Remote Config rollouts

Remote Config rollouts give you the ability to safely and gradually release new features and updates to your app. Using a Remote Config parameter, you can release new app features in a controlled manner to specific user groups. As your rollout proceeds, monitor its success using Firebase Crashlytics and Google Analytics. Use Remote Config rollouts to:

  • Minimize potential issues: Identify and address any bugs or issues before they impact a large portion of your user base.
  • Gather valuable feedback: Collect feedback from a limited audience and iterate on your implementation before rolling out to a wider audience.
  • Enable iterative development: Make quick, iterative changes to widely-deployed apps while mitigating risk
  • Monitor metrics you care about: Compare app stability between rollout and control groups with Crashlytics and use Google Analytics to monitor metrics like revenue and engagement.

For example, if you created an app that incorporates generative AI and stores prompts within a Remote Config JSON parameter, you might want to:

  1. Create a rollout that updates the parameter that contains your LLM prompt(s) to a small percentage of your user base.
  2. Monitor the resulting performance--have conversions increased or decreased? What about engagement? Are there more or fewer crashes?
  3. Depending on the results of the rollout, you may decide to:
    • Roll back your change.
    • Update the prompt parameter value to adjust and refine your model's response.
    • Increase your rollout percentage to roll out to a larger audience, ultimately rolling out 100% of your users.

You can also access the history of all of your changes using the Firebase console.

Key capabilities

Target by user attributes Deliver features to specific user segments based on user properties, app behavior, or any other relevant criteria.
Staged rollouts Gradually increase the percentage of users exposed to a new feature over time, reducing the risk of unexpected issues.
Monitor stability Use Crashlytics to monitor potential issues (like crashes, non-fatal errors, and non-responsive apps) that may be introduced by your feature release.
Gain insight into key metrics Ensure that your new release positively affects the Google Analytics metrics you care about, like conversions, revenue, and user engagement.
Rollback functionality If rollout results show potential issues, roll back to a previous version of the feature for all or a specific segment of affected users.

How does it work?

Remote Config rollouts rely on three key components:

  1. Remote Config stores and manages your app's configuration data, including feature flags and configuration parameters.
  2. Crashlytics provides real-time crash reporting and performance monitoring so that you can track the impact of your rollout and quickly identify any trending issues.
  3. Google Analytics provides the ability to target rollouts based on user attributes and monitor how your launch affects key metrics like revenue, user engagement, and conversion events.

For more information, see About Remote Config rollouts.

Implementation Path

Configure Remote Config Define your feature flags and configuration parameters in the Firebase console.
Set up Crashlytics Integrate Crashlytics into your app to monitor its performance and identify any issues.
Set up Google Analytics Integrate Analytics into your app to view key metrics like revenue and user retention.
Implement rollout logic Configure Remote Config in the Firebase console and in your app to access and apply feature flags and configuration parameters based on user targeting criteria.
Monitor and iterate Monitor Crashlytics data and user feedback to track the rollout's impact and make adjustments as needed.

Policies and limits

A/B Testing experiments and Remote Config rollouts share the total experiment limit: 24. For example, if you are running 12 A/B Tests, you are limited to 12 running rollouts.

Next steps