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Settings and maintenance

Since 0.6.0.

Do this to change how Brick Work behaves (the retail country, where pictures come from, how old a price may be), to look after the catalogue and your keys, and to keep the collection healthy. Everything is under Manage → Tools & Admin, which opens with two cards, Get started and Statistics, followed by the groups of tools.

Settings

Tools & Admin → Settings holds the preferences that are yours to choose. Change what you want and press Save settings. The page then says Settings saved with an Undo next to it; Undo puts back exactly what was there before, and is refused with Item changed · undo the later save first once you have saved again.

  • Currencies. The currency amounts are shown in, and the exchange rates used to compare amounts in different currencies. A rate is per one euro. Load ECB reference rates fetches the European Central Bank's daily rates (no key); a rate you entered by hand is kept. Stored amounts never change currency.
  • Retail country. DE, US, UK or CA: which LEGO price Brickset's retail figure uses.
  • Part lists. Prefer BrickLink's part list for new copies. When it is on, a new copy of a set starts on Rebrickable's list and switches to BrickLink's list as soon as it arrives; a set's own pinned choice still comes first. The switch needs a BrickLink key: without one it is off and says so, with a link to Catalogues & keys. It has its own Save button and saves at once, with no Undo; turn it off again the same way.
  • Picture source order. Where Brick Work looks for a picture, first to last: for Parts, and for Everything else. Each list names the three sources in plain words (the Rebrickable catalogue, BrickLink, the Rebrickable API). Use the switch to leave a source out and the arrows to move it, then press Save settings. The first source that has a picture wins. The setting applies to jobs queued afterwards. See Pictures, prices and where they come from.
  • Source priority. For the other steps that call a source (metadata, market price) and each kind of item, the sources to try, first to last, separated by commas. A blank kind uses the default list.
  • Freshness. Days before a source's data counts as stale, per source and kind of data. Empty means it never goes stale. A fresh install starts with prices 30 days, metadata 365 days and pictures never. Bulk refresh prices lists what is stale by these rules.
  • Pictures. How many of the things you hold have a picture and from which source. Refresh pictures queues a job for the missing pictures, or for every item; the dialog says how many items that is before you confirm. There is no Undo for a refresh, and existing files are kept.

The BrickLink region and currency and the repair settings of Complete sets are set where they are used (the command line and the planning screens).

Catalogues & keys

Tools & Admin → Catalogues & keys shows each source with its daily budget, its last success and its last error, and a switch to turn a source off. A card per key lets you enter a key: it is write-only, tested once and stored encrypted, and it is never shown again. Replace and Remove are there afterwards, and Undo right after a removal.

The Catalogue card says what the catalogue file beside your collection holds, when it was built and last reconciled, and whether the optional BrickLink item lists are loaded. The pages below do the rest from the browser.

Catalogue

First run. An empty install shows Nothing here yet on Sets. Download the catalogue there needs no key and no login: it fetches Rebrickable's twelve files (about 17 MB), builds the catalogue, creates your collection file if it is missing and switches the catalogue on, as a background job with a progress bar. It takes about a minute: 51 s on a Raspberry Pi 5, most of it building the catalogue. Rebrickable asks for at most one download a day, so if today's files are on disk already the button reads Build from today's files and fetches nothing. When it is done, Add a set opens: add a set by its number and open Set Inspector. Keys are optional; they bring prices and part lists for sets newer than the catalogue. A catalogue file that is beside the collection but not switched on yet shows Activate the catalogue.

The first run is one flow of four steps: Load the catalogue, Set up your keys (optional), Bring your collection in (see Bring your collection in from another app) and See how the inventory works, five short cards on sets and copies, completeness, loose stock and lots, the workflows at the table and an assistant, each linking to its screen. Got it at its end marks it read. Each step shows whether it is done, where the flow picks up, or what it waits for: bringing your collection in waits for the catalogue. Skip for now sets a step aside, and Back into the flow takes it back. Once your collection holds something, the flow lives on Tools & Admin › Get started, with how many steps are done, and it resumes at the first open step. A step counts as done only when it happened: a catalogue is switched on, a key is stored, the collection holds a copy or loose stock, or the guide was read. Skipped steps are remembered in onboarding.json beside the collection file. What the catalogue is, under the first step, says what the catalogue holds, how Brick Work ids relate to the BrickLink, Rebrickable and Brickset numbers, and what comes later: pictures, prices and newer sets. Once the catalogue is active, the step shows how many items and colours it holds and the date of Rebrickable's files it came from. A download keeps running when you leave the page; coming back shows its progress, and a failed one shows the error and the button to try again. On Get started, the keys step has a card per source, as on Catalogues & keys: what the key gives you, a link to the site's page where you make it, the fields, Test and save, and for a saved key Test key, Replace and Remove. A rejected key shows the site's reason on its card. Every key action comes back to the flow. Until a key is stored the step says what is missing without one: prices, and part lists for sets newer than the catalogue.

Tools & Admin → Catalogue → Build shows the current catalogue: when it was built, the date of the Rebrickable download it came from, how many items and colours it holds, how many retired items it keeps (items that left Rebrickable's files keep their ids), and when your collection was last reconciled with it.

  • Re-download fetches Rebrickable's twelve files again (about 17 MB, no login) and builds the catalogue from them, then reconciles your collection. Rebrickable asks for at most one download a day: if today's files are on disk already, they are used instead.
  • Rebuild builds the catalogue again from the files already downloaded, with no network. The current file is moved aside as catalogue.db.damaged-DATE, never deleted. It is disabled until a download is on disk.

Both run in the background. The page shows a progress bar and the step it is on, and you can leave it: the result is there when you come back. Only one job runs at a time; the buttons come back when it finishes. If a job fails, the page says why in plain words (folder names are cut to the file name, and an unexpected error says only that the details are in the server log), and the catalogue that was in place before stays in place.

When a job is done the page lists what changed (items, colours, retired items kept, names refreshed, links upgraded) and the copies whose part list changed against the new catalogue, each as "Set 2 · 1 list changed" with a link to that copy. Nothing switches on its own: open the copy to see the change and switch it.

Reconcile brings your collection up to date with the catalogue (names, links, kinds, part lists to check). It writes only your collection. If the new catalogue is in place but the collection has not been reconciled yet, the page says Not reconciled yet. Brick Work reconciles at the next start by itself, as a job you can see under Jobs; Reconcile now does it straight away.

Tools & Admin → BrickLink item lists is optional. BrickLink's own catalogue lists confirm BrickLink numbers for sets, offer same-number candidates and correct the kind of zero-part sets. Loading them adds no item by itself. They also help Orders: an order e-mail's item names are matched against BrickLink's names, and a line naming an item only BrickLink has (an instruction booklet, some sticker and printed parts) becomes an item of Brick Work's own when the order is read (#154). See Receive a parts order. Put BrickLink's catalogue XML files (all eight item types) in a folder under bricklink-lists/ beside your collection, choose the folder and press Load lists.

The page keeps the last load: how many items were listed, how many links were upgraded, how many candidates to check there are (open Unresolved items to decide them) and how many kinds were corrected. A candidate is never confirmed on its own.

Mappings and coverage

Tools & Admin → Catalogue → Mappings shows where BrickLink numbers come from: your own links first, then the BrickLink lists, then the local mapping files in mappings/ beside your collection, then the files that ship with the app and the rules. It lists the shipped and local files with their rows and version.

Two figures say how well that covers your collection: how many of your items have a BrickLink number, and how many part and colour pairs have a known picture. Each is a count and a bar. The items figure appears after the first reconcile.

For the commands that do the same work on the server, see Commands.

Migration report

After a move from 3.3, Tools & Admin → Migration report reads the report the migration wrote: the summary, whether the proof passed (each part of the proof with what it checked), the identity matches you decided by hand and every report file with its row count and a Download link. It shows whether the report's digest matches the one recorded in your collection. The report is read from migration-report/ beside your collection, or from the folder in BW_MIGRATION_REPORT (Settings reference). With no report there, the page says so.

Values

Values edits the lists the forms offer: owners, statuses, tags, storage locations and purchase places. Rename a value in place; Archive hides it from the forms and keeps what refers to it. A value Brick Work uses itself (such as the status that marks a set as checked) is listed but cannot be renamed or archived. A storage location can only be archived when it holds nothing; its own page, Open location · moves and Undo, moves things out and undoes the archive.

Statistics

Tools & Admin → Statistics counts your live copies four ways: by completeness, by theme, by storage and by purchase place. The headline says how many copies are incomplete ("9 of 25 copies are incomplete"), and each chart's title states its point ("Only 5 copies are complete", "Harbour is the biggest theme, 3 copies"); when rows tie for the lead the title says so ("Icons and Police lead, 2 copies each", "3 places share the lead, 5 copies each"). Every bar is one line, label, bar and value, and all four charts share one scale, copies starting at zero, so bars compare across charts. Completeness is in status order (Complete, Incomplete, Not checked, Sealed); the others run from most to fewest copies. After six rows the rest folds into one outlined row, for example 14 more themes, with their summed copies. Below the charts, a card compares what you paid with LEGO's retail price.

Jobs and Bulk refresh prices

Jobs lists the newest jobs with their steps. A failed step has Retry; a job that was running when the app stopped has Resume. While a job or bulk action is queued, running or waiting, the page keeps itself current every few seconds: states, step counts, progress bars and new jobs appear without a reload, and your search and filters stay. When nothing changes for a while (a job waiting for a daily budget, an interrupted job) it looks less often, up to once a minute, and once everything has settled it still looks once a minute for jobs started elsewhere. It does not look while the tab is in the background. Bulk refresh prices queues a price job for every held or wanted item whose price is stale, and needs the BrickLink key.

A bulk action (Bulk refresh prices, Refresh pictures, fetching missing booklets) is one row under Bulk actions at the top of Jobs: how many of its items are done, failed, cancelled and still to go, a progress bar, and when it waits for a source's daily budget, until when. … failed · why lists the items that failed with the reason (the first 50). Cancel stops the items not started yet; the one running finishes, and a cancelled item is not retried. While a bulk action runs, your own work goes first: an Add's import, its part list and a single Update price run before the next item of the batch, so a new set gets its picture and price in seconds, not after the whole refresh. The daily budgets of each source hold for the batch's items as for any job. A step that only lacks a key (no BrickLink key for a price, no Brickset key for set data) is not a failure: it shows Waiting for a key · runs once it is stored, and storing the key, or starting Brick Work with the key in its environment, runs it. A key the site refuses fails the step, with the site's reason.

Instruction files

A PDF is attached to a set; a booklet shows the files of the set with its number. Upload a PDF takes a set number (or a booklet's number, which names the same set) and a label; Fetch missing only refreshes the identity of booklets that have no PDF and downloads nothing.

Database

Run integrity check checks the collection file and the catalogue file and keeps the result, with its time, on the page. Export database downloads a consistent copy of the collection (never your keys). See Back up and restore.

API tokens

API tokens creates and revokes the tokens scripts and assistants use. A new token's secret is shown once. After a revoke the banner offers Undo for 10 minutes. See Connect an assistant.

What next