by Peter Fearey under QuickBase Advice & Tips

Have you started using Grid Edit yet? If not, you’re missing out! Many of us on the team have gotten to the point where we start the day by bring up grid edit views on our top applications (issues lists, customer support cases, team project tasks, etc) and then just updating the appropriate records in grid edit and saving throughout the day. It makes everything so easy!

Anyway, I digress…

The main reason for my writing this is because I figured it might help people if I shared some of the keyboard shortcuts we have setup for the Grid Edit views…

- CTRL S = Save: Saves the records that have been changed since the last save. (Internet Explorer only)

- ALT-S = Save: Saves the records that have been changed since the last save. (Firefox and Netscape only)

- CTRL-D = Fill down: Copies the values in the topmost cell(s) into the selected cells below (Internet Explorer only)

- DEL = Delete: Deletes the contents of the selected cells

- CTRL-X = Cut

- CTRL-V = Paste

- CTRL-Z = Undo

A few other fun tips and tricks are the following:
- You can insert multiple blank rows at once by selecting multiple rows, right-clicking and selecting Insert Rows from the popup menu. As many rows will be inserted as are selected and if you’ve inserted them below a record you want to copy, you can then use “fill down” to quickly populate the new rows.
- Have you tried right clicking on row headers, on individual cells and on column headers? You should try it, like many other things in QuickBase, the “right click” menu has many helpful options available.
- Would you like a field to be required only when editing with grid edit or perhaps “read only”? If you have any special requirements like this for your grid edit view, you can create a form that has the specific fields and the “read only” and “required” settings you want. Then, you can setup a view to specifically use that form when people select Grid Edit at the top of the view by going into the Customize Forms screen and selecting the view’s grid edit override.

For additional help on Grid Edit, see the grid edit help topic.

Oh yeah, one more thing…anyone else finding Grid Edit a major part of the workflow for their application? If so, we’d love to hear about it.

by Peter Fearey under QuickBase Advice & Tips

Have any of your users ever complained that certain QuickBase operations take too long? We do get reports of this and once application managers go through the steps outlined in our "troubleshooting performance" knowledgebase article, a vast majority of the cases are the result of poor internet connections causing slow page downloads. Having said that, there are times where slowness can be attributed to applications and the amount of data they contain or the way they are setup and used. Here are some tips and tricks that should help you ensure you are getting the best performance possible out of your applications:

Minimize which fields are searched. Whenever someone attempts to find records through the "Find" menu and/or the "Find a record" menu item in a table’s menu, QuickBase needs to figure out which fields to search for the information. For example, if you use the Find menu and haven’t done anything to limit the search, QuickBase will search every field in every table across all records. The smaller the number of fields QuickBase searches, the faster the response from QuickBase. Here are some ways you can limit the number of fields searched:

- Create a view that uses matching criteria that is setup to ask the user for the information they want to search for and then QuickBase searches that specific field only. For example, if your team generally brings up contact information by searching for names, you can have the view ask and then search for the contact name in that one field.

- If you go to any field’s "properties" page, you will notice that there is a property in the "Advanced Options" section with the "Prevent the Find menu from searching this field" label. This property tells QuickBase whether it should search that field when users use the more general search mechanisms like the "Find" menu. The more fields that have this property checked, the better your performance will be.

Minimize embedded views. Each time a form is rendered with embedded views, QuickBase needs to do a fair amount of work to apply any security and view logic (matching, sorting, etc) for the embedded view(s). If an application has complex custom rules for roles and large numbers of records, it can improve performance if you cut back on the number of embedded views because each one has overhead associated with the logic required to display that view. Instead, if you can display one embedded view that shows all the appropriate records with sorting and grouping.

Archive Data. The more data in an application, the more work QuickBase has to do to apply any application logic you have built (e.g. custom rules, view criteria, etc). If you can automate the export and deleting of data so that applications only contain relevant information, applications will perform better.

Field Usage. Here are a few things to consider about the fields and their usage:

- Prefer formula fields over custom columns which are specific to views. Formula fields have better performance characteristics than view custom columns.

- Reduce the creation of summary and lookup fields: If you find that you do not need some formula, lookup or summary fields, delete them.

by Alex Chriss under Industry Trends

Don’t tell anyone, but some of us on the team often make the mistake of referring to QuickBase as if it’s a living, breathing “thing.”  Maybe it’s not a mistake.  I know that even the engineers who wrote the code are constantly amazed with what this product can do and the problems we can solve. Many of our customers push us to the limits of our own imagination, and more often than not, QuickBase can figure out a way to solve their unique problem.

Since we work with QuickBase everyday, we sometimes take for granted how cool some of the features are. Working with a customer today I realized, yet again, how powerful our Role System is.  Field level permissions, custom rules, limited views, custom overview pages, and more. All the features and flexibility add up to a freedom of process – the ability to make your business process work exactly the way you want it to.

If you have a good story of how QuickBase amazed you or how you pushed your business process to new heights with the technology, we would love to hear your story.