April 2025 PDX Qrew Notes

Attendees:

Barry Dolan Seattle, Kennedy Maxey, Lee Gilmore, Jen Clarke, Jim Harrison, Pat Wenger, Jacob McIntyre, Elena Larabee

There were no collaboration challenges this month.

On the plane back to Portland a fellow Empower attendee said hello when he noticed my Quickbase shirt. I mentioned PDX Qrew and invited him to attend, welcome Barry Doland! After brief introductions to Barry Dolan who joined us via Teams from Seattle we moved into discussing Empower.

Empower Recap, Jen said she didn't really learn anything but enjoyed the chance to meet other QB builders and see how they use Quickbase to get work done. Jim also found Empower was good for meeting people. He learned that Harder has built an advanced system using Quickbase. Pat then expanded the conversation on what Harder has built and then moved on to more of a discussion about different use cases and the intentions of using Quickbase at Harder.

Next we moved on to talking about using AI in Pipelines. Jacob gave an example of how they are recording online meetings and then putting them through a pipeline that uses AI to analyze and "score" the conversation. An example was given where a sales meeting is recorded and then scored or compared with other sales meetings. What they are finding is in some meetings the sales representative provides good information and the conversation covers many Quickbase features and appears successful. In other meetings the conversation doesn't go as well, information is missed or not included and the meeting doesn't go as well. It was an interesting example to consider and as I write this it seems obvious that some sales calls will go better than others for so many reasons. Part of sales is having the ability to react and move with the customer, sometimes the customer isn't interested. The area where AI may be beneficial is in helping the Sales representative to understand where they may have missed a que in the conversation, per se. I hope Jacob and team continue to investigate this example and look forward to hearing the fruit it bears.

Next Jacob asked Pat about Empower and Pat talked about what we are doing with Quickbase. The conversation lead off into the realm of software platform comparisons. An example was when some of the Harder Team went to Groundbreak (a Procore sales event) to look at Procore and compare it to Quickbase. The questions or goals of the visit included answering topics like, What is the state of the Quickbase development processes versus other products? What is the business model that allows for success with Quickbase? One area that came up is the challenge of collaborating within departments. Some organizations are separated by walls of policy and the process of change takes patience.

We talked about the value Quickbase provides to a company willing to break down walls and bring collaboration into the processes. Is it better to develop an in-house product with consultants or is it better to build a product using Quickbase with a team that takes on the challenge and owns the process?

Quickbase is a solution for a company that has a leader committed to building a solution in Quickbase, a team of intelligent, curious and productive builders and a supportive environment in which to build. Part of building in Quickbase is the long term investment required to actualize value for the business. Other products provide value more out of the box but the business is required to change around the product and there is little to no customization without cost. Once the team learns how Quickbase works, it doesn't take long to train new builders and help them be successful. Quickbase tends to be more organic and malleable to a business willing to make the investment. The conversation wandered around these areas for a few minutes.

Barry mentioned that having the understanding how the data is structured is also important for supporting business. The data entry side of understanding and solving when something doesn't work and how it tends to be the data that is the problem more so than the software.

We then heard from Lee and Elena regarding their experience with Procore. One observation was it can be used as long as you are able to spin up a separate pipeline for each Job. One Pipeline per table per Job. Could it be done with callable Pipelines? One challenge we discussed for example is Invoices from Procore into QB.

We also talked about pushing RFI's / Invoices in or out or Procore. Observations around leveraging the API. Getting data out of Procore or putting data into Procore. All of these use cases are challenging from the experiences shared by Lee and Elena.

Jen mentioned excitement about the Pipeline integration with Bluebeam. Pat mentioned we use Egnyte for drawings and markup. He noted it could be interesting to use Bluebeam to perform markup and see how it compares with our current process.

While we discussed Bluebeam Jacob mentioned it may be possible to create our own channels or connectors in Pipelines. This is something Harder has experience with after using Workato. When we first started to use Workato in 2019, there was no connector to Quickbase. Workato built a connector for us to develop and we worked with Workato to make improvements to the connector. Now we are beginning to do the same with Pipelines.

Last we talked about another aspect of building software. One method is to take an idea, come up with a solution, define the architecture, build a Product, and then resolve problems until a stable product is reached. The other option is to get Users to define the requirements and then try to meet the requirements without an understanding of the underlying platform. Pat said it is easier to build a solution around the platform than to try to fit Users requirements. The challenge is to continue the conversation with the users to understand the needs and look for opportunity to improve the initial product. Developers then become responsible to support the product, train users and make changes as needed. During the building process there needs to be training and support for the Employees at the company. The product is an investment in collaboration and running the business. The product is then grown with the company.

We ended the meeting and then headed over to Prost for more conversation and tacos.