Share Blocks Between Applications

In Pigment, you use Libraries to share Blocks, such as Transactions lists, Dimension Lists, and Metrics, across Applications. By sharing Blocks across Applications, you can reuse the same Metrics and Lists in different Applications without having to recreate them. This saves time and effort in duplicating the Blocks and ensures efficiency, consistency, and collaboration across multiple Applications.

In addition to centralized management and consistency, sharing Blocks facilitates collaboration within an organization. Multiple Applications can access and use the same Blocks, allowing for better coordination and alignment of data across different teams and departments.

Before you begin

Here are some considerations before you share a Block with another application in Pigment:

• Permissions. You need to have the Configure Blocks permission to add or remove Blocks in the Library. 
• Use Case. It's important to understand when to share Blocks and when to add Views to the Application Library:
  - Share Blocks when they need to be used by other Applications in their Metric's structure or they need to be referenced in formulas.
  - Add Views to the Library when the View and its underlying data needs to be displayed on other Application’s Boards.
  For more information, see Using Libraries to share data between Applications. 
• Scope. When you share a Block, you are also automatically sharing all the underlying Dimensions of that Block. Any changes made to the shared Block are reflected in all Applications using that Block.

Share a Block

To share a Block, you first need to activate the sharing of the Block by toggling the sharing button. This makes the Block available to other Applications.

1. In either All Blocks, or in Block Explorer, locate the Block you want to share.
2. Click the menu (...).
3. Click Settings, and then go to the Library section. 
4. Toggle on the sharing button located in the Library.
   Use the same button to deactivate sharing. However, this isn’t possible if the Block is being used by other Applications’ Blocks. 

Use a Shared Block in your Application 

1. Go to your target Application, open Settings and click Libraries.
   Here, you see a list of all the Applications sharing Blocks through their Libraries. .
2. Locate and toggle on the source Application that contains the shared Block you want to use.
   When the Library is activated for use the target Application, you can start creating formulas using the shared Block's data.

Create formulas using the Block's data

Now that the Library is activated in the target Application, you can create formulas with these Blocks. 

• Replace the name of the Block in your formula as follows : 'APPLICATION_NAME'::'BLOCK_NAME' 

As an added help, the auto suggestion panel lists the Blocks from your current Application as well as from the Libraries.

If the shared Block’s Name has no equivalent in the current Application and the Shared Blocks, the prefix 'APPLICATION_NAME' is not necessary and will be automatically removed by the formula corrector.