GevorgHovsepyan
Quickbase Staff
Joined 7 years ago
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Re: QB Actions vs. Pipelines vs. Automations
Great question Megan and good discussion! At the high-level, Actions, Automations and Pipelines have a lot of similarities, but they were built in different eras. Actions capability was one of our first entry points into the workflow automation space. While it was powerful and strong innovation at the time, we quickly realized that a new approach is necessary to empower our builders to continue automating their workflows. As a result, we designed and built Quick Base Automations capability, which has a similar tech stack as Actions capability, but is certainly a lot more powerful and has a better UX. As we continued our innovation journey in this space, through your and other customers' feedback we learned Automation is great but it's also limited in terms of scale as well in terms of capabilities around data transformation and integration. As a result, we delivered a completely new Platform - Quickbase Pipelines - for addressing all workflow automation and Integrations requirements you have. The reason I'm sharing this is that it's an important context to have. As you make technology decisions, it's important to know that the future of Quickbase in terms of workflow automation and integration is Pipelines and all our strategic investments are focused on improving the capability and build next-generation no-code workflow automation and integration platform. Hope this context helps! ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Getting Started with Pipelines Webinar AMA
Great question Brandon! You have the capability to apply regular expression on the payload you get from the Webhook with our Text channel. We are planning to implement more generic data parsers this year (JSON, XML, CSV, etc.) that will further simplify this. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Getting Started with Pipelines Webinar AMA
Great question Blake! I love the discussion and do agree we need a more flexible account model, where builders can build in a shared environment as well as share they pipelines with each other if those are not in that environment. While we all are excited about the release and the new functionalities, we are not done yet! We have a lot of work in front of us. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------Pipelines Launch FAQ
Getting Started When will I have access to Pipelines? On Tuesday, February 25, 2020 we will begin a phased roll out of the Pipelines technology for Quick Base customers. We will be turning the feature on for groups of customers over the coming weeks. How do I access Pipelines? Since pipelines can work across Quick Base apps, you access Pipelines from the app bar. If Pipelines has been turned on for your account and you cannot see it, please contact your account administrator to have them enable your access. I'm just getting started with Pipelines, do you have any examples I can refer to? Yes, you can visit our community to learn how you can use Pipelines to generate template records and build trend reports. We'll be adding more examples throughout the year to give you more inspiration. Pricing How do I better understand my pricing and billing for Pipelines? You will receive entitlements for both integration channels and a set number of step-runs based on your current subscription plan. Additional channels and step-runs are available for an added cost. Contact your account team to forecast your Pipelines usage and calculate your pricing. Your account team's contact information is available in the Summary tab of your Admin Console. What is an integration channel? An integration channel is a set of pre-built functionality that allows Quick Base users to connect to third-party systems. Additionally, the webhooks channel allows you to connect with as many custom API endpoints as you need, and that is billed as a single channel. Our Quick Base channel is included and does not count towards your plan entitlements. What is a step-run? A step-run is an automated action within a designed pipeline that has been run. This includes triggers, actions, and API calls sent and received by the webhooks channel. Visit this page in our Pipelines Help documentation for more information on step-runs and how they are counted. How can I get visibility into my account's step-run usage? You can always see the number of step-runs remaining as well as the timing of your next reset date in the Quotas section of your "My Pipelines" page. You can also click "View Usage" to find a detailed report to see more information about your Pipelines activity. What happens as I approach my step-run usage limit? You will receive email notifications at predefined thresholds as you begin to approach the entitlement limit of step-runs for your account. It is important that you work with your Quick Base account team to add additional step-runs to your plan in order to avoid any disruption in service. If you do reach your plan's entitlement limit without taking action, any actively running Pipelines will be allowed to complete, however no further pipelines will trigger until additional step-runs are added. Integration Channels What integration channels are available? You can visit Channels page at any time to see a complete list of third-party solutions that are currently available to integrate with, as well as a list of upcoming channels that we are in the process of adding. What is Quick Base's plan for adding new channels? We will be continuously adding new channels to Pipelines so that you can integrate with the systems you need to run your business. If you don't see a channel for the specific solution you're interested in connecting with, please let us know by submitting your feedback to our UserVoice discussion forum. Does an ODBC channel exist for Pipelines? The ODBC channel is currently in development, and we are excited to make this available to customers soon. This channel will allow you to connect with on-premises database systems. Integration Capabilities Can I build a bidirectional integration using Pipelines? Yes, you can build bi-directional integrations using Pipelines. For example, you could have one pipeline which pushes data from Quick Base to ServiceNow and a second pipeline that pushes data from ServiceNow back to Quick Base. You can also configure pipelines which connect two third-party systems without involving Quick Base apps at all. Is there a way to connect my pipeline to a custom API endpoint? Yes, Pipelines includes a webhooks channel which allows you to both send and receive API calls. This can be configured for any accessible API endpoint. Will Pipelines work with the Quick Base API? Yes, you can use the webhooks channel to send and receive API calls. Will Pipelines work with File Attachments? Support for file attachments is available for specific integration channels. While you cannot yet move file attachments to and from a Quick Base app, you can use our file storage integration channels. Workflow Orchestration Capabilities What are the limits for Pipelines? We've established a set of limits for Pipelines to ensure world-class performance and reliability. We may adjust these limits as appropriate based on customer needs. You can review our current Pipelines limits here. Does Pipelines support conditional steps? Yes, you can include several conditional branches in a pipeline to ensure precise and reliable workflow orchestration. Can I transform data using a pipeline? Yes, you can use jinja2 templating to transform data within your pipelines. You can do things like process arithmetic, adjust dates, and parse text. Please see our Pipelines help topic on transforming data to see some examples. What functions are available for the Quick Base channel? Pipelines can trigger based on a change in a Quick Base app - when a record in Quick Base is created, modified, or deleted. Pipelines can also take action in a Quick Base app – by creating new records, updating existing records, deleting records, and searching records. You can review our Quick Base channel functionality for more details. Which user is listed in the record owner field for records that are created by Pipelines? The Record Owner and Last Modified By fields in Quick Base will show the user who created the pipeline, not the user who caused the pipeline to trigger. Pipeline builders can identify who triggered the pipeline by capturing their name in a separate field of their choice. Misc. Will Pipelines work with a Sandbox app? Yes, you can configure pipelines to work with an app while testing changes in sandbox mode. Step-runs that are triggered and completed while testing will still count towards your account limit. Will my existing Automations continue to work once Pipelines is available? Yes, your currently configured Automations, Webhooks, and Actions will continue to work as usual. While we are excited about the large world of new possibilities offered by Pipelines, we will continue to communicate any changes in our support for existing capabilities well in advance. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
You got it right, Brian! Our ODBC channel is in development and testing right now and should be available as a fast follow after the GA (general availability) launch. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
Great questions, John! see my comments below. You should be able to automate table to table import, in fact, I've seen some of our Early Access customers do that. The limit you are referring to is a limit of Quick Base applications that both Automations and Pipelines must adhere to. Currently sorting in the source window is not available, but that might be a great idea for our User Voice: https://quickbase.uservoice.com I don't see any reason why not. Can't wait to see what you'll build with this new feature! Hope I was able to answer your questions. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
Great question, Gilbert! Depending on the system we are handling file attachments by using pointers to the endpoints where the file is stored. In other words, we just pass the URL of the files with the payload and have the next system in your workflow download them using that URL. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
This is a great idea, Jenni! It's not available at the moment. You might want to add a User Voice request so that others in our community can vote for it. Here is the link to our User Voice: https://quickbase.uservoice.com ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
Thanks for joining us, Sam! The Pipelines is already in Early Access. In case you want to sign up please submit your request at https://www.quickbase.com/earlyaccess . We do plan to deliver the product as generally available (GA) in Q1 As for the other questions There is going to be no way to modify your pipelines without the visual UI. That said, you will have the capability to export the YAML description of the pipeline and modify it in the developer IDE. Pipelines will not be accessible via API in the near feature. I would love to learn about the use cases where you might need that capability. Absolutely! Our generic webhook channel will allow you to trigger your pipelines externally as well as will give you the capability to make calls to external systems using their APIs. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------RE: Introducing Pipelines - Webinar Q&A
Great question, Alex! One of the great advantages of this new technology is that it gives us the ability to build and deliver channels to you really fast, in weeks not months. As always our roadmap is subject to change, however, we are planning to continuously build and add new integration channels throughout 2020 and beyond. ------------------------------ Gevorg Hovsepyan Senior Product Manager Quick Base, Inc. Cambridge MA ------------------------------
