Swap a Connection Reference in a solution

[PaulD1]

In my (unmanaged) solution I have a connection reference to a SQL DB with the name crb60_DBAdminDev.

There are multiple flows using this reference.

Moving from the Dev to Test environment (as managed), this name is no longer appropriate (we will not use the Admin account and it point to the Dev Db rather than Test Db).

I can change the display name and the credentials when I move it but cannot change the 'unique identifier': crb60_DBAdminDev.

I have multiple flows which are called from the Power App (using the Power App trigger) and pass in parameters to the trigger.

I created a new connection reference with a more appropriate name but if I try to change my Flows actions individually to use the new reference, they fail to save giving an error that the parameters from the trigger are no longer present (seems to be yet another bug, I don't see why changing the connection reference would interfere with the parameters).

Is there some other / better way, within a solution, of changing all references to one Connection Reference to another? Feels like this is likely to be a common requirement. Otherwise, I guess we just have to live with a badly named Connection Reference which may cause confusion for later support.

[wolenberg_]

Hi @PaulD1  , 

Did you try to user enviroment variables to manage this swap of environments ?

Here it more details about it :

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/custom-connectors/environment-variables

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[PaulD1]

I am using environment variables where appropriate, but this is a connection reference. When deploying I can configure the connection reference (e.g. specify the db, account credentials and so on) but cannot change the 'internal' name of the connection reference which is likely to cause issues for later support as it will always indicate that it is connecting to Dev using the Admin account. 

As the name cannot be changed, I created a connection reference with a more appropriate name and just want to swap out all usage of the old connection to the new one. Surely that shouldn't be so difficult 😞 

[wolenberg_]

One thing you can try, it is:

 - Delete all the reference conections inside the solutions

 - After delete, try to change all actions to the new conection with the proper name

 - Go to each Flow and add required objects inside your solution.

This always works to me, sometimes I got struck with this connection reference as well, but delete them all and import again always save me to this situation.

[PaulD1]

Thanks, but...

I can't delete the connection reference inside the solution as it says it is in use (by the Flows and Power App).

I can't change to the new connection reference inside each Flow as this appears to trigger a bug where the parameters from the trigger go haywire and the flow cannot be saved (I could try to replace the parameters trigger in every flow, but some have a lot of parameters and so that is a major PITA):