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What would you tell a “newbie”?

By Peter Fearey | Posted on March 1st, 2006

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?

About Peter Fearey

james lacorte

1. Eliminates worris about version control with spreadsheet swapping
2. Powerful yet easy
3. Empowers users and improves communication across an organization in ways you cant imagine (email notification, customer dashboards, views, alerts.)

[Reply]
james lacorte

1. Eliminates worris about version control with spreadsheet swapping
2. Powerful yet easy
3. Empowers users and improves communication across an organization in ways you cant imagine (email notification, customer dashboards, views, alerts.)

[Reply]
http://www.myspace.com/jesus God

Pshhh newbies. You guys should go to college

[Reply]
http://www.myspace.com/jesus God

Pshhh newbies. You guys should go to college

[Reply]
Anonymous

How can I Transfer all my Quick Books Information to another PC

[Reply]
Anonymous

How can I Transfer all my Quick Books Information to another PC

[Reply]
Royce Patton

To help someone new to QuickBase learn more easily, I would suggest that they gain a very clear understanding of what Applications, Fields, Records and Tables really are. I know this seems self-evident to an experienced user, but to a Newbie with very little database experience, this is key to their learning. In my opinion, extreme emphasis should be placed on understanding these basic concepts, as well as Relationships, before moving on to Views, Forms, Notifications, etc.

A new user is likely to look at QuickBase more from a standpoint of what they want it to do rather than what it actually can do. When I first got started, and I’m hardly an “advanced” user, I continually bumped my head on the product’s limitations because I did not understand the basics. I wanted to create mega-tables that would do everything, which in the end turned out to be totally impractical.

I now understand the full power of relationships, and that breaking up information into smaller tables and relating them is the way to go. QuickBase also has a way of hiding useful and timesaving tools such as the duplicate a field option, which I did not discover until a couple of weeks ago (d’oh!). I’m not an idiot, but like most people am used to standard Windows applications, which would have such a function in an edit pull-down menu.

So that’s my 2-cents worth: Pound new users with the rudimentary database stuff, and although it will make people cringe, a more Windows-like feel. MS Word has no “I want to…” button, get rid of it! Unless “I want to be rich” or “I want to be thin” are made options.

[Reply]
Royce Patton

To help someone new to QuickBase learn more easily, I would suggest that they gain a very clear understanding of what Applications, Fields, Records and Tables really are. I know this seems self-evident to an experienced user, but to a Newbie with very little database experience, this is key to their learning. In my opinion, extreme emphasis should be placed on understanding these basic concepts, as well as Relationships, before moving on to Views, Forms, Notifications, etc.

A new user is likely to look at QuickBase more from a standpoint of what they want it to do rather than what it actually can do. When I first got started, and I’m hardly an “advanced” user, I continually bumped my head on the product’s limitations because I did not understand the basics. I wanted to create mega-tables that would do everything, which in the end turned out to be totally impractical.

I now understand the full power of relationships, and that breaking up information into smaller tables and relating them is the way to go. QuickBase also has a way of hiding useful and timesaving tools such as the duplicate a field option, which I did not discover until a couple of weeks ago (d’oh!). I’m not an idiot, but like most people am used to standard Windows applications, which would have such a function in an edit pull-down menu.

So that’s my 2-cents worth: Pound new users with the rudimentary database stuff, and although it will make people cringe, a more Windows-like feel. MS Word has no “I want to…” button, get rid of it! Unless “I want to be rich” or “I want to be thin” are made options.

[Reply]

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