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Ask Me Anything about the new Quick Base visual builder

By Davin Wilfrid posted 03-21-2019 13:18

  



Today we announced the Quick Base Visual Builder, a new feature that will fundamentally change the way people learn and build with Quick Base. WeÕre really excited about this release, and want to get as much feedback as possible from our community.  

This Thursday, March 28th, weÕll host our first-ever live AMA (Ask Me Anything) featuring our esteemed product manager Jon Arias. Jon will be here from 2-3 p.m. EST to answer any questions you have about the visual builder, other ways weÕre making Quick Base easier to learn, or anything else youÕd like to know.   

Submit your question in this topic any time between now and then. Jon will be in this thread live to tackle them on Thursday!

Comments

04-24-2019 13:27

I just wanted to let everyone who participated in our first AMA know that we will be hosting a new AMA tomorrow Thursday, April 25th, 2-3 PM EST. This AMA will be on mobile in Quick Base. Come with all your burning questions on the mobile app, using Quick Base via the mobile browser, and what is in the future for mobile. Chris Hutchins and Bob Gregor from our mobile development team will be joining us this time to answer your questions. You can post your questions now in the thread linked below and make sure they are ready and waiting for Chris and Bob. 

https://community.quickbase.com/quickbase/topics/ask-me-anything-about-quick-base-mobile

04-15-2019 15:42

David,
The Vsual-Builder is a great tool. May I recommend using the Visual builder to place items directly on the form? This will add huge value to building experience in Quickbase.

03-29-2019 14:42

Visual builders are awesome. This is great that Quick Base is doing this and it will expedite the development of database architectures. Thank you.

Along the lines of visualization and communication, two things that would vastly improve the capability for our organization to utilize Quick Base for much more of our work content would include unlimited users for view, add & edit records and a signature field.

We have a large workforce that needs to view, add & edit data on a regular basis. We also have many different forms that require sign-off. We use Quick Base user fields for some authentications and 2 step authentication via email for other, but still have good old fashioned hand written signatures for a good deal of forms due to the roles using the forms.

The only reason I bring these up in this discussion is that unlimited users for view, add & edit and a signature field would enable our workforce to interact with the new Pages and Forms that are on the road map.

03-28-2019 22:38

Thanks for doing this!!

03-28-2019 19:01

I am signing off now but thank you to everyone that posted questions in our first-ever AMA. If you have any additional questions about the Visual Builder, feel free to leave a comment on this reply and I will get back to you as soon as I get a chance.

03-28-2019 18:45

Our current thinking is that all dashboards in the product should have a similar building experience and capabilities. So yes, we want to enable our customers to build richer table home pages that are closer to what you currently get on app home pages.

03-28-2019 18:40

Thanks for your questions, I do know that we have plans to try the AMA format again given so far it seems promising for interaction. We are open to feedback on if there might be better places for the format, but we wanted to try starting off grounded in our own community.

03-28-2019 18:39

To your first question, yes, a lot of customers have requested improvements to our dashboards and many customers make heavy use of them. Regarding our decision-making process, we know that we want to improve both our dashboard and form building capabilities and found that there were some advantages from an implementation stand point to starting with dashboards that would enable us to lay the groundwork for better form building in the future.

03-28-2019 18:35

That's an AWESOME idea.

03-28-2019 18:34

You mentioned "table home pages".  Are there plans to allow for more of a dashboard on those as well?  Currently you only pick a single report.

03-28-2019 18:31

Wow, yes, can't believe I missed that. We are planning on including a formula editor in the Visual Builder for formula fields.

03-28-2019 18:29

What about formulas?  

03-28-2019 18:29

App home pages / table home pages. They are also commonly referred to as dashboards.

03-28-2019 18:29

Haha, thank you very much!

03-28-2019 18:28

Great to hear it is helpful Luke! We are definitely planning on adding support for summary and lookup fields to the Visual Builder.

03-28-2019 18:27

Jon, you mentioned in previous answers that pages will be another (the next?) area of focus for UI improvements. I'm curious, is this something that your product team found was in need of development for a lot of customers? Considering that A) it's something my organization uses very little (maybe that's not typical?) and B) it's already pretty much drag+drop as-is, I wonder if you could speak to the decision making process there?

03-28-2019 18:27

Hi Kat, thanks for your question. We are definitely looking for feedback from our community on how to improve the Visual Builder. But we know for sure we will be extending the feature to include support for lookups, summaries, connected tables and import.

03-28-2019 18:25

Hi Hillary, great question! We are working hard to deliver experiences where the builder can accomplish as much building as possible on a single screen, while still keeping the experience easy to use. With a feature rich product like Quick Base, this can be pretty challenging and balancing the trade off between simplicity and power was a challenging aspect to Visual Builder.


03-28-2019 18:22

Hi Kenny, yes we will be adding a lot of capabilities to the Visual Builder and we are also working on a new Settings panel to help with builder navigation. We are accepting early access participants for the new Settings panel, so please feel free to open a support case to request access.

03-28-2019 18:21

Jon:

Thanks for your time today. Do you feel like this forum was a good setting for this AMA? Any more AMA type events planned? Did you peek at these questions ahead of time?

03-28-2019 18:21

Thanks Alex.  I call them "dashboards", so I was thrown off by "pages".

03-28-2019 18:20

Hi George, yes, existing apps and clients have access to this Visual Builder. Our only restriction is apps with more than 80 tables are prohibited from using Visual Builder for now, but we are hoping to lift this restriction over time.

03-28-2019 18:18

@Forrest https://[domain].quickbase.com/db/[dbid]?a=AppDBPages
dashboards/home pages/code pages/etc. 

EDIT: I mean, I assume that's what he means.

03-28-2019 18:18

Hi Jenni, thanks for the question! Are you trying to build an app using visual builder on your tablet? That is interesting.  Right now we are focused on nailing the experience on the desktop since this is where the majority of our builders build apps.


03-28-2019 18:17

We hear you loud and clear Alex. Its definitely something we are planning to tackle.

03-28-2019 18:15

Thanks! Forms are on our radar for a future face-lift. I would keep a look out for enhancements to pages in the near future.

03-28-2019 18:14

What are pages?

03-28-2019 18:13

Thanks for your question Mark! In future versions of Visual Builder, we will be adding more capabilities like creating lookups, summaries, connected tables and import. We also want to improve how we handle larger apps.

03-28-2019 18:12

Great question Jason! In future versions of Visual Builder, we will be adding more capabilities like creating lookups, summaries and connected tables. Forms is on our radar for a product face-lift, but pages are likely to come first. We are also working on an a new Settings Panel for builders which is currently open for early access. Open a support case with our case team if you would like to participate in the Settings early access.

03-28-2019 18:09

Haha, thanks. We are definitely striving to make app building a more enjoyable experience. We are using React, React Dnd and jsplumb to deliver the front end experience in Visual Builder.

03-28-2019 18:08

Hi Derek, that's a good call out, when we built the Visual Builder, we wanted to make sure we warned people about the impact changing a data type on the field could have to your app. That being said, I think we are being a bit overzealous with the current messaging since it is now popping up for freshly created fields. We are exploring how we can suppress this messages for newer fields where there is lower risk of any impact.


03-28-2019 18:06

Hi Pat, thanks for your question! We are planning to increase the 80 table limit over time as we continue to enhance the feature.

03-28-2019 13:16

We have an app that exceeds the 80 table limit.  Are there any plans to allow more than 80 tables?_

03-28-2019 13:06

No registration necessary, we will be running the AMA right here in this Community post from 2-3 p.m. EST today! You can leave any questions you might have here in advance or John will also be active here between 2-3 p.m. EST to answer questions. 

03-27-2019 18:51

I'd suggest that you post a new thread with information on the issue you're having.

03-27-2019 18:50

I find no save dropdown within settings for my reports and charts

03-27-2019 18:29

Lots of hard work! Nice job! 

And you can search for "Visual" and add "Form" behind it, and you're done there too!

03-27-2019 18:27

Not on topic here, Percy, but: Go to Settings for the report under 'Mine'. Use the 'Save' dropdown to select 'save as'. This will give you the option to save a public version that will appear in the Common report category.

03-27-2019 18:24

Just gave it a shot - it's very helpful!
Is there a plan to implement adding summary and/or lookup fields?

03-27-2019 17:45

What's on your road map for the visual builder, both in the near future and long term? Is your plan clear or are you mostly relying on feedback to figure out what to do next?

03-27-2019 17:23

how do I move a report from mine to common?

03-27-2019 16:36

Good morning, Jon.  This looks like a terrific improvement.  Will it be retroactively available on previous applications/clients?

03-27-2019 15:07

Amazing new feature the Visual Builder. Where can I register for the live AMA?

03-27-2019 14:20

What was the hardest part of building the visual builder?

03-27-2019 13:49

I just used the visual app builder for the first time and loved it!.... anything else exciting coming soon?

03-27-2019 13:04

We're doing it right here in the comments - just trying something new. 

03-26-2019 21:06

But you guys did a great job with the app builder so I am sure will do so shortly on the form builder...

03-26-2019 21:05

Drag and drop form builder is what we are all waiting for including the option to put our fields where ever we want without limitation on the grids.

03-26-2019 21:00

Will there be better functionality when creating an app on a tablet?

You are unable to collapse all table windows so you can see all your tables to arrange on the screen for better viewing. One stays expanded. Otherwise, it seems to work like a charm!

03-26-2019 19:28

I was so excited to ask the same thing I scrolled right to the bottom and missed that you already had :D

03-26-2019 19:08

Forrest took the words right out of my mouth. Drag and drop form builder, please!

Oh, wait, it needs to be a question: May we please have a drag and drop form builder?

03-26-2019 19:02

Hi Davin, is there a link for the Ask Me Anything event?

03-26-2019 18:59

Visual builder looks great!  

Are there any plans to do something similar for the forms?  A visual forms builder would be great as well.

03-26-2019 18:43

The visual builder looks like a very cool way to build out apps! I've seen the short video that outlines what the changes are, but what are some of the other features you planning on rolling out with any future phases? Either way, I look forward to getting back into QB at my company and begin to utilize this new way app building way soon!

03-26-2019 17:59

What are the other features that are rolling out soon to accompany this, a new form builder???

03-26-2019 17:53

Really great job on the visual builder, it kinda makes building apps in QB fun  ;)  What frameworks/libraries are used on the frontend of this builder.  

03-26-2019 16:08

Why do I keep getting Error message when using the visual builder when changing the data type? This is happening when creating a new table and field from the default of text to another value. I get an error/ Warning asking if I want to make the change. 

03-21-2019 13:19

Leave your questions here in the comments!