We get lots of people asking us what we use to build our products and run our business, so I figured we’d just post it to the blog.

• For customer support we use QuickBase.
• For text editing, HTML, programming, and CSS work we use Visual Studio.
     
• For computers we use PC Laptops.
• For managing our sales team and sales opportunities we use QuickBase.
• For our community forums we use QuickBase and there’s a Yahoo Group.
• For our payment gateway we use some software from an internal Intuit
  team that builds "shared product components".  That’s one of the
  advantages of working at a great company like Intuit…they understand
  the value in building out shared/common technologies that all the
  products can leverage and so they provide some wonderful resources to
  help build out our infrastructure.  This lets us focus on what’s important to you…using Intuit’s Customer Driven Innovation techniques to improve the product.
• For keeping our Superbowl squares pool organized we use QuickBase.
• For internal bug tracking we use QuickBase.
• For instant group communications most people use AIM through Trillian.
     
• For our web hosting we use the Intuit data center…yep…Intuit has it’s own data center that houses one of the largest ASPs out there.  You may not realize it, but QuickBase, QuickBooksOnline, TurboTax and many other Intuit products and web sites are all housed in the same data centers with the same great people monitoring our servers and keeping things humming along. So…you can feel comfortable that we know how people feel about their data and we take that responsibility quite seriously.
• For keeping people organized and managing our internal projects we use…yep…you guessed it…QUICKBASE.

As you can see, we "eat our own dog food".  We believe it’s important to live and learn using our own product so if there are problems we feel the pain the same way you all do.  Trust me…if QuickBase has any issues at all or our office has network problems, our sales, support and engineering teams comes running in immediately and long before anyone else knows about it. 

If you want copies of any of the QuickBases we use, just let us know by putting in a support case…we’re more than willing to share what we use. 

In the next major release of QuickBase, currently scheduled for late Spring or early Summer, we’ll be introducing a feature we call Dynamic Forms.  This posting will give you a few details about this new feature but keep in mind that many of the details might be different by the time we actually release it.

Form Rules

We’re making forms dynamic by allowing each form to have an associated set of "rules".   Here are a few examples of the kind of rules that will be allowed:

• When Type is Fragile, show the section: Special Handling Instructions
• When Status changes to Done, set Date Addressed to Today
• When Priority changes to High, and Assigned to is Mary, display the message "Please inform Steve!"
• When Status changes, change Previous Status to the value in the field Status

Every rule has 3 sections: a When section, an Additional Conditions section and an Action section.

In the When section you specify When the rule applies.  Currently we anticipate the choices here being:

• when a field is a particular value
• when a field is not a particular value
• when a field changes
• when a field changes to a particular value
• when a field changes from a particular value
• when the form loads
• when the form is saved

In the Additional Conditions section, you’ll be able to specify one or more conditions that must also be true in order for the rule to apply.  The choices here will probably be:

• when a field is a particular value
• is not a particular value
• is greater than a particular value
• is less than a particular value.

The Actions section will, of course, be the action to take when a rule applies.  Here the choices will include

• changing a field to a particular value
• changing a field to the value in another field
• changing the field to a special value (like the ‘current user’ for user fields)
• hiding a field or section
• showing a field or section
• making a field required
• making a field not required
• making a field read-only
• making a field editable
• displaying a message

It’s important for the application designer to understand that these rules will run in the end-user’s browser.  Suppose you have the following rule:

• When Status changes to Done, set Date Addressed to Today

A user who brings up an edit record form and changes the Status field to Done will actually see the Date Addressed field change to today’s date.  But nothing is saved until the end-user saves the record.  It’s just the same as if he/she had typed today’s date into the Date Addressed field.

Live Formulas and Lookups

Besides form rules, there’s one additional new feature that will be part of dynamic forms.  Any lookup or formula fields that are included on an edit form will automatically recalculate on the form when any of the fields that they depend on are changed.  Today you probably don’t include formula and lookup fields on your edit record forms because of the likelihood that they will show stale information.

For instance, suppose you have a formula field for Full Name which is a concatention of First Name and Last Name.  If you have a form with all three fields on it, then when an end-user changes First Name or Last Name, Full Name will update.  What the end-user will actually see upon changing say, First Name, is that the text for the Full Name field will appear with a strike-thru.  This happens client-side (in the browser).  Then the browser sends a background request to the QuickBase server, to get the updated value.  When the value is received, the screen is updated and the strike-thru goes away.

Live formulas and lookup fields will just work - you won’t have to do anything to enable them.

Not Doings

A couple of things we most likely are not doing for this release:

• form rules based on formulas and lookups - in other words, you won’t be able to make a rule that says: when formulaX changes to Y, change A to B.  While this would be very powerful, it’s a bit too hard to fit into the time we have for this release.
• dynamic drop-downs - this is the oft-requested feature where the contents of one drop-down change depending on the value of another field.  It won’t make it into this release but getting the basic rules structure in place moves us a step closer.

Last Words

Let us know what you think.  While we can’t promise that we’ll be able to incorporate every suggestion into version 1, your comments are very important for helping us determine the direction we go with this powerful new extension to QuickBase functionality.

It’s that time again for another QuickBase webinar and this Thurdsay, March 16^th at 2pm EST, we’ll be introducing you to our new SOX QuickBase offering. Come and learn how Intuit has successfully managed its on-going SOX compliance efforts using QuickBase and how you can, too.

Are you prepared to meet your SOX deadline?
Imagine not only being ready; but able to file early!

With over 1000 documents, 450 controls, 100 process owners, and a looming SOX filing deadline, Mark Fluornoy, CPA and Director of Internal Controls for Intuit, not only felt ready to file on time; but that he could file early. Using QuickBase, he was able to stay on top of the project and keep everyone on the same page about what needed to be done without spending sleepless nights getting there. Come and see how QuickBase is being used for: 

•         Project Planning and Forecasting
•         Certification Process and Process Owner Management
•         Risk Assessment Control Matrix and Testing
•         Control Deficiencies Management
•         Documentation Maintenance
•         Internal and Audit Partner Workflow Management

To register for the webinar, click here: https://www.quickbase.com/db/ba862t3m7?a=GenNewRecord        

We want to improve how we bring a new customer into the world of QuickBase…we call it "on-boarding".  We understand that QuickBase is used by a wide range of business and technical professionals with differing skill sets.  We also know that some people use QB to manage projects and others use QB to manage their sales pipeline.  There is little uniformity to our new customers.  This is what makes developing material for new customers hard.  Yet, we know we can do better and we know we can make QuickBase easier to learn.  But that will take time to get right.  In the meantime, we’d like to do a better job of pointing people in the right direction when they get started, which brings me to my question:

If you were at a cocktail party talking to someone that was new to QuickBase, what three tips and tricks would you pass onto them about how to quickly learn QuickBase?