Export & Import for Component Libraries or share across Environments and Tenants

[Craig_Humphrey]

Hey People,

we've recently started working with the preview Component Libraries, but as a MS Partner, we tend to end up working in client tenants or our own (MSDN/My Visualstudio) tenants and there's currently no ability to share Component Libraries across multiple tenants or even export/import them - which means you end up manually copying stuff around, defeating most of the reason for Component Libraries.

Can we get some functionality to at least allow the Export/Import of Component Libraries, but this should be seen as a first step, as sharing Component Libraries across (Power Platform) Environments and separate O365 Tenants is the more logical end-goal.

This would allow us to not only build apps for clients using our Component Libraries, but we could make our Component Libraries available to clients to save them time and effort.

I guess this is a prelude to a Component App Store?

Thanks

Craig

[Jaco_Campher]

You can sort of do this now.

1. Open your source component library and then File > Save As.
2. Save the file to your computer.
3. Create a new app or open your exiting app on the destination tenant.
4. File > Open > Browse.
5. Select the file you saved in step 2.
6. Now save and publish. It will give you an option to override if it is an existing app.

[Craig_Humphrey]

Thanks @Jaco_Campher 

You're close, but you're missing some steps.

I took another look at this today and it has progressed.  Key take aways are:

• The "import component" available from the Insert | Custom top nav only seems to support importing components from other apps in the same environment.
• The "Get more components" is only available from the "+" (aka Insert) on the LEFT NAV and only supports component libraries that are already in your current environment.  And it will only show you component libraries/components that you haven't already imported.
• These imported custom components are then ONLY available from the "+" | Library components in the left nav.
• Apps that are using components from a component library, will prompt you, the next time you edit them, if the component library has been updated, to see if you want the new version of the component(s).
• The first thing you need to do is:
  1. Use Export components or Save as | This computer to download a copy of your component library. 
     Note: in a component library, this exports the whole library, not just a single component.
  2. Use Open | Browse files, in the destination environment and Save As | The cloud, to import the component library into your destination environment/tenant.
  3. Any updated versions of the component library must use Replace  and save over the top of the existing component library, in the destination, to ensure your apps know there's a new version of the components.

So it's progress, but it would be nice if MS updated the nav so that it was a bit more consistent and made clear when you are importing from apps or from component libraries.

I see THIS blog post turned up a bit after my original post.  It's suggesting you can use the upload file function within the Import Components - but I've found this doesn't work for component libraries.  I haven't tested for components that have been exported from normal apps.