QuickBase Straight Up

It’s almost ancient now, but remember that promise you made to yourself to be thrifty in 2011?

QuickBase Straight Up is here to help. This is a list — as complete as we could make it — of free resources on the web to enhance your use of QuickBase.

The great thing about free tools is not just that you don’t have to pay for them — after all, how much would you miss the 99 cents you might spend for one of these apps? — it’s also that you don’t have to really think about whether they’re worth the bother. At these prices, just go ahead and grab them, like a squeeze ball at a trade show, and keep your wallet in your pocket!

Full disclosure: Many of the resources listed here reside on QuickBaseNation.com, a website maintained by The Data Collaborative, which is my shop.

Our list of freebies:

1. Free File Storage. QuickBase charges extra for file storage beyond 1 gigabyte (your limit may vary, depending on your plan). But QuickBaseNation provides up to 5 gigabytes for free, or up to 50 gigs for just a few bucks. It’s QuickBaseNation’s most popular feature.
   

   QuickBase Nation Storage Example

2. Free Mapping. Take your QuickBase list of contacts, customers, or in-laws and QuickBaseNation will map them and then give you a link to put that map on your website, if you want. Check out this example of locations to buy Swedish meatball dinners at reasonable prices.
   

   List of Places to Eat Swedish Meatballs at a Reasonable Price

   

   Find Those Swedish Meatballs on a Map, Thanks to QuickBase ... and QuickBaseNation.com

3. Free Design Tool. Our friends at Advantage Integrated Solutions have an excellent tool covering the many elements you might consider as you initially plan a new QuickBase application.
   

   Advantage QuickBase App Design Tool

4. Free Templates. QuickBase has a boatload of free templates. From “assigning hotel rooms” to “multi-party litigation,” there’s truly an app for that. Just click on “Create a New Application” from the “My QuickBase” page.
5. Synchronize QuickBase with Constant Contact. Constant Contact is the friend of tens of thousands of small businesses. It  delivered this newsletter, for example! Ever want to synchronize a list from QuickBase with a Constant Contact list? It’s easy to do at QuickBaseNation.
   

   Contact Sync - QuickBase to Constant Contact

6. QuickBase on the Android. As we described last month, there are several smartphone apps for QuickBase, and one of them (“MobileBase,” which is from Data Collaborative, if we may say so) is free.
   

   

   MobileBase for Android Screenshot

7. File Emails into QuickBase. Wouldn’t it be great if you could send a client an email and it would magically appear in QuickBase? If you want to file emails for free, or you want a filer that will work with any email client, see QuickBaseNation. (Yes, SendToQuickBase is the dominant app in this field, and it’s built well. But it isn’t free, and it works only with the Microsoft Outlook email client.)
8. Backup QuickBase to Your Desktop. Peace of mind might be the greatest gift of all in the new year — and it can also be obtained for free! After a one-time setup, the QuickBase Desktop Backup Edition from Data Collaborative can run automatically to backup your QuickBase applications as a precaution against data loss. Don’t fret again about losing a single byte.
   

That’s it for the free apps! See you next month!

Happy clicking,
Eric Segal
The Data Collaborative

• You Read It Here First on QuickBase Straight Up. A version of my review on this blog of smartphone applications for viewing and editing QuickBase apps was published this month on Intuit’s QuickBase Blog. It was my debut on that blog, and I’m grateful for the support of the QuickBase marketing teams in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Orem, Utah, for their interest in publishing my thoughts on their blog. Special thanks to Alexandra Hastings for her work to make it happen.
  
• Something’s Coming, Something Good. In the early part of West Side Story, Tony has a picture of Maria in mind when he sings Something’s Coming, Something Good. Me? I’ve got a beautiful picture of the QuickBase release scheduled for this weekend in mind when I think of that tune. While we wait for Intuit to make a widely anticipated announcement, get excited by singing with me…Or let’s not. My singing isn’t so hot. So, gee, Officer Krupke put the kibosh on uploading any YouTube performance. But rest assured, after Intuit announces its enhancements to QuickBase — and it will, soon — we’ll be here at this blog to let you know about their significance and how they can improve the good work you do.

Make a Map

Mapping piggybacks off of a pre-existing QuickBase page, so the first step toward mapping your data is to log into your account at QuickBase.com. Leave that page open, and in a new tab or window navigate to QuickBaseNation.com. Create an account through the free and simple registration process. Upon logging into the Mapping utility, you will see a list of all your QuickBase tables. Pick the one with the address data, and QuickBase Nation will read it right out of QuickBase.

The next (and final) step is to pick out the fields that contain your address data. In most circumstances, these will be “Address 1,” “Address 2,” “City,” “State,” and “Zip.” But if the whole address is in one field, just enter that on the first line and leave the rest of the lines blank.

Then select a field to be the identifier and a title, and click on Submit. We used our IKEA table, but of course, you can map any addresses you have in QuickBase — up to 50 addresses per map.

Hit the Road

Voila! Here’s your data: a breathtaking snapshot of IKEAs across America. Clicking on any red location indicator on the map will bring you to the QuickBase page for the record, and the data is presented in a format that should make it a snap to hop in the car and proceed to the nearest retailer. Unless you live in Nebraska.

Keep in touch! Be sure to let us know if you come up with any particularly clever uses for Mapping. And if you would like us to customize this tool for your specific uses, please let us know that, too.