Change management is always going to be a factor when rolling out a new solution. Users will adopt at varying rates depending on two things:  their individual openness to change, and their ability to see a painless transition to the new solution so they can continue to do their jobs effectively.

In order to achieve a high rate of user adoption, consider the following best practices:

1. Define and understand natural groups of users.

Who is going to use your solution and what are their needs? Group your team members into like work functions, for example “Sales Reps.” It is likely that all Sales Reps will need to have similar access to a solution, but their access might be very different from a group of users called “Project Managers.” Keep in mind when planning and implementing your solution that not all users are created equal. Knowing your audience can also help to create targeting messaging and training that will lead to increased user adoption.

2. In order to solve user problems, you must know what their problems are.

Interview your end-users to gain insights and feedback about the existing system and understand completely what works and what doesn’t work. Users are creatures of habit. If the new solution has all the good and none of the bad, it will feel comfortable and the likelihood of user adoption will be improved.

 3. Involve a subset of users in the entire process, from evaluation to implementation.

Including various users from different functional groups, skill sets, and abilities will provide valuable insight during the evaluation stages of finding a new solution, as well as during implementation. These ‘super-users’ will help you create excitement about the new solution early on, and help with training and change management within their teams as advocates for change during the implementation phase.

4. Design with your user in mind. Speak in their language.

Every solution has business objectives that it is solving for such as increased productivity, decreased costs, etc. However, the new solution should work in a way your users will understand and be able to use every day while still being able to provide upper management the functionality it needs on the back end. For example, use terms that make sense to the end user. Although upper management might need reporting for “Allocated Resource Hours,” your users might use the term “Hours to Complete” to refer to the same thing. Naming a field in your solution “Hours to Complete” will help user adoption.

5. Invest time in usability testing and continually improve through user feedback.

Going live with a half-baked solution is the first step in a guaranteed rollout failure and an uphill battle for user adoption in the future. It isn’t necessarily required to get it right on the first try, but it should be as close as possible to instill confidence and excitement within the user teams. This is where users from different functional groups, skill sets, and abilities are crucial so that any issues or inefficiencies can be easily detected early on before the larger team has access. Utilize user feedback to iterate and improve on the solution until it is ready for prime time.

6. Implement user knowledge and feedback resources to the new solution.

The best place for a user to find information, documentation, or job-aids on how to use the new solution is within the new solution whenever possible. Creating a knowledgebase, wiki, or help topic section can help users feel self sufficient within the application. Implement a feedback depository so that users can submit feedback instantly about the new solution within the solution, while also being able to track the status of their feedback. Empowering users to report bugs, fixes, and other improvements can only mean a better solution for the team, and will lead to long term success for the new solution.

7. Preview the new solution to the larger team before going live. Sell the advantages!

Creating awareness that change is coming is an often overlooked step when attempting a successful new solution rollout and implementation. Present the users with high level information and visuals about what is staying the same and what improvements are being made. Discuss any forecasted improvements to workflow directly affecting them that will happen once the switch has been made to the new solution. Utilize your ‘super-users’ to promote change within their teams.

Following the best practices above will lead to a happier, well balanced user group that has adopted your new solution and was part of a successful rollout and implementation. The important thing to remember about our users is that they are typically average everyday people. They don’t really care how cool our new solution is, nor do they think about how it works. They just expect it to work for them and for it to be EASY. They don’t want to learn something new every six months, they don’t want to ask for help, they simply want to have the tools they need to do their job well. It is our responsibility as managers and application administrators to not just consider, but to seriously focus on our users and include them in the process when we design, build, and/or implement web based software. No matter how great the software is, no matter how good the sales person was that sold it to us was, if our users don’t adopt, it might as well be that company t-shirt that doesn’t fit!

When evaluating new software solutions, the purchase decision usually comes down to the product that sufficiently meets the primary business needs, has the most impressive features, is both reliable and secure, and is procured for a reasonable cost. And this decision is almost never made by the end users. The factor that likely did not come up in our example above and that does not come up often enough is the end user experience.

User adoption is a result of simple and effective application design. If an application doesn’t enable end users to complete work easily without the technology getting in their way, users may resist change, and your application will not have the opportunity to fulfill its potential for positive impact. Unfortunately, this story is all too common. With enterprise software, the end user is often faced with unnecessarily complicated workflows, irrelevant design elements, flashy-yet-useless functionality, and developer-centric design.

Many companies today have unique business processes and require customized solutions. Customizable solutions also enable application designers to craft a simpler, more effective end user experience. Here are a few simple things to focus on with application design and customization that can have a dramatic effect on positive user experience:

• Focus on the central business process. It can be tempting to try to solve for everything all at once but remember – Rome wasn’t built in a day. The end user wants to be able to complete their work quickly and easily. This can be accomplished by designing the application with their workflow in mind so there are minimal clicks, scrolling and thinking required to accomplish their work within the application.
• Put the brakes on scope creep. Often times a product is evaluated and eventually purchased based on a very simple need, but as more is learned about the capability of the new product, the scope of the new product rollout (and the amount of change required of the end user) increases. If the first iteration or version of the solution can be kept aligned to the primary goals that initiated change in the first place, end users are going to be more likely to accept and absorb the change.
• Keep it simple. For now, avoid implementing all those impressive extra features that are not mission-critical to accomplishing the main work in the application. The solution you have selected may have all the bells and whistles that you might eventually want to use, but if users don’t have a reason to use them right now, they could just end up being more of a distraction.
• Group users into like “roles” to simplify each group’s experience. Roles allow you to define custom permissions for what users can see and do in an application. Most administrators use this function for restrictive or security purposes however, savvy application designers use roles to assist with ease of use and user experience. For example, in an application for Sales and Project Management, there may be no reason to restrict a salesperson from seeing project data, but why not remove it from their main views to simplify what they see in their workflow views?
• Consider design aesthetics. Users adopt and enjoy using applications that are aesthetically pleasing. Data entry forms should flow naturally in the way users actually do their job and data fields should be arranged logically. If fields exist that users do not use as part of their job or role, create separate forms for different user roles or separate sections on data entry forms to simplify their views. Likewise, dashboards and reports should only show users the data they need to see to get their work done. (Click here for more about Customizing Forms)

The graphic to the left is an example of application aesthetics. Both graphics are from the same data entry form however, the graphic bordered in green is the form that end users find more aesthetically pleasing.

Of course, there is only so much that can be accomplished with technology to improve user adoption. Communication with the people that will use the application is the biggest driver towards ensuring their satisfaction. Thinking about the end user experience early on in the process is likely to improve the success of the implementation. Consider a proactive approach to involving end users by inviting a team lead or veteran team member in on the evaluation and design phases to be a user voice in the process. Gaining user feedback is the best way to know how the work is currently done, what works well, what could be improved, and will eventually provide indicators on how ready users are for another round of functionality after the first implementation is adopted.

If you can customize and control the user experience in that new solution that revolutionizes the way you do business, your users will more than likely adopt it, and your implementation will more than likely be successful!

In these videos I walk you through each of the new templates so you can get a sense for how they work. Our entire library of templates can be found by signing-in, navigating to your MyQuickBase page, and clicking on the green “Create an Application” button. Then choose a template from the categories on the left. If you don’t see the “Create an Application” button, then you do not have app creation rights. Have no fear! All you need to do is contact your account administrator to request permissions. Here are directions to help your account administrator grant you creation permissions.

Without further ado, here are the new templates by category. They’re listed in order of appearance in the videos below with the video tracking number so you can jump to the template you’re interested in.

Sales and CRM Templates

1. Sales and Project Lifecycle Portal (0:56) – Many people use QuickBase for sales management and project management, but until now we’ve never offered a template that combines the two. Many of our customers find this useful because after sales leads convert, they may need to kick off a project with that customer and its super convenient to do so without leaving their QuickBase Sales CRM app!

2. Order Management Portal (4:55) – Similar to Sales and Project Lifecycle Portal, this app combines two commonly-used types of QuickBase apps. Order information and management features are combined with a CRM system, to give users a holistic view of a customer account and their sales activities.

3. Simple Contact Manager (9:12) – We offer some highly sophisticated CRM templates, such as Sales Management Portal (which can be found under the Sales template category) but we wanted to also provide you with a dead-simple contact manager. And of course, as with any QuickBase application, you can customize to your heart’s desire.

Customer Service Templates

1. Customer Service Portal (0:38) – This is the flagship of our customer service templates. This gives your customer service team full management and creation of customer support cases and could easily be customized to enable your customers to enter and track their own support cases as well. It also includes a customer survey so your support staff can continuously improve their process.

2. Customer Satisfaction Survey (4:57) – This template can be used to administer customer or employee surveys for any transactional process on which you’d like feedback, such as customer support or sales.

3. Customer Service Help Desk (6:30) – This template is focused on ticket tracking and can be customized for many processes including customer support, telesales or your IT help desk.

4. Client Services Call Log (9:10) – A simple app for tracking customer calls.

5. Simple Customer Service Tracker (9:42) – A simplified version of the Customer Service Portal.

IT Management Templates

1. IT Asset Management (0:30) – IT management software template made for tracking and managing all the IT assets at your organization such as including a feature for tracking the depreciating value of your assets.

2. IT Bug Tracker (2.00) – This template includes several dashboard reports that give users a high-level view of current bugs as well as features to delegate bugs to the folks who can work on fixing them.

3. IT Project and Release Management (2:50) – View IT project status at a high-level in the project portfolio dashboard, then drill down to get to the nitty-gritty details. This app borrows many of the best customizations from our other project management templates including features for data collaboration, delegating tasks, and budgeting, while providing its own unique example of how project management could be tracked in QuickBase.

4. IT Ticket Help Desk (4:05) – Customers or employees can enter tickets for your IT help desk. Users manage tickets via two comprehensive dashboards.

5. IT Total Management Portal (4:50) – This template brings together all of the above IT management templates. It’s a one-stop-shop for your IT department.

Hopefully there’s something here that you find useful! If not, check out the rest of our templates by signing-in, navigating to your MyQuickBase page, and clicking on the green “Create an Application” button. If you don’t have a QuickBase account, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial here.

Have questions on the templates? Feel free to ask in the comments below!

What is a dashboard in QuickBase?

Think about what you see when you get behind the wheel of your car. You’ll see modules that report on your current speed, fuel level, important warning and status indicators, and buttons that allow you to perform various functions. QuickBase dashboards are intended to create a very similar experience! Dashboards give application administrators the ability to present their users with the data views and workflow shortcuts they need as they work with, and navigate through QuickBase.

QuickBase applications can have has many custom dashboards as needed to get the job done. The most common use is to create a dashboard for each group of users or individual user roles. Dashboards can also be dynamic, allowing for many users to view the same dashboard with customized data for each individual.

Elements of a dashboard.

You may choose to display several reports, maybe a welcome message, some buttons or links to common tasks, or even a list of instructions for users to follow as they view and work within the application. To start creating dashboards, click on “Customize” on the main menu, then ”Application”, and on the “Settings” tab click on ”Pages”. You can modify existing dashboards or create new ones.

Once you are in the dashboard customization screen you will be able to list all the reports in the application on the left column if you wish, or simply select “Hide” to remove that element from your screen. In the main column you have the ability to display up to three reports of your choosing. Select the reports that make sense for the user by thinking of what info they would need to see when they log in. This could include a report that shows all of the overdue tasks, new unassigned trouble tickets, summary of tasks by project and task status, or even a queue of new sales leads.

Use buttons to expand dashboard capabilities.

Need more than three reports in your dashboard? While you can only display three reports in the main column, you might utilize the buttons section at the top right of the screen to either link to a specific report, or even a second dashboard page with three more reports listed. I like the idea of having three dashboards linked together to create a past, present, and future view of the world. Create a dashboard that hosts reports for things that have happened in the past, a dashboard with reports that show what is currently happening, and a dashboard with reports showing what is going to happen in the future. Using the buttons section will allow you to link to past and future from your main dashboard that shows the present. Buttons are a great way to expand the capability of dashboards, giving you more space to see what you need to see.

Add a personal message.

Dashboards also have a text section option that can be added in the main column. The text sections offer a full featured word processing module allowing for the adjusting of fonts, font size, font color, etc. and can be utilized for simple welcome messages, application descriptions, or even instructions for users to see when they visit the application. Text sections can also be utilized for listing additional reports or pages within QuickBase or even hyperlinks to outside websites or other online resources. You could even create links that help users with common, everyday functions like adding records or uploading files.

Utilize full HTML and JavaScript.

Perhaps the most secret feature of all when it comes to dashboards is the ability to utilize full HTML and JavaScript within a text section. This allows application administrators to design and implement a more graphical interface on the dashboard with functions and scripts that can really lead to unlimited possibilities and increased control on what a user can see and do from the main dashboard page.

Are you ready to take QuickBase to the next level? Would you like to make it easier for your users to navigate and work within QuickBase applications? Start working on your own dashboards right now. Find more information about dashboards with this online help topic.