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CraigGlaser's avatar
CraigGlaser
Qrew Member
6 years ago

Need help on how to design/implement checklists

I currently have an app that I use to track servers in our environment.  What I'd like to do is add the ability to have checklists tied to each server.  Each checklist would contain any number of things that would need to be checked off.

For instance.  I may want a checklist called 'Server 2012 R2 Build'.  That check list would contain steps such as:
1.  60 GB System Drive
2.  Install AV
3.  4 GB  RAM
4.  Verify Naming convention
5.  Verify server AD object moved to proper  OU

Then I might have another checklist call 'Monitoring - SQL'
1.  Set up monitoring for SQL service
2.  Set Data partition monitor to alert at 75%
3.  Set Disk contention monitor to alert at XXX

Each record in a checklist would track something like
Item name, description, was it implemented, date implemented, reason for not implementing, etc.

These checklists should have a many to many relationship with the servers.  So a server can have many checklists and a checklist can be assigned to many servers.  I'd like to be able to build checklists dynamically as well.  So I can add or remove items from a checklist.

So far I created three tables

Standard Names (The name of the checklist)
Standard Steps (The checklist 'record')
Checklist - A child table for both the Standard Name and Steps table.

This table lets me build the checklists under a standard name.  So in the standard Name table I create a record with a name of '2012 R2 build' and then relate several steps from the standard Steps table to it in the 'Checklist' table.

What I can;'t figure out is how to now take a checklist such as the '2012 R@ build' and relate it to many hosts while also allowing host to have many checklists.

I have a feeling I may be approaching the whole thing wrong.  I'm looking for guidance on how to implement this (even if it needs to be done via scripting or some other advance method...I'll learn how to do it)..or if this is something Quickbase doesn;t really support.
APIs and custom code
App builders
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  • QuickBaseCoachD's avatar
    QuickBaseCoachD
    Qrew Captain
    6 years ago
    There is no question that this can be done and Quick Base without any scripting

    I will describe the low-tech approach.

    You can set up a series of dummy servers each with a standard set of child record checklists.

    Then you go to the Settings for the app and look for Copy Master Detail. It will guide you through the steps to create a button which will give you the choice to import the checklist items from a particular parent record. So what will happen is you will end up making a series of buttons and each button will import a particular standard checklist into the parent server record you�re sitting on.

    There is another approach which is more complicated to describe where there would be a parent table of standard checklist headings and each of those would have a set of child records describing the individual checklist items. Then you would push a button and copy those across to the target server. But the steps to do that are a little more complicated to explain. The advantage of that method is that it does not clutter up your real servers with fake servers which have to be filtered off various reports. As they only exist to hold standard checklist items.

    If you would like some one on one help to set up the second method, please contact me at QuickBaseCoach.com