4 Things You Should Know About The New QuickBase Release

I am not sure if you have heard, but there is a major QuickBase release this weekend. As a QuickBase-nerd, this is easily the most exciting QuickBase release I can remember. Check out the product release notes here. As a QuickBase Solution Provider, it includes many of the things that will help us and our clients bring their applications to the next level.

Rather than espouse the complete awesomeness of the enhancements, we thought it might be helpful to list some things you should understand about the release:

1. Your old dashboards will still work, but we suggest....

The new release completely revamps the "homepage" builder. Using complex javascript to put graphs side-by-side and to embed outside content is a thing of the past. Need more than 3 buttons? You've got it. Need to customize your side menu? It will take just a few clicks.

What you need to know: Your current dashboards won't be affected. Even if you have a bunch of custom script on the dashboard, you will not not notice any changes. That said, we highly recommend migrating your old dashboards into the new dashboard model using the built in tools such a report embedding and html embedding.

2. You have some work to do in order to take advantage of the new address fields

This latest release includes a new "address" field type which is integrated with Google Maps. No more creating a separate field for Address, City, and State. These fields are created for you and will allow you to map multiple addresses on a map.

What you need to know: Your old address fields will not automatically be migrated to the new fields. To take full advantage of the mapping features, you will need to migrate your old address fields. Our recommendation is to use the table-to-table import feature...but be careful to map your key field correctly.

3. Choose the Day of Month for Monthly Subscriptions?

Buried in the sheer beauty of the new QuickBase release is the ability to choose the day of the month that a monthly subscription goes out. This seems inocuous enough, but imagine if you need a report to go out a few days before month end, such as a payroll approval report to a manager. Take advantage of this feature.

4. Time for Spring Cleaning

The new release lets you see how often reports are accessed. Many users have experience "report abuse" where there are so many reports in a table that nobody really knows which ones are important. This causes confusion and leads users to create even more reports. It's a vicious cycle. If you are an administrator, use this as an opportunity to clear out all your unused reports to focus your users on the reports that really matter

And no blog would be complete without a shameless plug. If you need help migrating your old dashboards or address fields, we can help!