Qrew December 2024 Meeting Notes

We started the meeting giving our general status on what accomplishments we made this month. I would say the overall theme this month was everyone was busy. Due to being busy, not a lot of Quickbase work was done. We started off giving general updates with Dorian.

Dorian spent some time this last month learning more about Quickbase. He is taking online QB Training and setting up a builder account. It will be exciting to watch Dorian progress through the learning process. Next we heard from Kennedy.

Kennedy has been showing the Quickbase feature set off to other Big Sky stakeholders. One of the best ways to build interest in what Quickbase can do is showing it to others. When showing it to others, they start asking if it can do this or that and that builds on the development process. These simple questions may seem daunting but write them down anyways. Our brains process information at different rates. Sometimes it takes a while to think of a solution. Next thing you know, you're building and supporting an entire infrastructure the business relies upon to get work done. Next Diego talked about his experiences this month and had some really interesting questions for the group.

Diego is getting comfortable conceiving and building structured systems. He shared observations on Users asking for changes and having to re-design a structure that is already in place. Another observation is finding what is already built and hasn't been used. Finally there is what needs to be added and how to do it in a way that gets used and still performs.

Jen talked about building out some Apps for the service department and some UI improvements. She  did a lot of building this month. She also has been working on integrations with Power Automate and HTTP connectors in Pipelines.

Lee Gilmore made some comments regarding New forms versus Old forms. Learning what works for the old form versus the new form UI/UX and becoming familiar with the changes. We all agreed there is no reason to move to new style forms until Quickbase provides the same feature set as the old style forms. This feature set includes mobile functionality and form edit mode grid edit with sub-form rules. Sadly this leaves User experience in this strange state of unfinished partial solutions. Quickbase no doubt wants to proclaim new forms done and deprecate the old style, but doesn't seem interested in pushing New Style forms over the done line. Hopefully next year we will see some improvements to user experience.

Elena spent time last month learning about Marketo. Also her team is working towards building a common data model for the Construction Apps in the Exchange. She shared her experiences learning about the complexity of designing the distributed data model with scalability in mind. The development of the Apps in the Exchange is complicated by answering questions like "how complex do you built it" and still have it be flexible enough to meet general requirements.

At this point in the meeting, Diego asked Elena a question regarding overall decision making for product development. The question triggered an interesting conversation where nearly everyone had something to say. The question he asked; Who are you talking with to determine what solution to build and how deep you need to go?

Diego then asked about how to communicate with stakeholders who aren't really interested or don't give feedback . Lee said treat the communication or lack thereof like an intake form. As builders we want to help and provide a solution. The problem happens when we get lost in the solution and are unable to provide what they are asking. It is important, and challenging, to listen to others commenting on our work and focus on their words, not a solution. Sometimes people are asking or saying things because it is how they process whatever it is we are showing them we built. There doesn't always have to be a solution. After that we went on to talk about other experiences we have working with others. Meeting with people and listening to their ideas. One interesting observation is people don't have a full sense of control over data in Quickbase. Having confidence in the data is important to getting and keeping User interest. It is easy to identify the lack of confidence when Users want to download the data and process it themselves in Excel. The challenge as a builder is to design User confidence in the data. We continued talking about how to structure data. Planning and best practices.

Next Jim talked about progress on building a new Subcontractor form and process named Subcontractor Prequalification. The idea allows a User to formally request a Subcontractor is added to our Work Order system. The process replaces the current system, which is based around email, Teams and phone calls. The goal with the Subcontractor Prequalification process is to locate the information in a single database with progress alerts. Users can choose to receive Notifications on status changes, ask for status updates, stop getting notifications or learn when the Subcontractor is or isn't added to the system and why not. A benefit to this process is we now have a datastore of previous requests anyone can review before putting in a duplicate request.

There were no collaboration questions this month for Quickbase development but it felt like we came together discussing Users and right sizing app building in general. Overall it was an interesting conversation, covering a problem that is complex and challenging. Any professional builder has had to deal with questions that have nothing to do with building the software part of applications. How much satisfaction does the builder provide the User versus calling it done?

Afterwards we went to Broadway Grill & Brewery and continued the conversation eventually leading in to tales of upcoming and past travel. We decided then the PDX Qrew meetup next month will also be a week early and then fall back to the fourth Wednesday in February.