New Features in Oracle Visual Builder
Here’s an overview of new features and enhancements added recently to improve your Oracle Visual Builder experience.
Topics:
- Release 22.07 - May 2022
- Release 22.04.2 - April 2022
- Release 22.04 - February 2022
- Release 22.01 - January 2022
- Release 21.10.2 - October 2021
- Release 21.10 - August 2021
As soon as new and changed features become available, Oracle Visual Builder instances are upgraded in the data centers where Oracle Cloud services are hosted. You don’t need to request an upgrade to be able to use the new features—they come to you automatically.
Note:
Classic applications created in earlier versions of Visual Builder use a structure that isn't compatible with the visual application structure now used in Visual Builder. No further feature development work is planned for Classic applications, and only critical bug fixes will be addressed. Oracle recommends that you update your Classic applications to use the visual applications approach, which provides a much more robust functionality for creating sophisticated apps.For the moment, you can use your Visual Builder instance to manage Classic applications, but this option will be disabled by default in new instances starting soon. You can use your existing instance to export Classic applications and then import them as visual applications to migrate the business objects, but be aware that there are no migration capabilities for the web or mobile UIs. See About Classic Applications.
Release 22.07 - May 2022
Some new Visual Builder features can’t be used until you’ve upgraded your Visual Builder Runtime to 22.07. See Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 22.07 for more information.
Change | Description |
---|---|
Custom actions | In addition to Visual Builder's palette of built-in actions, you can now define and implement your own actions. A custom action is implemented with JavaScript and uses metadata to define input and output parameters. Once defined, you use your custom action in action chains just the way you'd use a built-in action. See Custom Actions. |
New Flow Diagram view | When working with flows in the Diagram view, a new Flow Diagram now displays navigational relationships between pages in the flow. The Flow Diagram, different from the standard Diagram view, provides a more intuitive and interactive view that allows you to focus on navigation between pages in the flow. See View a Flow's Navigation in Diagram View.
You can also use this view to create pages and actions chains when you want to build workflows from scratch, just by dragging pages and actions from the Components palette and dropping them into the diagram. A subset of built-in actions (as well as custom actions) are available in the Components palette for you to use in your workflow. See Add Pages and Action Chains to a Flow in Diagram View. |
Fragments |
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Components palette enhancements |
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Structure view enhancements |
See The Structure View. |
Changed requirements for Apache Cordovo custom plug-in | As part of maintenance for the deprecated but still supported Cordova custom plug-in, we've updated the minimum version of Cordova and iOS required to build hybrid mobile apps. For details, refer to the readme.md file bundled with the Cordova Project Source file in the Custom Plugins tab of your mobile application’s Settings editor. See Add a Custom Plugin to Your Mobile Application.
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Dynamic form enhancements | You can now configure form field properties so that fields are displayed as multi-line text areas instead of the default single-line text field. You can set the number of rows of text area to display, and the max number of rows to which a text area can grow. See Set a Field to Display as a Text Area in a Form . |
Business object enhancements |
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Enhancements for services and backends |
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Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 22.07
This release of Visual Builder uses Oracle JET 12.0.x libraries and components. We recommend that you upgrade your Visual Builder applications to this latest JET version, as well as to the 22.07 Visual Builder Runtime, to take advantage of the full spectrum of 22.07 features.
Among JET 12's many new features is the ability to show dynamic status indicators to your tab bar headers with new icons, badges, and metadata. There's also a new oj-message-banner
component that you can use to render brief, semi-permanent messages that communicate information in the context of the current page or actions in progress, without blocking interaction on that page. To see what's new in JET 12.0.x, go to the JET Release Notes and select v12.0.0.
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Custom actions | In addition to Visual Builder's palette of built-in actions, you can now define and implement your own actions. Custom actions can be defined at a web or mobile app-level and you use them in action chains just the way you'd use built-in actions. See Custom Actions. |
Fragments |
|
You can upgrade to the latest JET and Visual Builder Runtime versions from your visual application's Settings editor. See Manage Runtime Dependencies for Visual Applications.
Release 22.04.2 - April 2022
Change | Description |
---|---|
Custom app URLs for web PWAs | If you use custom URLs for your apps, those URLs can now be used to access web apps that are deployed as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). No additional configuration is required to support custom URLs for PWAs. To set up the custom URL, see Specify a Custom App URL. To enable PWA support for web apps, see Enable Progressive Web App Support. |
Release 22.04 - February 2022
Some new Visual Builder features can’t be used until you’ve upgraded your Visual Builder Runtime to 22.04. See Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 22.04 for more information.
If your Visual Builder instance is not on Generation 2—a reference to Visual Builder running natively on Oracle Cloud Generation 2 Infrastructure—this release gives you access to new features and enhancements in 22.04 as well as 22.01 (see Release 22.01 - January 2022). Your instance is on Generation 2 if you find Visual Builder under the Developer Service menu in your Oracle Cloud tenancy.
Change | Description |
---|---|
Responsive web app templates | New web app templates are now enhanced for responsive design. Available in three navigational styles, these templates adjust to various screen sizes and provide better support for responsive layouts and progressive web apps. See Create a New Web App.
Common elements for these web apps, such as the header, footer, and navigation items, are defined in fragments, enabling you to reuse each piece in the web app's root page as well as other pages. You can also customize these elements however you want to create your own look and feel. See Edit the App Header and Footer. Note: Web apps created with version 22.01/21.10 or earlier will not be affected. These apps will maintain their original look and feel even after you upgrade them to 22.04. |
Fragment improvements | Dynamic containers are now supported in fragments, so you can define sections of a page in containers that you want to display based on conditions. You use dynamic containers in a fragment the same way you'd use them in a page. See Create a Fragment.
You can also create input parameters for a fragment right from the Properties pane of the fragment container on the page where the fragment is used. See Pass Data Between a Page and Its Fragment for a sample scenario. |
Background processing of action chain tests | Action chain tests now run in the background, even when you are not actively working on your application. If you are, only tests impacted by your changes (for example, if you added a new variable or changed an existing function) are scheduled to run again. This way, your test results stay up-to-date even as you develop your application, helping you detect bugs earlier and maintain your tests more easily. See Manage All Tests in a Visual Application. |
Dynamic layout enhancements |
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Properties pane improvements |
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JavaScript editor changes |
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Business object updates |
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Enhancements for app lifecycle management |
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Support for server variables in a server URL | Server variables are now automatically created when you enter a valid URI template expression in a server instance URL. When your server URL is defined as, for example, https://restcountries.com/{version}, we create version as a server variable for you. All your server variables are listed under a new Server Variables section in the Servers editor, where you can manage them to set a default value (required by the OpenAPI3 specification) or to add an enumerated list. See Add and Use Server Variables with Instance URLs in Service Connections.
A new Server Variables tab has also been added to the Test tab of the Endpoints editor, allowing you to set the server variable value when testing an endpoint. |
Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 22.04
This release of Visual Builder uses Oracle JET 11.1.x libraries and components. We recommend that you upgrade your Visual Builder applications to this latest JET version, as well as to the 22.04 Visual Builder Runtime, to take advantage of the full spectrum of 22.04 features. To see what's new in 11.1.x, see the JET 11.1.0 Release Notes.
Feature | Description |
---|---|
Fragment improvements | Dynamic containers are now supported in fragments, so you can define sections of a page in containers that you want to display based on conditions. You use dynamic containers in a fragment the same way you'd use them in a page. See Create a Fragment.
You can also create input parameters for a fragment right from the Properties pane of the fragment container on the page where the fragment is used. See Pass Data Between a Page and Its Fragment for a sample scenario. |
You can upgrade to the latest JET and Visual Builder Runtime versions from your visual application's Settings editor. See Manage Runtime Dependencies for Visual Applications.
Release 22.01 - January 2022
This release of Visual Builder is available only on Visual Builder Generation 2, which refers to Visual Builder instances that run natively on Oracle Cloud Generation 2 Infrastructure.
To check if your Visual Builder instance is running on Gen 2, you'll need access to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) console: Open the OCI console, click Developer Services in the menu, and scan the list for Visual Builder. If you see it, then 22.01 features are available to you. If you don't, that means your Visual Builder instance is not on Gen 2, so 22.01 features are available to you as part of release 22.04.
Change | Description |
---|---|
Fragments | If you've always wanted to break up complex pages into parts that are easier to work with, fragments is for you. A fragment encapsulates a page's section in its own HTML, JSON, and JavaScript files, helping you share it across pages in an application. Besides reuse, it provides performance gains and makes for easier organization and code management. See Work With Fragments. |
Support for JET's Stable theme | When customizing a Redwood-themed application, you can now use the Stable base theme to override only what you want to change, where previously you might have had to override all variables directly in the Redwood base theme. The Stable theme (introduced in JET 11.0.0) is meant to be as stable as possible; as a result, you can override the variables you want to change while inheriting all other updates to the Redwood theme. See Customize the Redwood Theme for a Web Application. |
Dynamic UI enhancements | We've made a bunch of updates to enhance UIs based on dynamic components. When you add a dynamic component (table, form, or container), you'll notice that the Dynamic UIs tab in the Navigator is now called Layouts. Other significant enhancements include:
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Business object enhancements |
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Backends and service connections |
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Enumerated type | It's now possible to create an enumerated custom type in the Types editor to define a list of values, usually for variables that have a small set of possible values. See Create a Custom Enumeration Type. |
Improvements for action chain tests | Action chain tests, accessible through the Tests tab at the bottom of an application's window, now include some usability improvements. Instead of showing a full list of tests, this tab shows failed tests alone to highlight items that require you to take action. Test results are also cached across browser sessions now to improve performance. See Test Action Chains. |
Page Designer enhancements |
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Other enhancements |
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Release 21.10.2 - October 2021
Change | Description |
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New format required for Android apps |
Starting in August 2021, Google requires that all new applications uploaded to Google Play use the Android App Bundle ( |
Release 21.10 - August 2021
Some new Visual Builder features can’t be used until you’ve upgraded your Visual Builder Runtime to 21.10. See Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 21.10 for more information.
Change | Description |
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PWA support for web apps |
We've extended our PWA capabilities to support web apps, in addition to mobile apps. This option allows you to create responsive web apps that your users can add to their mobile devices as mobile apps. To enable PWA support for a web app, you use the new PWA tab in a web app's Settings editor. We also provide an offline fallback page that you can display to users when your PWA-enabled app isn't connected to the Internet. The default |
Page flow enhancements |
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Redwood icon gallery | Visual apps that use the Redwood theme now leverage Redwood's comprehensive icon library and are available to you right from an app's icon gallery. As a part of this update, we added the icon's stylesheet to an app's imports, so you'll always see the latest Redwood icons when new versions of the icon font are released. You access the icon gallery as usual, say when you add an icon to a page or a navigation list component. See Add an icon component to a page. |
Action chain enhancements |
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Data provider enhancements | We've added some design-time options that you can configure from a built-in data provider's properties on the Variables tab:
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Business object updates |
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Other Designer updates |
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Reset HEAD for a visual app integrated with a Git repo | When you link a visual app to a Git repo in a Visual Builder Studio project, you can now reset your current local branch HEAD to use the latest branch head or any other commit. This feature is useful to resolve push and pull failures when the commit referenced by the local branch HEAD is removed from the remote branch. See Change the Branch Head in a Linked Git Repository. |
Features Requiring Visual Builder Runtime 21.10
This release of Visual Builder uses Oracle JET 10.1.x libraries and components. We recommend that you upgrade your Visual Builder applications to this latest JET version, as well as to the 21.10 Visual Builder Runtime, to take advantage of the full spectrum of 21.10 features. For example, JET 10.1.0 provides chroming options for buttons out of the box, including a new one called danger, to help you draw a user's attention to important actions on your UI. To see everything that's new in JET 10.1.0, see the Release Notes.
Feature | Description |
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PWA support for web apps |
To help you build apps that scale from desktop to tablet to mobile, we've expanded our PWA capabilities to web apps, in addition to mobile apps. To enable PWA support for a web app, you now use the new PWA tab in a web app's Settings editor. See Configure Progressive Web App Support. We also provide a default offline page that you can display to users when your PWA-enabled app isn't connected to the Internet. The default offline page is based on a responsive Redwood page template, but you can customize it to suit your requirements. |
Action chains in separate JSON files |
To optimize performance and reduce Git merge conflicts, we've moved an action chain's source from the artifact JSON to its own JSON file. While action chains created with version 21.10 will use separate JSON files by default, you have the option of migrating action chains created in earlier versions. See Create an Action Chain and Migrate an Action Chain. |
Deprecated actions |
We've deprecated two built-in actions: The takePhotoAction action is deprecated for web apps while the transformChartDataAction is deprecated for both web and mobile apps. It's now possible to view actions that have been deprecated in a release by selecting the Show Deprecated menu option in the Actions palette. See Built-in Actions. |
You can upgrade to the latest JET and Visual Builder Runtime versions from your visual application's Settings editor. See Manage Runtime Dependencies for Visual Applications.
New Features in Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel
The version of Oracle Visual Builder Add-in for Excel bundled in Visual Builder 22.07 is 3.0. To see what's new in this release, go to the add-in's documentation page and click 3.0.0.
Supported Browsers
Oracle Visual Builder supports most modern HTML5–compliant browsers.
Oracle Visual Builder complies with the Oracle Software Web Browser Support Policy and supports the latest version of the browser available, and in the case of Safari, one previous major release. Support is provided by Oracle on all platforms that the browser vendor provides support for. For mobile device operating systems, Oracle provides support only for the most recent browser delivered by the device operating system.
Operating System | Chrome | Firefox | Microsoft Browser | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|
Android |
Supported* |
Not Supported |
N/A |
N/A |
iOS |
Not Supported |
Not Supported |
N/A |
Supported |
Mac OS X |
Supported |
Supported |
N/A |
Supported |
Windows |
Supported |
Supported |
Supported |
Not Supported |
* Chrome for Android only, not native Android browser
JavaScript must be enabled for all browsers.
Note:
The Visual Builder designtime UI for building applications supports the Chrome browser running on Mac OS X and Windows. Other browsers and platforms are not supported.Note:
Visual Builder runtime has deprecated the use of Internet Explorer 11. Users who try to access a staged or published Visual Builder application from Internet Explorer will now see a deprecation warning. In addition, Oracle Support will no longer address issues pertaining to Internet Explorer 11.Deprecated Features
Take note of features that have been deprecated and are no longer supported in Visual Builder:
Feature | Description | Release |
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Support for Alta theme ending |
Apps created on Visual Builder version 20.07 or earlier were created with Oracle JET's Alta theme as the base theme. The Alta theme was deprecated in JET 10 and will not be supported beyond JET 12. To be able to publish new versions of an Alta-based app beyond July 2023 (when JET 12 reaches End of Life), you must transition your app to use the Redwood theme. To check the theme used by your web or mobile application, navigate to your application's Settings editor and look for the Theme field. If Theme is set to Alta, we strongly urge you to take time to redesign your app using the Redwood theme before support for the Alta theme ends. Starting with 22.04, we'll remind you to do this every time you stage or publish Alta-themed apps. |
Planned for 23.01 |
Select One component dropped from Components palette | The Select One (oj-select-one) component, deprecated since JET 8.1.0, has been removed from the Components palette and is visible only if you select the Show Deprecated option. Switch instead to Select Single (oj-select-single). | 22.04 - February 2022 |
Oracle SaaS R13 Light Theme deprecated | The Oracle SaaS R13 Light Theme application template has been deprecated, although we will continue to support it until version 22.01 reaches End of Life (EOL). See Updating an Oracle SaaS application template for more information. | 22.01 - January 2022 |
Migration support for deprecated navigateToPageAction | When you upgrade your app to version 21.10, any existing action chains that use navigateToPageAction (deprecated in 21.07) are automatically migrated to navigateAction (introduced in 21.07). | 21.10 - August 2021 |
Hybrid mobile apps and Apache Cordova custom plugin | In recognition of the increased adoption of the Progressive Web App (PWA) approach for building apps that scale from desktop to tablet to mobile, Oracle is focusing on expanding our PWA capabilities and will correspondingly de-invest in the mobile hybrid solution offered in Visual Builder and Visual Builder Studio. As a result, the use of build configurations to build native .ipa and .apk files for distribution to iOS and Android devices—as well as the Cordova custom plugin option—are being deprecated, although they won't be removed from the products for a minimum of two years (April 2023). We will continue to deliver bug fixes for both native builds as well as PWA until native build reaches End of Life (EOL).
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21.07 - May 2021 |
Internet Explorer 11 |
Visual Builder runtime has deprecated the use of Internet Explorer 11. Users who try to access a deployed Visual Builder application from Internet Explorer will now see a deprecation warning. |
19.4.3 - August 2020 |
Oracle Support will no longer address issues pertaining to Internet Explorer 11. |
21.04 - February 2021 |
Upgrade Policy
When you create a new visual app, Visual Builder automatically sets your runtime dependencies to the latest Visual Builder Runtime and JET versions. If you’ve already an app, however, it’s up to you to decide when to upgrade, as long as you do so within a certain time period. As a general rule, Visual Builder supports applications built on the current Runtime Version, as well as the two previous versions. So for 22.07, for example, Visual Builder supports not only the 22.04 Runtime Version, but also apps built with 22.04 and 22.01. Once 22.10 comes out, however, support for the 22.01 Runtime Version will drop off, so we'll ask you to upgrade those apps before you can work on them in Visual Builder. If you choose not to upgrade at that time, you run the risk that newer browser versions will break your app. You also won’t be able to take advantage of any important security and performance improvements. For all of these reasons, we encourage you to build time into your development cycle to keep abreast of current changes, and to make sure you upgrade your app (you should version it first) before support for your current runtime version expires.
Documentation Accessibility
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Access to Oracle Support
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Oracle Cloud What's New in Oracle Visual Builder, 22.07.0
F56450-01
May 2022
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Primary Author: Oracle Corporation