Business Logic
In Quickbase, applications typically work together to solve a common business need. Customizable workflows help automate processes within and between these apps.
Our workflow business logic includes:
- Trigger logic
- Conditions
- Control logic (like loops and branches)
- ETL (extract, transform, load)
- Custom scripts
Types of workflows
There are three primary ways to build workflows in Quickbase:
- Pipelines: Our flagship integration and automation capability. It lets teams create workflows across apps and third-party tools using a mix of pre-built integration channels and APIs.
- Formulas: Our intuitive, Excel-like formula language. It allows builders to dynamically generate URLs to drive workflow. Formulas are great when you need to include manual triggers or steps in your workflow.
- Code pages: Enable professional developers to use custom code. This helps extend the functionality of Quickbase apps.
Triggers
Quickbase offers several options for triggering workflows:
- On a schedule: Use simple options, like daily or weekly. Or use custom schedule logic using a CRON expression to fit your calendar exactly. This is available by building your workflow as a pipeline.
- On data change: Set up a workflow to run whenever a record is created, updated, or deleted. This is available by building your workflow as a pipeline or a formula.
- On button press: For cases when a worker must use their own judgment to kick off a workflow, you can write a URL formula.
Conditions
Apply different types of conditional logic to a trigger or step. This ensures your workflow operates according to your exact business needs:
- Check field values: Trigger a step based on field values (for example, only if the Priority is P0). This is available by building your workflow as a pipeline or a formula.
- Check user identity: Trigger a step based on user roles (for example, only if the requesting user is not a Manager). This is available by building your workflow as a formula.
- Check the output of the previous step: Trigger a step based on the step before (for example, only if the prior step returned no matching records). This is available by building your workflow as a pipeline.
Quickbase supports compound conditional expressions and expressions with several layers of depth.
Loops and branches
When building a workflow using Pipelines, you can build looping and branching steps.
ETL and custom logic
When building a pipeline, you can embed an ETL process into your workflow. Quickbase supports Jinja (a Python templating library) for ETL and any other custom logic you need.
When building a workflow as a formula, you can use the Quickbase Formula Language for ETL. Perform numeric calculations, work with dates, or parse text. This helps ensure you provide the right data in the right format, at each step in your process. Learn more about business logic supported by Quickbase formulas.
Custom scripts
Extend apps using custom code. This is helpful for using workflow logic that would not be possible otherwise. You do this by storing code pages in a Quickbase app using a language like JavaScript.
You can then set up most of the types of business logic listed on this page based on the capabilities of the programming language you’re using.