Archive for the ‘QuickBase Advice & Tips’ Category
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips
How to add Dynamic Gantt Charts to QuickBase will be shown today at 2pm Eastern time when Don Larson of MCF Tech shows their enhanced charting product.
As you drag a timeline and link it to another task, data is updated automatically and reports are reconfigured on the fly.
Who: Open to All
What: Don Larson from MCF showing Advanced Gantt Charting for QuickBase
When: 2pm Eastern time today, 11/17
Where: Online via WebEx
How: Register at: http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/register/965033785
MCF Technologies is a Certified QuickBase Solution Provider and is based in Cleveland, Ohio. http://mcftech.com.
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips, QuickBase News
If you know of anyone that has long wanted to integrate QuickBase with SQL Server, Microsoft Word, Excel, Access or Visio, be sure to invite them to attend this webinar entitled “Using ODBC with QuickBase”. Scheduled for 2:00 PM Eastern time Thursday 10/15 we will talk with Claude von Roesgen one of the early co-founders of QuickBase and author of Qunect http://qunect.com.
This webinar session will show and demo how it is set up and how it works. Like all of the 10 live weekly webinars, they are free and open to questions and answers. Register here.
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips
You can add buttons to your QuickBase forms that launch activities with other web services. Buttons for Google, Yahoo, Linked In, Twitter, etc.
To add these buttons:
- Right click over the name of a field that is close to where you want the button to be and scroll down to add a new field.
- Name it what you like and select a “Formula URL” field type and save. The text will show up on your form but we haven’t told the button what we want it to do so it is blank.
- Right click on the name of your button and select “Edit the field properties for this field…”. If you like you can cut and paste the example code into the FORMULA area. See the example code below.
Copy and paste the following example code. Use your own field names in place of the ones below. NOTE: Sometimes when you cut and paste the quotation marks pickup unwanted formatting. Especially the quotation marks. Make sure when you paste that they are the straight up and down quotation marks and not the angled ones. (Thanks Jared)
Google Information
“http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=”&URLEncode([Company]&”+”&[Address]&”+”&[City]&”+”&[State]&”+”&[Zip])
Google Finance
“http://finance.google.com/finance?q=” & URLEncode([Ticker])
“http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sik=1178917462007&keywords=”&URLEncode([Name]&”+”&[Company])
“http://twitter.com/search/users?q=”&URLEncode([Name])&”&category=people&source=find_on_twitter”
Virtually every web service has some widget that you might want to launch from QuickBase. Using Formula URLs can help integrate them with your QuickBase.
You are welcome to attend any of our 10 weekly webinars. Many of the webinars discuss online database items just like this.
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips
I got an email from Ryan who wants to create a unique identifier for each of his sales opportunities.
QuickBase already creates unique identifiers. Sometimes they are called Record IDs and in the case of his application (Sales Force Automation), the counter is a key field named [OpportunityID]. Whichever field name it is, it is counting every time a new opportunity is created. You can use this field or add to it by adding a number to make it larger say… a four digit number or you can add text to it by concatenating the text from some other text field to make this separate new formula text field.
If your want the result to be a number then use a formula numeric field and enter something like “[OpportunityID]+1000″.
If you want your result to be mixture of numbers and text like the company name then use a formula text field and add something like this: “ToText([OpportunityID]&”"&[Account - Company Name])”.
In other words, if the [OpportunityID] is “57″ and the [Account - Company Name] field is the company who’s name is “5M” the formula text field puts them together so they look something like: “575M”.
Here is an brief overview video:
We do things like this in our webinars every day. You are welcome to pop in and we can do it live.
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips
You can use QuickBase Formula URL fields to automate many manual database processes. Like pressing a button that toggles an approval check box or maybe pressing a button and automatically changing a task assignment. When you use Formula URL fields they create buttons and links that can invoke QuickBase’s very powerful API or Application Programming Interface.
I am a fan of right-clicking how other people use buttons and seeing how they tick. Somewhere in my head I know I am flattering the author by copying their work.
Say for instance we have a report in a Project Management application and we wish to trigger emails to select assignees. Let’s add a formula URL field, and title it “Make Toggle”. When the viewer presses this button the Toggle field will check. When pressed again it will uncheck. This is cool because we are actually using the QuickBase API to do something that would ordinarily require multiple mouse clicks and we have reduced it to one click. Another benefit of this is that the record itself is being changed. Sure you can grid edit this report and check the boxes but if you want to trigger automatic email notifications this might be a better way to do it. Grid Edit doesn’t trigger email notifications but API calls do.
You can find out more about Formula URL buttons and cool API functions by checking out the following links and signing up for any of our 10 free weekly webinars. Many of the webinars dive into customizing and making your QuickBase applications come alive.
Configure QuickBase URL Fields
Using Formulas
List of Formula Functions
Sign up for a Free Webinar
by Kirk Trachy under Inside QuickBase, QuickBase Advice & Tips, QuickBase News
If you thought QuickBase was a powerful database before you are really going to be impressed with the addition of formulas, summary and lookup fields to our forms.
This isn’t just hiding or showing fields or sections on a form. This is controlling your form with formulas, changes to lookup, summary and reference fields.
This opens up many new possibilities for forms:
Say you have projects and you have a field called [Project Type]. You use that to describe whether it is a Marketing, Sales or Support type of project. Every time you add a task you need a different set of fields to show based on the project type. Before you would have to create a long task form with all the unneeded fields showing. With form rules now sensitive to lookup fields your project type can now control what your task form looks like. It’s fast, easy and simple.
How about a better way to keep on top of your project’s issues? Say you want to see your issues when they are open but want them to go away when closed. Using a Summary field you can now have them pop up when opened and disappear when closed.
Here’s another one, let’s say we are working on a task and it is overdue. How about using form rules to pops up an alert screen, switches the priority to high and require a note be entered? You can do that too.
We also enhanced our QuickBase alert functionality. You will notice them in applications and on your My QuickBase page.
“I cannot express how excited we are for the dynamic form rules. First conditional drop downs and now this! Christmas was early this year! Thanks QB Team!”
-Melissa
“This is incredible!!! I am so happy to be able to have more power over my form rules! This will save all those creative workarounds I was used to dreaming up! …Conditional Drop Downs & Form Rules!!!! Thank you QuickBase!!!”
-Hunter
“Thanks for listening and making it happen. Keep the enhancements coming!!”
-D.J.
Check out the video to see how you can use this new feature and review the release notes http://quickbase.intuit.com/resources/node/2004 for a complete item listing.
If you have any questions be sure to let us know or pop into any of our 10 free weekly webinars at http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/.
Have a blast!
by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips
You can enhance your QuickBase Lead Tracking, Sales and CRM applications by adding a LinkedIn button that does intelligent lookups into LinkedIn. Frequently we call people and companies and we wished we knew more about who we are calling. Try adding a simple button to your application QuickBase. QuickBase will pass the company and contact’s name to LinkedIn for a quick lookup.
All you need to do is add the following to a new Formula URL field:
“http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sik=1178917462007&keywords=”&URLEncode([Name]&”+”&[Company])
If you only have “First Name” and “Last Name”, modify the link so it reflects your usage. Like this:
“http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sik=1178917462007&keywords=”&URLEncode([First Name]&”+”&[Last Name]&”+”&[Company])
We talk about things like this in many of our 10 weekly live webinars. All are welcome whether you want to ask questions or just watch.
http://quickbase.intuit.com/webinars/
Have a blast with your QuickBase.
Kirk Trachy
Intuit QuickBase | 781-370-4438 | kirk_trachy@intuit.com
