Item: Quickbase
Rating: 8
Author: Mike Ciampa

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBase

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use QuickBase to track IT store data and installation specifics. We track details such as IPs, phone numbers, connectivity info, staging information for the servers and terminals, etc. We have a large (30+ person) team that has real-time access to this shared data, as well as vendors who collaborate to update data and milestones. We use the notifications and subscriptions to pass information from vendor to vendor, as well as to our support staff, and are able to reduce the amount of email communications to open stores, resolve issues, provision connectivity, etc.

Pros and Cons

Pros

QuickBase allows technical novices the ability to create customized notifications and subscriptions that allow automated communication based on certain milestones or events being reached.
QuickBase has proven to be highly available, and is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, making it easy to share with vendor partners and other off-net users.
Form rules are robust and allow form-entry conditions to trigger other actions such as updating fields or dates, triggering a field to be required prior to saving, allowing for fields or entire sections of data to be hidden until triggered by something such as a checkbox, etc. This type of customization is often limited to being enacted by development teams and is subject to being placed in a backlog.

Cons

It would be nice if the look of Quickbase could be modified. Branding of the application does exist, but is rather limited.
My experience with the technical support team at QuickBase has been rather mixed. I didn't get good answers to my questions about some form behaviors I was seeing.
I didn't find the sandbox to be very helpful. I had hoped there would be a way to duplicate my data to a sandbox, make and test changes, then promote the changes to production. This wasn't really a possibility.

Alternatives Considered

We inherited QuickBase from its use by a vendor. Ultimately, we built it into a powerful tool, but have not investigated other offerings.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe it is a great tool that allows instant productivity gains for users. In an environment where the administrator is a user within the community in which the application will be deployed, the product shines the most.

It would probably be a less effective tool in an organization that is highly regimented and subject to a great deal of bureaucracy/control. It is a nimble, agile tool that benefits from having someone who is good with process design and logic. Easy and quick changes can be made, rather than being stuck in a development queue. The tool is ultimately as good as the person who is developing the application.

Comments

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QuickBase has increased our productivity and quality of delivery without the help of IT.