Pipelines is not their first attempt to improve upon the automation capabilities of Quickbase. This is just their most recent. Prior to their divestiture from Intuit, Quickbase was utilizing the technology that Intuit had purchased from ItDuzzIt, another connector service. This was also an uphill battle, but it was such an improvement for those of us that were lucky enough to have access to it. Unfortunately, Intuit kept the technology post-divestiture and I'm guessing that Quickbase has been looking for a suitable replacement ever since.
At present, they now have 4 different technologies within the platform that allow for some level of automation or integration - Webhooks, Sync, Automations, and Pipelines. I doubt that Sync will be going anywhere any time soon, if at all, just because it provides features that are different enough from Pipelines that it wouldn't make sense. I'd guess Webhooks is safe as well, as it could act as the first step towards integration for those users who might not yet need something as complex as Pipelines. Automations, though very useful, is very limited in its' ability to accept / process business logic other than simple triggers and was built based on usage assumptions from 5+ years ago. I agree that the implementation of Pipelines has left a LOT to be desired, but it is a better technological approach overall.
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Blake Harrison
bharrison@datablender.io
DataBlender - Quickbase Solution Provider
Atlanta GA
404.800.1702 /
http://datablender.io/------------------------------
