November Product Release Scheduled

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Business critical apps, ones with complex relationships supporting many processes and having multiple administrators, are an exciting possibility for any team using QuickBase. In the past, making changes to these applications was best accomplished by copying the application, working on it and switching everyone over to the new version – safe, but not so simple.

That’s why I’m so excited our next product release on November 29th. We are introducing a Developer Sandbox for all Enterprise accounts that will let you make changes to your live applications without risk. You simply create and test the changes in the safety of the sandbox application, continue using the live application, run a compatibility check to identify any problems and update the live app with your changes – safe as houses.

screenshots

There are new features that all customers will enjoy. An improved user management area allows account administrators to easily manage access of thousands of QuickBase users. Finding users is much easier with dynamic search and sorting capabilities, while modifying status is simplified with bulk actions and the ability to provision users by importing a CSV file.

Lastly, a great usability tweak worth mentioning is better visibility and tuning of [non]searchable fields. This is a great way to make fast searches even faster.

Greg Collins

Greg is a Senior Marketing Manager for QuickBase. He enjoys short walks on the beach, long periods of speculation, good meals and a well tuned QuickBase.

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  • Eric

    It would really be nice if the developer sandbox were made available across the board and not just for Enterprise accounts. Thank you.

    [Reply]

  • Eric

    It would really be nice if the developer sandbox were made available across the board and not just for Enterprise accounts. Thank you.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.GoodDoneGreat.com/ David

    This is all great news and very welcome additions. Thanks.

    That said, I agree with Eric. I can see no reason why the sandbox would be Enterprise only, as this is a feature that is sorely lacking. If the idea is to make Enterprise more attractive to justify its higher price point, I say that this only serves to make regular QuickBase less attractive when compared to the competition.

    Also, you say that the release is scheduled. Scheduled for when?

    [Reply]

  • http://www.GoodDoneGreat.com David

    This is all great news and very welcome additions. Thanks.

    That said, I agree with Eric. I can see no reason why the sandbox would be Enterprise only, as this is a feature that is sorely lacking. If the idea is to make Enterprise more attractive to justify its higher price point, I say that this only serves to make regular QuickBase less attractive when compared to the competition.

    Also, you say that the release is scheduled. Scheduled for when?

    [Reply]

  • Kevin

    I’m also disappointed that the sandbox feature is only available with Enterprise. I thought Quickbase (and Intuit) was supposed to be non-Enterprise friendly? Pretty lackluster update in my opinion.

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    @Kevin, @David and @Eric,

    I hear you loud and clear about the sandbox. It is an important feature. In our research the need for this feature came from our larger customers who were managing complex deployments across lots of users. It’s important for us to keep our different offerings focused on the needs of the customers for that offering. We always try to balance feature development to match the needs of the teams using them – between complexity and simplicity, large teams and small. That said, I’ll circle back with the team and see if there are a large group of accounts that feel like you do. If so, we’ll look at any changes we should make.

    [Reply]

  • Kevin

    I’m also disappointed that the sandbox feature is only available with Enterprise. I thought Quickbase (and Intuit) was supposed to be non-Enterprise friendly? Pretty lackluster update in my opinion.

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    @Kevin, @David and @Eric,

    I hear you loud and clear about the sandbox. It is an important feature. In our research the need for this feature came from our larger customers who were managing complex deployments across lots of users. It’s important for us to keep our different offerings focused on the needs of the customers for that offering. We always try to balance feature development to match the needs of the teams using them – between complexity and simplicity, large teams and small. That said, I’ll circle back with the team and see if there are a large group of accounts that feel like you do. If so, we’ll look at any changes we should make.

    [Reply]

  • http://octo.quickbase.com/ Surya Avantsa

    Greg: I cannot wait for these features. Is there a beta version that we can take a look at and provide feedback, before it is released?

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    @Surya Avantsa,

    I’m glad you’re excited and I hope you enjoy it. Sorry, no beta available for this release. We’re moving to a live, more iterative development process so we can get more new features in-market.

    [Reply]

  • http://octo.quickbase.com Surya Avantsa

    Greg: I cannot wait for these features. Is there a beta version that we can take a look at and provide feedback, before it is released?

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    @Surya Avantsa,

    I’m glad you’re excited and I hope you enjoy it. Sorry, no beta available for this release. We’re moving to a live, more iterative development process so we can get more new features in-market.

    [Reply]

  • Albert Clawson

    “There are new features that all customers will enjoy. An improved user management area allows account administrators to easily manage access of thousands of QuickBase users.”

    Most administrators don’t have thousands of QB users….

    “Finding users is much easier with dynamic search and sorting capabilities, while modifying status is simplified with bulk actions and the ability to provision users by importing a CSV file.”

    This is of no value to most smaller users either.

    “Lastly, a great usability tweak worth mentioning is better visibility and tuning of [non]searchable fields. This is a great way to make fast searches even faster.”

    Any details on this?

    And while we’re at it will QB -EVER- provide transitive lookups like every other relational database on the planet? I am so tired of having to copy large chunks of data from tblA into tblB just so tblC can use the information – if A B and B C then C should be able to query tblA directly.

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    @Albert,
    You’re right. A lot of what we’re doing in this release is focused on larger user groups. We’ll be doing more for smaller team deployments in our upcoming releases.

    [Reply]

  • Albert Clawson

    “There are new features that all customers will enjoy. An improved user management area allows account administrators to easily manage access of thousands of QuickBase users.”

    Most administrators don’t have thousands of QB users….

    “Finding users is much easier with dynamic search and sorting capabilities, while modifying status is simplified with bulk actions and the ability to provision users by importing a CSV file.”

    This is of no value to most smaller users either.

    “Lastly, a great usability tweak worth mentioning is better visibility and tuning of [non]searchable fields. This is a great way to make fast searches even faster.”

    Any details on this?

    And while we’re at it will QB -EVER- provide transitive lookups like every other relational database on the planet? I am so tired of having to copy large chunks of data from tblA into tblB just so tblC can use the information – if A B and B C then C should be able to query tblA directly.

    [Reply]

    Greg Collins Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    @Albert,
    You’re right. A lot of what we’re doing in this release is focused on larger user groups. We’ll be doing more for smaller team deployments in our upcoming releases.

    [Reply]

  • Bob

    Is there anything that details all these new features that all customers will enjoy? Or are the 3 things you list here it? I’d much rather you fix some usability things like allowing to sort by totals in summary reports with Crosstabs, instead of the default.

    I have 15 users and Sandbox should be for everyone, not just Enterprise.

    [Reply]

  • Bob

    Is there anything that details all these new features that all customers will enjoy? Or are the 3 things you list here it? I’d much rather you fix some usability things like allowing to sort by totals in summary reports with Crosstabs, instead of the default.

    I have 15 users and Sandbox should be for everyone, not just Enterprise.

    [Reply]

  • Thomas

    How about stopping QB from stealing focus (it’s an application issue, not a Windows/OS issue)?

    What about an honest-to-goodnes Excel/spreadsheet download (seriously, a .CSV is *not* a spreadsheet)?

    How about the ability to create relationships on *ANY* field–not just the key field of one table–without having to jump through the hoops conatined in the KB articles?

    How about a native/Intuit authored ODBC driver (Quickbase Desktop simply *DOES NOT* cut it)?

    How about putting off development of bells and whistles and working on improving overall performance?

    [Reply]

    Thomas Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    @Thomas, along with the ODBC comment of mine, QuNect is not an option for my organization.

    [Reply]

  • Thomas

    How about stopping QB from stealing focus (it’s an application issue, not a Windows/OS issue)?

    What about an honest-to-goodnes Excel/spreadsheet download (seriously, a .CSV is *not* a spreadsheet)?

    How about the ability to create relationships on *ANY* field–not just the key field of one table–without having to jump through the hoops conatined in the KB articles?

    How about a native/Intuit authored ODBC driver (Quickbase Desktop simply *DOES NOT* cut it)?

    How about putting off development of bells and whistles and working on improving overall performance?

    [Reply]

    Thomas Reply:
    November 24th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    @Thomas, along with the ODBC comment of mine, QuNect is not an option for my organization.

    [Reply]

  • Ton Jense

    Why keeps Intuit suprising its customers with Releases with unexpected and often unneeded functionality?
    I am pretty certain that it would pay-off if Intuit would share its plans with its customers much earlier. It would lead to a better alignment with the needs of customers and prevent Intuit from being suprised by its customers (like Kevin, David and Eric demonstrated).

    [Reply]

  • Ton Jense

    Why keeps Intuit suprising its customers with Releases with unexpected and often unneeded functionality?
    I am pretty certain that it would pay-off if Intuit would share its plans with its customers much earlier. It would lead to a better alignment with the needs of customers and prevent Intuit from being suprised by its customers (like Kevin, David and Eric demonstrated).

    [Reply]

  • Patti Dornacker

    I represent a “large” company with thousands of users and the change to the Add Users will help me tremendously – but I need to be able to see the email address of users who are not in our domain as well as what group a user is in before I deactivate them.

    In the developer sandbox, is it possible to give us the option to copy with data? If I have an application using tables for conditional drop downs I lose all my lookup values. I will have to reload a lot of data before I can begin testing.

    [Reply]

  • Patti Dornacker

    I represent a “large” company with thousands of users and the change to the Add Users will help me tremendously – but I need to be able to see the email address of users who are not in our domain as well as what group a user is in before I deactivate them.

    In the developer sandbox, is it possible to give us the option to copy with data? If I have an application using tables for conditional drop downs I lose all my lookup values. I will have to reload a lot of data before I can begin testing.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.discountiffany.com tiffany jewellery

    What is noteworthy about this application is that it works natively with QuickBase. Instead of accessing QuickBase via the iPhone’s web browser, MCF Tech has leveraged QuickBase’s API to present QuickBase applications with native iPhone functionality.

    [Reply]

  • http://www.tiffanyforsale.com tiffany sale

    What is noteworthy about this application is that it works natively with QuickBase. Instead of accessing QuickBase via the iPhone’s web browser, MCF Tech has leveraged QuickBase’s API to present QuickBase applications with native iPhone functionality.

    [Reply]