1. Extending Oracle Cloud Applications with Visual Builder Studio
  2. The Essentials
  3. Get Started
  4. Configure an Oracle Cloud Application

Configure an Oracle Cloud Application

You can configure an Oracle Cloud Application to hide or rearrange fields in a dynamic form or table, introduce new behavior based on a variable’s value, add your own content to a page, and much, much more. The easiest way to start is by viewing your page in Oracle Cloud Applications:

  1. Enter the URL for your Visual Builder Studio instance. (If you don't have it, you can navigate to VB Studio from your Oracle Cloud Application's Navigator. Select Configuration, then Visual Builder.)

    Note:

    Before continuing, make sure you or someone else in your organization has completed the steps in Essential Set-Up Tasks .
  2. In your Oracle Cloud Application, navigate to the page you want to modify, hover over Ask Oracle, then click Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio:
    Description of editpagenew.png follows
    Description of the illustration editpagenew.png

    Note:

    If you don't see the pencil in the lower right corner, click your user name at the top-right corner to open the Settings and Actions menu, then select Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio:
    Description of fa-edit-page-link.png follows
    Description of the illustration fa-edit-page-link.png
    If you don’t see the Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio option in your Oracle Cloud Application, it could be because:
    • You don't have the right privileges to access VB Studio. Check with your Oracle Cloud Application administrator if you're not sure.
    • You may not be working in an environment that has an instance of VB Studio associated with it, such as a TEST environment. Again, check with your Oracle Cloud Application administrator to see if this is the case.
    • Your Oracle Cloud Application has not yet adopted Oracle’s new Redwood design pattern, so this page is not extensible using VB Studio. In that case, refer to Configuring and Extending Applications for instructions on how to customize your Oracle Cloud Applications with App Composer to meet your business needs.

  3. Select a project and a workspace.

    To edit a page in VB Studio, you must belong to a project that has been set up to configure Oracle Cloud Applications in this environment. If you're a member of several projects, you'll be asked to choose one at this point. Although it's considered best practice for you and everyone at your site to work on all Oracle Cloud Application extensions within the same project, regardless of pillar, it's possible that multiple projects have been set up—one for each pillar—so you'll want to pick one of those. These projects are badged as Recommended badge. If a project is recommended but you're not a member, select the project and click Request Membership to contact the project owner and get yourself added. You'll be notified by email when your request is approved, at which point you can try editing the page again.

    If you're not a member of any projects, and you don't have any recommended projects, you'll need to create one. Click + Create, then enter a Project Name in the New App Extension Project dialog. If you know others may work with you in this project, optionally select their names in the Add Members list. (Make sure someone has enabled these users to access VB Studio by following the instructions in Set Up VB Studio Users.) Click Create.

    Note:

    Projects created this way use default settings to get you started right away. Once the project is created, you can access its properties to explore all the options available to you (click Go to project page at the top left of the header, then look for Properties under Project Administration Project Administration icon in the VB Studio left navigator). As someone who creates the project, you automatically become the project owner, with rights to manage it. At this point, you may want to set merge restrictions on the main branch in the project's Git repository to control who pushes commits to it and how. See Set Merge Restrictions on the main Branch.

    Whether you create a new project or select an existing one, you'll need a workspace, which we'll create for you if you don't have one. For example, this is what you see when a workspace is created as part of the new project workflow:
    Description of workflow.png follows
    Description of the illustration workflow.png

    Here's how workspaces behave under various circumstances:
    • If you already have a workspace in the project for the page you're editing, VB Studio automatically opens that workspace for you.
    • If you have more than one workspace for the same page in that project, you'll be prompted to select one.
    • If you have a workspace for a different page, but it belongs to the same product family (known as pillar in the Oracle Cloud Application ecosystem), you can re-use that workspace, even though it wasn't originally created for the page you're currently editing. This avoids creating a surplus of workspaces—and Git repositories—every time you edit a page for the first time in a project.
    • If you don't have a workspace for the page you're editing but someone else does, your new workspace will be based on a clone of your teammate's existing Git repository. If you have a workspace but it isn't associated with the page you're trying to edit, and again, someone else is already working on that page, you should clone that teammate's repository when prompted. In this case, a new workspace that's based on a clone of your teammate's repository is created for you, allowing both of you to use the same repo and collaboratively make edits on that page. You have the option to use workspaces unrelated to the page (or create a new repo)—but this means you cannot collaborate with your teammate because your changes will be in different repositories.

    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 CX. If that name already exists, a number is added to the name and incremented as needed, for example, Workspace CX 1, Workspace CX 2, and so on.

    Once you access a project, you'll see your page open in the Designer, with the extensible areas highlighted, like this dynamic form:
    Description of extendableareasingreen.png follows
    Description of the illustration extendableareasingreen.png

  4. Select an extensible area by clicking it, then selecting a component or rule set in the Properties pane on the right. You’ll then be placed in one of VB Studio’s editors, where the real work begins.
  5. Use Configure an App UI to help you configure your Oracle Cloud Application to meet your organization’s requirements.

    When you're done making your changes, there are several ways you can test and prepare your configurations for publication. See Preview, Share, and Publish Your Extension for more information.