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The Qrew Blog
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How can we help you adapt to your new (and evolving) priorities?

NeilForbes's avatar
NeilForbes
Quickbase Staff
5 years ago

I spent some time this morning looking at how a variety of businesses are adapting their approach to continue to live their mission in this new reality. My son's elementary school is holding physical education class every morning online. Brené Brown is leading non-denominational prayer groups on Instagram. Veterans groups are posting daily workout challenges on social media to inspire physical and mental fitness during this stressful time. Fine dining restaurants are converting to touchless delivery literally overnight.

 

Touching base with my team, I was inspired by the collaboration and partnership we've delivered to customers over the past week. State and local governments are spinning up apps to manage their response(s) to the COVID-19 crisis. Businesses are rapidly identifying business needs and developing applications to address them. Other clients have built apps to manage IT assets that need to be delivered to newly remote employees.

 

The world is changing fast and we all are in a constant state of trying to adapt even faster. We know you are facing new priorities and evolving challenges right now. For our team at Quick Base that means we want to help more than ever. What can we do to help you and your team succeed in this new environment? What new problems have cropped up? How can we help you solve them? We can help with everything from app building advice to simply being a sounding board. We know the power of our community, and we know that you all are doing amazing things everyday; if you are creating an app that you think others could benefit from, please add it to our App Exchange.

We look forward to connecting and collaborating with you soon.


How To Publish An App


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Neil Forbes
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Published 5 years ago
Version 1.0
  • DwightMunson1's avatar
    DwightMunson1
    Qrew Assistant Captain
    5 years ago
    I can' t think of anything to specifically help us in the current environment, but there are a couple things in general I could use: 

    1. Enhanced email subscriptions that can go straight to our customers (who do not have Quick Base access). 
    Example: Right now I have a report that needs to be sent to several different construction coordinators that are part of our customer's company. Each coordinator has their own report. As of now, we have an email address set up through our organization where each report gets sent, then we have email rules set up to forward it to the specific coordinator. This takes several steps to set up a new coordinator. 

    2. Salesforce has a feature where you can download a report that is formatted instead of just a CSV. So if I'm in my customer's system I can do that, but not in our system. 

    3. Ability to edit the logs to text fields that have logging enabled. Some of them can become messy, if they are rich text fields. 

    4. Built in holidays. Declare your company's holidays so the WeekdayAdd/WorkdayAdd will automatically count them.

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    Dwight Munson
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    • UrsulaLlaveria's avatar
      UrsulaLlaveria
      Qrew Assistant Captain
      5 years ago
      I completely agree with the holidays thing! My team just last week had to write a script to account for all holidays in a duration field. Would have been so much more efficient if this was included as a formula type in QB.

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      Ursula
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      • DwightMunson1's avatar
        DwightMunson1
        Qrew Assistant Captain
        5 years ago
        We have a table dedicated to years and the holidays within them. We have to relate them to any table where we need to account for holidays in two steps, Holiday for Current Year and Holidays for Next Year. So since we have 6 holidays, that's 14 related fields, plus we have some placeholders for if we add a holiday or two. 
        Then we declare a variable to account for the holidays in any formula date fields.

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        Dwight Munson
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    • KatValentine's avatar
      KatValentine
      Qrew Trainee
      5 years ago
      I don't work for QB, but I might have a few ideas on how to accomplish these items using current functionality.

      1. I believe there is an option to send email subscriptions to email addresses that don't have access. What about that doesn't work?

      2. You can link Excel to Quick Base, format it, then simply refresh the connection to get the latest data. That's what I do for formatted reports, deliverables with multiple reports, reports I want to do data transformations on in Excel or turn into charts, etc. It's a bit tricky to get working, but once you figure it out, it's very convenient. Here's a couple links for more info: https://getsatisfaction.com/quickbase/topics/automatic-export-from-quickbase-into-excel
      http://www.kimgentes.com/worshiptech-web-tools-page/2010/8/18/web-connecting-csv-files-as-external-data-to-excel-spreadshe.html
      For your connection use a URL in the general format of https://yoursite.quickbase.com/db/YOUR_DATABASE?act=API_GenResultsTable&usertoken=YOUR_USER_TOKEN&options=tsv&qid=YOUR_QUERY_ID

      3. Agreed, these fields are kind of a pain, and I've also wanted to make some administrative edits to them in the past myself. Overall though, I find there are better way to track changes. I personally have a change log table which has fields for the table and field that was changed, old and new values, when it was changed, and who changed it. You can then show the changes for specific fields (or all fields, if you like) as a report link, run reports to get changes during date ranges, count all changes, etc. I use a webhook to drive mine, but you could probably use an automation or pipeline instead. You just need something to log the change info to the change log table whenever there's a change.

      4. I'd also find this useful. Maybe you should suggest it on the User Voice forum? It sounds like you'd get some support.

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      Kat Valentine
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      • NeilForbes's avatar
        NeilForbes
        Quickbase Staff
        5 years ago
        Hi Dwight,

        Kat is spot on with 1,2, and 3. Thank you Kat!

        Josh Kaylor (your CSM) should be hopping in here shortly to provide some additional help beyond user voice on #4.​

        Thanks!

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        Neil Forbes
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  • DerekHutchinson's avatar
    DerekHutchinson
    Qrew Cadet
    5 years ago
    I love seeing all of this support from the QuickBase Team. As of right now we are just starting to transition and everything is getting monitored closely. Currently no major changes or systems need but that could change at any minute as we transition how we work. I will repost here if that changes or I come across something that would be valuable to share with the community.

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    Derek Hutchinson
    Business Process Manager
    PSG Dover
    Grand Rapids, MI
    269-779-5748
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    • NeilForbes's avatar
      NeilForbes
      Quickbase Staff
      5 years ago
      Awesome, Derek. We are happy to help and grateful for any contributions you and your team at PSG Dover can share out to the QB community.

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      Neil Forbes
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  • JenniMurray's avatar
    JenniMurray
    Qrew Cadet
    5 years ago
    We have a need to add a questionnaire form from App (B) into another App (A), where the team filling it out lives in. The reason for this is that the info from the survey should really reside in App (B) for reference and tracking. The team only needs to fill it out as management will be reviewing the answers and follow up with any requests.

    My thought process was to put a button on App (A) for the team to click and be routed to fill out the form that lives on App (B). Would that be the best way, or would it be better to set up a table in App (A) then sync the info into App (B)? I'd like to avoid duplicating data.

    Or is there a way to include/embed/iframe the form from App (B) in a home page within App (A), so it doesn't look like they are leaving App (A) to fill it out?


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    Jenni Murray
    Detroit, MI
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    • EvanMartinez's avatar
      EvanMartinez
      Quickbase Staff
      5 years ago
      Hi Jenni,

      It is possible to pull in an app page into a dashboard using a webpage widget to pull in an add record page from that app. You can add an iframe to it as well if you want to narrow down the focus to just the form if you want to go that route. Alternatively, I have also seen buttons on dashboards or buttons on forms that take users right to the other app to put in data as well so they are aware of where they are going to enter data. Pretty much all the options you outlined are all viable depending on how much you want to hide the other app and how smooth you want the process to feel versus the extra steps in the process.

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      Evan Martinez
      Community Marketing Manager
      Quick Base
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      • JenniMurray's avatar
        JenniMurray
        Qrew Cadet
        5 years ago
        Hi Evan,

        Thank you for the response!

        Oh good, glad I'm on the right mindset on how to do this. I like the idea of using a webpage widget for this or an iframe. I'll check those options out.

        I'm looking for a clean easy user experience for our team to use. The more I can make it seem like it is all contained within App (A) the better. After thinking about it, using the button to open in the other app may confuse some, unless there is a way to reroute them back to the page they were on in the original app.

        I'll take a stab at the page options first and let you know if I have any questions :)

        ~ Thank you

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        Jenni Murray
        Detroit, MI
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  • DebraCote's avatar
    DebraCote
    Qrew Trainee
    5 years ago
    Love the holiday idea as well.

    With thousands of users moving to remote and looking for access to data, we're limited to who can view based on license limit. Would QB consider a free "viewer" license like other vendor solutions offer?

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    Debra Cote
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  • StephenArnold's avatar
    StephenArnold
    Qrew Trainee
    5 years ago
    Nothing new has popped up yet but our company has only been working from home for a week.  A&M University (where I work) is going to online classes because of COVID-19 starting next week so we may see something pop up then.  I will reach out if we have any problems.

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    Stephen Arnold
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  • AmyGosz2's avatar
    AmyGosz2
    Qrew Cadet
    5 years ago
    From my perspective, we are doing good. Our company already lives on laptops so it has been fairly easy to transition to work at home mode. Also, throughout the past year, departments went on a 'test' BCP to makes sure they were able to stay at home and continue working. Notifications were sent out the night before so that was the only notice employees got and they were expected to stay home and work and not show up at the office.

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    Amy Gosz
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