The group Everyone on the Internet (EOTI) allows you to offer users who do not have Quickbase accounts, referred to as anonymous users, limited access to your Quickbase app.
This article provides examples of appropriate use cases for sharing your apps publicly using the EOTI group.
In this article
Submit new records
In some cases, you may need anonymous users to submit new records. Examples of records they submit could be things like:
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Surveys
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Appointment requests
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Feedback forms
Typically, these submissions are add-only or deposited. That means that once the record is saved, the anonymous user does not see or interact with the record again.
Review and edit limited sets of data
You may need to let anonymous users view a specific set of data.
For example, your customers need to see a list of available appointments. You create a report that is open to EOTI. Customers view the report and add their information to a record to make an appointment.
Create and edit records
You may have a scenario where anonymous users need to create records that can also be edited by other anonymous users.
You may also have a situation where you want users to be able to add parent records along with child records. For example, adding a maintenance request for a specific machine. In this case, users need some limited access to the parent record.
Assuming you are okay with the risks of some machine data being exposed, the Machines parent table would have a custom permission that only allowed access to certain records and fields that were necessary for the EOTI role to add maintenance requests.
File attachment access
You can use the EOTI group to provide access to file attachments at a more granular level than what Quickbase offers, that is, using Quickbase without custom code or API access from a separate environment.
An example of this might be a document that doesn’t contain personal or sensitive information but is not appropriate for public consumption, but you need to provide a URL to the file in emails to customers for download. Rather than allowing the entire file attachment field to be accessible, consider conditionally allowing records in a certain status. This allows a file to be accessible for a limited period of time.
Both custom permissions and limited field access should be used.
Secure link use cases
Secure links allow you to add an additional layer of security when you share your app with anonymous users.
You can use secure links to let anonymous users do things like view data on a specific record. As an example, you use your app to manage property repair requests.
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You’ve set up your app so that tenants use Quickbase to submit a repair request.
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After the request is saved, you’ve also created a custom email notification that is sent to whoever submits the request.
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The custom email includes the formula field that constructs the secure link. Tenants can use that link to check for status updates on their request.
You could use a process similar to this for things like:
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Vaccine registration
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Checking order statuses