Create a Simple Extension

The easiest way to set up VB Studio for others and ensure everything is working properly is to create a simple extension yourself, which walks you through the required steps. There are some other steps you may want to complete later, but those are optional.

The best practice is to create one project for each Oracle Cloud Application your users will want to configure, so that all the code for that Application is stored in the same Git repository. (A VB Studio project gathers all the resources you need for your software development effort, depending on what that is.) For that reason, you’ll need to repeat the following steps for each such Oracle Cloud Application:

1. Navigate to a page in the Oracle Cloud Application, then click Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio:
   
   
   Description of the illustration editpagenew.png
   
   
   If you don't see the pencil in the lower right corner, open the Settings and Actions menu and click Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio:
   

   
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2. In the New App Extension Project dialog, enter a unique name for the project, as well as some team members or groups you think might use this project to extend this Oracle Cloud Application:
   
   
   Description of the illustration newappextproj.png
   
   

   Note:

   After you've completed this procedure, make sure that the team members you've added have the proper roles, by following the steps in Set Up VB Studio Users.

   VB Studio shows you a status dialog so you can follow along as each asset is created:
   
   Description of the illustration projprogress.png
   

   If you're curious about these assets, you can find out more about them in What Project Artifacts Are Created?.

   By default, VB Studio creates a private project that’s discoverable, which means that users you haven’t added explicitly to the project will be allowed to choose the project when they click Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio from the associated Oracle Cloud Application. Remember, it’s best to keep all work for a given Oracle Cloud Application within the same project, so VB Studio will place a “Recommended” badge next to the project’s name to encourage users to select it.

   Note:

   The default workspace name generated when you jump over to VB Studio typically uses the pillar of the page you're trying to extend, in the format Workspace PILLAR, for example, Workspace HCM. If that name already exists, a number is added to the name and incremented as needed, for example, Workspace HCM 1, Workspace HCM 2, and so on.
3. VB Studio opens the page you were just viewing in the Designer. When you hover over an extendable component on the canvas, it is outlined in blue, like this:
   
   
   Description of the illustration extendableareasingreen.png
   
   
4. Make a small change to the page, just for testing purposes. You can drag a Heading component onto the page, for example, or add or remove a field on a dynamic form. VB Studio implicitly saves your changes as you work.
5. In the Designer's header, click Publish:
   
   
   Description of the illustration designer-publish-changes-action.png
   
   
   The Publish action automatically commits your changes and pushes them to the Git repo, then opens this dialog:
   

   
   Description of the illustration publishchanges.png

   
   
6. Add a brief comment to describe your changes, then click Publish Changes.
7. Add valid credentials for this Oracle Cloud Applications instance. Be sure to supply Oracle Cloud Application credentials, as opposed to those for Visual Builder Studio, SSO, or any other system. Once you do this, other users deploying to this instance will not be prompted for credentials.

   The pipeline that was created as part of the project contains two jobs: a package job (called extensionName-Package), which generates the extension's artifact file, and a deploy job (extensionName-Deploy, which deploys the extension's artifact file to the Oracle Cloud Application's Development environment. After testing, you can set up a separate pipeline to publish the build artifact to the live (PROD) instance; see Set Up the Project to Deploy to Production.

   Let's take a look at the pipeline that's kicked off as part of the Publish process.

8. Click the upper left hand arrow to exit the Designer:
   
   
   Description of the illustration gotoprojectside.png
   
   
9. In the VB Studio left navigator, click Builds, then click Job Queue:
   
   Description of the illustration jobqueue.png
   

   In this example, you can see that the package job has already begun running, which will be followed by the deploy job. Depending on how long it takes for you to arrive on the Job Queue tab, you may see a message in the Progress field that says the job is waiting for a VM executor to become available. This should resolve itself shortly.

   Take a moment now to investigate the Jobs, Pipelines, and Pipeline Queue tabs.

10. View your published changes.

    After the deploy job completes, you'll be able see your work by going to your Oracle Cloud Applications instance and pointing your browser to the App UI you just configured. You may need to re-authenticate to see your latest changes.

11. As this was just a simple test and not a real extension, you may want to remove it. To do so, see Delete an Extension Manually.

What's Next?

At this point, you have several options:

• Set up the VB Studio users you added in step 1, if you haven’t already. (This must be done before your users can access VB Studio.) See Set Up VB Studio Users.
• Take advantage of some the advanced settings you can apply. See Advanced Administrator Tasks.
• Set up a pipeline to deploy to your PROD instance. See Set Up the Project to Deploy to Production.
• Change some of the project’s attributes, like the markup language used to format wiki pages and comments. See What Else Can You Do with Your Project?.