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 deployed via a sophisticated CI/CD pipeline; Visual Builder has none of these underlying concepts. As a result of these and other disparities, the actions you use to manage applications created in VB Studio must be performed within VB Studio, and not from the Visual Builder Home page where you manage Visual Builder-native applications.

This table lists all the actions available to native Visual Builder applications and explains a bit about how to perform them for applications originating 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 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: On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer. In the upper right menu, 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. In the upper left corner, click the left arrow to exit the Designer. On VB Studio’s Project Home page, in the Workspaces pane, click Manage Workspaces. Click Import to create a new workspace with the imported app. Drag and drop the file you exported in step 2 and click Import. Once you are in the Designer, click the menu in the upper right and click Settings. In the Root URL field, give the app a new name (assuming you want it to be different from the original). Share or Publish the app. The name you specified in step 8 will appear on the VB Project 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: On the Project Home page, in the Workspaces pane, click Manage Workspaces. Once you are in the Designer, click Source View in the Navigator. Click visual-application.json. Enter the new name for the visual app in the rootURL field: Description of the illustration rooturl.png Share or Publish the app. The name you specified in step 4 will appear on the VB Project Home page.
Export	On the Project Home page, in the Workspaces pane, click Manage Workspaces. On the appropriate row, click the Actions menu on the far right. Click Export.
Import	On the Project Home page, in the Workspaces pane, click Manage Workspaces. Click Import to create a new workspace. Drag and drop the exported .zip file.
Settings	On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer. In the Designer, click the menu in the upper right. Click 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 that Visual Builder has. Whereas 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): On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer. In the upper right menu, click Share. This takes a snapshot of whatever is currently in your workspace and assigns it to a URL unique to that snapshot. 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): On the Project Home page, click Builds in the left navigator. Click Configure next to the app’s Deploy job. (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 > General tab will be used. Select the Include the application version in the URL check box. (Optional) If your app contains business objects and you want to include their data, click Add Step > Visual Application > Import Data and supply the required information. If you haven’t already, supply your user name and password for the target environment. Click Save. 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. 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), while 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 particular 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. On the Project Home page, click Builds in the left navigator. Click Configure next to the app’s Deploy job. On the Steps tab, uncheck the Include the application version in the URL check box. If you haven’t already, supply your user name and password for the deployment credentials. Click Save. Click Workspaces in the left navigator and open the workspace for the app. 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. 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) from its predecessor or the deploy job will fail.
New Version	To change the version number of your app: On the Project Home page, click your workspace name to open the app in the Designer. In the Designer, click the menu in the upper right. Click Settings. Enter the version you want in the Version field. Click Publish. (This will kick off your Deploy job, so make sure the Include the application version in the URL check box is checked or unchecked, as needed. See Stage and Publish above.)
Move to trash	From the Project Home page, click Environments. Click the Deployments tab. Click the Actions menu on the appropriate row. Click Undeploy.