Address Importing Best Practices
Hello, looking to crowd source some best practices for importing and standardizing addresses in Quickbase. I know QB uses MapBox but they have some odd formatting practices. For example, they spell ...
Forum Discussion
Thanks Don, this sounds like good advice I'll have to look into it. How are your users adding individual addresses? Did you ever adopt the QB built-in address field?
I'm researching the Google Address Validation API and seeing if that can be incorporated into QB. It requires learning about QB Code Pages too unfortunately.
For my address duplication check I'm using 2 parts. The first is a formula field that combines all of the necessary elements of the address. The second is then a custom data rule on the table that alerts the user if they are trying to enter a duplicate address.
QB won't run a duplication check on a formula field and my end users won't have the option to bulk import additional addresses. The workflow will only require them to enter a few addresses here and there.
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David Semitekol
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I'm researching the Google Address Validation API and seeing if that can be incorporated into QB. It requires learning about QB Code Pages too unfortunately.
For my address duplication check I'm using 2 parts. The first is a formula field that combines all of the necessary elements of the address. The second is then a custom data rule on the table that alerts the user if they are trying to enter a duplicate address.
QB won't run a duplication check on a formula field and my end users won't have the option to bulk import additional addresses. The workflow will only require them to enter a few addresses here and there.
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David Semitekol
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MarkShnier__You
Qrew Legend
Qrew LegendDavid,
What do you mean by this?
QB won't run a duplication check on a formula field
You can have a Formula Query look for duplicates and that will happen even before the record is saved.
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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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- Hi Mark, I'm referring to the "Must be unique" checkbox in the field settings. Here is my formula:
List(ToText([Number Start]),ToText([Number End]),[Address Number],[Predirectional],[Street Name],[Suffix],[Post Directional])
When I tried to save the field, I got this error:
When I did some research, I came across this post in the community:
Enforcing Uniqueness on a Formula Field
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David Semitekol
------------------------------- MarkShnier__You
Perhaps some of their fields are lookup fields? I would need to know the field type of each to suggest which one is the culprit.
If you do a formula query it's also possible to detect duplicates, regardless of what the components are of the unique field. If you need help with that we can muddle through it together. The Formula Query would be if the Size of the result was greater than 1.
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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
------------------------------- Sorry Mark, yes, the Street Name is a lookup field. I'm okay with the current solution of using a custom data rule.
What I'm really struggling with is the QB Address Field and the formatting of the MapBox address. They just are not using standard address formatting that we expect from the USPS or Google Maps.
This causes 2 issues:
The first is that searching for addresses becomes very difficult because end users are accustomed to entering an address using the standard format. But when the QB Address field changes the way an address gets entered, the user can no longer find the address using the search records tool.
The second is there is no way to prevent duplicate entries easily, if at all, so it becomes a data entry nightmare. Sure, we could write a complex formula that looks for "North" and converts to "N" but that won't account for all variables in an address. Like when "North" is actually the street name and not the predirectional.
Today's end user wants to be able to start entering an address and have a dropdown autofill the result. We need to find a way to duplicate that experience in QB. I think that is why I've been experimenting with this complex address table but I'm not sure if it is future proof, provides a quality user experience, or can scale when we go from 1k to 5k to 10k plus records.
Any help would be greatly appreciated in solving this Rubik's Cube.
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David Semitekol
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