Quickbase Desktop Simplification…

Quickbase Desktop is a Microsoft Access database that can synchronize data between Quickbase and a computer that has Microsoft Access installed. Today it is used by those that want to…

• Integrate Quickbase data with data in other systems
• Consolidate data for centralized reporting using other business intelligence technologies (e.g. Crystal Reports)
• Backup Quickbase data onto local computers

But sometimes Quickbase Desktop can be hard to manage when applications are large because the synchronization can take a long time. Here’s a “best practice” that Claude von Roesgen, the father of “QBDesktop”, came up with…

1. Create a new role that can only see those fields that you must synch.
2. Share the applications with a new user using the new role.
3. Rebuild the QBDesktop database using that user’s credentials and the new role. This will reset which fields QBDesktop syncs.
4. Setup the daily synch using the new user account.

By using this technique we were able to take an application that had ~300 fields and over 100K records and we cut the time it took to complete the daily synch dramatically while also improving reliability. We did this by creating a role that didn’t have access to about 90% of the fields (we took out the built-in fields, formula fields, lookup fields, summary fields and report link fields) because we only needed to backup the raw information in the table. Claude realized that most people don’t need to backup the vast majority of the fields in a Quickbase and he came up with a great way to easily implement it…thanks Claude!

I hope you find this helpful…

Peter F