Automating with Pipelines: Information and Resources
Automating with Pipelines: Information and Resources
Pipelines provides Quickbase builders with the tools to easily design automated workflow that can connect across their Apps and other third-party systems. With Pipelines, you don’t need to write code to integrate your data and unlock the true potential of your apps.
The technology that we’ve put into Pipelines builds on the lessons that we learned with our older Quickbase Automations feature. As a result, Pipelines is able provide a comprehensive foundation to support both the automated workflows that have become a core part of many Quickbase Apps, as well as new processes that require a greater degree of flexibility, connectivity, and scale. Now that this exciting technology is powering the future of workflow automations and integrations for Quickbase, we are looking forward to continuously expanding its capabilities and empowering innovative new business solutions for years to come.
Ready to get started? Jump ahead to the specific resources you’re looking for:
Why Now is the Perfect Time to Get Started with Pipelines
Whether you have new ideas for automated workflows, or you already have Apps that use the Quickbase Automations feature, now is a great time to build that use case in Pipelines! Here are a few reasons why:
Increased Value without Increased Cost
Pipelines can automate workflow both in, and between, Quickbase Apps, at no additional cost. In February, we made sure you would never have to miss out on the benefits of Pipelines by making usage of the Quickbase channel unlimited for all customers! (Learn more here)
Joining a Passionate Community
With more than 1,000 companies already getting value from Pipelines, usage growing over 100% per month, and nearly 50 million automated steps triggered in April alone, there is a wide range of insights and experience available to you in our growing Community of Pipelines Builders. Ask questions, start conversations, or even join us at Empower to learn how your peers are introducing creative new solutions of their own.
Growing and Evolving Capabilities
If you’ve already seen Pipelines, you may have noticed how easily it allows you to connect disparate systems to design workflow that’s far more advanced than what’s possible with our older Automations feature. The intuitive drag-and-drop designer opens the door to thousands of new use cases, allowing you to test and implement multi-step automations with branching logic, record searches, and loops. Even if you haven’t struggled with the limitations of Automations, here are two of the many recent examples of how we are continuously enhancing the capabilities of Pipelines:
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We recently introduced the “On New Event” step for the Quickbase channel, allowing you to build more efficiently by creating just one Pipeline that runs whenever a record is Created OR Updated OR Deleted. (Learn more in the Help Center)
- We also added the ability to use both the previous value and the new value from a field when a record is updated and triggers your Pipeline. This allows your Pipeline to compare the difference between the two values, or log and track changes your records over time.
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How to Get Access to Pipelines
The good news is that the power of Pipelines is only a few steps away. Once you have access, you’ll be able to start building Pipelines of your own.
Check if you already have access to Pipelines
If you’re new to Pipelines, you may already have access and not even realize it. You can find out for yourself by logging into Quickbase and checking to see if the “Pipelines” tab is visible next to the My Apps tab in the upper left:
Pipelines will appear for Account Administrators and Users who have been granted access
Contact your Account Administrator
If the Pipelines tab isn’t showing up for you, don’t worry! Getting access is still easy once you know who to ask. Any Quickbase Account Administrator at your company can turn on access to Pipelines for you by following the simple steps found in this help topic. Simply reach out to them, and let them know that you need access to Pipelines.
Not sure who to ask? Let us know!
If you don’t know who your Quickbase Account Administrators are, then the best thing to do is simply contact our Customer Care Team. Just open a new case and a member of our staff will be happy to help you get in touch with the right person.
Managing your Existing Automations
Once you have access to Pipelines not only are you able to start creating new automated and integrated workflow, you’re also able to convert your existing Automations into Pipelines whenever you’re ready. Moving your Automations to Pipelines allows your automated workflow to continue running without interruption, while opening the doors to the flexibility, scalability, and speed that makes Pipelines such an exciting part of the future of agile business workflow here at Quickbase.
Automations to Pipelines Migration Tool
To make it easy to move your existing Automations to Pipelines, we are introducing a new Automation to Pipelines migration capability that can turn your existing Automations into powerful new Pipelines with just a couple clicks. This tool will be available for all customers on June 21, 2021, and you can see just how easy it is to use this exciting capability here:
Check out our Automation Migration Help Topic for more detailed documentation of this new Automation to Pipelines Migration capability
Building and Testing New Pipelines
In order to make it easy for you to get started, we've collected some resources and guides that can provide clear steps and inspiration for your next workflow automation use case.
We also recommend checking out the great sessions from our recent Empower 2021 event. Register here to access all the content from Empower 2021, or click here to login if you are already registered.
Directory of Pipelines Worfklow Automation Resources |
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Resource |
Description |
Link |
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Template Records: Copying parents and children |
Many companies have a standard set of child records which need to be created when a new parent record is created. For example, the onboarding process for hiring a new salesperson should always include the same curriculum of training courses. |
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Cascading deletes |
When deleting a record, what happens to its related child records? If those child records become obsolete once their parent record has been deleted, you can use this process to clean up the data. |
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Trend reporting |
To get real-time insights into your team’s progress against key business goals, it can be helpful to see how your data is trending over time. This process snapshots data and creates a history in a related child table which you can use to create trend reports. |
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Dynamically Creating Child Records |
This application allows you to create a dynamic number of child records from a formula numeric field derived from the duration between a Start Date and End Date fields on the Parent record. |
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Basic Pipelines Navigation and Anatomy |
Learn the ins and outs of the My Pipelines Page and the key parts of a Pipeline. You’ll want this basic understanding before reviewing any of our other Pipelines sessions. |
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Trending Your Data with Pipelines and the RESTful API |
In this session you’ll learn how to use Pipelines and the new RESTful API to build rich trending reports that track how your data changes over time. You’ll walk away with examples of the syntax needed to accomplish this and use cases to help you and your company get more out of your Quick Base data. |
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Data Transformation Two Ways Using Pipelines |
Learn how to build a multi-step pipeline to search and react to soft data changes in your Quick Base records. In this session, we explore two ways to perform Data Transformation using pipelines. The first utilizes in-app Quick Base formula fields and native Pipelines Condition options. The second method will dive into the Advanced Query and newly integrated Jinja syntax to provide additional flexibility in your queries and Pipeline steps. This session references the "Pipelines Demo" app from the Exchange. |
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Create Your Own Template Copy Pipeline |
In this session, we use Pipelines to create and relate child records to a parent from either a template set of records or from another parent record. Utilizing Pipelines we are now able to improve on the possibilities provided by manual entry, automations, and the copy master detail wizard. This session references the"Empower 2020 - Pipelines Copy Template Demo" app from the Exchange. |
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Importing from table-to-table |
For those builders who save table-to-table imports to run periodically, you can use this process to automate a comparable import using a pipeline. |
With these resources you can now build pipeline to automate many types of workflow. To learn more about building pipelines, check out our community post here: So You Want to Learn Pipelines.