Forum Discussion

benrizz17's avatar
benrizz17
Qrew Member
5 months ago

Building Checklists

I am trying to build an inspection checklist app, where an inspection checklist appears after selecting that equipment from a dropdown list. I am pretty new to building apps in Quickbase, and I have the dropdown list of all the equipment created (I used the multiple choice form). Once a specific machine is selected on that list, I want to somehow display a checklist that is specific to that machine. 


Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.

  • There are a variety of ways to do this.  

    One method is to create a table of inspection checklist items, where there are two fields. One field will be the machine name, and the other will be the inspection item.

    You can create a Pipeline line that is triggered "on new event" when the machine parent record's multiple-choice machine name has changed.

    After the Trigger step in the pipeline, the next step will be to search that table of inspection items with a filter that the machine type of the inspection items and matches the machine type in the trigger record step.

    Then a For Each loop to add an inspection checklist record to the machine Parent record.  Be sure to populate the field for Related Machine, (the parent record from the trigger step) or else you will create floating orphan checklist items!) 

    Feel free to post back if you have a problem with the Pipeline.

    There is also another method which would give a slightly better user experience by more instantly populating the checklist, but it's a bit more complicated to set up, and you may find that this is quick enough for your users.  They will need to refresh the page to see the results of the pipeline's run. 

  • I am trying to build a checklist that is as user-friendly as possible, so I was hoping to get it all to appear in the same form without having to refresh. I actually managed to do this I believe, where I made each machine its own section, and each question was a separate field that appeared and was required upon selecting that machine.

     

    My next question with that is whether it is possible to once a specific machine's checklist is completed, to save the results in a table for that specific machine and with no concern for the other machines that are possible selections. Ideally I would want a chart on the dashboard that shows whether each machine's checklist was completed that day, and if there are any outstanding ones. Any thoughts? Thank you.

    • MarkShnier__You's avatar
      MarkShnier__You
      Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend

      It's not a design I would recommend, but you can have a very long formula checkbox statement to check for each possible machine type, if the questions were completed which were relevant to the machine selected.this is an example of a formula checkbox field to be true if the boxes are all filled in for each question relevant to the machine  

      The format would be like,

      CASE([Machine Type],

      "Machine A",

      [Q1] <> "" and [Q2] <> "" and [Q3] <> "" and [Q4] <> "" ,

      "Machine B",

      [Q5] <> "" and [Q6] <> "" and [Q7] <> "" and [Q8]<> "" ,

       

      etc

      "Machine Z",

      [Q55] <> "" and [Q56] <> "" and [Q57] <> "" and [Q48] <> "" )

       

       

       

    • MikeTamoush's avatar
      MikeTamoush
      Qrew Commander

      My two cents: I have done both what Mark suggested and what you have started. The reason originally did it the way you did (sections, form rules to hide things etc) is the same reason you did - navigation is much nicer, especially on mobile (where my checklist was being used).

      However, there is a reason Mark does not recommend the design, and I now agree and have stopped building it the first way. Having a child table with your checklist items will, down the road, have many advantages.  As you go down the rabbit hole of wanting more metrics and charts, the child table will be invaluable. Additionally, if you ever decide you want to add notes or pictures for each checklist item, you will be very happy it is in a child table.