Manage Applications Created in Visual Builder Studio

The way you manage visual applications created in Visual Builder Studio is fundamentally different from the way you manage Visual Builder-native applications. For starters, VB Studio applications are managed in the context of a project, you do your work within a workspace tied to a Git repository, and your app is typically deployed via a sophisticated CI/CD pipeline; Visual Builder has none of these underlying concepts. So while you'll still be able to use the Visual Builder Home page to manage applications created in VB Studio, just like you manage Visual Builder-native applications, we recommend that you use VB Studio to manage the applications originating in VB Studio.

This table lists all the actions available to native Visual Builder applications and explains a bit about how to perform them for applications created in VB Studio:

Note:

The first step for each of these procedures is to go to the VB Studio project, using either the "from project_name" link in the VB Home page (shown below) or the VB Studio URL.
Description of home-page-studio-apps.png follows
Description of the illustration home-page-studio-apps.png

For each of these actions, go to the Visual Builder Studio project, then:
Visual Builder Action In VB Studio:
Open On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer. (The workspace may have a different name from the visual app as it appears on the VB Home page.)
Duplicate The Duplicate action isn’t exactly the same in VB Studio as it is in Visual Builder, and you shouldn’t have as much of a need for the action in the context of VB Studio. One way to duplicate your app in VB Studio is to:
  1. On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer.
  2. Click Menu in the upper-right corner and select Export. This creates a .zip file of the exported app. All the changes you’ve made in your workspace, even those you haven’t committed to your local Git repository yet, will be included in the .zip.
  3. In the upper left corner, click the left arrow to return to the Project Home page.
  4. Under Workspaces, click Manage Workspaces to go to the Workspaces page.
  5. Click Import to create a new workspace with the imported app.
  6. Drag and drop the file you exported in step 2 and click Import.
  7. Once you're in the Designer, click Menu in the upper-right corner and select Settings.
  8. In the Root URL field, give the app a new name (assuming you want it to be different from the original).
  9. Share or Publish the app. The name you specified in step 8 will appear on the VB Home page.
Rename In VB Studio, the name of a visual application is determined by the Settings tab’s Root URL field at the time the app is deployed or shared. By default, the Root URL is set to the repository name you specified when you created a workspace for the app. To rename a visual app:
  1. On the Project Home page, click Manage Workspaces under Workspaces.
  2. Once you're in the Designer, click Menu in the upper-right corner and select Settings.
  3. In the Root URL field, give the app a new name.
  4. Share or Publish the app. The name you specified in step 3 will appear on the VB Home page.
Export
  1. On the Project Home page, click Manage Workspaces under Workspaces.
  2. From your workspace's Actions menu, select Export.

See Export Your Workspace as an Archive.

Import
  1. On the Project Home page, click Manage Workspaces under Workspaces.
  2. Click Import to create a new workspace.
  3. Drag and drop the exported .zip file.

See Create a Workspace by Importing an Application Archive.

New Version To change the version number of your app:
  1. On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer.
  2. Once you're in the Designer, click Menu in the upper-right corner and select Settings.
  3. Enter the version you want in the Version field.
  4. Click Publish. (This will kick off your Deploy job, so make sure Include the application version in the URL is checked or unchecked, as needed. See Stage and Publish below.)

See Set Version Information for Your Application and Update the Live Version of an Application.

Settings
  1. On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer.
  2. Click Menu in the upper-right corner and select Settings.

See Manage Visual Application Settings.

Note:

While Visual Builder Settings provide a Team tab, in VB Studio, team membership is handled at the project level. See Add and Manage Project Users.
Stage VB Studio does not have the same concept of stage as Visual Builder. In Visual Builder, you staged an app whenever you wanted to make a particular version available to others; in VB Studio, you actually have two options for this, depending on whom you want to share the app with:
  • To make a version of your app available to another person, or perhaps to a small group (that is, somewhat informally):
    1. On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer.
    2. From the menu in the upper-right corner, select Share.

      This takes a snapshot of whatever is currently in your workspace and assigns it to a URL unique to that snapshot.

    See Share a Visual Application.

  • To officially package the app’s resources to, say, share it with another group like QA (as opposed to just sharing what you have in your own private workspace):
    1. On the Project Home page, click Builds in the left navigator.
    2. For the app's Deploy job, click Actions and select Configure.
    3. (Optional) On the Steps tab, add a version number to the Application Version field. If you don’t, whatever is specified in the app’s Settings tab will be used.
    4. Select Include the application version in the URL.
    5. (Optional) If your app contains business objects and you want to include their data, click Add Step, select Visual Application and Import Data, then provide the required information.
    6. If you haven’t already, authorize the target environment to use OAuth.
    7. Click Save.
    8. On the Builds page, click Pipelines, then click the Build icon for this visual application. This will trigger the package job, followed by the deploy job.

    See Configure a Job to Import Data to or Export Data from a Visual Application.

For both these options, the status on the VB Home page will be Stage. However, the Share option creates a dummy version number (which you can ignore); the build job lists the version number you specified in the Application Version field.

Publish In Visual Builder, you used the Publish action to move a visual application to Live status. In VB Studio, you can do this from the Designer, as long as you configure the deploy job properly first.
  1. On the Project Home page, click Builds in the left navigator.
  2. For the app's Deploy job, click Actions and select Configure.
  3. On the Steps tab, clear Include the application version in the URL.
  4. If you haven’t already, authorize the target environment to use OAuth.
  5. Click Save.
  6. Click Workspaces in the left navigator and open the workspace for the app.
  7. In the header, click Publish. This commits your changes to the project’s Git repository and kicks off the package and deploy jobs.

When the job finishes, you will have a permanent URL for this visual app that will remain viable even if you have to republish it later, so you don’t have to keep giving people different URLs. See Deploy a Visual Application Through CI/CD Pipelines.

On the VB Home page, you will see your app with a status of Live. If you click the app name you’ll see the URL, which contains the word "live" (unless you’re using a custom domain).

Only one version of an app can be live at a time. While the version number is not included in the URL, if you republish this app, you must be sure to increase the version number (in Settings), otherwise, the deploy job will fail.

Lock and Unlock In Visual Builder, you used the Lock action to lock a visual application for maintenance and prevent users from accessing the app in a browser during maintenance. You can do the same thing in VB Studio, except that the application's status changes to Deployed (Locked), instead of Live Locked.
  1. From the Project Home page, click Environments.
  2. Click the Deployments tab.
  3. From your deployed application's Actions menu, select Lock.
  4. When you're ready to release the lock, select Unlock from the locked application's Actions menu.

See Lock and Unlock a Deployed Application.

Move to trash
  1. From the Project Home page, click Environments.
  2. Click the Deployments tab.
  3. From your deployed application's Actions menu, select Undeploy.

See Undeploy a Visual Application.