QuickBase Straight Up is published by The Data Collaborative, which works with both developers and users to locate areas where QuickBase instruction is needed.
Many of us have recently received an e-mail from Intuit congratulating us on the success of our QuickBase application. In addition to extending good wishes, the email also indicates that the number of users, size of our QuickBase applications, or file attachment space may be exceeding the limits of our plan.
This article will focus on data limits, helping you come into compliance with your plan. To figure out what to do, you first need to understand the problem — here’s an easy, 3-step process.
Step 1: How much space do I get?
Start by checking your user and data plan. Go to your My QuickBase page and click on “Manage my Billing Account” (if you don’t see that, then you are not the Account Administrator — only that person can see these pages).
Next, click on “Change Plan” and you will see a page with a list of plans available to you. Among the different plans listed, one will be highlighted. That’s yours.
It shows the maximum number of users, application space, and attached file space allowed under your current plan. The number under “Applications (total size)” is the amount of space you get.
Step 2: How much space am I using?
Now you need to figure out how much space your applications are using. Go back to the Manage Billing Account page, and on the Summary Tab, under Current Usage you will see the total amount of application space your applications are currently using.
If you are using more space or users than you are paying for, you will need to get those two numbers in line with each other. You can purchase additional application space, or upgrade to a plan with more application space. You can find options here.
Alternatively, you can reduce the amount of data space your applications are using.
Step 3: Who is the Space Hog?
If you want to cut back on usage, you need to figure out who the space hog is. From the “Manage Billing Account” page click on the Applications tab. You will see a list of your applications and how much space each takes up.
Click on the application that is taking up the largest chunk of space and then click “Show Application Stats.” You’ll see a list of the tables. Under each table is the size of that table in bytes. Typically, you will find one or two tables that are using the lion’s share of your allotted space.
What Do I Do About it?
Now you need to figure out what to do about it. If you have a lot of old records, you may just choose to take them off-line. “Export this Report to a Spreadsheet.” can work, but that tool can also get confused by embedded quotes and other characters.
Another technique is to click on “Customize ===> Import / Export ===> Export a table to a file” which exports a whole table. We’ve also written custom scripts to move archievable data into less expensive platforms like MySQL. When you are satisfied you have saved the data off-line, you can delete the old records in QuickBase.
Other Options
If you can’t archive historical records, then you may need to consider a different course of action. The field most likely to be sucking up much your space is a notes field (a multi-line text field). You know, the field that includes a narrative of every time your client hiccoughed or called back to share their life story? Each letter is a byte, and they add up quickly. For example, this article is about 3500 bytes.
Deflating a Notes Field
If you see a Notes field that is taking a lot of space, one option is to “deflate” those notes into file attachments (your file attachment space limit is much higher than your application limit). The data is always available to “inflate” back into your records, so this is an easy way to save a lot of space. We have a utility for this, give us a call and we can give you details.
Empty Fields
The other likely culprit is tables with a large number of empty fields. In QuickBase, almost every empty field still occupies eight bytes. So if you have 300 fields in your table and 5000 records, your table occupies 12 MB, even if it is completely empty. Eliminating unused fields can save a significant amount of space.
The Big Picture
We’re just scratching the surface here. A close analysis should look at all of these factors–and more–in some detail. Take a step back and compare What we need the database for with What the database actually does. If there is a lot of functionality you don’t use, you can take that out and save space.
But taking these first steps will give you a good start. If you have any questions, call us; we can analyze your application and recommend ways you can save space.
Happy clicking,
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QuickBase on your Mobile Phone
Intuit has moved ahead and set up a great QuickBase site for mobile devices. Don’t take our word for it - just open up your phone’s web browser, go to QuickBase, log in and start using your application.
You will be amazed at how easy and powerful it is.
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Back Issues
Here are some links to high-demand articles from past issues — and all articles are available at www.QuickBaseStraightUp.com. |
Some SaaS providers, like Blist, Doodle, Coghead and others disappeared fairly quickly, leaving their customers with little choice but abandoning the investment that staff had made in learning those systems. So if you are considering expanding your investment in QuickBase, how do you assure yourself and your purchasing department that QuickBase is the right choice today, and ten years from now?
We don’t *know* the future, but in the past two years there have been some pretty strong indications of where QuickBase is going.
Predicting the Future
The biggest changes of the past year have been infrastructure improvement and the mobile platform. With two new data centers, QuickBase can now make a legitimate claim to be a suitable platform for mission critical applications. Even in the event of natural catastrophe, your application will be back up within 30 minutes, and that is a far cry from the multi-day outages during the summer of 2010.
On the mobile end, QuickBase has very quickly become a mobile-friendly application. For now, QuickBase data is read-only on the mobile platform, but I’m sure that will change soon.
Looking at changes to the core QuickBase platform, I am most impressed not by the changes themselves (which have been helpful, if not euphoria-inducing), but the way the roadmap has been put together:
What does this tell us? Both the new data centers and the mobile platform represent significant investments from Intuit. They could have made some minor data center improvements, left the mobile apps to the developer community, and saved major dollars. But they didn’t, and that tells me that they see QuickBase not just as an experiment, but as a long term, important product in the Intuit family.
The Roads Not Taken
At the same time, the software itself is staying simple. Unlike other Platform-as-a-Service providers like Force.com and Amazon RDS, Intuit is not creating complex, difficult and powerful development tools. If you can use a spreadsheet, then you can probably develop a pretty useful QuickBase application.
So on the one hand, Intuit is not trying to sell QuickBase to the low end of the database market that Microsoft Access is gradually abandoning (anyone remember data pages? ADP files are next on the chopping block). On the other hand, they’re also not trying to compete as a high-end development platform with the enterprise products mentioned above.
So what does this mean to you, the QuickBase user? I think it’s mostly good news. QuickBase is around for the long run, and Intuit has demonstrated its commitment to keeping the product current. At the same time (and this is great news for you accidental techies), I think it is going to remain an easy to use product.
The sweet spot for QuickBase is not the IT department, taking 3 months to select a platform for its next big assignment. The sweet spot is the middle manager who needs to get an easy-to-use, dependable database operating quickly and inexpensively. For that user, QuickBase has always been a great pick, and I don’t see that changing.
Happy clicking,
No bold, no italics, no colors, nothing but characters.
Here we have it with the WYSIWYG for QuickBase Text Box:
Interested?
Happy clicking,
P.S. - We have a nice video presentation of what you can do with WYSIWYG at http://www.datacollaborative.com/WYSIWYG/.
Justin Klubnik is the developer of Pocket Base, a QuickBase app for Iphone/Ipad.
He recently let us know recently that there is a new release of his app. “The big change in this release is the ability to connect to apps in the Intuit Marketplace. There are also bug fixes and improved graphics for Retina Display devices included.” He was also kind enough to provide promo codes for QuickBase StraightUp readers:
6LA6R6LFAXLA
4WJ694LFKFKF
JXFATMLFRKKL
(a) to hide them for all users, click on the table name, then customize, then properties. Click on the Advanced tab, and then on “Hide from Menu Bar.”
(b) To hide a table for certain roles, click on Users in the Silver Bar, then Permissions (by role), then the role you want to address. Then click on the User Interface tab, and then the “Hide Table” checkbox, either for one table or all.
2. The Silver Bar - Most of your users do NOT need to see some of the links on the silver bar. So follow the same instructions as in (b) above, and then in the “Menus” area, deselect the options you want to remove from the silver bar. Typically, you can remove “Customize” and “Users”, as those are options most users are not concerned with. If you want to have total control over the user experience, you can remove all the options. (see https://www.quickbase.com/db/bdx6xa6th for an application that is tightly locked down).
3. Saving Shared Reports - While you are setting up roles, go to the “Permissions” tab and decide whether your users should be able to “Save Shared Reports”. The answer is probably no. We all create reports all the time, and if we all save them as “shared”, then pretty soon the list of available reports is huge, and no one know what any of them do. So let your users share Personal Reports - that should still keep them happy. For more info, see this.
4. Help Bubbles - It may be totally clear to you what “Capitalizable Task Budget Revision Number” means, but it might not be so clear to your users. So make judicious use of “Help Bubbles”. They are set in the field definition, and then available on forms.
What if some users need one dashboard and another set of users need another dashboard? Most likely, you then want to create separate roles for those sets of users, and give each what they want.
6. Default Fields - Dashboards with columns that head off to the east horizon or confusing or worse. To fix that, click on the table name in the blue bar, and then customize, and then fields. If you don’t see some check boxes on the left of your screen, click on “Show Advanced”, and then in the “Default Columns” field, select the fields that users will typically want to see in a list - usually not more than 10 fields. If the list gets too long, the important fields get pushed off to the side of the screen and your users will have to scroll to the right, which no one likes to do.
7. Face time - No, not the Apple application, real face time. No matter how great your application is, don’t just email your users a link and tell them to have a nice day. Find a time to work with them, live or over the web. Explain what the app is for, and show them how to use it. Check to make sure that fields and reports have names that make sense to the users. Make sure there is plenty of time for questions.
That’s it! Remember, it don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that bling.
Happy clicking
Eric Segal
The Data Collaborative
