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BrianneJacobsen's avatar
BrianneJacobsen
Qrew Trainee
5 years ago

Updating Apps - one question and tips please

I inherited an app that needs quite a few changes.  The original app was not thought through completely and is a mismatch of two people before me who no longer work here.  So I'm intending to make quite a few changes both large and small.  I'm also fairly new to Quickbase. 

I don't have the sandbox feature so I copied the app and created a "testing app"(TA).  I really like the changes I made to some of the tables so far and would like to update the "working app"(WA).  All the changes I want to make are not done. It is going to be a long process.  Plus I think it will be helpful to others using the WA to make the updates in batches. 

The problem is I made quite a few changes, tweaks and modifications on the TA before I was happy and I'm not sure I remember everything I did to update the WA.  I don't want to update or import data; in fact the WA has data from the past couple of months that I've been tinkering that I don't want overwritten.   Is there an easy way to update the WA?  or do I just resign myself to updating the WA by comparing the two apps relationship to relationship, form to form, field to field, etc.?

Also, does anyone have any tips for when making big changes to an app?  or for cleaning up an app?  My WA also has a number of obsolete fields and reports but I'm scared to get in there and just start deleting.

Thanks
Brianne

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Brianne Jacobsen
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App builders

1 Reply

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  • AustinK's avatar
    AustinK
    Qrew Commander
    5 years ago
    You say you are new to QuickBase so I would just start with trying to understand why your app is set up the way it is. There may be a good reason that it was done in a weird or different way than normal. It may just be a bad design though.

    Start documenting more and that will solve your issue of not knowing what you did. List what you have done in your app copy and then follow that list in the production app when you make the changes. If you didn't list your current changes then you need to get in there and compare and hope you didn't forget anything. Either that or start fresh with a new app copy and this time document your changes.

    As far as deleting fields you just need to go to their settings and look at the usage tab. If you are the only one that uses these(no software component that may use the API for any of them) then the usage tab will show you basically everything you need to know. It will tell you what something is used in and usually even tell you how which is very helpful. Like knowing it is just a default column in a report vs used in the filter for it. You may need to go several levels deep to make sure there are no lookup fields that are being used in other tables. It is a time consuming process if you have a ton of tables or fields but totally worth it.