QuickBase makes it easy to automate and foster collaboration
December 16, 2016
QuickBase makes it easy to automate and foster collaboration
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with QuickBase
We are using QuickBase within our department only, which handles strategic communications for fundraising. We are using it primarily as our project intake and management system. We have public-facing intake forms that feed our project management app in QuickBase. This enables our whole team to easily view their active projects, provide updates to project requesters and it allows managers to view workload at-a-glance. We are also using it as an information repository for important lists and stories associated with our work.
- Workflows/notifications - There are a multitude of options available for setting up workflows that include notifications that go to specified people at specific points in the workflow. This is great for keeping every one on task.
- Sharing data between apps - If you have multiple apps but require a standard data set (such as people with whom you collaborate outside of your organization) you can share that data between apps.
- Powerful formula fields - These allow you to calculate data to show to users on everything from dates, numbers and even URLs.
- QuickBase has done a good deal of work on their UI, but it still could use some improvement. The apps are very functional, but not particularly aesthetically pleasing.
- Multi-table forms - If you would like to be able to edit fields from multiple tables on the same form, that's currently not possible.
We have definitely benefited from QuickBase. The project management app was an intense implementation, but now that it is in place and we have that experience, enhancing it has been a fun project. Additionally, with our experience in building that app, we were able to quickly stand up our knowledge base app (less than a week) and get our people testing it.
Honestly, the two big skills needed for QuickBase are a process-oriented mindset and knowledge of and experience with relational databases. Basic set ups do not require much in terms of technical skills. To really get the maximum benefit out of your apps, it is helpful to have someone who understands some basic HTML as well SQL or other database calls. Unless you pay for an engagement, plan to spend several months planning and implementing your first app. After that, you'll find it easy to stand up new apps.
- Improving our ability to drive insights from our data
- Improving collaboration across one or more teams
- Building and deploying an application (or multiple applications) that meets our exact needs
We are constantly improving our Project Management app. We added a new capability to our portfolio that has specific, different needs from the capabilities already present. It took us about two weeks of planning and then about four weeks of implementation (including testing and documenting) to add new tables, reports and notifications to our app. It was a fun, rewarding experience.