by Joshua McGinnis under Inside QuickBase

Hi. My name is Joshua McGinnis and I’m the new Web Designer/Developer for QuickBase.

After spending the past few years with a web hosting company as a Brand Manager, it’s nice to come full circle and end up with more of a technical role. My first impression of Intuit: great! After only three days at Quickbase, I’m impressed by what this company has to offer its employees and its customers. Everyone is really nice and friendly.

I’m really excited about what the company has planned for the future, specifically in regards to what changes are on the way for the web site. If at any time you have opinions or recommendations, do send them along.

So until next time, take care.

by eherbert under Inside QuickBase

As the sales leader in the QuickBase organization I wanted to introduce you to a team of dedicated and passionate individuals which help people who have just started looking at QuickBase. Tim, Shawn, Kevin, Jim, Scott, Amy, Kirk, Dick and Brian work with prospects in companies from all industries and of all sizes every day so they get the most out of their QuickBase trial. 

A few of the team members are relatively new to QuickBase while others have been aboard for several years, and while the team has a very diverse background, they all share a passion for helping people and the QuickBase solution!

This dedicated team provides a very valuable service for the folks who are just getting started and may have a few questions about this powerful tool.  The team spends time with folks and really gets to understand what it is they are trying to solve, then helps them put the best “right for me” solution together. 

If you are in a trial of QuickBase and have questions, give your application specialist a call, this team is very eager to help you!

Happy Holidays!

Eric

by Philip Gross under QuickBase News

The feedback on our announcement of our enterprise strategy, and the release of the new Enterprise Edition has been most gratifying. First of all, we’ve heard from a lot of customers with feedback about the new edition and the new features. I’m not going to give any gory details, but lets just say that the ability to restrict application access by IP address range is the breakout new star of the Enterprise Edition!

We’ve also had quite a bit of coverage of the Enterprise Edition in the press, and the blogosphere.  First out of the gate was J. Nicholas Hoover of Information Week with "Intuit Sneaks in to Enterprise Collaboration".  The article talks a little about how we come in below the radar, and then spread.

Web Worker Daily gave us a quick blurb in their Coffee Break 17. My new second favorite adjective to describe QuickBase? Venerable. We have been around for nearly 8 years, which does not make us a spring chicken, but we’re a little spry to be venerable. (Just so you know, my favorite adjective to describe QuickBase? Rocks.)

James E. Powell of the Enterprise Systems Journal picked up the baton with an article, talking in depth about the new features.

Bill Ives on the Fast Forward Blog (always a great read, by the way) wrote a nice article about our announcement. Bill has been keeping an eye on us for a while (he also wrote an article about XM Radio’s use of QuickBase). Bill had an interesting discussion with Josh Holbrook, who is an analyst at the Yankee Group. He also went in depth about the Enterprise Edition features, and how we came up with them — hint? We asked our largest customers! He even gave a pointer back to this blog. Thanks Bill!

by Alex Chriss under Industry Trends

There’s a great quote today on John Soat’s CIOs Uncensored Blog.  The quote is from Dave Bent, CIO of United Stationers:

"there is no such thing as an IT project — there are business projects that leverage technology to enable them. Once businesses understand that fact, then they understand that there must be joint business and IT accountability to deliver against expectations."

I believe this understanding is one of the reasons we see QuickBase spreading so quickly throughout an organization once IT embraces it.  I’m hearing from our customers that there is a real shift in the traditional roles of the business user and IT.  The business user is now an active participant in not only the planning but also the execution of a project, and IT is sharing control (and the overwhelming burden of “success”) while maintaining crucial visibility.  The net-net is aligned teams throughout, leading to tighter collaboration and better execution. 

I’d love to hear other stories of better Business User & IT relationships (and more importantly, better results) due to QuickBase!

-Alex

“

by emccann under Customer Stories

As a marketer, I understand that it can be difficult to juggle multiple tasks and projects all at once in effort to deliver successful campaigns and programs on-time and within budget. And that’s from an in-house perspective. When on the agency side and working with high-profile customers – delivering award-winning work alone just isn’t enough. It’s just as important to deliver a seamless end-to-end customer experience. And reality has it that the right systems need be in place in order to effectively support and surpass your customers’ needs and requirements.

The TDA Group of Los Altos, California recently shared with us the positive impact QuickBase has had on their ability to seamlessly manage projects and consistently deliver outstanding customer service to their Fortune 50 clients. Read how this award-winning marketing firm takes a unique integrated approach to writing, design, and project management. 

by jmantaro under QuickBase Advice & Tips

Have you heard? Spreadsheet-style editing arrives on QuickBase forms. (Read
What’s New in the Fall release.)

Lots of you have requested this ability, but it may not be right for every application. Here’s some guidance to help you figure out if this feature’s
appropriate for a particular form:

DO use this feature if…

 
• You want to add a master and related detail records from within a single form. For example, you want to be able to create a new project and its initial
  tasks
  in a single stroke.

 

• Users want to edit related detail records at the same time they’re editing the master record. For instance, you can pull up a project and update all its associated tasks on a single screen.

DON’T use this feature if…

 
• Form Rules are an important part of entering detail records. Editable embedded reports display in grid-edit
  mode. But form rules don’t work in grid
  edit. If you have form rules set on your detail
  form that you need to enforce, don’t make your embedded report editable.

 

• You want the embedded report to total or average detail records. Grid edit reports don’t show totals or subtotals.

 

• Users need to see detail formula fields update dynamically
  as they work.    On a form, formula and calculated fields update their values immediately
  based
  on entries you make in their sub-fields (even before you save). In grid
  edit, calculated fields don’t update until you save all changes.

 

• Detail records include file attachments. If your detail table stores documents, enabling this feature won’t do you much good, since you
  can’t upload documents
  in grid edit mode.

If you do implement this feature, make sure you remove any pre-existing URL-formula "add detail record" fields that used to show on your form.  These links/buttons would be redundant and confusing if they appeared above the editable report, as users should enter new detail
records directly on the report. Learn
more.

Also, remember that YOU control what fields show in your grid edit report.
To change what fields display and what’s required, specify grid edit settings
  for the report that you’ve embedded. Tackle this in two basic steps: First, create a form for the detail table that shows and requires whatever fields you want. (If you already created this form, use the existing one.) Second, configure grid edit to use the fields on that form. Read more.

by Peter Fearey under QuickBase Advice & Tips

A few months ago we did a Net Promoter survey of a small subset of our customers.  The survey reached about 20,000 administrators and end users.  What we learned was fascinating.  The biggest “ah-ha” was that buyers and application administrators love QuickBase, but end users don’t feel as good about the product.  In reading through the comments we learned that this is largely due to one thing:  application managers often build applications that work for them, but that users struggle to use.  Well, we want to help.  To that end, here are some “best practices” that we’ve pulled together for application creators that should helping drive adoption and enthusiasm for your applications:

Start Simple: Application managers need to recognize that when they ask someone to use an application they are asking someone to change how they work.  For many end users this is hard…we all know what people say about change.  The best way we’ve seen people drive adoption is to start simple.  Solve one important problem for the team and evolve from there.  Don’t get caught up in building the perfect app and letting “scope creep” turn the application into a mammoth application that requires lots of training.   If you start simple, then people will engage and won’t be hit by the hurdle of “not getting” the new system. Once people are engaged, you can build out the app as you go and expand the scope…

Listen, Learn, Evolve: When application managers proactively listen to user feedback and evolve the applications based on the feedback, end users become more engaged in the success of the application / team.  Sometimes this feedback comes in the form of review meetings or emails to solicit feedback.  Another technique that some use is to have feedback mechanisms built into the apps themselves (e.g. adding a feedback table into the app that users can post into).  By providing users a forum for feedback, the application creator gets some great ideas on how to improve things and it will generate some goodwill because the end users will see that the app creator “is listening” and actively trying to improve.  This approach is much better than the “deploy and forget” approach that many take where they put the application out there.

Utilize Key Functionality: There’s some important functionality that, when administrators use it, it significantly improves the end user experience.  A few of the best examples include:

• Using “user fields” to help personalize reports and to limit what data users see (so they don’t get overwhelmed)
• Using roles for more than security… roles are oftentimes used to customize the reports and dashboards people see- again so that users only see what they need to
• Using “form rules” to simplify forms so that not everyone sees all fields all the time (big hairy forms can intimidate and annoy users)
• Setting up grid edit views for situations where people update all their relevant content in bulk

Teach End Users to Personalize: QuickBase offers a bunch of features that end users can use to personalize QuickBase applications to their own needs.  Three examples are:

• Personal reports: End users can create reports that are specific to them and that only they can see.
• Personal notifications: End users can setup notifications that only trigger when they want them to and that only contain the content the end users want.
• Personal subscriptions: End users can schedule reports to be sent to them whenever they want (e.g. they might want the daily reminder of tasks rather than weekly).

In coming weeks we are going to post some blog entries to dig into more detail on some of the things mentioned above.  I hope this helps you all…and makes the end users love QuickBase as much as the buyers and application creators do today.

Oh  yeah…anyone else have any good ideas of things that have helped end users?  I’d love to hear about them.

Peter