep the current values unless you mean to change them.

Secrets deserve one note: after you save one, the field shows an encrypted value starting with KBC::ProjectSecureGKMS::. That’s the secret stored encrypted, not a replacement. To rotate it, paste the new value over the encrypted one and redeploy. How secret names become environment variables: Secrets.

Stop, start, sleep

• Sleeping is automatic. After the inactivity timeout (five minutes to 24 hours, set in the deploy wizard) the app suspends; the next visit wakes it and shows a short waking up page. You pay only for time the app is awake or waiting to suspend.
• Stopping is deliberate: ⋯ → Suspend App stops the container and takes the URL offline while keeping the configuration. Start App brings it back with the same settings.
• Redeploy App restarts a running app with the current configuration and, for apps on your own repository, the current branch head.

Sleep and wake behaviour in detail, including the wakeup error page: Sleep and resume.

See what changed

The Versions tab lists every configuration change with who made it and when, from “Configuration created” onwards; Show All Versions opens the full history. Code changes for a Kai-built app are visible in the Builder’s chat and drafts; for your own repository, in your Git history.

Copy, automate, delete

• Copy app duplicates the configuration into a new app, so you can try a change without touching the one people use.
• Automate adds the app to a flow, for example to redeploy it after the data it reads has been refreshed.
• Delete app stops the app and deletes its configuration. The App URL stops working immediately; there is no undo.

When something is off

Start with Troubleshooting: where the logs are, what the common start failures look like, and what to do about each.

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Next: Troubleshooting →