QuickBase: The Missing Manual

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The hardest challenge you’ll ever face with QuickBase is quickly describing what it is. A highly customizable database? A workflow management system? A Web site that can make your working life a whole heckuva lot easier? Yes, yes, and yes.

Because it helps with so many different tasks, QuickBase doesn’t fit neatly into the program categories we’re used to talking about—database or spreadsheet programs, contact managers, or project management applications, for instance. But whatever you want to call it, at heart, QuickBase is an amazingly powerful and endlessly customizable database, whose greatest tools are offered up to you, lucky QuickBase user, even as you’re shielded from some of the highly technical underpinnings that power everything it can do.

Whatever information your business relies on, QuickBase lets you share it easily with those who need it. QuickBase provides a secure, centralized place to store, work with, and share data: reports, specifications, spreadsheets, price lists, client information, work orders, invoices, purchase orders—any kind of data your organization uses. So wherever your team members are, they can get on the Internet, sign in to QuickBase, and view, add, and edit data. They can submit billable hours, track leads, share documents, submit and prioritize change requests—whatever. QuickBase’s flexibility lets you create forms that work for your business and display your data in a variety of different ways, using charts, tables, timelines, and more.

Half your mental investment in QuickBase is made just getting acquainted with all the various virtual levers, switches, boxes, and forms that you have at your disposal. That’s what this book is designed to do. In this chapter you’ll take your kickoff tour so you know your way around this machine. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

Register to use QuickBase
Respond to an invitation to join a QuickBase application
Use your My QuickBase page, your home page inside QuickBase

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Think of a QuickBase account as your nametag that lets you roam the halls of a giant data storage warehouse, crammed full of all kinds of interesting tidbits. The account gives you access to names and contact info, requests from fellow QuickBase users, and a timeline of who’s doing what on a project—everything you need to know to get your job done, all in one place. It’s all essential stuff. But you can’t peek at it if you’re not registered. Registering takes only a few seconds—and then you’re good to go.

To register with QuickBase, you take one of two routes:

Create a brand-new account. When you’ve got information you want to organize—client lists, expense reports, inventory spreadsheets, your vintage baseball card collection—open a new account to get started. The first 30 days are free.
Accept an invitation. When someone has information they want to share with you—you’ve just joined a new project management team or a client wants your opinion on a report—that person sends you an email invitation to join their application.

Either way, you’ll be up and running on QuickBase in no time.

If you want to create a new account to sniff around QuickBase and try out its features, you can do so for free with a 30-day trial. (When you’re ready to pull the trigger and pay for an account, just click the “Subscribe now” link in the bottom-left part of your My QuickBase page—that’s the first page you see when you sign in to the site.) Head over to the QuickBase home page at www.quickbase.com (), and then follow these steps:

Figure : To register with QuickBase (or to sign in once you’ve registered), click the “Sign in” link (circled; if you don’t have an account yet, you can create one on the next page). If you’re interested in trying QuickBase free for a month, click the “Get started!” link (circled in the Free 30-Day Trial box). Or, if you’re the type who likes to be convinced the water’s fine before you even stick your big toe in, click the Product Tour or Overview button in the “Why QuickBase?” section of the page. You can even search QuickBase's Help files before you give the program a try—type any term into the right-hand Search box, and then click the magnifying glass.

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Your My QuickBase page () is your home within QuickBase. It’s the page you see when you first sign in, your command center, your bird’s-eye view of everything in your QuickBase account. From it, you can work with existing applications or create new ones (if you’ve got permission to do so; see the Note in ). You can manage your account information, search for an application, create and manage groups of folks who’ll work on an application—whatever you want to do with QuickBase, this page is your starting point.

When you’re signed in to QuickBase, you’re never more than a click away from your My QuickBase page. Whatever page you’re on, just look in the upper-right corner for the bright orange My QuickBase button. Click it to zip back to your My QuickBase page.

Figure : My QuickBase is the page you see when you sign in to QuickBase. It’s divided into three main sections, each with its own box. Applications, on the left, lists all the applications you have access to. Click any application to open it. Or, if you want to see more details about your applications (when you last opened that application, who manages it, and so on), click Display (circled)→Details. On the right, the Welcome box lets you know whether you have any alerts (messages) and provides links for managing your account. Below that, QuickBase News keeps you up to date with the latest QuickBase developments.

QuickBase applications are like miniature programs that let you and your team tackle projects—like tracking sales figures, managing spreadsheets of customer accounts, developing requirements specifications, and so on. The rest of the chapters in this book show you everything you need to know about the different types of applications, and how to work with them. But before you focus on those details, it’s worth taking a brief look at how to manage the applications on your My QuickBase page. Your starting point is the Applications box, which shows every application you have access to.

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Just as your My QuickBase page is your control center for everything you do in QuickBase, each application has its own home page: the Dashboard (). The Dashboard is your starting point for working with any application. Usually, it’s the page you see when you open an application. (If you’re invited to join an application [], the link in the email welcoming you takes you directly to the application’s Dashboard.)

Figure : An application’s Dashboard is both your starting point and your control center for working with an application. The Info box tells you the purpose of the application and who manages it. Below that is a report displaying some of the application’s data. On the left, the Reports menu lets you choose among existing reports, giving you different ways to look at the data this application holds.

Getting to the Dashboard of any application is a snap. From My QuickBase, look in the Applications box for the application you want, then click its name (in Details display) or its picture (in Icons display). Or, if you’re knee-deep in an application’s records and want to get back to the Dashboard, click the application’s name in the upper-left corner of any page in the application. (Next to the application’s name is a little picture of a house, reminding you to click here to return to this application’s home page—its Dashboard.)

Administrators can create and assign different Dashboards for different roles (for an explanation of roles, see ). So if you’re looking at a Sales Leads application, for example, you’ll have a different Dashboard depending on whether you’re a Viewer, a Sales Rep, or a Manager. and illustrate the difference between the Sales Leads Dashboards for a manager and a sales rep.

Figure : The Dashboard for the manager of the Manage Leads application shows all leads that haven’t been contacted yet, organized by sales rep. Leads that need to be assigned to a rep appear first, under “(empty)”. Application managers can customize their Dashboard by clicking “Customize this Page” (circled). Application managers can also manage the application’s users by clicking Share (also circled).

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Like any self-respecting program, QuickBase is considerate enough to let you look at your data in whatever way makes most sense to you. From Excel-style tables to calendars, charts, and timelines, QuickBase’s wide range of built-in reports lets you sort, organize, and display your content almost any way you like. If you can imagine it, QuickBase probably has a report to make your vision appear onscreen.

And the best part is how flexible these reports are. Don’t like a crowded table with too many columns? QuickBase lets you choose the columns you want to display. Going for a high-impact graphic to illustrate sales trends at a glance? No problem. Or perhaps you want to find out which project tasks are on track—and which have fallen behind; just whip yourself up a custom report and, with the click of a link, you (and your co-workers) can see your handiwork.

Creating a custom report () does take a little bit of work. So before you get your hands dirty trying to design your own, the first part of this chapter takes you on a quick tour of QuickBase’s standard report formats: the table, the calendar, the chart, and the timeline.

Plus, every built-in application comes loaded with ready-to-use reports based on the standard formats. For example, the Track Tasks application has a My Tasks report, which presents all your assignments in an easy-to-read table. Once you learn your way around one table, you’ll find it a snap to view and manipulate Table reports in your applications. Same goes for all the other report formats.

When you open an application, its Dashboard shows you a report or two. For example, if you’re a sales rep and you open the Manage Leads application, the Dashboard shows a handy table listing your assigned leads. If you’re a project manager, the Track Tasks Dashboard shows a table of overdue tasks and a pie chart of open tasks, sliced up by status. Changing between reports is simple. From the Dashboard page, click the report you want in the left-hand Reports menu, which lists all the existing reports for that application. In a multi-table application, of course, you’ll have several tables to choose from. From anywhere in the application, simply click the name of the table you want in the Table bar—the blue bar at the top of the page just below in the menu bar. A menu appears listing all the reports for this table; just select the report you want. The following sections explain each report format.

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When you open an application, its Dashboard shows you a report or two. For example, if you’re a sales rep and you open the Manage Leads application, the Dashboard shows a handy table listing your assigned leads. If you’re a project manager, the Track Tasks Dashboard shows a table of overdue tasks and a pie chart of open tasks, sliced up by status. Changing between reports is simple. From the Dashboard page, click the report you want in the left-hand Reports menu, which lists all the existing reports for that application. In a multi-table application, of course, you’ll have several tables to choose from. From anywhere in the application, simply click the name of the table you want in the Table bar—the blue bar at the top of the page just below in the menu bar. A menu appears listing all the reports for this table; just select the report you want. The following sections explain each report format.

In QuickBase, the most common way to display data is in a table, which shows your data in rows and columns (). Each row represents a record, and each column represents a field within that record. If you’ve ever used an Excel spreadsheet, a Table report will look like an old friend.

Figure : In a Table report, each record appears in its own row; each column holds whatever info you’re tracking: first name, last name, title, email, and so on. To narrow down the records and fields you’re looking at, click the “Customize this Report” link (circled), which opens the Report Builder (see ).

A Grid Edit report, such as the one shown in , looks a lot like a Table report. (In fact, you can magically convert most QuickBase tables to Grid Edit reports by clicking the table’s upper-left Grid Edit link.) What you can do in Grid Edit that you can’t do with a table, though, is edit individual cells or ranges of them, just as you would in a spreadsheet. That can be a

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Reports are so flexible you can do just about anything you want with them. You can create a report that displays data in a whole new way, or you can tweak an existing report so that it shows exactly what you want to see. When you’ve got a report looking just right, you can save it, print it, or copy it. (You can also copy a report to use it as a starting point for creating a new report.) Or, if there’s a report you don’t need anymore, you can delete it. This section explains all.

When you’ve got a great report, tell the world! teaches you all you need to know about sharing your QuickBase reports, from emailing a report to spiffing up your Word documents with imported QuickBase charts.

If you use any of QuickBase’s prebuilt applications ( explains all about those), each one already has a number of reports built right in. For example, the Track Tasks application comes with more than a dozen reports including My Tasks, Calendar of Tasks This Month, Open Tasks by Assigned to, Tasks Due in Next 30 Days, and so on.

That’s a lot of different ways to look at your data! (And that’s just for one application.) Chances are you’ll find prebuilt applications have all the reports you need. But maybe not. Or maybe you’ll create your own application ( tells you how), in which case you’ll definitely need to know how to cook up your own reports. Either way, follow these steps to create a new report:

Open any application and then, in the menu bar, click Customize→Create a new→Report. If you’re in a multi-table application (), choose the table you want to create the new report for. Or, if you’re the type who likes to minimize clicks so you won’t wear out your mouse, you can take this shortcut: Click the table name in the Table bar (the blue bar at the top of your screen), and then select “Create a New Report”.

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When you’re creating a report, the options QuickBase gives you depend on the kind of report you’re working on. When you select a report type (Table, Calendar, or whatever), Report Builder magically transforms itself to ask you for the precise information it needs to create that kind of report. The following sections step you through each set of options.

For tables, Report Builder asks you to define the criteria you want for the report you’re creating. For example, you might want your new Work Orders table to display only high-priority work orders or your Purchase Requests table to list all requests over $5,000. You might want sales leads grouped by region or by product interest. And you might want to show only a few columns, rather than cluttering up the table with lots of extraneous information. However you want to organize your table, whatever info you want it to show, you can customize a report to get your table exactly the way you want it.

When you’re creating a Table report, QuickBase presents you with the following sections:

Filtering. This section is where you tell QuickBase which records to display in your new report. There are, of course, many reasons to filter records: You might want to display unassigned tasks, leads, or work orders; documents modified in the past week; high-cost purchase requests; and so on.

Displaying only those records that match criteria you choose is one of the most common reasons to create a new report. And doing so is easy, as you can see in . In Report Builder, click the “Show only records that meet certain criteria” radio button, and then select the field you want to filter and tell QuickBase how to filter it. (Filtering criteria, of course, depend on the field you select. If you want to see records modified in the past week, for example, you’d select “Date Modified” and then set the criteria to show only those records changed within the past week. If you wanted to see tasks assigned to a certain person, you’d select “Assigned To,” then “is,” and then the name of the person you’re interested in.) You can filter on several criteria by clicking “more lines” and choosing other fields until you’re done. Just don’t filter out too much or your new report will have nothing to show for itself!

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QuickBase is a super-powerful database, but until there’s stuff inside its mighty self, it’s really just an empty program. Fortunately, QuickBase makes it easy to gather your data and documents in one location, so everyone on your team can start working quickly—no fuss, no muss, no chasing missing documents from cubicle to cubicle.

This chapter shows you how to get information into QuickBase, from individual records to complex documents, and how to work with the information once it’s there. Whether you need to import an entire spreadsheet, change a single phone number in a contact list, or track revisions to an evolving specification, QuickBase makes it easy.

Ever spend hours revising a report, only to find out someone else overwrote your changes? With QuickBase, that’s a thing of the past—you can reserve a report while you’re working on it, preventing others from modifying it until you’re done. Here’s a quick rundown of the other big topics you’ll learn about in the following pages:

Adding a new record to an existing application
Importing data
Uploading documents
Finding information within an application
Editing existing records or documents
Deleting records or documents
Getting your data out of QuickBase
Restoring a previous version of a document

Whether you’re updating an existing application by adding a single new record or sucking in heaps of contact info, product listings, or whatever, QuickBase gives you plenty of ways to import your data and documents.

Different applications have different names for records, the data that QuickBase stores in its internal database. In an application that manages sales leads, for example, all the info related to Frances Higgenbotham (her name, email, phone number, and so on) makes up one lead—in that application, every record is a lead. Other records in other applications might track things like work orders, hiring requests, project issues, and so on. In this chapter you’ll read about adding a “record,” but the application you’re using might tell you that you’re adding a “task,” a “resource,” or whatever; the actual name depends on the application you’re working with. So if your screen says “Add a New Issue,” for example, instead of “Add a New Record,” don’t worry: You’re still on target.

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Whether you’re updating an existing application by adding a single new record or sucking in heaps of contact info, product listings, or whatever, QuickBase gives you plenty of ways to import your data and documents.

Different applications have different names for records, the data that QuickBase stores in its internal database. In an application that manages sales leads, for example, all the info related to Frances Higgenbotham (her name, email, phone number, and so on) makes up one lead—in that application, every record is a lead. Other records in other applications might track things like work orders, hiring requests, project issues, and so on. In this chapter you’ll read about adding a “record,” but the application you’re using might tell you that you’re adding a “task,” a “resource,” or whatever; the actual name depends on the application you’re working with. So if your screen says “Add a New Issue,” for example, instead of “Add a New Record,” don’t worry: You’re still on target.

When you want to add a new record to an application, just follow these steps:

Open the application you want to add the record to. If you’re in a single-table application, look in the upper-right corner of any page for the Add a New Record button and click it. Or click the name of the table you want in the blue Table bar near the top of your screen, and then click “Add a New Record”.

The Add Record page, shown in , opens.
Type in the info you want to add.

Some fields are optional; those marked with an asterisk (*) you have to fill in.
If you have more records to add after this one, click Save & Add Another.

QuickBase saves the info you’ve entered and presents you with a fresh new Add Record page.

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Once you’ve got some data in QuickBase, you’ll want to work with it: find records to update or edit, delete deadwood you no longer need, export it into a spreadsheet, and so on.

As your QuickBase applications—and the data they hold—grow, it might seem like you’re going needle-hunting in a haystack when you want to find a particular record or application. Not so. QuickBase lets you do lightning-fast, precise searches to pull up what you’re looking for, no pitchfork required.

Search for an application

When you’re a busy person working on tons of projects, your QuickBase Applications list can get pretty long, making it hard to find the application you want when you want it. You don’t have to scroll endlessly through your application list to find the application you need. Start on your My QuickBase page; in the Applications box, click Tools→“Search for an application”. In the “Search for an Application” box that pops up, type all or part of the application’s name into the text box, and then click Search.

QuickBase looks for an exact match of whatever you type. So if want to find records that contain, for example, billed, billing, or billable , type bill, which matches them all.

If you can’t remember the application’s name, you can still find it. Instead of trying to guess the name in the “Search for an Application” box, just leave the text box blank and click Search. QuickBase zips you over to the “Search for an Application” page, where you have these options:

Search for text in an application’s name or description (in case you suddenly remember that elusive name).
List all applications you have access to.
List all the applications you manage.

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Your team is working on a report that’s due at the end of the week. Three people have revisions to make, and everyone else has to read and OK the changes. If you’ve ever tried doing this document dance by email, flinging one attachment after another through cyberspace, you know what a nightmare it can be. Is this file the most recent version? Has Elaine made her updates yet? Did Fred sign off on this version or the last one? (Maybe typewriters weren’t so bad after all.)

Enter QuickBase, which gives you a centralized way to share, edit, and track your documents. You’ll wonder how you ever produced a report without it. This section tells you everything you need to know when it’s time to work with the documents...and other people.

Before you can work on a document, you’ve got to find it. No problem. Just search for a document (or for any text inside a document) the way you’d search for any QuickBase data:

Open the application you want to search in and click the Find drop-down menu.

The Find window opens.
Type in your search term, like a filename or the document’s title. Click Find.

QuickBase searches inside all documents stored in the application you’re in and shows you a list of documents that match the term you’re searching for. Links to matched documents appear in the File field.
Click the name of the document you want to open.

QuickBase downloads the file so your computer can open it in the appropriate program—a .doc file, for example, opens in Word.

To make your search more precise, use Advanced Find, where you can specify plenty of other criteria, like Author, Category, Date Created, or Date Modified. You can even search for a word or phrase that’s inside the document. For more on using Advanced Find, zip over to .

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As you’ve learned by now, QuickBase is an amazingly flexible information container. You can stuff it with almost endless amounts of addresses, milestones, tasks, documents, whatever, and never once will you hear it complain, “Hey, buddy, I’m tired.” But sometimes you want your super-powered database to speak up. Sometimes you want to share with others the sleek and info-rich reports you learned about in Chapter 2. Or perhaps certain people need to know when certain records have changed. And maybe everyone—you, your colleagues, definitely the boss’s shiftless nephew—needs a little nudge now and again to remember when something’s due. No problem.

This chapter shows you how to turn QuickBase from quiet recipient to bold communicator. You’ll learn, for example, how to share reports with anyone who needs to see them. Even better, QuickBase is happy to send off recurring reports that get automatically dispatched. For the folks in the trenches who need to know about small-scale changes, just a few mouse clicks let you make sure they’re notified whenever a record changes. And for those in need of a nudge, QuickBase is ready to keep the team on target: Email reminders are quick and easy to program.

The reports you learned about in are a great way to get a filtered look at just the data you’re interested in. A well-designed report—whether it’s a table, chart, calendar, timeline, or spreadsheet—helps visually summarize the key info you’ve been packing into your QuickBase applications.

QuickBase reports (like the example in ) serve up a selection of your data in a visually pleasing and easy-to-digest format. Sounds like the sort of info you’d want to share with everyone—not just you and your fellow QuickBase users, but anyone you work with, like vendors, suppliers, and maybe even your proud parents. Good news: QuickBase makes it easy to distribute your reports far and wide. You can email or print individual reports, or you can set up subscriptions, recurring reports that QuickBase automatically sends out for you.

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The reports you learned about in are a great way to get a filtered look at just the data you’re interested in. A well-designed report—whether it’s a table, chart, calendar, timeline, or spreadsheet—helps visually summarize the key info you’ve been packing into your QuickBase applications.

QuickBase reports (like the example in ) serve up a selection of your data in a visually pleasing and easy-to-digest format. Sounds like the sort of info you’d want to share with everyone—not just you and your fellow QuickBase users, but anyone you work with, like vendors, suppliers, and maybe even your proud parents. Good news: QuickBase makes it easy to distribute your reports far and wide. You can email or print individual reports, or you can set up subscriptions, recurring reports that QuickBase automatically sends out for you.

Figure : You can email a QuickBase report like this one to anyone with an email address. QuickBase sends a copy of the report and a link to the same report in QuickBase. To get started, click the report’s Email link (circled).

When you want to email a report (to another QuickBase user or to anyone with an email address), you can do so right from QuickBase. It’s fast and easy—just follow these steps:

Open or create the report you want to email (see for all you ever wanted to know about reports). In the header at the top of the report, click the Email link.

QuickBase opens a page that looks like .

Figure : When you want to send a report via email, type recipients’ names into the topmost box, or click Browse Users to choose from QuickBase users with access to the application. In the other boxes, you can write your own subject line and a custom email message. When everything looks good, click Send to zip the report off to everyone on your recipient list.

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Unlike magazine publishers, QuickBase won’t make you wait 6 to 8 weeks to change your subscription. You can edit, temporarily hold, or completely cancel any subscription in just a few steps, as explained in the following sections.

If you want to edit your report subscription—perhaps daily emails are cluttering up your inbox and you only need to see the updated report once a week—follow the first two steps for creating a new subscription (): Open the application, and in the menu bar click Customize→Personal Automated Emails to get to the Personal Automated Emails page.

If you’re an administrator, select Customize→Tables to get to the Tables page, shown in . If you’re in a multi-table application, select the table you want the left-hand Tables list, and then click the Emails tab.

Whichever route you take, you’ll see a list of the automated emails for this application. Find the subscription you want to change and click its name. This opens a page like the one back in, where you can make whatever changes you want. Click Save when you’re done.

Figure : The Emails tab (circled) of the Tables page is all about email: It lists all the subscriptions, notifications, and reminders you’ve created for this application. Use this page as a central hub for managing automatic emails: You can edit, copy, enable/disable, or delete any email on the list. You can even create a new automated email from this page; simply click one of the “Create a New Email” buttons on the right-hand side of the screen.

When you go on vacation, you don’t want newspapers piling up on your doorstep and letters spilling out of your mailbox, so you suspend newspaper delivery and tell the Post Office to hold your mail. In the same way, you can suspend your QuickBase report subscriptions—QuickBase calls it

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You can keep everyone on the same page with notifications about the latest data coming into or out of your applications. Whenever someone adds, deletes, or changes a record, QuickBase can send out an email notification of the change to everyone on the application’s notification list.

Setting up notification emails is different for application administrators than it is for users who don’t have administrative privileges. The next two sections take you through both procedures.

Ever have someone create a new work order for you...and then forget to tell you about it? Or maybe you’re a manager who wants to keep an eye on purchase orders as they’re coming in (do those clowns in Marketing really need 5,000 red rubber noses?). If you want to be the first to know when someone adds, changes, or deletes a record, follow these steps:

Open the application you want and then click Customize→Personal Automated Emails.

The familiar Personal Automated Emails page appears. If you currently have any email notifications set up for that application, you see them on this page.
Click Create a New Email.

The “Choose a new email type to create” box appears.
Turn on the Email Notification radio button. If you see a Table drop-down list (which means you’re in a multi-table application), then select the table you want. Click Create.

The Emails: New Notification page, shown in , opens.

Figure : The Notify When drop-down list (circled) lets you select whether you want notification when a record is added, modified, or deleted (or any combination of those actions). You can fine-tune your notification criteria by specifying that certain fields or conditions will trigger a notification email: Click the “Additional criteria” link to do so. Click the plus sign (circled) next to Advanced Options if you want notification only of either single record changes or batch record changes (as in an import), or to change the From address on your notification emails (usually email comes from notify@quickbase.com, but you can also have it sent from the application manager’s address.)

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When it’s up to you to make sure that everyone on your team meets their deadlines, sending a reminder can be an effective way to keep people on task. You can set QuickBase up to send automatic reminders by email before a task is due. If you habitually need to chase someone down for overdue tasks, you can also send an automatic reminder after the task’s due date.

To have QuickBase give someone an automatic nudge, follow these steps:

Only application administrators can create email reminders. So if you’re a user without administrative privileges, feel free to skip this section. If you’re a user who wants administrative privileges, contact the application’s manager.

Open the application you want to create the reminder for. Select Customize→Create a new→Email Reminder (choose a table if you’re in a multi-table application). Or you can take the scenic route: Customize→Personal Automated Emails→Create a New Email→Reminders→Create. (If you don’t have permission to create reminders, here’s where you find out: QuickBase tells you so and offers you a chance to email the application’s manager to request that permission.)

Whether you took the long way or the short way, QuickBase lands you on the Emails: New Reminder page, shown in .
Fill in the appropriate info. When you’re done, click Preview to see what the reminder will look like; click Save to create the reminder. Here are the different fields you can set for a reminder:
- In the Remind Whom drop-down menu, choose the person or people you want to notify. For example, for an upcoming work order, you’d want to remind the person named in the Assigned To field. Or you might want to send a reminder to the last person who modified a record.

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QuickBase takes a load off your mind by remembering to send out important notification emails. But what if those emails, with their terse wording and generic look, are just so not you? You can add interest to the emails QuickBase sends on your behalf by customizing your notification emails’ text, look, or both.

You don’t have to go with QuickBase’s generic (read: boring) message for email notifications. You can create a custom message that calls attention to a particular field within the changed record or that offers instructions or commentary to people who receive the notification.

Start by choosing “Custom message” in the Message Type drop-down menu shown in . As soon as you make that choice, the text box shown in appears. When you click in either the Subject or the Custom Message text box, the Fields & Markers menu appears. This menu is where you’ll embed various fields into the body of your email. That means that the contents of the embedded field, such as a phone number or modification date, appear in the body of the email. (The contents of the Fields & Markers menu are specific to the application you’re working with. So a purchase request application has fields like PO Number and Priority; a time-tracking application has fields like Billing Rate or Total Time for Week; a property management application has Unit Number, and so on.)

Figure : When you choose “Custom message” from the Message Type drop-down menu, and then click inside the Subject or Custom Message text box, the Fields & Markers drop-down menu (circled) appears. Click Fields & Markers to insert codes into your custom email that will show the recipient what’s changed in the record. For custom messages in the case of multi-record changes (like an import), click the Multiple Record Version tab (also circled) for a slightly different set of options—the main difference, of course, is that you want to send just one email for the entire import, not one email for each record that changed as the result of an import (which could change dozens or hundreds of records).

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You’ve probably wished from time to time that there was an easy way to get contact info and appointment details out of QuickBase records and into an email, address book, or calendar program. In the past, your options were either copying and pasting, or typing until your fingertips got sore. Now, QuickBase works with vCard and iCalendar, two industry-standard formats that let you exchange data with other programs: vCard is for exchanging contact information (think of it as an electronic business card), and iCalendar works with calendar data, letting users easily download appointments, meeting invitations, and task information. Once you’ve set up a vCard or iCalendar field in your application, users can download, store, or send contact and calendar information as easily as clicking a button.

Here’s how vCard and iCalendar work: When an application has a vCard field (for contact info) or an iCalendar field (for tasks and appointment info), QuickBase displays an icon with the records in that application, as shown in . A user who sees that icon can click it to download the fields you’ve associated with the vCard or the iCalendar field. For example, Sharon Choe might click the vCard icon to download information about a sales lead—name, phone number, email (whatever fields you’ve chosen). Once she’s downloaded the info, Sharon can open it in Outlook (and many other email programs) and then email or store it. iCalendar works the same way, except it bundles information that you might find on a calendar: start date, end date, appointment time, and so on.

Figure : When users view a record, they can easily download certain information stored with that record by clicking the vCard or iCalendar icon (circled). vCard stores contact information; iCalendar holds time-related information.

Sound good? Here’s how to add vCard and iCalendar fields to an application:

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QuickBase is flexible enough to match the way you work. After all, you don’t want to change the way you do things to fit some programmer’s idea of how to organize your data. But that also means that, in order to get the most out of QuickBase, you need to have a clear picture of what you’re trying to accomplish.

So before you jump in and start creating tables and applications, take some time to define the problem you want QuickBase’s help with: Analyze your organization’s workflow (the steps you and your colleagues follow while doing your collective job), decide what kinds of information you need to track, and determine who needs to know what to keep things running smoothly. Defining and refining your problem now saves time down the road.

If you don’t understand a problem, you can’t solve it. So start by defining the problem you want to solve. Try writing it down as a broad statement—something like, “Having too many different versions of the budget is driving everyone nuts!” or “Sales reps in the field don’t have access to the most recent promotions,” or “Client requests keep getting lost; clients getting angry.” Maybe your whole team’s drowning in too much information and you want a better way to distribute information efficiently. Whatever the problem, you can solve it only if you identify the specifics.

To clarify your problem, it helps to ask yourself questions like the ones below. As an example, imagine you’re a human resources (HR) manager for a big company and you need to track mountains of hiring requests and candidate résumés. Here are the kinds of questions you may start asking:

What’s the problem? It’s hard to coordinate the hiring needs of different offices around the country. Documents, like interview notes and résumés, get misplaced or attached to the wrong file. Promising candidates with specialized skills sometimes get overlooked and then are snatched up by another company. So my department’s problem is organizing and coordinating information that’s stored in a number of different locations.

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If you don’t understand a problem, you can’t solve it. So start by defining the problem you want to solve. Try writing it down as a broad statement—something like, “Having too many different versions of the budget is driving everyone nuts!” or “Sales reps in the field don’t have access to the most recent promotions,” or “Client requests keep getting lost; clients getting angry.” Maybe your whole team’s drowning in too much information and you want a better way to distribute information efficiently. Whatever the problem, you can solve it only if you identify the specifics.

To clarify your problem, it helps to ask yourself questions like the ones below. As an example, imagine you’re a human resources (HR) manager for a big company and you need to track mountains of hiring requests and candidate résumés. Here are the kinds of questions you may start asking:

What’s the problem? It’s hard to coordinate the hiring needs of different offices around the country. Documents, like interview notes and résumés, get misplaced or attached to the wrong file. Promising candidates with specialized skills sometimes get overlooked and then are snatched up by another company. So my department’s problem is organizing and coordinating information that’s stored in a number of different locations.
Is it my problem or someone else’s? If it’s a shared problem, what part of it is mine? Because I’m the HR manager, it’s my problem. But my problem can also create problems for other hiring managers throughout the company. Solving this problem can save time for my fellow managers and maybe even result in better hiring decisions.
Is it a new problem or an old one? If it’s an old problem, how have we tried to solve it? What’s wrong with the old solution? Recent, fast growth has made this a new problem. Old methods for tracking applicants no longer work because the company now has offices across the nation.

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To see what problems QuickBase can help you solve, try breaking down your organization’s workflow into the steps that represent a typical day of doing business. When you distill a large or complex process into a series of steps, you can identify bottlenecks to get rid of, events to automate, and information to record. QuickBase can track every step of the process. It can even let the various players know when it’s their turn to step up and do their thing to move the work along.

To get a sense of your organization’s workflow, think about a typical workday. Take a look at what sort of information comes in, who receives it, who gets it next, and what they do with it. Figure out all the steps that lead to the final outcome.

Example 1: Distribution company

Say you work for a distribution company that specializes in novelties, from squirting lapel flowers and dribble glasses to rubber chickens and whoopee cushions. When a new joke shop places a big order, a cascade of events follows from the time the order comes in to the time your delivery driver unloads the boxes.

A customer calls in and places an order with a customer service rep (CSR). The CSR passes the order on to Madge, fulfillment specialist extraordinaire, who pulls items from their shelves: a case of exploding cigars, a couple dozen bald head wigs in assorted skin tones, some of that new super-realistic fake vomit. Madge puts the items in boxes, along with a packing slip. When the order’s all packed, Madge tells Ron, the dispatcher, that the order’s ready to go. Ron assigns the order to a driver, and the driver loads the boxes into his truck and delivers them.

sketches out this workflow: An order passes through the hands of a CSR, a fulfillment specialist, a dispatcher, and a driver, who delivers everything to the customer. Each person in the chain has to do his or her job before the process can continue, and so each person needs notification before taking that next step.

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Of course there’s more to workflow than getting a package to a customer or tracking software fixes. Sometimes you need to track the status of different parts of your workflow. For example, when an order or job’s status changes, a problem comes up, or a deadline passes, you’ve got a new piece of information to deal with. QuickBase can capture and track all the information along your entire workflow (as well as for each individual player). So, first take a look at what information you need to track, and then break that information down by job role.

Once you have a sense of the workflow, you can identify the information that comes into play (and changes) at each stage of the process. Think about the kinds of information that you need to track: things you already track routinely, things you wish somebody would keep track of, and information that lands between those two extremes.

Example 1: Distribution company

The novelty distribution company has a lot of information to track. For example:

What’s the customer’s account status?
Are any special promotions going on?
Are there enough items in stock to fill the order?
What items are in a package?
How many of each item are in a package?
Now that the order’s packed, how are inventory levels? Is it time to place an order with a supplier?
Where’s the package now?
When is the package scheduled to arrive at its destination?

As shows, the daily workflow generates information that goes into company records—and vice versa. For example, if Madge starts packing an order for three dozen rubber chickens, but there are only 27 in stock, what happens then? Or when a customer calls in demanding to know, “Where’s that carton of trick golf balls I ordered two weeks ago?” can the customer service rep find the answer quickly?

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Think of QuickBase as a virtual manager—or, perhaps, the best assistant manager you never had. It can tell team members when it’s time for them to do something, and it can let you know when the work’s been completed.

Do people on your team waste time waiting for someone to tell them it’s their turn? Any dinky little spreadsheet can hold information, but QuickBase can let people know as soon as everything’s in place for them to get to work.

Example 1: Distribution company

Relying on people to pass on information can only slow down the workflow. If Madge has to walk over and tell Ron when a shipment’s ready to go, or if Ron has to print out a manifest and route for each driver and put it in an inbox, then problems are bound to pop up. If someone forgets to make a call or send an email, a customer’s important order can get delayed unnecessarily. Papers can get buried under other papers or slip down behind filing cabinets.

Here’s how QuickBase can help a distribution company stay on track:

Automatic notifications. When someone adds, modifies, or deletes part of an order, QuickBase can automatically send an email to the person who needs to know about it. You can even specify the kind of change that triggers an email: when a new order’s received, when the status of an order changes, when a shipment is assigned to a particular driver, and so on

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Example 1: Distribution company

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Example 1: Distribution company