The Journey of a New Quickbase Builder: Roles and Permissions

As you continue building out your application, you may find that you are collecting/tracking a significant amount of data, and that not all users need access to all the data that is being collected. Some of the data collected may be sensitive or of no real use for the user. If a user has no use for the data, why should the user see the data or have the opportunity to accidently edit/erase data irrelevant to them? Have you ever worked in a shared document and have someone else accidently delete data you need? (I have been the culprit once or twice…) It can be an extremely frustrating and defeating problem to deal with! QuickBase once again, makes it easy to solve for this problem by allowing you to define who will have access to your data and how users can interact with the data.

 

My Key Aha moment:

• What hit me about roles and permissions was about access to data; not everyone should be able to see, edit, or remove data from an app. So, when you start saying to yourself 'These people need to be able to do 'this' and these people need to be able to do 'that'', that's when it's time to create a new role."

 

For example: from the bakery app I created, I developed two different roles that have access to two different homepages: the boss’s view and the employee’s view. The boss does not need to see the same data as the rest of the team. So, whenever they sign into the application, they will be met with a custom dashboard designed specifically for them; Data they only care about. This can work both ways, both roles having different experiences customized specifically to them when they sign into the application.

 

Visual example:

Owner View:

 

 

 

Employee View:

 

 

This is a great way to leverage roles and permissions and it is very easy to do!

 

Managing and creating roles can all be done under Roles settings page as shown below:

 

(This is found under the home settings page)

After clicking the roles page, it will lead you to the home screen where you will be able to add new roles, manage users, and edit current roles.

 

 

1. New Role Button- Customize new role name, permissions, user interface and properties

 

2. Manage Users- This will lead you to the users page where you will be able to manage the current users with access to your application, and manage which role those users are in.

 

3. List of current roles users that can be assigned along with their app level permissions and associated homepage. (Both can be customized) Important to note, that the default roles are Viewer, participant, and administrator.

 

When you click on a role or create a new role, you will be brought to the settings of the role. Here is where you will manage permissions, user interface, and properties of the role. (Shown below)

As you can see above, there are three tabs you can work with in editing user roles, Permissions, User interface, and Properties.

 

1. Permissions Tab (shown Above)- this tab is broken down into two key elements of permissions, App access and Table Access. Self-explanatory in their title. Table access will list all your tables and allow you to set permissions in 7 different elements. Permissions are broken down by View, Modify, Add, Delete, Save Common Reports, Edit Field properties, and fields. Very important tab when editing roles, be sure to click into the drop-down arrows and understand all options available.
2. User interface tab- This tab will enable you to set what is displayed to each role in 3 areas; Homepage, Report displays, and Menu/Table display. Common use case is certain roles do not need to see all the tables listed at the top, this is where you are able to hide those tables from roles. (See page below)

 

 

 

3. The Last tab is the Properties tab. This is where you are able edit the name of the role and add a description to role.

 

Once you have set up roles and their custom permissions, I highly recommend testing out the roles to ensure your roles are set up exactly as you want them to be. QuickBase has feature that will allow you to change out of your role and test as the different role you have created. Very simple to do, when signed into your application, click into your name at the top right and click on the role you wish to test out. (Drop down shown below)

 

 

*Important note: When you test as a role, you use the app, so any changes that you make while testing are applied to the app.

 

Last piece of advice, I will continue to iterate is that you need to continue building and practicing these key concepts! The more you build, the more comfortable you will become with platform!

 

For more on Managing roles and Permissions please refer to our help guides and our QuickBase University courses.

 

As always please feel free to leave any comments or feedback!