Contents
- New
- Enhancements
- Pipelines enhancements
- Open beta
- Other beta opportunities
- What’s fixed in Quickbase
- Feature retirements
New
New table report — general availability
We’re excited to announce that the new table report is ready for general availability (GA). On April 26th, we will begin a phased rollout that defaults table reports to the new style.
Note that after rollout has completed, you’ll still be able to toggle back to the previous table report style. Eventually, the toggle will be removed so all customers use the new table report. However, we’ll keep the toggle around for a period of time while we validate that the new table report serves the needs of the Quickbase community.
Our rollout will be in phases, based on the first letter of your Quickbase URL. For example, “https://examplecorp.quickbase.com” starts with the letter “e.” The first phase begins on April 26th, when we'll make this change for the first ~25% of accounts. During the following few weeks, we'll continue with 25% phases until we complete this rollout:
| Phase | Date | Segments |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | 04/26/21 | Customers with URLs beginning with a – d |
| No additional phase | 5/03/21 | Monitoring performance |
| Phase 2 | 5/10/21 | Customers with URLs beginning with e – m |
| Phase 3 | 05/17/21 | Customers with URLs beginning with n – s |
| Phase 4 | 05/24/21 | Customers with URLs beginning with t – z and all others (accounts with URLs that don't start with a letter of the alphabet) |
We'll closely monitor each phase of the rollout and may adjust the dates for the following phases as needed. This rollout also marks the next milestone for a few features we are retiring this year.
Read more about the improvements you’ll see with the new table report in our community post. Questions or concerns? Please submit a support case.
New summary report calculation option
This enables you to use a new type of calculation in a summary report. It performs calculations on a set of aggregate data by first summing the data set, and then calculating an average. This is made possible via a new formula function which the builder will plug into a report formula. This solves a longstanding issue often called the "average of averages problem".
Learn more about summary report formulas in our community post.
Platform analytics — general availability of the overview page
The overview page functionality within platform analytics (previously referred to as platform insights) will be generally available starting April 27. Located in the admin console, this feature provides realm-level insights across all your apps, users, and connections. Platform analytics is available in the admin console for all customers on new plans.
The overview page enables account and realm admins visibility into their organization’s usage of Quickbase through eight valuable operational and contract-based metrics.
To learn more about each metric, please read our blog post.
Enhancements will quickly follow through the rest of Q2 and Q3 2021, including the launch of the drill-down page that enables realm and account admins to view historical trends of each metric in aggregate, by individual application, and/or by individual user level. This helps you to better understand usage patterns as well as view trended data. Stay tuned for more details.
Enhancements
More control over formula-url and formula-rich text fields
These features and capabilities include:
-
Open a formula url as popup allows builders to set a website to open in a popup window and the existing setting to open in a new tab. You can use the same functionality with formula-rich text by applying the CSS class (
OpenAsPopup). -
Builders can now use a new CSS class (
SaveBeforeNavigating) inside of a formula-rich text field so that Quickbase saves the record before navigating when this setting is used.
Note that only one of the above workflow classes is supported per formula-rich text. -
Embed a secure, external website as an iframe on a form. This provides builders a way to embed YouTube videos or other file services (Box, Drive, etc.) as a file preview. For security purposes, the only *.quickbase.com URLs that are supported are for code pages. All other native pages (*.quickbase.com URLs) do not function when embedded on a Quickbase form.
A new find() formula function
Now you can parse more complicated text patterns with less work. A new function called find() provides the index of the start of a defined string. This value can then be used in further text functions like left() or notRight(). Find(“hello”, “ello”) would return 2.
Security enhancement to rich text fields
We disabled the ability to insert and/or edit custom code such as JavaScript in rich text fields on April 23, 2021. This change only affects user-entry fields, so formula fields are not affected at this time. Users cannot save values in rich text fields that contain unsupported content. This is part of a greater security initiative regarding how Quickbase handles JavaScript and unsupported HTML tags in places other than code pages. Learn about upcoming JavaScript changes on community.
Additional tracking in audit logs
We’ve added additional events that will be tracked in audit logs as we continue to improve the platform and add ways to access data. See the updates in the audit log help article.
Pipelines enhancements
Google Drive channel
You can now access Google shared drives. If you are an enterprise user, you can extend all the features and functionalities in Google Drive to operate over items located in your shared drives. You can design workflow automations to spread throughout all folders a specific user has access to and not just those in My Drive. Look for this capability in the dropdown menu of the Drive field.
You can now use the Google Drive channel to export in various formats and steps that allow download of files now work with these formats. Now it's easier to directly download the file in the format you need.
You can now look up files and folders by name in Google Drive. This makes it easier for you to directly navigate to the resource you want to work with. It is not necessary to keep or work on intricate ways to obtain the file or folder ID.
Google Sheets channel
In cases where your workflow spreads across multiple channels and you need date/time fields transfers, there are expanded date/time formats.
Google Contacts channel
You can now add contacts with international phone numbers.
Outlook Calendar channel
It’s easier for you use time zone IDs in subsequent steps.
Open beta
Open betas are available to all Quickbase users, allowing us to collect feedback before releasing them fully.
New dashboards
This enables you to quickly build more powerful dashboards and addresses several longstanding requests from the community. Notable features include:
- Cross-report filtering: Click to filter several reports on your dashboard simultaneously
- Cross-app reporting: Display reports from any of your Quickbase apps side-by-side
- Dashboard tabs: Easily organize important reports on your dashboard
April updates
- Funnel and area charts are now supported on the dashboard
- We fixed an issue where numeric percent fields were not properly formatted
Learn about creating new dashboards in our Help Center.
Pipelines: New My Pipelines page enhancements
On/off toggle– You can turn Pipelines on and off from the My Pipelines page.
Other beta opportunities
| Feature | Description | status | how to participate |
|---|---|---|---|
| New timeline |
This combines an improved Gantt chart design with updated table report functionality. Customers can gather more insight immediately with colorized timeline bars in a more modern experience.
|
Beta |
Sign up in our early access app. Select Using Apps under Program Area. |
What’s fixed in Quickbase
We continue to focus on quality. Below are the issues we fixed this month.
Note: Platform security, billing changes, back-end tooling, and performance are all ongoing commitments. Each release may include changes in these areas.
| Issue | Description |
|---|---|
| QBE010744 | We fixed an issue that prevented you from deleting a copy of a connected field that is part of a composite refresh key in a connected table. |
| QBE010793 | We fixed an issue where the key field of a connected table remained required if you set the key to a different field later. If you set the key field of a connected table to a connected field other than the refresh key, the field automatically becomes a required field. |
| QBE013422 | We fixed a permissions issue that sometimes prevented an application administrator from deleting a connected field from a connected table. |
| QBE014721 | We've updated Quickbase Sync to use Salesforce API Version 39 for connections to Salesforce. |
| QBE015082 | If you disconnect a connected table, you can now delete the composite refresh key from the disconnected table if it's no longer the table key. |
| QBE015598 | We fixed an issue with new table reports where, if you applied a filter before pressing some formula – URL buttons, you would receive a JSON response. This change does not affect any legacy reports. |
| QBE015615 | We fixed an issue with how new table reports displayed rich text fields that contained HTML tables. This change does not affect any legacy reports. |
| QBE015593 | We fixed an issue in new table reports where filtering with the operator <some field> contains would only search the columns in the report instead of all searchable fields in the table. |
| QBE015561 QBE015589 |
We fixed a couple of issues in new table reports where, when the performance bar or a footer were enabled, the horizontal scroll bar would sometimes disappear after exiting full screen mode or closing the Reports & Charts tray. This issue did not affect legacy reports. |
| QBE015671 | New table reports now correctly display UTF-8 encoded data when the app or realm-level settings to force UTF-8 encoding are enabled. |
| QBE15283 | We fixed a problem where the API portal would cache and display the first successful request to download a file endpoint and return it to users instead of the most recent attempt. Now, browsers always fetch the latest version, instead of caching the first successful one. |
| QBE014676 | We fixed an issue in Pipelines Outlook Calendar Event Triggers where, when the Created and Updated pipelines were simultaneously enabled, the Created Pipeline couldn't trigger and users couldn’t invite themselves to calendar events. |
| QBE015677 | We fixed an issue in new table reports where predecessors didn’t work since they weren’t displayed as links. This change does not affect legacy reports. |
| QBE015678 | We fixed an issue in new table reports where no records were returned when you filtered on a column with high-order characters, even if matches existed. This issue did not affect legacy reports |
| QBE015679 | We fixed an issue in new table reports where multiple-choice numeric fields in new table reports did not display values not currently in the list of choices as red. This issue did not affect legacy reports. |
| QBE015680 | We fixed an issue where standalone new table reports weren’t displaying error messages. This issue did not affect legacy reports. |
| QBE015685 | We fixed an issue in new table reports where summary fields, reference fields, and reference proxy fields didn’t display a blue hyperlink color. This issue did not affect legacy reports. |
Feature retirements
Quickbase routinely retires features that aren’t broadly useful so we can focus on delivering the most valuable product improvements for your business. Learn more about feature retirements and the terms End of Sale, End of Support, and End of Life on the community.
All feature retirements in the April release are related to table reports. The features we're retiring are not available in the new table reports, but you can toggle back to the legacy table report to continue using them for an extended period of time. We suggest beginning to explore alternate solutions and migrating your applications.
Read more about table report retirements in this community post.
End of Sale
iCal fields
We’re retiring iCal fields since pipelines offers a more streamlined method for integrating meeting schedules across systems. Specifically, our Outlook and Google Calendar channels have made iCal fields redundant.
Timeline for retiring iCal fields: iCal fields are reaching End of Sale as of the April release. We have not yet determined the dates for End of Support and End of Life.
vCard fields
We’re retiring vCard fields since pipelines offers a more streamlined method for integrating contacts across systems, making iCal fields redundant.
Timeline for retiring vCard fields: vCard fields are reaching end of sale as of the April release. We have not yet determined the dates for End of Support and End of Life.
End of Support
Summary tables on table reports
We’re retiring summary tables on table reports since you can surface the same insights with summary reports and dashboards, making this feature redundant.
The feature we’re retiring is the small summary table displayed at the bottom of table reports, like the one shown here. Summary reports will not be affected by this change.
Timeline for retiring summary tables on table reports: This feature will reach End of Sale and End of Support as of the April release. We have not yet determined a date for End of Life.
Table report format setting
We’re retiring the table report’s format setting. The plain text and CSV options are already served by the Download report as CSV feature, making these report options redundant. The XML options do not match best practices for extending Quickbase with custom code and are outdated since most developers prefer CSS over XML to style web pages.
The alternative to the XML options is to stand up a full web page and use the Quickbase API to populate it with record data.
Timeline for retiring the table report format setting: This feature will reach End of Sale and End of Support as of the April release. We have not yet determined a date for End of Life.
New and updated flags
We’re retiring new and updated record flags. App builders can’t rely on their users seeing these flags, since each end user controls whether the flags are visible. Quickbase also offers many options to highlight important and timely data. Instead of using new and updated flags, you can use report filters and formulas to dynamically filter and flag records you want your users to act on.
Timeline for retiring new and updated flags: This feature will reach End of Sale and End of Support as of the April release. We have not yet determined a date for End of Life.