FastField channel

Go to the Channel Catalog to learn more about what plans have access to this channel. Sign into Quickbase, and then go to Pipelines > Channels.

FastField is a cloud-based data entry solution that helps businesses of all sizes gather data, create forms, and collect information via tablets and smartphones. Primary features include question branching, collaboration, version control, text editing, dispatch, form routing, and duplicate detection.

Learn more about FastField in their help center.

Connect with the FastField channel

To connect the FastField channel:

1. In the Pipeline Designer, add a step that uses the FastField channel.
2. In the new step, enter your FastField information to connect to FastField.
   This includes the FastField token, API URL base, and API subscription key.
3. Select the Connect button to authorize pipelines in FastField.

About the fields:

FastField Token—The way that FastField authenticates your account. To find your token in FastField:

1. In FastField, go to My Profile.
2. On the Security tab, select the Manage API Tokens button.
3. Select the Add API Token button, and then enter a name. For example, Quickbase Pipelines Token.
4. Save your token.
   This creates a token, which you can copy from FastField and paste into Quickbase.

API URL Base—The API Base URL against which the requests will be done. By default, the Prod API URL Base is used (https://api.fastfieldforms.com)

API Subscription Key—

• You will need to have a FastField developer account. If you already have such an account - skip this step
• If you don't have an account, you need to request a developer account. For information on how to do this, see Looking for an API Key or API Documentation?.
• Log in to your FastField developer account:
  • FastField developers account for Prod API
• In the top right corner, click on your Name → Profile
• In the Your subscriptions section, click Show next to your Primary key, copy the value and paste it into the API Subscription Key field in the connect dialog of the channel.
  

After you connect, you see the channel’s steps:

How to reconnect

You may need to reconnect your account to a channel. Reasons may be (but not limited to):

• If you need to connect a different account.
• Authorization updates, such as a changed password.
• Editing the access rights that Pipelines has to the channel.

To reconnect:

1. Select a pipeline that already has this channel in it.
2. Open a step that contains this channel.
3. Under account, select Connect (or reconnect) and follow the process above, How to connect.
   

Steps

The steps you can use with FastField include categories like Forms and Form Dispatches.

TYPE	NAME	DESCRIPTION
Forms
Query	Search Forms	Searches all Forms based on your search criteria. Returns a list of Forms each represented by ID and Name
Form Dispatches
Action	Dispatch a Form	Sends assignment (single-use form) to specific users or user groups, along with instructions, pre-filled data, etc.
Action	Recall a Dispatch	Recalls a dispatch by given ID.

Limits

The maximum file attachment size is 19.5MB when sending emails through the workflow.

Dispatch a Form step

This section discusses more about the Dispatch a Form step.

Merge Fields Options Field

The Merge Fields options field lists all the available (currently supported) merge fields that the customer can select for pre-population before dispatching the currently selected form.

Note: Only the enabled merge fields will be listed in the Merge Fields options field.

Once the merge fields are selected in the options field, a new Merge Fields section will appear in the mapping of the step:

 

Once the merge fields are selected in the options field, a new Merge Fields section displays in the mapping of the step:

Supported FastField Merge Field Types

These are all the FastField merge field types that are currently supported for pre-population in the Dispatch a Form step in Pipelines:

• Text
• Long Text
• Static Text
• Numeric
• Formatted Numeric
• Rating
• Option List
• List
• Date/Time
• Yes/No/NA
• Switch
• Location / GPS
• Subform

For more information about the FastField field types see Form Field Types.

Information about the different FastField merge field types

This table details different FastField merge field types.

FastField merge field type	Field type in Pipelines	Supported custom properties	Example of the field
For all currently supported field types		Enabled, Required, Default
Text	String
Long Text	String
Numeric	Number
Static Text	String
Formatted Numeric	Number	Display Mask The Display Mask is represented as a placeholder value in the field and it is also displayed as a description under the field. The value is sent as a raw number.
Rating	Single-select List	Allow NA It is represented as an additional NA value that is available for select Show Labels It is represented as labels next to the values in the drop-down
Option List	Single-select / Multiple-select List	Allow Multi Select By default, this field is represented as a single-select list, but if this option is selected in FastField, the field will be represented as a multiple-select list
List	Single-select / Multiple-select List	Allow Multi Select By default, this field is represented as a single-select list, but if this option is selected in FastField, the field will be represented as a multiple-select list
Date/Time	DateTime
Yes/No/NA	Single-select List	Allow NA It is represented as an additional NA value that is available for select
Switch	Boolean
Location / GPS	Nested field - Number
Subform	Nested field

Working with multiple subform instances

You can pre-fill multiple instances of a subform in the Dispatch a Form step. To do so, fill in the subform's fields with jinja expressions that reference previous query steps and return arrays of objects. See an example of this use case.

Limits for pre-filling multiple instances of a subform:

• The maximum number of subform instances that can be pre-filled is 100.

• The maximum size of the pre-filled data in each field of the subform is 1 MB.

• It is not possible for a subform field to be pre-filled with a textual representation of an array, or for this value to be parsed as an array. Meaning, it is not possible for the elements of a textual representation of an array to be mapped to the subform instances.
  Any value other than a jinja reference of a previous query step will be parsed as a single value and will be repeated in all subform instances.

Dispatch Types

There are four different options for dispatching a form: Account User, User Group, External Party, and Multiple Account Users.

Account User and External Party expect a single email address to be supplied. Use Account User when the email address belongs to a person who has an account in FastField. Use External Party for someone who does not have an account in FastField. User Group expects the name of a User Group to be defined in FastField.

As their names suggest, Multiple Account Users via User ID and Multiple Account Users via Email address dispatch a form to multiple people who have an account in FastField. Multiple Account Users via User ID expects a list of User IDs while Multiple Account Users via Email address expects a list of Email addresses. The list can be the result of a previous step, for instance, the Search Records step from the Quickbase channel, or it can be constructed manually, by supplying multiple email addresses/user ids separated by a new line.

Note: The option to send an email along with the dispatch is only available when dispatching to one of Account User, Multiple Account Users via Email address, or External Party.

For more information about the FastField Dispatches, see Dispatches.

Use cases

Here are some use case examples to help you understand how to use the FastField channel.

Dispatching a form

In this example, we dispatch a form to inspect a Job Site when a Safety issue is found.

Pre-filling multiple subform instances

In this example, we use the data in each record to pre-fill a separate instance of a subform when dispatching a form.

We create the pipeline using these steps:

1. A Search Records step that queries the records from our table.

Note: We don’t need the loop that is generated after the query step. It can be deleted.

2. A Dispatch a Form step. The Subform fields should be filled in using the fields from our table:

These jinja references provide all of the data that is contained in the corresponding column of the table. In this case: name, age, address, and job title.

This results in subform instances being pre-filled with data from each record in the table, for example:

• The first subform instance is pre-filled with the data: name1, 12, street1, job1
• The second subform instance is pre-filled with the data: name2, 13, street2, job2

Schedule maintenance tasks

In this example, we schedule maintenance tasks on equipment on a specified cadence.

First, we set up a check to see if any equipment needs to be examined:

Then we set this check to occur on the first of every month: