I need to be able to import an Excel Spreadsheet from my computer, specific date

While I certainly don't want to discourage you from learning, Quickbase is a BPM applications platform first and a reporting engine second, so you can definitely do what you're wanting to, but it may end up a little wonky. With that said, I would strongly encourage you to go through the Quickbase University learning videos so that you can understand the basic features, functions, and menu navigation in Quickbase. 

Regarding importing your data, I initially thought an application with 3 tables would suffice. One for the CDC data, one for the NYT data, and a third table that you would use to aggregate that information. The problem with this scenario is that it assumes you would have a single record on each of the 3 tables that would represent a single date's information. With medical data, however, you're going to have many different categories of data associated with a single day. To build accurate reports on complex data like this will require an equally complex database structure. You can certainly still build it in a 3 table structure, but you will end up with a very flat data model.

Regarding Pipelines, you are charged when calls are made outside of Quickbase. If that call is to import a single CSV, my understanding is that would be considered 1 step as opposed to directly querying the CDC's database and iterating over 1000's of records, each of which would be considered 1 step.

As to the questions on when/how to import data, you can do that at any time, not just with the app builder. If your table already exists, you can select the table at the top and then use the menu on the right as shown here:

This process will let you import from a local file, from the clipboard, from another table, and other options as seen here:

If you want to regularly pull CSV data from Google Drive to a Sync table, that would be the option you presented the snapshots of. You will need to create a folder in your Google Drive INSIDE the Quickbase-created folder called Quickbase Sync. Then, inside THAT folder, you will add a CSV file. Quickbase assumes that you will have ONE CSV file and that your data will be regularly updated. When creating the Sync table, you will be given options for how to process the data, one of which will be to match the CSV file, but do not delete records. Select this one and you will be able to clear existing data from the CSV before adding in new data, rather than appending to it.

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Blake Harrison
bharrison@datablender.io
DataBlender - Quickbase Solution Provider
Atlanta GA
404.800.1702 / http://datablender.io/
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