All the Things You Can Hide!

All the Things You Can Hide!

Have you ever looked at your Quickbase implementation and thought 'I really need to drive my users to use this process, but they’re getting distracted by xyz…’ read on to find some common, and not so common things you can hide from your users at different levels. 

* Please note that ‘hiding’ or ‘obscuring’ things in Quickbase is NOT the same as securing them. Keep an eye out for the asterisk and red text throughout this document for clarifying statements. 

1. Realm Level 

If you're a Full Account (realm) admin, it's a great idea to limit who can create applications. If you don't have a solid App/Builder Governance process, you could end up with a graveyard of applications where no one actually knows what their function is.  

1.1 Application Creation Permissions 

From your 'My Apps' page --> Manage my account --> Permissions 

1. Specify who can create applications, as well as manage the account. 

1.2  Additional Account Permissions 

From your 'My Apps' page --> Manage my account --> More --> Edit Account Properties 

1. Protect Builders from possibly sharing sensitive data by disabling the ability to share apps with Everyone on the Internet by disabling the setting at the realm level. 
2. Hide the ability for users to share an application on the QB Exchange. 
3. You may have applications where you don't want to allow the app admin to test as a user in case they could view sensitive data. 

2. Application Level 

At the application level, we give you even more control!  

2.1 Role Level 

Within the User Interface tab of each Role, you may want to hide the following functionalities based on your own needs: 

1. App & table settings -- By checking this box, if the Role also has 'Edit app structure and permissions' checked, they'll be able to create a new table, but not add fields or access the Settings. 
2. Users -- If your Role has 'Manage users and share the app' permissions, that will be hidden from their top ribbon, but they'll still be able to add new users through user picker fields if you allow users to create new choices. 
3. Favorites & Recent -- Check this box if you wish to hide the Star icon in the upper right which shows things users favorite, or recently visited in the application. 
4. Search -- If you have a large application, checking this box can improve performance by removing the user's ability to default search the entire app for any search term. Are your users used to using this functionality? Spend time with them documenting what they're searching for and create targeted 'ask the user' reports for them at the table level. 
5. Help -- Control which Roles can contact our Care team or search Quickbase Help pages. As these are pertaining to Quickbase as a whole, they can be confusing for new users, and many admins create their own help documentation which is specific to their application. 
6. Test as another role or user -- If a user has 'Edit app structure and permissions' checked, you can turn off their ability to test as another Role or user by checking this box. This can help control what data a user can see, for instance if you only want users to see records they own.  
7. Additionally, in the User Interface tab, you can control visibility of the following: 
   1. Tables from the table bar. This is really handy for cleaning up a user's view. If your users only interact with ‘Order Items’ while on an ‘Order’ record, it may make sense to hide that table from the table bar.  
   2. Add Button/Links, Import/Export Links, Save as a Spreadsheet Link, Multi-record Options, Email Buttons/Links and Print Links. This can help out if you want to control some of those functionalities and funnel your users to a different process, like using a unique button utilizing an API call to create a new record rather than using the native button. * Be advised that obscuring these items is not the same as securing them. Please see our documentation link on #9 below. 
8. You can show/hide reports for each table by clicking 'Set report access' and toggling the checkboxes. This can help streamline your user's views by not cluttering them up with extraneous reports they don't need.  * Again, keep in mind if another user shares the exact report URL with a user in a Role where the report is hidden, they will be able to see it. 
9. The Permissions tab is where you can truly ‘secure’ what your users can and cannot see. Please read more on configuring permissions here. 

2.2 Application Settings 

In your app properties page (App Settings --> App properties) you can hide the following from your users: 

1. Under Advanced Settings --> Options, hide new/updated icons that appear for records in reports. Some people just don't like them! 
2. Here you can also exclude the user picker’s ability to find users who are already in the app. For example, you may have invited people to the same app who are from competing vendor companies and you don’t want them to see those users. 
3. Under Security Options, hide the application from public searches. This is helpful if you have EOTI enabled, but don’t want it searchable by other Quickbase users. 

3. Table Level 

At the table level (Settings --> select table from dropdown --> Advanced Settings) we give you a few more options for customizing your user’s experience: 

1. If you've opted to allow Global search, you can omit your table from it by unchecking 'Include this table in global searches' under Advanced Table Settings. 
2. If you'd like to hide a table from everyone and not just specific roles, you can uncheck 'Show in the table bar' and the table will be hidden from all roles. Or, you can obscure the actual table name by leaving the box checked and populating the 'Override the heading with' box. Best Practices advise that you stick to a naming convention for tables that best allows for indicating what data a table holds. Utilizing this feature to obscure a table name could cause more confusion, use with care. 

3.1 Report Settings 

Get familiar with your Report Settings page to streamline your reporting by customizing your user’s views: 

1. Control who will be able to see the report in the reports & charts view. This is essentially an extension of setting report access in individual Roles (2.1.8 above). This way you won't have to go all the back to the Role page to hide a new report. 
2. Columns from the report by using 'Custom columns' to only show relevant data. 
3. Filter your records to hide those that are not necessary for the report. 
4. Keep your users from drilling into the report by removing access to the Dynamic Filters. 
5. If the report is particularly large, restrict users from utilizing the Quick Search field. (This checkbox is only visible when you select 'none' for Dynamic Filters see 3.1.4) 
6. Toggle the checkboxes to hide totals and averages which are shown by default. (This can also be controlled on the individual field’s properties page.) 
7. Icons for editing and viewing records from the report. 
8. Old or non-edited records: just toggle the 'Display only new or changed records'.  

4. In Conclusion 

Please keep in mind, if you have sensitive data that under no circumstances certain Roles should be able to access, you should remove that access in the Role itself or the field-level settings to ensure security. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself ‘could I be fired for sharing this data with someone?’. If so, secure it and implement a process for users to request additional permissions, and the management approvals needed for those. If you have questions regarding security, please contact our Care team or your CSM for further assistance!