Managing your blocks

Learn how to use the block store options to manage blocks you’ve created.

After reading this article you’ll know how to:

Check the statuses of your blocks
Release and unpublish blocks
Manage the visibility of your blocks
Update blocks

After creating a block of your own, it’s time to get it released to be used in other applications, but besides that, you have to be aware of other settings you might want to use in order to manage and maintain them. For example, when you add a feature to your block, it needs some management to get it to work properly. These are the topics we are going to cover in this article. Let’s get started!

Settings and statuses

Note: Before we started, it’s important to mention that for this example we will take the same block created in Sharing a data source block but by default, it will have unreleased status.

Open the block store and find the needed block. In our case, we are looking for the one called Swagger API Petstore. It is unreleased (that is, not shared with and visible by other builders), therefore it will be displayed as Dev Block with the status ‘Unreleased’ status. Here it is, among other blocks with the same statuses.

Click on the block and the detail page will be displayed. Let’s have a look at what it contains in terms of statuses and options.

The first menu gives you the possibility to release the block to the block store, manage its visibility or delete it.

When you press ‘Release’, the dialog window will open giving you two options you can see below.

Click on ‘Visibility’ to manage who will be able to see this block. When a block is visible, it means it can be installed by:
- Owners (the same organization you belong to)
- Owners and selected organizations (you select this organization(s) below)

2. Here you are always able to see the current status (Released or Unreleased) of your block and who it’s visible for.

3. Block image that could be easily changed (by pressing the pencil icon within it), or deleted. In our example, it’s a Swagger logo.

4. Block description that can be updated by clicking on the text itself.

5. Content section shows a number of elements (data sources, components, etc.) this block contains. You can add content to the existing block, continue reading to find out!

6. Lastly, below the status and visibility statuses, there is other information about the block:

‘Maintained in’ provides a link to the original application in which this block was created
‘Published by’ - name of the organization that published this block
‘Developers’ shows the names of those who created this block
‘Last updated at’ and ‘Created at’ show the dates and time the block was updated and created accordingly.

Updating and adding new content to a block

While maintaining the block to keep it up to date, you might want to add some more content to it. For example, you’ve realized that some of your reusable page blocks need one more component. Let’s have a look at how it’s done via the page builder.

Open the page builder and find the component you want to add to the existing block.
In the component’s options choose ‘Save as new component’ at the bottom
Come up with a name for it, select the category, and icon, and toggle ‘Share via block store’.
As the additional options appear below, select ‘Add to the existing block’ and pick up the desirable pre-created block
Click the ‘Add to block’ button to finish this configuration.

As we come back to the block store and find our block.
Click the ‘Edit block’ button and you’ll notice our newly added component called ‘List component for home page’ in the ‘Dev content’ section. The block’s status has become ‘Dev content changed’, which means that we first need to apply changes we’ve made in order for the component we have added to become visible to others.
In order to release our component along with the home page, click the ‘Update’ button and then ‘Release’ in a dialog window.

From now on, all organizations we shared this block with will be able to install the ‘Home page’ block with our added page component. You can also delete the components separately from the Dev content section by clicking the ‘Delete’ button.

That is the basic information you need to know to be able to manage your blocks. Other types of blocks (functions, data sources, and themes) are updated in a very similar way, so we recommend that you test their configuration yourselves. But in case you have any questions left, you can always contact our support department by pressing the blue dialog icon in the bottom right corner, and address them with all kinds of questions.