Last month we shared how our Pipelines engineering team protects one day each month, the first Friday, to work on the small things: the rough edges, the extra clicks, the moments of friction that individually seem minor but collectively shape how a product feels to use every day.
The response to that post genuinely made our day. One reader commented:
"I had noticed several of these and really appreciate the little changes, they are impactful. I really like being able to auto-gen description and notes for the steps, that is a huge time saver, and I found it to be more accurate than I would have expected."
That is exactly the outcome we are after, so we are keeping the series going.
To get to know our team better, I am going to start tagged the engineers who worked on each improvement. Here is what came out of our July session.
More canvas real estate with the new floating islands
tweaked by rmilushev-qb
The top bar of the Pipeline Builder was taking up a lot of real estate, one merged bar stretching across the canvas, claiming space that could be yours.
We decided to open it up and give that space back to you. These controls now appear as two compact floating islands, so more of the screen belongs to your pipeline, which is especially valuable on smaller screens. All existing behavior is preserved, including side panel resizing.
Pin fields in a pipeline step
smoothed out by DzhemSS
Previously, steps with long lists of additional fields forced you to scroll and search for the handful of fields you actually use, every time you opened the step.
You can now pin fields in a step's additional fields section. Pinned fields are saved with the pipeline, so they are waiting right at the top the next time you open the builder.
A new "is today" date filter
polished by mboshikyova
Filtering records by the current date previously required workarounds, and many of you asked for a simpler option.
Date filters will now include an is today operator, available across search, create record, and other steps, with careful handling of timezones so the comparison lands on the right calendar day.
A few other things we fixed
Not everything needs its own headline, but these are worth knowing about:
- Show and hide columns in Connections Central. My Pipelines lets you choose which columns appear in the list view, and Connections Central now has the same column picker, with your selection preserved across visits.
- The Activity panel no longer loses runs of invalid pipelines. Running an invalid pipeline used to flash "Pipeline starting..." and then reset the Activity panel to empty as if the run never happened; the panel now shows these runs with their failure reason.
Why we keep doing this
The "is today" filter above did not come from a roadmap meeting. It came from you: several customers asked for it through Quickbase Feedback, an engineer picked it up on a Friday, and next month it ships. That loop, from feedback comment to a working feature in weeks, is the whole reason we protect this day.
So if you have noticed a rough edge in Pipelines that deserves a spot in a future session, tell us in the comments or through Quickbase Feedback. You have just seen where those suggestions end up.
See you next month.
