by Kathleen Lamphier under Industry Trends

Tip number six for improving project team productivity with customizable web-based software. The seventh and final tip is coming next week.  Want all the tips, all in one easy to read PDF file? Click here to request them.

Tip #6 – Personalize the project experience
Sure, collaborative teamwork is what project management is all about. But your team’s success depends on the integration of individual efforts – each with different needs.

For example, not everyone on your team wants or needs to see all project information, and they definitely don’t all want to see it in the same way.  You may want to assign varying levels of information access to project participants.  And, each member of your team may want to customize the project management application to view just the information that’s most important to them.

Many project teams find the following personalization features very helpful:

Adjustable permission levels
The entire team does not need equal access to project information. Customizable project management applications allow managers to control what information individuals can see – and their ability to modify, share or simply view it – by assigning different levels of permission.  This way, the project manager retains the oversight he needs, while individual participants gain access to just the information they need – no more, no less. And, confidential or sensitive information remains restricted to authorized users.

Customizable dashboards and reports
A “dashboard” is an application’s control center. It’s the first page you see when you open your application, and it puts all the at-a-glance information you need in one place.  From it, you can search, add information, create or access reports, and more.

Project management software should enable individuals to arrange their dashboard to their tastes, allowing them to easily access just the documents, records and other information most important to them. It should also enable individuals to create their own custom reports so they can see information how and when they need it.

Get personal with QuickBase
Did you know that Intuit QuickBase provides many ways to personalize your project experience? They include: roles, groups, field level permissions, dashboards and reports.

Roles
You control access to your application and information by assigning a role to a user. QuickBase roles determine what the user can see or do within your application.

Groups
You can save time when managing large groups of users, by creating a QuickBase group. QuickBase groups are a collection of similar users combined together to grant application access or special permission rights to all members at once.

Field level permissions
There may be times when you want to share your application with many users, but limit access to certain fields. QuickBase lets you choose from three access settings: No Access, View or View/Modify.

Dashboards
With QuickBase you can customize dashboards for your users, including personalized views of the information important to them, buttons to get them going to the right place fast, and information to guide them on what to do or what’s new. For example, you can add a report to the dashboard that lets each user see a list of her own unfinished tasks when she opens the application.

Reports
With seven QuickBase report types to choose from, you can display your data the way you want and interact with your data right through your reports. QuickBase reports formats include: table, grid edit, summary, crosstab, calendar, chart and timeline.

Coming next week – tip #7 – anticipate needs for security, service and support.

How are you using QuickBase’s personalization features?

by Kirk Trachy under QuickBase Advice & Tips

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