Over the past year we have been working hard to make Quickbase easier to use and more intuitive. Here are some of the enhancements you may have already noticed in Quickbase: a mobile version, improved user management screens and consistency across the platform.
We’re now ready to take a giant step on the journey to modernizing Quickbase. We are very excited to announce a new Quickbase that we’ll be phasing in for current customers later this year. In this blog post, we will cover some of the User Interface (UI) improvements to the new Quickbase that make it easier to use and easier to learn.
The first thing you will notice about the new Quickbase is the modern UI; it is more intuitive, perfectly organized, and a pleasure to look at visually. During the design phase, we did hundreds of user tests with current and new Quickbase users to ensure that it met our design goals, which were to deliver a simpler, easier, and faster UI to our customers. The new Quickbase was also designed to provide a consistent user experience across all your devices, and to be instantly mobile on tablets and smart phones, so you can stay productive while on the road.
When you sign in to the new Quickbase, you will see a helpful ribbon on top which provides you easy access to all your tables. If you hover your mouse over the table icons you will see a description for each table. This helps familiarize new users with the app so they can get started faster. All your data is now easily accessible in one place from your app’s Home page. App builders can pick a custom icon for every table, to make it even more memorable for your end users.
Finding what you need is now faster than ever with table Home pages that allow instant searching and filtering. These new features provide you with instant access to exactly what you need, when and where you need it, without having to painstakingly build a report. Click a filter to dynamically show only records with that field value. Clicking multiple values for a single field shows all records with any of those values.
Alternatively you can search for records by typing into the search box and the new Quickbase dynamically filters to find records with the desired value in them.
If you have been using Quickbase for a while, you probably have a ton of reports that you constantly refer to. Now, finding the report you need is easier than ever. The new Quickbase keeps track of the reports each user accesses most often, so they are easier to get back to. Additionally all your personal reports are grouped under “Mine” and reports everyone in your role can see are grouped under “Common”. If you don’t find the report you need in any of the groups, you can always search for it using the instant search box.
During usability testing, we noticed that users who had long forms in their apps had difficulties in finding the information they needed. So we made form sections collapsible in the new Quickbase. With collapsible form sections, users were able to quickly find and focus on the information they needed to get the job done. If you typically work on a few sections of a longer form, you can collapse the rest of the unwanted sections. Quickbase will remember which sections you collapsed and save the selection for you. This effortless personalization enables you to customize your Quickbase app to the way you work.
In addition, all the key actions for every page are always easily accessible at the top of your screen, even if you’ve scrolled halfway down a long form.
So far we have covered how the new Quickbase is much easier to use, now let’s look at some of the improvements that were made for app builders. Now, there is a single Settings button which is a “one-stop shop” for all your App customization needs. From any Settings page, you can access app, table, and personal settings.
You can change table names and descriptions directly from the table settings Overview page, and app names directly from the app settings Overview page. You can also create new fields, tables, roles, and more using the buttons on the Overview pages.
We have also worked on user assistance and community. Access to the Quickbase Community is now available from within the product. When you’re looking for help, unified search includes community questions and answers, as well as information from the online help, Knowledge Base, videos, and more.
The new Quickbase was designed to make you and your team more productive while you are in the office or on the road. It offers a consistent user experience across all your devices including tablets and smart phones.
We hope you enjoy the new Quickbase as much as we do. If you would like to check out the new Quickbase, an early access program is available for a limited number of people. And, as always, we would love to hear feedback and suggestions from you on how we can improve Quickbase even more.
Chai’s co-author on this article is Sybil Shearin, who produces online help for Quickbase as part of the User Experience team.
