Oracle Visual Builder Studio

Here are some key things you can now do to extend your application pages using Visual Builder Studio: 

  • Resource optimization
    The process of sharing or deploying your extension now automatically optimizes all your extension's resources to improve performance. Optimization minifies resources such as stylesheets, HTML, and JSON files and creates RequireJS bundles in an embedded build server.

    By default, all extension resources are included in an optimized resources bundle, but you can customize this configuration to include and exclude resources. See Customize Optimization. If you use Grunt tasks to optimize your extension, you must migrate your customizations from Gruntfile.js into build.json to make sure your customizations can take effect. See How to Migrate gruntFile.js Configuration Into build.json.

    Optimization is recommended to improve your App UI's performance, but you have the option to temporarily disable optimization, say to troubleshoot file access issues that occur because of optimizing your extension. See Suppress Optimization.


  • Built-in label for rules in dependencies
    The business rules and validations editors now use a built-in label for rules defined in dependencies. For Advanced mode, see What are Business Rules? and What are Business Rules? for Express mode. 

  • Business rule editors embedded in the Designer
    The editor tabs for business rules and validations have been removed, with the editors now embedded into the Designer and accessible from the Properties pane.

  • New rule-based property editor
    On some pages, you can use a Page Properties editor to create rules and conditions. With this editor, you can conditionally set the value of page properties. For Advanced mode, see Set Property Values Using Rules, and Set Property Values Using Rules for Express mode.

  • Faster project creation
    We've made several improvements to create a project much faster. Project creation, which previously took the longest, is now significantly faster, helping you to quickly get started on designing and developing pages in the Designer.

  • Left navigator personalization
    Administrators have the ability to customize the Visual Builder Studio navigation bar for the entire organization or for specific projects. You can easily access frequently used menu items while removing those that may clutter their workspace. You can also choose to hide menu items just for your view. See Configure the Left Navigator.

    With this update, projects created when you use the Edit Page in Visual Builder Studio option to customize Oracle Cloud Applications, by default, show only the Organization, Project Home, Workspaces, Git, Merge Requests, Builds, Environments, and Project Administration items in Advanced Mode. See Configure an Oracle Cloud Application.

  • Workspace refresh
    Visual Builder Studio now notifies you to refresh your workspace when teammates publish changes to your project's Git repository and allows you to keep your workspace up to date with everyone's changes. A refresh notification is triggered by default when someone merges changes to the repository's main branch, but you can control the target branch for notifications from the Settings editor. See Refresh Your Workspace for visual applications and Refresh Your Workspace for extensions. See Refresh Your Source Files to view the functionality effect in Express mode.
  • Enhancements to the Publish process
    When you publish your extension or visual application, you're no longer limited to merging your changes to your project's main branch in the remote Git repository. Instead, you can use the Publish dialog to select any remote branch to merge your changes and then deploy. It lets you isolate and validate your work in the target environment. You can specify the name of the new working branch that Visual Basic Studio creates and switches your workspace to after publishing, which means you can specify branch names that might be more meaningful to you than the suggested ones.

    See Deploy a Visual Application in VB Studio Through CI/CD Pipelines for visual apps and Deploy a Visual Application Without CI/CD Pipelines for extensions. See Publish Your Changes Through CI/CD Pipelines and Publish Your Changes Without CI/CD Pipelines.


  • Error notifications in business rules editor
    Business rule editors now display a notification in the status bar to indicate errors when connecting to a service. In the status bar, you can view details about service connection errors and performance issues when fetching data from services. See Resolve the "Loading Completed with Errors" Message for visual apps and Resolve the "Loading Completed with Errors" Message for extensions. 

  • Condition builder operator for regular expressions
    The condition builder now includes Match and Not Match operators for JavaScript regular expression values. For visual apps, see Set Conditions for a Rule and for extensions, see Set Conditions for a Rule. See Set Conditions for a Rule for new operators that are available in Express mode.

  • Improved dynamic container editor
    The editor for customizing dynamic containers now allows you to add, remove, and change the order of sections directly in the Properties pane when the container has only one rule. You can open the embedded editor from the Properties pane for containers with multiple rules. See Add a Dynamic Container to a Page for visual apps and Add a Dynamic Container to a Page for extensions in Advanced mode.

    See Control the Sections Displayed on the Page for extensions in Express mode.

  • Auto-populate response data for Call REST action mocks
    When testing a Call REST action in a chain, Visual Builder Studio now automatically sends a request, captures the response, and populates the mock action. All you need to do is enter the required parameters. Previously, the only way to populate mocks for a Call REST action was to manually make a REST call using the Endpoint tab.

    See Test Action Chains and Create a Test for a Test Case for visual apps. See Test Action Chains and Create a Test for a Test Case for extensions.

  • Usability improvements for Run in Parallel, If or Else, Try or Catch, and Switch actions

    • Run in Parallel: You can add an empty block at the bottom by right-clicking the top-level If node. To add an empty block at a specific position right-click any block. See Add a Run In Parallel Action for visual apps and Add a Run In Parallel Action for extensions.

    • Else-If: You can add an empty If or Else-If block at the bottom by right-clicking the top-level If node. Also, you can add an empty Else block before or after an Else-If block and an empty Else block before an Else block. See Add an If Action for visual apps and Add an If Action for extensions.

    • Try or Catch: If you accidentally delete a Catch or Finally node in the Code view, you can add it back in the Design view by right-clicking a Catch node (to add a Finally node) or a Finally node (to add a Catch node). See Add a Try-Catch Action for visual apps and Add a Try-Catch Action for extensions.

    • Switch: You can add an empty case at the bottom by right-clicking the top-level Switch node. To add an empty case at a specific position right-click an existing case. See Add a Switch Action; for extensions, see Add a Switch Action.

Additionally for all four actions, we've changed the drop-zone to a more targeted drop-line when you drag an action onto the canvas.

  • Support to automatically create fragment variables as constants in a container
    When marking input parameters as variable or constant in a fragment designed for automatic creation, you can switch between the two types within the container. You can use a new property, Create As to convert a constant into a variable or a variable into a constant. This property is particularly useful for fragments that accept page-level properties as input parameters, where the values are expressions evaluated within the context of the page. For example, suppose a fragment defines a title variable whose value is derived from a page-based expression. If you determine that the title is unlikely to change, you can set the fragment variable to be created as a constant on the page. See Automatically Create and Wire a Fragment Variable on Its Container for visual apps and Automatically Create and Wire a Fragment Variable on Its Container for extensions.

  • Support for vbDataProviderNotification events
    The vbDataProviderNotification lifecycle event, is triggered by data providers to notify users of errors that occur when something goes wrong during an implicit fetch. This event is supported within a fragment, and you can use it to display an error message. For example, when a service data provider makes a REST call to fetch data but encounters a timeout due to any reason, this event can be used to notify the user of the error. See Define Actions and Events in Fragments for visual apps and Define Actions and Events in Fragments for extensions.

  • Git diff editor changes
    The Git diff editor now defaults to display only the changed sections of pages. However, you can also choose to view the unchanged sections if needed. Additionally, a new processing timeout of 10 seconds has been implemented for large files, with an option to retry with an extended timeout of 30 seconds. See Other File Management Commands for visual apps and Other File Management Commands for extensions.

  • Improved notifications for in-progress tasks
    We've improved notifications to help you better track the status of in-progress tasks. Instead of multiple notifications for related tasks that need some time to complete, you now see a progress bar indicating that the task is running in the background. See Tour the Designer for visual apps and What Is the Designer? for extensions.

    See What Is the Designer? to view this notification in Express mode.

  • Help icon with label, description for page input parameters
    When marking a variable as an input parameter, you can now enter a label and a description to show an Help icon icon on the Page Input Parameters dialog and improve user experience. Page users can then click the icon to get a more meaningful identifier and some context on how best to set the parameter's value. See Enable Variables as Input Parameters for visual apps and Enable Variables as Input Parameters for extensions.

The new Visual Builder Studio functionality provides you with a platform to extend your Fusion Applications extensively.

Steps to Enable

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Tips And Considerations

If you have 25C version of Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, you automatically have access to these Visual Builder Studio features.

Key Resources