Item: Quickbase
Rating: 7
Author: Marwin Ko

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Historically a scientist would go into the lab, measure something like a chemical, and then they would take the data and copy it into an Excel sheet. What we've done is we've created a tunnel to the cloud. So when they measure something, a file is outputted and we put it into AWS, and then we actually use the Quickbase API and then write it out to Quickbase, and then we dashboard their basic analytics and aggregate statistics, such as quality.

Pros and Cons

High throughput development. Building a database and relating things quickly.

Honestly, I work a lot with the API and there were some changes to API, I think this past year or earlier this year. It was not formally announced the changes were going to happen and it broke some of our pipelines. So communicating those technical details more. I've already talked to people who said they're working on it.
There's a disconnect between the API verbiage versus the UI, the front end aspect. For example, the field types are actually labeled differently than in the front end. In the UI, instead of multi-text, it's multiple-choice or something else. There's a disconnect in the wording between the two.

Return on Investment

I would say it's so early. We're still rolling it out, so it's too early to say.

Quickbase Benefits

We're still in the midst of rolling it out, we haven't hit that yet.

Usage for Project Management

I would say there are a couple features I wish were a little better - like testing. The sandbox is a not a true sandbox environment when you're actually using it, other than like for basic schema changes. I would say another thing is pipelines. When you want to test pipelines, you create a sandbox. The pipelines don't carry over, you have to remap all of them again. So it does take a lot of extra time to rebuild everything or at least repoint them to development.

Key Insights

Do you think Quickbase delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Quickbase's feature set?

Yes

Did Quickbase live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Quickbase go as expected?

Would you buy Quickbase again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I would say in inventory tracking is probably where it's well-suited.
Where it's not well suited, I would say extremely early research data that doesn't quite have like a formalized schema. If things are constantly changing, it's hard for Quickbase to keep up with. It's also more that you just got to know what you are working with, right? So very early research is hard to capture in the air.

Quickbase Review

Overall Satisfaction with Quickbase