Name: Taking the Wheel: Mastering Your Inherited Quickbase App
Uploaded: 2026-08-13T18:31:30.555Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 16 s
Description: Taking the Wheel: Mastering Your Inherited Quickbase App

Transcript for "Taking the Wheel: Mastering Your Inherited Quickbase App": Let's go. Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar. We are going to be talking a bit today about what to do when you inherit a Quickbase app and how to really take ownership of your brand new app. So thank you all for being here. I see everyone is dropping in the chat where they're joining us from, which is great. Always love to see where people are hopping on from across the country or even across the world a lot of times, which is so cool. So, I am myself based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so right in the central zone here. So, you know, always looking out for my fellow Midwesterner Midwesterners in the chat there. But to get us started, my name is Charlie. I am a customer marketing manager here at Quickbase. So, you know, my main goal and responsibility is really to kind of help share with all of you the best ways to make the most of your Quickbase account, whether that is, you know, through new products and features or tips and tricks for your existing, plan and account. That's, you know, again, what I do every single day. So I'm sure you've, again, probably seen me on many webinars if you've been here before. So, thanks for coming back if you have. But before I turn things over to, our product expert here today, a few housekeeping items for the session. One, first and foremost, this session is being recorded. So if you have to, leave the webinar early or need to share this with a coworker or just wanna revisit the content, you will be able to do so. We will send that recording out to you via email tomorrow, so be on the lookout for that in your inbox tomorrow. Second, along with that email, we will make sure to send some follow-up resources, that will kind of help again with this whole topic of app inheritance and just getting to know and use, your Quickbase account even better. Those resources can also be found in Goldcast in this webinar platform as well. You should see a documents tab, so feel free to check those out, throughout the webinar as well. But similar thing, we will be sure to send those out via email in case you miss anything or don't have time to look here today. Finally, we will have time for questions at the end, so please feel free to submit questions at any time through the q and a tab. Again, we will leave time at the end, but at any point throughout the webinar today, if you have that question, please feel free to submit it in that questions tab, and we will get to as many as we can at the end. If we do not have time to get to your specific question, we will make sure that, your Quickbase account team follows up directly with you to make sure that we get an answer there. So with that, I am going to turn it over to, today's speaker and product expert. Again, if you've been on our webinars before, you've definitely, seen this familiar face. Very excited to have Evan Martinez with us here today. So Evan, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself and take it from here. Hi, everybody. I'm Evan. I'm a product marketing manager with Quickbase. Like Charlie mentioned, if you've been on our webinars before, you've probably seen me. I've been with Quickbase for a little over ten years now, helping people build apps and solve problems. And one of my passions has always been helping folks who feel like they are kind of dropped in the middle of being an admin and trying to figure out, like, what do I do next? I think most of us who work in businesses have had that experience of, like, I'm suddenly the owner for a process because someone has been promoted or they left or the business has changed. And, like, if you're feeling that way right now and you're you've recently inherited a click based application in our account and feeling a little anxiety around, like, how do I do this? That is what today's session is all about. So what we're gonna jump into today as a breakdown is like, maybe you've inherited an app. Maybe you've had had an whole account. Where are you trying to start? You're here. You're in the right place to get started. We're gonna talk a little bit more about a framework. So in this session, we're gonna get help you get a clear game plan for taking ownership of your applications, learn a little bit more about how you can understand your apps, your users, and Quickbase overall so you can kinda, like, marry it all together and have a good plan, and then set you up with some next steps to take you to take your inherited apps further. Like Charlie mentioned, just above where the chat is, there's a little section for documents. There is a workbook in there. There's a bunch of other resources in there. That's got a lot of stuff that you can use to help you along the way. Otherwise, you can kinda just follow some of the standard steps we're going to cover today. So our workbook that is in the document section does a we break it down to a ninety day framework. Basically, first thirty days is, like, how do you stay busy doing your day job, but kinda get your head wrapped around what your business is using Quickbase for? Thirty to sixty days is really, like, what's my biggest priority of what needs attention versus what I can kind of, like, set on the back burner and wait until I have time to dig into. And then sixty to ninety is like, I know what's going on. I know where I need to focus. How do I then start solving the problems people are bringing up to me? And then lastly, like, ninety days plus is gonna be, how do I stay current? How do I keep up to date when all the new stuff comes out that could help make my job easier? We have been working for many years to try to make jobs easier, allow you to do new things, but also do the things you need to do every day with less effort. And so that is what we're going to kind of be jumping into. So starting with our day one to thirty, it's really kind of thinking about, like, getting control. We wanna talk about, like, learning your organization's goals and challenges, getting familiar with your Quickbase account, identifying your top priority apps, and then building your Quickbase fundamentals. That sounds like a lot. It's these are the kinds of things that you should be able to do on top of, like, the stuff we all know you have to do besides being a Quickbase admin. So first off, it's I always recommend for folks, it can be really tempting to dig into the details immediately to solve the really tangible but really simple problems that someone may be being mad about having an app that's not working or having reports that don't look right. But when you're doing that work in the day to day, we should also be trying to do is starting with your organization and making sure you understand the basics of, like, why is your company using Quickbase? What is the goal? It's funny that people, when they take over, sometimes realize the apps that are being used the most or the things that are the people seem like are like, oh, this is the highest priority, can also be very far away from what their company wants to get out of Quickbase. They may have come to Quickbase to start a CRM, and and now they're using it for a bunch of project management applications. And it might be a good time to, like, reset their expectations because your leaders might still be looking for a CRM, but you are now actually handling your project management through Quickbase. And it's really successful, but it's a disconnect from what they're expecting. Then think a lot about what challenges stand in the way of the work that you're doing. It could be that you have had recent changes in your business, and the apps that you have no longer match what your business does. Maybe you've changed teams and people don't have access to the right stuff. Maybe the person who left was in the middle of a project, and it is now that quick the app doesn't feel finished. It doesn't work the way it's supposed to. And then I think once you've got an idea of what those challenges are, you also think a lot about what processes drive your work. At the end of the day, Quickbase plugs really well into the processes of a business. It's less about making your business match the way Quickbase does work and more about helping Quickbase align with what matters to you. Do you have a review process? It's really important for the work that you do. Do you send out contracts that need to be stored after they've been signed? Do you need to have people report daily or weekly or monthly on OKRs? And then how often do you need to share that with your leadership? Knowing those processes then helps you set up to say, like, what doesn't match the process? Because at the end of the day, I think, you know, with any software, your process still becomes the most important thing behind your business. It's the drive. It's the thing that you're most gonna say, this didn't work, if you don't do the processes that matter most. And so one of the things you can do is get to know your account. Basically, your account is how we talk about, like, the entitlements and all of the things that you have access to in Quickbase. What I typically recommend is if you have recently taken over the whole Quickbase account, you're gonna wanna get to know your account team. These are the folks here at Quickbase that are meant to work with you. You wanna know the quick resources Quickbase has available so you can learn at your own pace, find the resources you need. And then you also wanna get an idea of the usage for your account. What features do you have access to? What, how many users are you supposed to have? Because that'll help you set up a plan for, like, is Quickbase doing what you want it to do. And so when you think about your Quickbase team, these are just a couple of names I have to throw out early for folks to think about. You have your account executive here. This is the folks person you talk about contracts with and renewals with. Basically, you might be in the middle of a contract. You might have nothing to do with this just yet. But if you've inherited a whole account and you're the number one person, you might wanna touch base with this person to figure out when do we renew, how much are we paying for Quickbase, how do I make that as smooth as humanly possible. I here at Quickbase, I own a couple of softwares that I use for my day to day job where I'm the head head person. I always like to know this person so we can have conversations and make sure that, like, I'm well ahead of my renewals. Everything goes smooth as possible. Then you have your customer success manager. While your while your account executive is gonna know all the the contract and billing stuff, they're going to get to know more about, what you're looking to get out of Quickbase, and they often have a lot of skills when it comes to knowing how to use Quickbase to solve those processes, solve those problems. They're kind of your adviser. They're gonna coach you. They're going to get to understand where you are feeling like you're succeeding and where you feel like you're struggling. And so they're a really great resource for teams to just basically, like, ex they're really passionate about stand standing on them. That's a great question, Bob. A little bit later on, we're gonna cover where to find the admin console. These folks exist, these folks are listed in your admin console, so you can find their names and how to contact them. Also, by default, if you are ever unsure about where to find people, you can always go to, I'm jumping a person, but there's the technical support team. They're the one in the bright green. You can put a tech support case in and say, hey. I need to get in touch with folks. I need to understand better. And as long as you're an account administrator, they're gonna be able to help you out. Otherwise, if you're like an end user for your account, they may say, sorry, Bob. I can't help you. I need to point you to the person at your company that's supposed to be the point of contact, but, they're a great fallback for, like, if you're completely stuck and you do not know who to reach out to, tech support will help you get connected. And then, a little more special is the service team and the renewal specialists. Our service team is companies sometimes buy service is with us. What we what they do then is help you build and optimize and integrate your apps around a plan. You would typically bring these folks in if you are wanting to expand your usage, if you're brand new and you're trying to get, onboarded successfully. You can also contact them if you are realizing that the work your company needs to do is bigger than one person, or bigger than the resources you have, but you really want it to happen. They can sometimes lean in and help you accelerate the work that you're doing. And then your renewal specialist supports your renewal and billing. It might be that you have just the account executive you talk to. The renewal specialist basically is the person who reaches out more proactively to be like, I'd love to talk about your renewal and get into the specifics with you. If you're not the account admin who's taking care of billing, you might not worry about this person. But it's always good to know, like, if someone reaches out and says they're your newest specialist, that's what they're intending to chat about. And so continuing, like, other resources we have besides the Quickbase folks, which were great, but, you know, sometimes you wanna do things on your own. You have you wanna do things on your own time. We have on demand and instructor led courses in university. You can type in Quickbase University and find your way there. You can also find links to it in the product, but that is really where you can find the elearning where you can go at your own pace to learn more about Quickbase. We have a bunch of lessons and micro learnings that are about specific topics. We have bigger lessons that we're gonna cover a little bit as we go along. I'm gonna give you some suggestions of lessons you should check out. And then there's certification. This is really as, like, you grow your skills further. Certification is about testing yourself, but also being able to say, like, I'm a certified quick based builder. This is something tangible I can tell the folks that I work for as part of my professional growth. It's also something that could help me professionally long term being able to move around and say, like, I have certifications. There's our crew and community. They exist quick based community. Basically, it's out there full of a bunch of folks like you who are the maybe the one or two quick based people at your company who are trying to figure out how to solve this problem. They have also been there and are also doing the same things. You can ask questions. You can get advice from others who are doing things like you. It's a great opportunity to, like, build your network and have other quick based builders kind of on your bench that you can chat with. And we, as part of that, run a lot of events in office hours as well. Both the crew has their own community events that we help host, and they host some of their own live in various cities and various areas or remote for folks who wanted to go virtual. And then we do webinars like this all the time where we talk about different topics. We might do focus on specific features, focus on our releases. Those are also great resources to stay up to date. And then there's our online help documentation and support cases. I kinda talked about support already. You can also find quick based help where you have all the it's very much like the technical manual when, you know, you're setting something up new up and you get the instruction manual. Help is like that for you. It has a lot of really in-depth articles that go really into the details and nitty gritty of Quickbase. Like, if you can't find it there, you definitely it definitely goes further than the than surface level. And then lastly, service teams and value realization plans. Like, everyone has these right out the gate, but they're a resource that if you do have as you're exploring your account, might be willing to help it might be there to step there and help you get kind of, the land of land to figure out what you're going to do next. And then, like so let's say let's we talked a little bit about how you can get to know Quickbase. We talked a little bit about the resources that are floating out there. Let's talk about a resource that you should have access to right now. That is your My Apps page. When you sign into Quickbase, you often land on your My Apps page. If you're ever not on your My Apps page and wanna find it, if you click the little waffle menu that appears in the upper left hand corner, you can click my apps and it will take you to this page. This is the right place to review the apps you currently have access to and are using. If you're brand new to using your account, say you've just recently inherited it, you might only be familiar with one or two of the apps. You might also see a bunch that you're not familiar with, that you're invited to, but you've never used. This is great to just, like, what is going on in the account. You can have there's filters here so that if you use categories to categorize your app or if you only wanna show apps that, like, I'd have direct access to or I'm the manager for, you can kind of narrow down your focus. And you can also kind of use this as a quick opportunity to say, like, is there apps that are here that I'm not familiar with that I want to dig into as I get to know my account? There's this default grid view, and then there's also the list view. The list view lets you go into a little more detail right out the gate. It'll tell you when you last visited, when it was created. It will let you create or add categories if you wanna start categorizing your apps. That can be really helpful if you've taken over an account that has a decent number of apps and then you see there's no categorization. You might wanna start applying categories and saying this is an internal app. This is a customer facing app. This is a finance app. And that can kinda help you group things and get, like, in your mind, there's an easy way for you to narrow it down on the apps that matter most. I have for example, I have several apps that I've marked as my internal applications, so I can quiet all of my external apps and only focus on the ones I use for, like, day to day work if I really need to get something done. And then you can also find the manager of the app here. Most instances, the manager of the app is the person who created it. And so if you're ever looking to figure out, like, I need to ask some questions, you can check that manager and see if they're still with your company. And if so, you can sometimes have conversations with them about the application. There and if it's somebody who's left, this is a great opportunity to say, like, do we need to make sure there's a manager changed over to a manager that's with the company still? Because that's that person who gets the most communication about that app. And then along with that, same thing up in that waffle menu. If you're an account admin, you'll be an op you'll see an option to access your, manager account. This will take you to your admin console. Your admin console is where all of the nitty gritty details, the quick base show up for you. This is also where you get all those menus where you can, dig into the settings for your whole account, your billing, who has permissions. Like, when in doubt, you should definitely think of this as, like, the place that has just tons of information for you that's a little bit less about what's in your apps and a little bit more about what you're doing with Quickbase. But, what you should definitely do here is check out the account summary and figure out who is your billing contact and what plan are you on. Because if you took over an account or if you're a new admin, it might be that these, the billing contact is no longer the right person. They're the folks who basically get the the regular invoices. And then also your plan lets you know a lot about what you have access to. The the there are team business and enterprise plans here at Quickbase. They let you know how, what features you have access to, what, like, entitlements you have, and it can be really helpful for understanding what you can do. Because we might go into to help and see a feature and go, well, this would really be really helpful, but I don't know if I have access to it. I don't see this screen. That can help you clarify that. Similarly, as you go down the screen, you'll also get an overview of your usage and what it'll give you a little high level review of what the what is actually available on your plan. This is a great place to see how many users do you have, how many apps do you have in production, how much of, like, your, basically, like, the file attachment space you have and things. It's not I always say to people, like, don't go here and immediately panic if it's one way or the other. This is just sort of, like, a high level understanding of how active your account has been and how many seats are filled. You will always kind of, like, work your way into it. And if you're over, there's always ways to figure out, like, what do I do about being over? We it's not a situation where, like, if you're over, there's immediately a fire drill. It's more just like it's letting you know, maybe they're, a ton of people who were invited, because that admin was leaving, and they weren't the right folks. It's always a good place to be like, I wanna think about it, but I don't need to panic about it. And then as we're thinking about that, on that same space, there's a tab called permissions. This is where you can figure out, besides you, who else has permissions to create applications? Who else is a manager for the account? Who else can use things like plugins or pipelines or, for some accounts, AI. You can review a ton of information here about that, and you can also change the settings here. So, for example, you may open this up and see that no one's allowed to create apps but a very specific list of people. And you might say that doesn't feel right. I need to add some new people, or I might wanna open it up more broadly or vice versa. You might wanna say, like, we're in change enough as it is right now. I'd like to restrict access to creating new applications until I know what's going on. And so your permissions tab is just full of information. There's a bunch of, options at the top that are more about, like, who has access to these features, yes or no. At the bottom, you'll find a list, like, a little report that'll tell you specific individuals and what special permissions they have. You're gonna wanna look for users with full management. Those that's everybody who basically is a full manager of your account. They can change your billing. They can have conversations with Quickbase about your account. They can control, like, almost all the settings in your Quickbase account. The good news is if you are suddenly full management, you think you're alone, you might be able to find somebody else on this list who is still has access, who maybe didn't realize they're also an admin. And they're often the folks you most wanna talk about talk with because they can tell you a lot about the account if they've been a full manager. Often, they'll all be able to tell you what apps they maintain, what work they're doing, and you can kinda talk amongst yourselves and figure out, like, where do we need to focus. And then you can also find the apps tab. This is great because while the my apps page shows you your apps and the apps you've had access to, the apps tab shows all the apps in your account. And this is a great way to hunt down, like, I have access to five apps, but, really, we have 30 apps. I need to figure out which ones are active. And you can see here, who the app manager is, when was the like, how what kind of when was the app created? You can see its size, its usage, all kinds of stuff. You can also export this list. So you can also take this list, pull it out, put it into a Quickbase app if you want and help start filtering and playing with it. You put it in Excel and start crunching numbers, whichever way you feel most comfortable. And you can also I always recommend something really helpful here is look for apps that are marked as public apps. Those by default, almost all Quickbase applications are you pick a list of people you wanna share it with and what role they have in that app, basically what stuff they can see and change. Public apps are a little bit different in that you have given a role of some kind to the Internet at large. And what that means is that anyone with that the link to your app, can access what that role has access to. A lot of people use this as, like, an intake form. I have a quick base app where people can put in, you know, work requests or work orders or where people can submit, like, invoices or complaints and concerns. And, usually, it's set so, like, they can put that data in, but they can't really see anything. But it's always good to check these ones just because they're often customer facing or, like, vendor facing. They're often ones you wanna give a little attention early. You wanna make sure that they're working well. And so this is kind of all at that account level. What are you worrying or thinking about at the individual level? Say you're not an account admin. You're just an app admin who's picked up two or three applications, you may wanna just take a step back and say, I wanna focus on prioritizing my apps. And, also, if you're an account admin, you probably wanna get to this stage as well. This is where you're going to start thinking about what factors should I consider about my applications. I think I I coach people if you're suddenly have a couple apps to worry about, think about, what has the most users or the most activity. Because those that often means it's one of your apps that is most touched by a lot of people, which means if something's wrong with it, more people have potentially impacted. Think about the size of that application. App size isn't the end all be all, but, typically, bigger apps have more data. Means there's a potential for there to be more interesting stuff in there for you to focus on. You also can look at if the app manager is somebody who is active and available. If so, great resource. You could probably chat with them. Great example here is just like, I was really worried about this asset management app that I have in this example because it is big. It has a lot of users. I might feel relieved if I'm like, oh, Daryl's here and active. I don't have to worry about, basically, like, going in and knowing what to do with this account be or this app alone. I can talk to Daryl. But I might be a little more worried about the order management app if I realize Creed is has gone. Maybe Creed's the admin who I took over for because they left. That means I probably wanna check-in and make sure that app is doing well. And then, also, like I mentioned, if there's a public sharing status, I would heavily recommend, making sure that, you know what the app is doing and who it's being shared with. Even if it's just to confirm, sometimes you jump in and say, oh, there's nothing exciting here in this app. It's a good way to, like, assuage your concerns. And then, you know, like I mentioned, this is a lot. I'm dumping a lot of information on here, especially for those of you at the account level. If you find yourself feeling like I have this whole account I need to worry about, what do I do? Services does exist, is something you could chat with. And also your CSM. If you if you have a CSM on your account or your AE, they can also touch base with them and be like, like, what's going on? Do you have any context about what my account what was going on with my account? If you feel really, like, out of your depth, so you're not even sure what's really going on after doing a quick review. And so I would say, like, I love to put up this this poll. How confident are you feeling right now? Like, do you feel comfortable using Quickbase or not? And so I'm gonna do I'm gonna share this poll out. Like, for those of you sitting here today before we get into the deeper sections, are you just getting started with Quickbase? Are you fairly comfortable day to day? Do you feel like a pro? It's okay if you do feel like a pro and you're still here. It's also very much if you're feeling like you're getting started, this is a great place to go. We talked about some account level stuff. Don't worry if that didn't mean anything for you. We will be dig digging more into app stuff now. I just always like to bring the account level stuff up early because it is, like, one of the best places to start if you suddenly got a lot of applications to worry about. We'll give folks a minute to respond, but it seems like we've got a ton of people who are comfortable day to day using Quickbase. That is awesome. I will say if you've been a builder for one or two apps and you're moving on, you can get you can bring a lot of that with you. If you are just getting started, there is tons of resources out there to help you. And even stuff we've released in the last year, we've been really focused on helping folks build and manage apps easier. So, like, it's one of the better times to be starting. I guess that should always be true of a platform. It should always be getting easier, but not always the case. Alright. So we'll jump back in, but it seems like we've got a really strong mix of starters and confident day to day builders. So that's great. For those of you who are in that starter category, I would say oops. Hold on one sec. Let me get there we go. Back to the slides. Quickbase University is a great starting point. As I mentioned, you can even just type in Google Quickbase University, or you can go in from when you're inside Quickbase from your my apps page, there's a link directly to the university. There's live trainings. There's on demand trainings. There's certification. There's even a specific session I often recommend to folks who are starting out building. It's the quick start with Quickbase University. It walks you through building your own app for the first time. That can feel like maybe the, like a big ask, if you're brand new to Quickbase. It walks you through the experience. That's gonna help you learn all the building blocks that make up an app. So later when you go to solve problems, you'll be able to say, like, this is a report. I know what to look do what to look up. I I think it's always really good to know the terminology that Quickbase uses. It makes it a lot easier to search for stuff later when you have to look up help documents if you're like, this is a relationship. This is an app. This is a thing. So I think, it's the kind of thing that can be really helpful to to get you started. And it's about an hour, typically. Obviously, it's self paced, so, like, you can kinda go at your own pace. But in theory, on average, it should take you about an hour to build your first application this way. Just really good, like, learning hands on learning experience for folks. And if you're looking to dig even deeper in your first thirty days, there's a couple of lessons that can be really helpful. Galactic App Ventures is a slightly longer app building basics that you can review. That's super helpful. There's suite connections, which is more about how do you do relationships in Quickbase really well. And then end user reporting is how not only do I build reports myself, but how can I teach my end users to build reports for themselves so that every time they need a report, they don't need to run to me for answers? So that can be really helpful for people as they're getting started. These are really, like, actionable tactical things to do. And now let's move into the day 30 to 60. Some of you might be like, this is where I actually care the most. This is the stuff I need the most help with. It's so, like, how do I figure out what's going on with my apps that matter most, and how do I, like, build my skills to match my need? So I know I think whenever we're digging deeper into the app into applications, after we've made that little table where I have all of my apps and I know how many users are in them and who manages them and if that manager is gone or not, I then wanna ask myself, like, what was this app built to do? Is this a CRM? Is this a project management application? I I've had people say, like, you know, this application helps me track individual users who come into my business. Everyone has their own personalized profile, and I'm tracking all of their, like, visits and appointments. I've had people talk about tracking inventory, managing processes, being a project manager. Knowing what your app does helps you get context on, like, if it's doing it well. Sometimes apps can have more than one purpose. Many people get comfortable building, starting with an app that's fairly focused and then they keep plugging new things into it. Knowing the purposes of your application helps you figure out, like, this part's the CRM, but this part's our project manager, but this part holds all the invoices that we send to customers. That can be really tricky when you start out if you don't know all those things because if you change something in one part, maybe you change it another. Then you dig in a little more to how it was set up. Like, what is the app how is the app structured to achieve its purpose? And then what people are using it and how happy are they is the things that I think are the easiest way to start thinking about breaking your application down. So understanding your design intent. It's like there's a problem you're solving. At the end of the day, you can kind of chat with people who use the application or look into what the application has as this data and think about, like, what is it solving for your business? Because, like, the app doesn't exist to sit there and hold a bunch of data. It or it maybe it does. Maybe that is your problem. But, typically, people have a reason why they want an application to solve a problem. It is that, like, before this, customers weren't getting followed up with regularly or invoices were getting lost and sitting in people's email inboxes. Like, knowing the problem helps you know what you're trying to solve for. And that usually comes from talking to people. If you're lucky, if you go into an application, it still has builders. It still has the people who originally made it. That app manager, if they're still with the company, is a great person to go to for an application. You can ask them, why did you build this app? And they might tell you, like, what caused the app to be built, what they've done, and as long as they've had it. If there's other admins at your account, you can ask, like, how is this useful? And someone might say, oh, everybody at the company uses this application. Like, we use this every day. They might say, like, oh, we only use this, like, once a quarter. Quarter. This is an application where we keep our, like, quarterly review information, or it's a process we run, you know, three times a year because it the data comes in, but then once it's in, it's just kind of stored for historical purposes. It's all fine. Equally valuable, but maybe it'll help you figure out where you wanna focus, something that you're not going to use but twice a year, maybe it's not where you start, unless it's that time of the year to use it. Stakeholders would be perhaps as you've taken these things over, there are people people who've come to you to say, this app is broken. I'm unhappy with it. It's not managing a process. You can dig in with them. Like, what process is it supposed to be solving, and is that still true of the application? And then lastly, you have your end users. These are the folks that use the app on a regular basis. You can sometimes touch base with them and say, like, how do you actually want to use this? And they might say things like, hey. I really need the report that has these three pieces of information on it. And you go and open the app up and go, wow. This app has, you know, like, 50 reports 50 fields on this report, and it's not the three fields that people actually care about. And, like, that could be such an easy win for you, for your whole team, to be able to change stuff like that quickly. And it's just one of those things that sometimes, like, ideally, you've picked your app up from someone who's leaving for because they're getting promoted and they leave you with some documentation and the app's been well cared for. Sometimes you're taking over because somebody, you know, like, left two months ago, and no one remembers what they were working on. These folks are like your down in the weeds everyday folks that can help you figure things out, early on. And then, within an application, so you, you know, you're in your application that you have access to. There's a user's tab, and there's also a section for app settings. Under the app settings, you can find roles. Your role is basically, the permissions for an application. So if you're an app admin, you're most likely in that administrator role. That's the first one at the top. You have admin and sharing permissions. You can make changes to the structure of the app, and you can share it with whoever else you want according to your account's settings. You might have team members who have basic access, which means they can go into the app. And you may have roles that have only view access, or they might have really specific access. My, sales reps can see these three tables but can only edit one of these tables. Otherwise, everything else is just view only. They can only edit their own records. Going here can really help you figure out, like, who's using this app and what is it for. You also have some interesting things like their home pages. That is, what they see every day when they sign into the app. Ideally, it has the information that matters to the most, and it has, information, like, filtered for them or set up for them. Maybe they all share the same ad dashboard. Maybe they have different dashboards. These just let you know, like, these are the default experiences other people have in this application. You can also use this to help you find other admins. So the administrator role is a default real quick based toss is in that usually has admin access. People can create other admin roles if they want. It can help you look through here and be like, oh, there's a, like, IT team member role that has admin permissions. Maybe they have answers. Maybe they know stuff about the app. It can help you find other admins. I would say, like, it's a great opportunity to make sure you're are you truly alone? Are you truly the only person who knows anything about these apps, or are you going to be able to find someone who can help you with real context? And then, like I mentioned, their home pages are sort of, like, their view. It can help you figure out what they rely on daily, the app what they rely on the app to daily tell them. And then when you can ask your users, like, you find your admin, you find another end user, what do you use the app for? How often do you use it? Is that process easy? Why or why not? What do you wish it could do? I always recommend to folks, like, this is great information to get. Don't immediately panic and feel like you have to take action on all of it. Wish lists are great. Many people have strong opinions of what they would like to do in their app. You're still in the driver's seat about figuring out, like, what's the timeline for doing it and how do you do it? And sometimes people want things that are just like, you know, is the yeah. I often say, like, is the effort worth the result? Sometimes it will be really easy wins that you can be like, absolutely. I can change that dashboard for you and put a new report on there. Some of them will be bigger stuff where they're like, hey. I wanna add a whole new process to this app, and you might be like, we can review that after I've gotten everything under control. But once you have sort of, like, a list for this stuff, it can help you a lot. And there's in the workbook that is linked in the document section, there's a whole section on interviewing users with some suggestions on, like, the kind of questions you would ask and how you would document the things that you'd ask. So, like, everything we're talking about here today, you don't just have to watch my the you don't just have to watch the session and wait for me to talk about it. You can go back to that document. It covers a lot of what I'm talking about and gives you specific exercises you can do. And then next, you could check the app structure. So as I mentioned, when you're in the app, there's an app setting section. There's a place there's a section under there for the relationship diagram. It's, settings, app management, show diagram. It gives you a breakdown of what your application looks like. Ideally, it'll look something like this. You'll have projects. You'll have tasks. You'll have time cards. They basically, every one of these boxes represents a table. You can think of a table as just a container of information. If you're thinking about, a Excel spreadsheet, it's very similar to a sheet in an Excel spreadsheet. It should be full of all of the projects, all of the tasks, all of the time cards, and then the lines you'll see between them are relationships. And so Quickbase uses relationships to help put together information. A singular customer may have many projects that are related to them. A single project may have many tasks, and that helps you understand that I am doing a project for B and B Corporation. I have five projects, and I have 20 tasks, and they are all kind of connected together. And that can give you a lot of information immediately about, like, what's this app doing? Because the table should be the information that matters the most. And it may be that, like, you go into that documents table and there's two documents, and you go, okay. Maybe we haven't really been using the documents table. Or it may be that you go into that expenses table and you're like, oh, there's a thousand expenses in here across these five projects. This is clearly something that mattered a lot for this application. But this is your way of, like, categorizing your application. What's helpful and might not be obvious is that with the relationship diagram, it's drag and drop. You can grab the tables and move them around. So if you're trying to figure out what's going on in the app, you can kinda group things in a way that makes sense to you. I often say, like, let me pull the top table over to the left and then figure out how does everything flow down from that. But this is a great way to, like, what how is the app built to go along with all the purpose information you've been getting from talking to individuals? And then sometimes it will look like this. You may open it up and realize there's a ton of tables, a ton of information. I often say, like, don't panic. That just lets you know that, like, this is a serious app. This is an app that has a lot of stuff in it, has a lot of information process in it. It also typically means that, like, it's the app you're gonna wanna focus on. Like, basically, I always say, like, this is a good opportunity to say, like, maybe this is a sign I need help. Maybe this is a sign that I should chat with somebody at Quickbase, or I should chat with somebody in the company and figure out if there's another admin for this app. Often these apps are very plugged into people's processes. But don't panic. Like, it it's not as scary as it sometimes looks. Sometimes it's just you have a lot of data, but you don't actually use it all on a day to day process. Yeah. It for some of you, it may look familiar. I have helped I my time in tech support, I have helped multiple people who have had apps like this, and we've opened it together, and they've been like, oh, no. And it's like, we'll start small. We'll start this is why drag and drop can be really helpful. I often say, like, move a bunch of stuff to one side and just pull over the tables that you have to worry about today so you can, like, make the problem small. Every problem starts with, like, one focus area, one one, one lens. Especially, like, once you talk to your users, they may tell you, like, oh, I don't use any of these tables. They're all historical. Like, we were meant we meant to delete them. And you can be like, oh, what a relief. But, either way, you can go beyond the relationship value diagram. So Quickbase does it for you by default. It's a great little thing to do. Sometimes if I'm feeling a little stuck or I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, I might just pull out a a plain piece of paper, or I might open up, like, a Miro or a Figma or some kind of, like, you know, workflow management tool that I like to use, and just list my tables out. And note the fields and relationships that matter the most to my to me and most matter most to the people I chatted with. And then I can map out how data flows between the tables. And I can say things like, every time a customer has a project added, I need to make sure that I know the name of the customer, their phone number, their email. Maybe I worry about their title. Maybe under the projects, I wanna make sure I know the project's name and status. I always say, like, to people, usually, when someone opens a form, they'll see tons of fields with tons of data. There's usually five to 10 fields that matter the most that are the things that you most want to know about that that, that record for a project, name, status, due date. Like, those things all become more important for people because, you know, it doesn't matter if you have all the individual details of every stakeholder on a project. If the project is overdue and on hold and at risk, like, that can help you really, like, clarify what you're doing. Ideally, also, your forms should have that stuff at the top. Like, the things that matter the most should be where they're most easily accessible and perhaps colored a different color or labeled very clearly. And if people are saying, like, the process feels unclear to them or they have to church all over on the form, I always add that as, like, a checkbox into, like, there's an opportunity here for me to make this better. And then so, like, this might be an example of a diagram that you take it to the next level and you break it down and you get a little more information. And then it kinda goes into your record and you feel like, great. This I feel good about this. I recommend, like, maybe only do this for the apps that you care about early on. Maybe only do this for the apps that you prioritize. Over time, though, you can kind of build up a little, like, catalog of users how to sort of how my apps work. And then I also recommend checking out your automations and integrations. So while the app does a lot of work and people do a lot of work, many apps also use stuff in the background that helps it run smoothly. Automations is is exactly like it sounds like. It is basically you can say things like, whenever a project is added, do this. Whenever I add a project, add a task that is, like, make my first contact for or, set up a my our first, huddle about this project. Or maybe it is every time a project is marked, ready for review, specifically tag a certain person in the reviewer field. It can be really simple. They can get really complex. If you go into your app settings, there's a section called the connection central. It will break down for you what are all those connections, what are all those things. It'll tell you all of their call we we typically, when you think about connections and, automations in Quickbase, we call them pipelines. They are moving sys either data between tables in Quickbase, or they might even be integrating with systems outside. It may be every time I add a new customer in Quickbase, I want it to also be sent over to Salesforce so that my Salesforce stuff all stays active. People do this a lot because, like, they might use systems that they wanna keep really restricted, where they only wanna pull very specific information down. I have a Snowflake data lake full of a bunch of company data. I don't want everyone to have access to all of that. Also, the seats for Snowflake are kind of expensive. But I might be comfortable pulling some of that data down into a Quickbase app where anyone can use it, where where the whole company can share it and we can play with it and add new data. So this just lets you know, like, what's being run-in the background on my app that I might not even be aware of as a day to day user, especially because when you you when you talk to end users, they may say, oh, this does this for me. And, like, yeah. So, like, this is the kind of work these these are the kinds of automated workflows that could fill information in for you. So, like, if you are thinking about, like, oh, I check you know, as an end user, I check this checkbox, and it automatically then moves this on to the next part of the process or, like, updates the status. You can this might be done through automations. There's also something called formulas in Quickbase. Formulas can update fields based on, like, other fields, but they don't actually run-in, like, an automated flow necessarily. Automations can do more. They can reach outside of the app. They can go to other places. So, like, it's a bit of a mix between what you're looking for. And I recommend here in this in this part of your thirty to sixty day, you can start digging into, like well, it's called spy analytics. It's like, how do you build dashboards and reports that are even more interesting and better? You can think about, like, how do you make your forms better? All the right information should come first, the way it's organized. I I I when I build my app, I often color code parts of my form so that it's really obvious what you're looking at. I've done things like wherever customer data appears anywhere in my application, that part of the form is always purple. So, like, if you're looking at a purple part of the form, it is only customer data. Or if it's project data, it's only green. And then there's importing and exporting data. So you while you can use automations to move data around, sometimes you just have to upload a spreadsheet. This will help you figure out, like, how do you do that? How do you move data around manually? And then formulas is the smarter way to see your data. You can do things like I want my status to be based on a bunch of different things, and I just want it to automatically calculate anytime I look at that record. And now we're on to the sixty to ninety days of getting creative. This is where you align on your ideal state, make some decisions, update your apps, learn about more advanced functionality. I would always say, like, when you're working with all those users, after you've gotten to know them a little bit better, ask them what would make this app easier to use. What tasks could be automated? Automation is really powerful for teams because it is about taking manual manual work that people do daily, especially manual work that could potentially be, like, fudged if it's just copying data over and maybe they make a human mistake and now the data's wrong. What could be automated? What could be taken off their plates so that they have more time to do the work that matters most? I think we've all owned that manual processes where, like, I literally check a checkbox and hit save, and it's really frustrating. Would it would be great if we could just know this? And then what changes would be truly delightful for you? You as the builder of the app, as the admin of the app, there are gonna be parts of it that are just about making administration easier. Sometimes you can find that stuff, and it can be helpful for you as well. And then collecting feedback is really important. One of the simple ways to do that, there's actually if you look in our Quickbase, exchange, it is an app exchange where we put a bunch of template apps up, also available on your my apps page. You can find there's a feedback application that will let you have you people submit feedback ideas so you can just track them rather than leaving them in your email or rather than leaving them in Slack. You can see, like, I'm just gonna put them in the app, and I'm gonna track them, and that kinda gives me a way to, like, let people contribute without sort of overwhelming you. And then, also, you know, like, this is a great time to think about based on your app's age, you might not be using things like automations. It may your app may have originally been built before automations or pipelines were really popular, and maybe you could solve a lot of problems with them. Maybe they're using older home pages. Maybe they're not using the AI features we have available now. Maybe they're using older reports. Like, there's a lot of things you could do to help update your application. I would say, like, when in doubt, help documentation, tech support, coming to other sessions like this where we talk about specific areas of the product. You can learn more about those features and maybe realize that, like, oh, there's some there's something that could really unlock a value for me. And then you can kinda say, I've I've looked through this app. I've talked to people. I can start a diagram. What should it what does it look like? I have that now potentially if I've I've made a diagram. What should it look like? What's missing? What how what how much work would that take, and what are things that are, like, missed opportunities versus, like, what might be, like, a user's asked you for something and you realize, I gotta have, like, eight more tables. That's too much. That's that's that's a scope creep. That's a problem for, like, future. Things are running successfully ninety day plus me, not today's the day I need to fix things. And then you make a decision. There's always the decision of keeping your current app. Less changes, more familiar, faster adoption. You just start working on the app itself, sometimes, unfortunately, you're gonna realize that the app isn't hasn't had love in a while, and maybe it isn't solving your problems, and maybe a clean slate would be easier. You know, we have things like the smart builder where you can work with AI to build your applications now. It might be worth it for you. Or we have the Exchange where you find templates. It might be worth it for you to start fresh in a way that you can control, especially if you realize that the apps that people are using maybe are so far from what they want and the process is so outdated. You might wanna start fresh, latest features, easiest to streamline. That's kind of the decision that you can make app by app and then decide, like, I'm gonna live with the CRM because there's too much in here that I don't wanna change, but I'm gonna change this project management app because no one likes it. And and, frankly, we only have, like, 10 projects in there, and it'll just be well, this all get used to moving to a new app. And you can start to here's some ways you can think about editing that app with confidence. If you stay with the apps that you want, you can make a copy of the app that lets you play and break things, if you want. Which doesn't get copied over as well as automated workflows. But what you can do is, like, change tables, rebuild. I often will copy an app just to be able to play with it and get more comfortable with, what's built into it and break things on purpose. See what see, like, what needs to happen. You can also invite other people in and be like, hey. Let's break this out together. Let's try to solve problems, without affecting your live version of the app because, like, you often wanna take make your changes away from the live version. You can use solution versioning. Again, if you if you're more interested, you can find that on our help documents. It is a way for you to kind of, like, take a snapshot of the structure of an application. So that way if you make changes later, you can roll back to a version that's previous. It doesn't affect data, but it does affect, like, the structure of the app. And then lastly, you can work with quickly services. They're they're a really awesome team out there that can help you if you are feeling like there's a lot of work to do and not enough hands to do it, and you really love us an expert. We often think of a model as, like, do it myself, do it with help, or have quick ways to help me do it. And, you know, we're there to help you align on, like, what's the right level for you, depending on what your account's looking for. And if you are that's a great question. How do I make a copy of my app? If you are in the application, same thing. Go into the app settings, app management where you found, like, relationship diagram. At the very bottom, there's options to transfer app, copy app, things like that. You can copy the app either just the structure or you can copy the structure with the users and the data. So it's a great way for you to be like, I wanna make a working copy of the app or I wanna make just like a shell for me to play with. Super helpful t technique to have. And in advanced stuff is where you get into, like, making even more complicated forms. Building, pipelines yourself where you wanna automate on your own, also super helpful. There's now an ad pipelines builder that will help you get started building your pipelines based on just, like, chatting with it like you would with a chatbot, with a prompt. So they, like, automations are closer than they used to be. They're easier than the last time I did this presentation, it was they were still, it was out, but it was it has gotten better since then. Like, even in those six months since last time I've done this particular webinar, it's gotten better and more capable. And then lastly is the stay current bucket. This is where you can say, like, how do I stay informed? How do I maintain? You can think about if you're on our business or enterprise plan, there's an option to build what we call our governance core. There's several applications in our Exchange that you can download and they basically help you manage your account at the high level. You can think about it, tracking users, who has access to what apps, how often do they access them, what application data. You can basically pull all that stuff into a Quickbase app using this tool these tools and report on it just like a Quickbase application. So, like, easy, flexible, customizable, information that you can use. And then, also, like, think about how you wanna build a culture of continuous improvement. Subscribe to our release notes so you can stay up to date on things. Attend other feat other web feature focused webinars, join the crew, gather feedback, set up a cadence to review your application. I like to look at my apps once a quarter. I might sometimes be like, great great job, Evan. You your app is already good. You've already been doing things. I might decide to have high priority apps I review more regularly or low priority apps I leave sort of on their own unless somebody asks me something. Document what you learn and keep optimizing or building new applications or sort of, like, how do you do that? Also, I recommend if you are an account admin or an app admin and you feel like you're alone at your company, definitely look at adding another admin. Nothing is as painful as trying to plan a vacation and then realize that something can go wrong in the week that you're going on for, and, blah blah blah, you're gone, and you have no idea who's supposed to be in charge. Always think of another admin or another builder as, like, they're your backup. They're your co captain. They should be able to be be there to take over while you enjoy vacation or time away or focus on another project. And, doing it alone is a lot tougher. So I always say, like, if you are the only admin, especially if some, like, other people have left, think about if you who should be your second admin who could help you bounce ideas with you. And then lastly, now what? I recommend you download the workbook and sort of go through the rec go through there. Even if you don't use all the exercises, it's great to have. And, start documenting what you need to learn. I often think, like, when I make that list of all these changes I need to make, I often also make a list of all of the things I need to learn how to do. Maybe I only need to really learn about, formulas. Maybe I realize, like, automation is the way to go, and I would like to spend my time and energy learning pipelines because the apps are okay. They actually work alright. They just could there's so much manual work we could get rid of. And so, like, that will really drive your, your own plan. And then if you're ever really like, you really, really wanna push yourself and show your expertise, the builder the certifications in our university are there both for being a builder and also for pipelines. So those are a way for you to build your skills and also show off that you have them. So, like, thank you all for showing up. I know we're getting close to the end, so we wanna switch over to the q and a section and have a little bit left. Sorry. I asked for fifty minutes at you all. This is great. Thanks, Evan. Appreciate the content. Super helpful. I think I'm hopefully speaking forever on the call, but helpful for me even as someone who has, now been at Quickbase for, like, two and a half years. So always great to get more knowledge from you, Evan. And, yes, we do have a few minutes here for questions. A couple questions I know about, the recording. Again, we did record this session. We will send that out via email tomorrow, as well as the resources that you can find in the documents section of Goldcast as well. I know Evan alluded to, a few of those resources throughout the presentation, so definitely be sure to check those out as well. Evan, some questions for you. Let's see. This is a really great one, from Andrea. So she is preparing for the reverse issue. She's been the sole builder for twenty years and wants to know how to document and prepare for her retirement so the next person isn't lost. She's wondering, like, can you take that information, reverse engineer it? Evan, do you have any additional other tips? And, also, Andrea, congrats on your impending retirement. So that's that's super exciting. But, Evan, I'll let you, give some guidance there. Yeah. Also, same thing. Congrats. And, like, twenty years. Wow. That's that's that's deeply impressive. I will say, like, yeah, a lot of that workbook might actually be really helpful for you because a lot of the exercises in there are meant to collect this information. They can be a way to just, like, this is the kind of information I wanna pass on. I often say, like, something that's super helpful for people if you're gonna pass it to somebody else, prioritizing and categorizing your apps. Which apps are business critical, which apps are just for fun? It can feel like to you, it's super obvious. To a new person, that can feel so stressful. Basically, just doing a quick list of information of, like, I want to do this. I this app needs to be checked up, regulated. It's the most important app. This app is an app that we've built in is, like, out of use or out of commission. So I think, like, sometimes even just passing on to somebody a quick list of, like, these apps matter the most. Also, any of your apps that are business critical. So, like, all apps might be important, but one of your apps might be like, it powers automations. It connects to other systems. Making that super obvious for somebody is great. And then, if you're thinking about retiring, one option is, if you run a lot of automation, stay on a lot of processes, you can transition your existing user account into what we call a service account. I would recommend looking that up on our help documentation. But, basically, a service account becomes like an account at the quick base level that multiple users can be given access to. It's a great way to to, like, preserve your work and kind of put it in a place where everyone can access it. We often recommend it for folks who have multiple admins who maybe need to share responsibilities for being able to edit pipelines. It's also a great way to just be like, I don't want my user to be denied or removed from our Quickbase account, and suddenly everything stops working. It gives you a couple of months to, to figure things out. Awesome. Thank you, Evan. Obviously, you talked about, you know, having multiple people, having access to your app and things. We have a great question here from Jessica. As an admin, how can you add yourself to apps that you are not currently added to? That's why that apps page is actually super helpful so that in your admin console, when you're on the apps page, you can click into the app. It will take you to the users page. As long as you're an account admin, you can add yourself as a user from the user page of that application. We've set that up so that there's you can't get locked out. If you run into any trouble with that, like, if you're feeling like, I don't know what I'm doing, our help team can help you with that. Our tech support team can help you with that. They can basically walk you through the process and make sure you get there successfully. We We don't do it for you because we wanna make sure that, like, all the permissions are handled appropriately and you feel confident, but they can kinda help coach you through, like, how to do it the first time. But I would say it's go to the app that you're looking for in the apps panel. Open it up. You'll end up on the my u the users page, and from there, you can add yourself with a role into the application. That was created. As long as you are a full permissions account admin, you can do that. Excellent. Thank you. Next question here. If I want to check a field and then if filled in want to show a new field, is that a pipeline? So, yes, what you actually are looking for is what we call form rules. I apologize. It's confusing. Basically, on a form, when you're editing it, there's an option when you hit when you're it's called form rules. That's where you can set up basically, they're like automations, but they they they tailor the form. And so it might be that, like, when I mark a field I mark a a project up for review, I wanna show a whole panel that is all where all the review information goes in. But I don't wanna show it ahead of time because that gets confusing for my users if there's a whole bunch of fields they're not supposed to fill in yet. Formals is what you're looking for. There's documentation and a help documentation for it. I think I've covered formals in a previous webinar recently. I don't think it's been too long ago. But, and, also, like, absolutely, when you go to chat with the tech support, exactly the kind of thing tech support can walk you through as well. Like, they they may hate me for signing them up for a bunch of work, but it's it's a, really helpful technique that can be really nice to, like the first time you open a form, it's light. And as you start making decisions and changing things, more of the form opens up for you. It can really guide your users. Particularly, I will call out, we launched newer forms about two years ago. If you think your thing is much older, if you think your, Clickbase account is app is much older and the forms look kind of, like, bland and and very tech text heavy, you might just be on older forms. That's a great way to refresh an application to move to newer forms as well. Perfect. Thank you. I know we are just about at time here, but, since you just mentioned tech support, Evan, I'm gonna tee you up for one last question. Someone wondering if you, if they need assistance or advice regarding pipeline logic, who should they contact? Is that the service team? Or to your point, is that tech support? Can you just kind of reiterate that aspect? Yes. So I would say, like, if you're if you have some basic questions about pipelines, the tech support team is a great place to start. They have experience and will know a lot of the things. Like, if you're running into errors, if you're trying to figure out what channel you should be using, they can answer some of those questions. If you wanna dig deep on building pipelines, yeah, you might have to start looking into tie chatting with your CSM or with the services team if you want real build experience, build help. But if you wanna, like, just get some questions answered and just get a little help, tech support can usually point you in the right direction. And then we have really extensive help documentation. And then I also saw that, there was a question about, like, how do customers leave feedback, also super relevant, also on my apps page. If you go to the my apps page, there's a feedback tab. It's a little small, but it's there. That is where you can leave us feedback about Quickbase. We definitely wanna help folks out. There's also where you can find, when you're in Quickbase, there's a little question mark icon in the upper right hand corner. That's where you can find help, and you can find tech support. So, like, definitely reach out to us if you're running into specific issues. I I can't cover everything, unfortunately, in an hour today. There's way too much quick base for that, but, that can help you out with these kinds of things. And if, I saw a question about pro apps in the exchange. Pro apps are just a label. They don't cost anything extra. They're that is just a label that says that that app got, one of our teams developed that app specifically working with some pros in the field. They are bigger. They are more complex. They are not, like, in any way impacted by, sales. Awesome. That is a great call out there, Evan. I know there's a few questions left, but we are at time, so we will not have time to get to those. It looks like a few of them, are kind of specific to, like, your accounts or, you know, a specific instance you might be running into. So, again, we'll make sure that your account team reaches out to you, to get those answered and be able to work through some of that stuff with you. So that's it. That's what we've got for today. It was a great, great hour, packed with content. Thank you so much, Evan, for walking us through everything. As a reminder, the recording and those resources will be sent to you all, so be on the lookout for an email from us tomorrow. And with that, thanks to everyone for joining, and have a great rest of your day. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.