25.4.1 Importing vs. Deleting an Application

Import upgrades over the existing app to preserve production workflow and task instances.

Once you deploy your application using workflows and tasks into production, end users begin exercising its functionality to get their jobs done. The workflow and task instances your application creates are business critical, so they are as important as any other rows of data in your application data model. As you enhance your app and fix issues users report, you periodically import a new version of your application into production. When you do this, it is critical that you perform the upgrade without deleting the existing application first. There is clear motivation for this guidance. When you import a new application version over an existing one, any existing workflow and task instances remain as they are. This is not the case when you delete an application.

Caution:

When you delete an app, all its workflow and task instances are deleted, too.