3.13.11 QuickBase Release: Reportable Fields

Our March release continues our theme of better QuickBase reporting, adding a feature that’ll help speed up and simplify report creation for users. QuickBase now lets you limit the number of fields to choose from when building a report. This means that you can spend less time scrolling through fields that you won’t ever need for searching and reporting.

Make a field “reportable”

By designating a field as “reportable,” you tell QuickBase to make that field available in the Report Builder for filtering, sorting, and grouping reports. Making a field reportable also makes it available as a column that will display on a report. To access the new feature, click a table in the table bar of your application. Then, choose Customize > Table > Fields. See screen shot below for the new Table Field List Page.

Outside of the Report Builder, reportable fields are available in most places where you can specify filter criteria. That is, you’ll be able to select reportable fields when you

perform an Advanced Find operation
specify additional criteria in Email Reminders
create advanced criteria in Email Notifications

When a field is NOT reportable, it won’t be available in the filtering, sorting, or grouping UI in the Report Builder. You won’t be able to select it to appear as a column in any report. And, it won’t be available for filtering in any of the scenarios listed above.

Note that fields are marked reportable by default.

Automatically hide iCal, vCard, Report Link, and Formula URLs

There are certain field types on which you’ll never need to filter, group, or sort: namely iCal, vCard, Report Link, and Formula URL fields. Because of this, these field types will NEVER appear in the field lists used for filtering, sorting, or grouping, regardless of whether you turn on the Reportable option or not.

What about existing reports?

If any of your existing reports filter, group, or sort on a field that is no longer reportable, the report will still work correctly. Fields that aren’t reportable will appear in red font in filtering, sorting, and grouping criteria, as well as in available columns.

Fields that aren’t reportable will remain in the report, notification, or reminder unless you change selections that use them. If you do so and save, the field that’s not reportable will not be available for selection the next time you modify the report, notification, or reminder.

Learn more

You can read more about the Reportable feature in the online help. As always, you can learn more about bug fixes included in this in the release notes.

Alex Hastings

Alex manages social media for Intuit QuickBase. Her goal is to help users connect with the QuickBase community and build a constructive discussion around the product.

Patricia Dornacker

What is the difference between a grayed-out check mark and a blue check mark in the reportable column?

[Reply]
Intuit QuickBase Reply:
March 15th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
If you have that field checked in the default column then it will automatically add it to reportable; this will show up as a grayed-out check mark. Otherwise if the default column is not checked you have the option to decide if the field is reportable; this will show up as a colored check mark. Does that help?

[Reply]
Surya Avantsa Reply:
March 16th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Patricia,

When the field is a default field, then it has to be reportable. So when the default checkmark is checked, the reportable checkmark is checked and is grayed out, so you can’t uncheck it.

But when the field is not a default field, then the reportable checkmark is enabled (and blue) thus allowing you to choose whether you want it to be reportable or not. When the reportable field is checked, it is reportable and not otherwise.

Hope that helps.

[Reply]
Surya Avantsa Reply:
March 16th, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Whoops! I didn’t notice Quickbase folks already responded to your question. But I am glad because my response matches theirs!

[Reply]
Darla Nutter

This is great! Thanks.

[Reply]
Intuit QuickBase Reply:
March 14th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
We’re happy you like it. And thank you for your feedback on the previous release.

[Reply]
Beth

I was excited when I first heard about this feature, but it doesn’t work quite like I thought it would. I have a need to make certain fields “non-reportable” for specific users. Meaning they can view data in such a field in a report that I created for them, but they cannot create a new report using that field. For example, we track PTO for our staff in Quickbase. I want them to be able to see their own PTO available/used, but I don’t want them to be able to create their own report to see what others have available/used. Is there some other way to do this?

[Reply]
Intuit QuickBase Reply:
March 21st, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Good question. Right now, making certain fields non-reportable for specific users isn’t possible but you may be able to accomplish this through custom permissions. By giving certain users the ability to see their own records, but not that of others, they wouldn’t be able to access others’ records, even if they tried to create a report in report builder.

That said, I recommend submitting a support case so someone from our team can work through this with you. https://quickbase.intuit.com/support/portal/#YWN0aW9uPXN1Ym1pdGNhc2U=

[Reply]