Quickbase

I don't know much about this, but Quickbase is okay to use if you are not familiar. It will take some time to get things set up for a full understanding of the capabilities of the tool.

The most time intensive part of building an application is thinking through how the application might grow and develop over time.

I would definitely consider myself a "citizen developer" because I am one of the least talented people on our team for building applications. It doesn't come natural to me. However, even with my limited expertise, I was able to create valuable applications to contribute to our team with the help of QuickBase's user-friendly nature.

Quickbase takes a few minutes to understand the navigation and structure to building a good application. What we did in the beginning, and since as Intuit (the company behind Quickbase) was look at how some of the canned applications did what the do for certain functions. We learned from this process to now we have developed our own applications from the ground up without being professional developers.

Anyone that's familiar with Excel can do the basics although creating relationships and organizing the data can make things difficult. Once the systems are built non-technical people don't have issues using it.

This has been a problem. I've ended up building the database for three of our other divisions because no one has the capabilities to do this. The last division is client networking services. They are essentially an IT division, so they understood it immediately but this was far beyond the majority of experience most of our users had. That said, my MFA definitely prepared me for this as using project and access were regularly used but I'm the only one in our divisions who use them.

When building applications in Quickbase, it helps to have a working knowledge of database structure and practices (i.e., how different datasets can be related to each other, how to build simple formulas, etc.). Programming knowledge is not required, but can be helpful when creating more complex applications. If you're familiar with tables, forms and related concepts, learning Quickbase should be straightforward.

This is the one area where I really loved QuickBase. I am not a programmer. But I was able to quickly customize the app to handle test management (test case storage, test result, defect management). Even when there is a problem like (I want to do build a button which will do some additional actions - like adding a comment, changing the value in the drop down and finally save the record), I was able to refer to the QuickBase community support and able to get the solution. Since you can extend the app, you can test something in the test app, before marking changes to the production app.

The difficulty of building the program really depends on the needs of the person/company. From a knowledge base though, Excel and the various programming statements that are possible would be an asset since Quickbase's "programming" functions very similarly. I have run into some features that I would like to build in that are possible within the program, but based upon the information that I received from the online support the technically expertise of programming (not excel, but I believe was coding) is about my head. So like I said, the program has a huge amount of possibilities, but the person's knowledge of programming is a factor in it's capabilities.

This is the USP of QuickBase that a non-technical person can efficiently develop applications on QuickBase. You do not need the following skills: .NET, Java, etc. What you need is - above average aptitude and logic, some sense of GUI, some knowledge of software engineering and testing.

Building applications are easy for non-technical individuals. It is a step by step process, asking what type of application you want to build, what information is needed while using the application and the different fields needed to give you everything from the application. With my experience I have not needed any additional help because the application gives you enough information to work through the setup of a new application.

I personally came to QuickBase as a neophyte. No coding experience, barely any in Excel, I couldn't even spell SQL. There were challenges, but between the QuickBase community and Intuit's staff, I had the support I needed. I found our IT infrastructure (all good people) to be more of an impediment than of assistance. The time to build or maintain apps is completely dependent on the scope of the apps. I've built an app in a day that turns a three day job into a ten minute job. I have built an app that took six months dev time but it has been running for six years without any maintenance beyond adding/deleting users.

We needed a developer for this. I have zero skills in building it out but able to maintain.

Apps are easy to develop by non-technical personnel, however, understanding required the structure of the app can be tricky unless you are fairly technologically savvy. Once you get app in place minor modifications and new reports can be done by non-technical personnel.

I am no IT person or overly computer literate, but I found it extremely easy to learn to use QuickBase and even learned about how to use specific functions and applications on QuickBase with no assistance or training. The database is extremely simple to use, straight-forward, clean and very easy to read. I don't think it requires any help from IT personnel, however building the application itself is a time-consuming task.

We have not had to get any help from our IT department. Building a database has moderate difficulty. Maintaining and making changes is simple.

Unfortunately it is difficult for non technical people to get much out of quickbase. I have introduced the platform to other units in my org and checked on thier apps after a few years and they really have evolved. It seems like younger people today lack the skills to make somehting like QB work or have skills to develop something way beyond QB.

Building relationships can be tricky, understanding how to pull relevant information from different tables through those relationships.

I was fairly skilled with Access and SSPS with a knowledge of database structure so QuickBase was very easy to use immediately, l am not a programmer and we don't want to hire one.

Its just not that easy- from my experience, no particular IT or technical knowledge is required, but customizing the templates requires time and is not always intuitively obvious.

When I started I knew nothing about it and I was able to customize apps from the beginning. There were some areas that I didn't quite understand like the relationships and such but was able to learn thru webinars. When you become a bit more familiar and want the application to do some more complex things it does help to know some javascript. I have put in many hours learning from scratch but well worth the effort. I love QB

I think the application is user-friendly. I especially like the help functionality and the quick response from the team on guidance for various configurations I need to have the app function the way I expect.

Basic understanding of database is key in building QB application and we have seen personnel not been able to adapt to QB as quickly as we would have expected.

I don't have experience with building an app from the ground up, but I have worked with updating and editing our app, as well as copying and adjusting new apps. It is decently difficult for me, but after some time self teaching I was able to do the things I needed.

The non-citizen developer will thrive in this environment if they are willing to learn the following basics: data model/structure types (tables, fields, relationships), the basics of report querying/building & formula syntax, a general grasp of relational implications (inheritance, parentage, lookups, summarization). Any custom integration, or exploration of the QB API will require more expertise and/or IT intervention, however, Webhooks and continued product development help close this gap.