QuickBase’s Most Distinguished Feature (IMHO)

By Kirk Trachy | Posted on April 22nd, 2009

A writer asked me the other day, “What is QuickBase’s most distinguished feature?”

If you have been a QuickBase user for any time you are probably reeling like I did. Where to start? There are so many.

I landed on one of QuickBase’s core functions. Its role functionality.

If you have ever attended one of my 10 weekly webinars you will hear me say, “If you can say it, you can do it”. The role functionality describes what you can “see” and “do” right down to the field level of any table in any application for any customer, client, user or administrator. I have been with QuickBase for almost five years and have yet to come across a scenario that we have not been able to address with QuickBase roles.

You can create as many roles as you like and make them as unique and customizable as you like. One large retailer decided to take this to an extreme with over 1,000 unique roles and dashboards. That wasn’t really necessary but it is an example of how open and flexible QuickBase is.

Each role in QuickBase can control a default dashboard, whether you want the drop down menus and tables accessible, and it allows you to dissect each table and control its “Add”, “View” and “Modify” functionality right down to the field level. The process is the same for each table, so what you did for Contacts and Opportunities is the same as what you will do for Projects and Tasks.

A popular functionality is taking ANY unique role and assigning this role to an anonymous user we call, “Everyone on the internet”. That means that people on the internet who are not QuickBase users can do anything an Administrator can do. In reality, people usually pare back the role that they extend to anonymous users. Maybe they allow them to add records and receive email notifications on status changes. By the way, maybe you want different roles to have different dashboards? You can. You can also have a different web Form for each role as well. That isn’t just for adding a record. This applies to editing, displaying and grid editing forms as well. What you see on add may be different on the resulting displayed view and still different on edit and still different on grid edit.

Let me take this one step further. You can overlay as many roles as you like with as many users as you like too. For instance maybe you want to copy a role used by other people but just add this one very small approval field that no one else has access to, you can.

An example of an “Everyone on the Internet” application can be viewed by anyone at:
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bcyiggmep

Click the “Add a Request” button:
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bcyiggmeq?a=GenNewRecord

The above form is actually way different than the internal form and contains much behind the scenes linking and workflow. All controlled with role functionality.

Another example of the power of QuickBase roles is the QuickBase Project Manager 4 in 1 application. It actually is one application but with 4 distinct levels of functionality for all the roles.

Check a copy from our application library at:
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bbtt9cjr7?a=dr&rid=528

To get a copy, click the “Get App” button.

If anyone has a request for a particular new application, let me know. You can always find me in one of our ten weekly live webinars by registering at:
http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/.

Have a great day.

Kirk Trachy – QuickBase Evangelist