Controlling the User Experience
Thursday, December 4th, 2008There are many reasons why you may want to control a user’s experience of QuickBase. You may want to make sure that they feel comfortable, and not confused by a large number of links and buttons; you may want to make sure that they do not damage your application; you may want to keep them focused on the data you present.
Here are a few techniques for making sure that your users do not get lost in a QuickBase application.
Give them a link directly to the application
Instead of telling them to browse to www.quickbase.com, tell them to go to https://www.quickbase.com/db/bdx6xa6th. QuickBase will still ask them to log in, but then QuickBase will take them directly to their application. This is especially important now, since QuickBase starts new users with 3 sample applications. You don’t want new users in the wrong application!
Create Your own HTML Dashboard
You can click on Customize–>Application–>Pages and create a text page (make sure to name it something with an htm or html extension). Make it as simple or complicated as you want. Save it, then make it the dashboard for one of the roles in your application by clicking on Share–>Manage Roles–>Permissions for the role name–>User Inteface, then set the Home Page.
Now when your users log in, they will go straight to your page, with exactly the options that you provide for them.
Close Out Role Options
While you are setting the role, un-check as many checkboxes as you want on the User Interface tab. Certainly un-check Customize and Share — if a user does not have these powers, there is no reason to frustrate them by making them think they have them!
And just below those checkboxes, check “Hide Table” for all tables. You may want to check the other two checkboxes there, too, depending on the individual application.
Brand your Application
Click on Customize–>Application–>Branding. Click on Custom Page Banner, and if you want to keep them from seeing their list of Applications, don’t click on the “Use Standard Upper Right Elements” checkbox.
Now you are Ready
To see what this looks like, log out from QuickBase and go to https://www.quickbase.com/db/bdx6xa6th. You’ll be asked to log in — use ControlClientExperience@gmail.com as a username and password Control99. You will then be taken to this page. Of course, you will not want so sparse a page, but I created this just to show you the extent to which you can control your user experience.
