Feature requests from a newish user

Question

Good morning all!I'll start by saying if there is somewhere better to put feature requests, I will happily submit this through a formal channel!I have been building out a new system on Quickbase and hit a few pain points that I thought I would mention in case it hasn't been brought up before!

Select fields being limited to 100 items. This limit seems arbitrary, as I am able to use a pipeline to fetch data, write it to a table, and use that table data as the source for a select field. What the limit does do, however, is it make it so that I cannot make changes to the field without the "only 100 items allowed" error. This forces me to delete data from the table, make changes to the field, then rerun a pipeline. I'm not sure of the practical reason for limiting to 100, but I would hope to see this removed. To give a practical use-case, we have a field where we allow our users to select which facilities their report is in reference to, allowing selection from a list of facilities. We currently have 147 facilities.
Dynamic form rules layout is pretty hard to parse in my opinion. Using new lines to structure the various parts of the rule to make it more readable (like code indentation) I think could help. Additionally, allowing resizing of the dynamic rules list portion could help!&nbsp;

These are the only pain points I've found myself having so far. Outside of that, I'm impressed by how intuitive and powerful this system is. My thanks to the development team for the hard work!------------------------------Josh Payette------------------------------

markshnier__you · Answer

I suggest making a table of facilities with the Key field set to Facility Name a relationship to select a to choose the facility. You can then use the existing field to build the relationship to preserve the existing data. The record picking when you have such a drop down field is excellent as you can enter small part of the words for the choices and the drop down will pretty instantly filter down.

So I think that the QuickBase developers might argue that you were trying to misuse a multiple choice field when you're trying to get more than 100 choices. They are never likely to expand that limit.

I'm not quite sure what you were doing with the pipeline but using this method you may have to have your pipeline add additional records to the facilities table.

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Mark Shnier (YQC)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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markshnier__you · Answer

For any suggestions you have about forms, the appropriate way to give feedback is that you go to the My Apps tab at the top left hand of your screen and there is a little side tab on the left to Give Feedback. Then you can let people know on this forum that you made that suggestion and try to solicit other people to include that in their wish lists.

Quickbase will not be changing the way that forms behave on the current form builder because as it happens Forms are in the process of being completely overhauled as they have been basically remained unchanged for the last 20 years. So it is a good time to put in suggestions as they will have their ears wide open as to what feature should be designed for new forms. Many users think that when they give feedback it just goes into a deep dark black whole but in fact every single one of them gets read by the appropriate Product Manager. Ideas with higher rankings from multiple users carry more weight.

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Mark Shnier (YQC)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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joshpayette · Answer

Thanks for the response, Mark! What you said makes sense. The reason I did it the way I did is because my Facilities table had more columns than facility name, but I wanted user selection to only be the facility names. I didn't recall seeing an ability to make the record picking work in this way, but if it's possible I'll take another look.

Regarding the 100 item limit to select boxes, I am still not sure whether the limitation actually does anything, particularly if it's a field pointing at another table. All across the web we have select boxes with far more options. Additionally, my select box does have over 100 items in it since I have it point at an empty table for values, then use a pipeline to build out that table, so the 100 limit is not truly a hard limit within Quickbase. It seems to exist just to exist. Ultimately, not a big dealbreaker for me!

But like you said, perhaps the record field is the better tool for this, so I will check that out. I appreciate your feedback and the guidance you provided as it relates to the proper way to submit feedback as well as the pain points I mentioned in the original post!

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Josh Payette
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joshpayette · Answer

I was responding before your second response came through - what you mentioned about redeveloping the forms makes sense, and I will use the appropriate feedback channels. I wanted to make one more post to acknowledge your follow-up.

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Josh Payette
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Feature requests from a newish user