Databases and Homeless Kids
Intuit's QuickBase blog features a post on how Horizons for Homeless Children is using QuickBase to streamline paperwork and have more time to advocate for homeless families: http://bit.ly/Aoubs3. That's good work!
12-19-2011
Strategic Implications of "Build vs. Buy"
Unsure whether to build or buy your non-profit's next new database software? Hear Data Collaborative founder Eric Segal and nonprofit technology consultant Deborah Elizabeth Finn flush out the pros and cons of each approach. They also pose the questions decision makers should ask before making a purchase in this zippy askDeborah podcast, part of the CTK Educational Series.09-28-2011
Security Matters and Other QuickBase Tips
Looking for some tips and tricks to make your QuickBase experience better? Youll find helpful posts in Data Collaboratives QuickBase Straight Up blog. Check out these recent posts:- Will QuickBase security changes be a big deal for you?
- Now theres a way for you to suggest and vote for new features in QuickBase.
- Spruce up your QuickBase apps with iPhone-style icons.
- Enhance your QuickBase forms with custom tabs.
- Free QuickBase app templates, and a look at Intuit and SalesForce.
07-07-2011
With Data Collaborative's New Method Plug-In, Users Can Harness QuickBooks Data for Marketing Via Constant Contact
Method, already a great way for a business to make Intuits Data Collaborative tool to integrate QuickBooks contacts with contacts in Constant Contact.
Were proud that Method and Data Collaborative introduced a product called Contact Sync, a plug-in app for Method that lets users send lists of contacts from QuickBooks to Constant Contact quickly and easily.
Whats Method? Its a cloud-based service that takes a QuickBooks file and maintains it in the web, accessible from anywhere even from mobile devices. Moreover, Method extends QuickBooks with functions adding customer relationship management, pipeline opportunity tracking, end-user customization, and much more.
Constant Contact is a leading service for email newsletters, event management and planning, online surveys, and business social media.
Brian Poole, an applications developer at Data Collaborative, explains that Contact Sync was in development for about 18 months.
To use Contact Sync, a Method account holder logs into to the application with his or her Constant Contact credentials. A screen (shown below) presents contacts found by Method in the companys QuickBooks file.
The user can select which names to send to Constant Contact, and the list in Constant Contact to which the names should be added. Contact Sync also lets the user create and name a new list in Constant Contact as part of the Contact Sync interface.
Once the user clicks on Export, the records, including email address, first name, and last name, are shipped automatically to Constant Contact. (The process can take a few minutes because Constant Contact is diligent about checking lists it imports for duplicate email addresses as part of its verification process.)
ContactSync is released in Version 1.0. For Method Full Blown Edition users, Contact Sync costs $5 monthly for the first user and $1 monthly for each additional user. (The Full Blown Edition is required to use Contact Sync.)
The next step for the app, Brian says, will be to offer bi-directional syncing, allowing names from Constant Contact to be synced via Contact Sync to QuickBooks.
As for Brian, hes been with Data Collaborative for 1½ years. But hes been programming since he was just a kid, beginning when he was only nine years old. (He loved video games and his fathers an electrical engineer, so it came naturally to him.)
Brian also has a background is in entertainment. Hes installed movie projectors, automations, and Dolby sound systems into new and renovated theaters along the East Coast of the United States. Off hours, he and some friends strive to establish a successful live music venue in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
Are you a Method user? If so, please check out Contact Sync in Methods App Library. If not, shoot an email to Eric Segal at Data Collaborative for a Method demonstration.
05-31-2011
Database Design for Beginners
Read advice from Eric Segal of Data Collaborative on how to think about initial design for your new database. Check out the latest QuickBase Straight Up blog post.
04-15-2011
We Show Our Stripes
Our local celebrity (and Senior Developer), Josh Shortlidge, sang with his group, "Blue of a Kind", leading the Star Spangled Banner at FENWAY PARK last Tuesday!
We are all very proud! Check them out here -- Josh is the one carrying the high "Freeeeeeee" at the end!
03-16-2011
See You at NTEN
Heading to DC today for the annual NTEN conference, THE national conference for techies who are oriented toward non-profits (which is an important part of our work). Looking forward especially to various Salesforce and Google app workshops.
BTW the conference is sold out, but they are making most of the conf available online; see here.
03-15-2011
One Blog turns into Two
To help you see the information you need, we are turning this blog into 2. Now, you can see the QuickBase Blog (tools, tips, info on QuickBase) at our QuickBase page, and the Data Collaborative Blog on our home page.
03-11-2011
New QuickBase Release
With another release this weekend, QuickBase is clearly focusing on performance. They are giving us the ability to remove fields from indexing, from reporting, and from the default report. All of these will allow faster performance, which in turn allows for larger tables.
02-18-2011
Freebies
Just sending out our newsletter with 8 major QuickBase freebies! Not to be missed -- if you are not a subscriber, don't waste any time -- go to www.QuickBaseStraightUp.com now!02-04-2011
Nothing "Tent-Tative" About Our Own Josh Shortlidge
Perhaps you've heard. It's been cold and snowy here in the Boston area. Like, really snowy. We've got piles of snow all over our hometown -- Arlington, Massachusetts -- that are taller than any of us.
None of it stops our senior developer Josh Shortlidge and his wife, Terri, from sleeping outdoors every night in a backyard tent.
This week, as the Boston Globe reports, Josh and Terri celebrated 586 consecutive nights in their backyard tent in Melrose, Massachusetts.
In the heat. In the rain. In the snow. In the cold.
Josh epitomizes a Data Collaborative team that keeps its ear to the ground, day and night! Read more about Josh and Terri, or follow their tweets @WyndAndRayn.
12-23-2010
Seasons Greetings
From our team to you and yours, best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Data Collaboratives Massachusetts headquarters staff celebrated the season Tuesday night by attending the delightful holiday party of the 501 Tech Club of Boston, sponsored by TechFoundation.
About 75 people from the not-for-profit software and technology community in Boston attended the party at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge. As specialists in database design and development for not-for-profits, we were excited to hear many announcements about new people and new initiatives in the regions not-for-profit tech space.
Were glad to report about 20 people at the party were from our own company family. As you can see in the photo above, everyone from our headquarters in Arlington, about eight miles from Boston, was there along with many spouses, partners, and children. Steve Wishengrad, our principal who works from an office in Durham, New Hampshire, drove south to be with us, accompanied by his wife and daughter. (But we missed having Jesse Jones, who works in Washington State, with us.)
Our own Josh Shortlidge, a senior solution developer, was a featured panelist in the roundtable preceding the party. He discussed his Ethos project to develop an interoperable cataloging system for collections of data and content. Data Collaboratives adjunct colleague, Deborah Elizabeth Finn, moderated the session.
12-20-2010
How the Bug Applies to You
QuickBase has announced that they have found a bug in the current version, released yesterday. The bug occurs with API calls that return 1000 or more records.
How does this affect you? If you run any kind of scripts -- buttons into QuickBase application, vendor or customer portals, or scripts in back of an Excel spreadsheet -- and if those scripts look at large tables, then this could affect you. In addition, if you use Qunect, you have probably already received a notification and you should upgrade to the new version right away. Finally, if you use the QuickBase desktop backup edition, any backups that you create today could be incomplete. This bug is scheduled to be fixed at 11 PM tonight.
If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us or with your sales representative at QuickBase.
Eric
12-06-2010
Our QuickBase Android App
Our app for viewing QuickBase data on Android devices is now available! It's called MobileBase, it's free, and it's available on the Android Market. Let us know what you think!10-05-2010
From your Phone to...
If you are attending the Intuit Solution Providers Summit in LA, please stop by the Data Collaborative booth.
Steve will be demoing our game-changing phone-to-QuickBooks integration, the Canvas QuickBooks Connector.
Whether you have a Blackberry, an Android or a Windows mobile device (or soon, an Iphone), you can send time, expenses, etc, straight to QuickBooks.
You can also check it out here.
09-17-2010
Discontinued API Calls
You may have received an email saying that certain old QuickBase calls are going to be discontinued as of September 18. There has not been much publicity on this, so we are publishing a list of deprecated calls (click here). Few users should be affected -- most of the calls are either Internal calls or calls designed for the User Interface, as opposed to the programming interface. If you are not sure if this will affect you, please give us a call.08-19-2010
Data Access when QuickBase is down
Our Backup Version of QuickBase desktop is officially released! Make sure you have access to your data all the time, even if QuickBase is down.
Check it out here!
08-02-2010
Access to Data when QuickBase goes Down
We all know the QuickBase outages have been to frequent and too long. QuickBase has provided "QuickBase Desktop" for many years -- It's an MS Access application for synching data with QuickBase.
We have taken that application and modified it specifically for backups. It's easier to use, it remembers your settings, and it won't create data conflicts. Plus you can set it up to run daily, every three hours, or whatever frequency you need.
We will be releasing it shortly. A link and instructions will be included in the next issue of QuickBase Straight Up. If you don't subscribe already, it's free! Check it out here.
07-21-2010
The Outages
This week's slowdowns and outages, especially following last month's outage, have left QuickBase users and developers stunned. After years of relatively steady operation, QuickBase's live time percentage now hovers around 96%.
This has cost QuickBase clients millions and millions of dollars. Sales have been lost and productivity has plummeted. At Data Collaborative, we have had many conversations with customers who are considering switching to a different platform. QuickBase's ability to be up and running, at full tilt absolutely must improve -- now -- or QuickBase will stop being a viable product.
At the same time, we remain cautiously confident, for a few reasons.
- The core code of QuickBase has not changed. It has run dependably for many years and there is no reason to think it has suddenly become undependable.
- The problems seem to have come from different sources. Some hardware, some software; some in the old data center and some in the new data center. No one link has appeared undependable -- but different links broke, one after the other. We are holding out hope that the outages were an awful coincidence.
- Most importantly, the entire QuickBase team at Intuit knows that their whole product is on the line now. They are becoming obsessive and paranoid -- which is exactly what they need to be, to get the engine humming again.
Are we too optimistic? Time will tell. There are certainly competitors waiting in the wings. But it's not time to jump ship right now, in our opinion.
07-14-2010
>Good< News about the QuickBase Data Center
A number of on-line Intuit services went down today but QuickBase stayed up! Thanks to the folks at QuickBase who pushed for the move to the new data center -- it paid off today.
07-12-2010
Year of the Smartphone
Lots of talk about developing applications for Smartphones -- but for us database folks, we have to decide what platform to work on. Blackberry? Android? iPhone? An application written for one won't work on any of the others.
That's why we are excited to be working with Canvas. Canvas applications allow you to enter data from your smartphone, and they work on Blackberries, Androids, and iPhones!
We'll be using this platform and the expertise of our experienced staff to build Canvas apps linking to QuickBase, QuickBooks and more. Stay tuned!
06-09-2010
Get To Know Method
I've recently started working with a great new tool to connect QuickBooks to database applications, a tool that I think can have a serious impact on the way you do business.
We're database people here at the Data Collaborative, which means that we're dedicated to finding the best, most relevant solutions for your data needs. To that end, I'm pleased to announce that I am among the first batch of developers to become certified consultants for Method, the QuickBooks-integrated web development platform that took the recent Scaling New Heights Intuit advisor conference by storm.
We at the Data Collaborative are currently putting the finishing touches on our debut Method app - you'll see more about that here in the coming weeks - but we're also here to help you. If you're a QuickBooks user, I think you'll find that Method is an ideal platform for many of web development needs, and I want you to be as excited about it as we are here. Want to learn more about this innovative, flexible platform? Check out Method's website, or drop us a line to chat about the ways that Method can be put to work for you.
05-08-2010
QuickBase and Freecycle
One of the great things about QuickBase is that you can make anything with it.
We just finished collaborating with Intuit and Freecycle to make an office version of the wildly popular "Freecycle" -- where you can "post stuff you don't use and give it to someone who wants it."
Unlike some software in the cloud that is specifically aimed at one business purpose or another, QuickBase can mold to fit almost any need. Take a look here to see the Freecycle app!
04-21-2010
New Dropdown Format Comes and Goes
If you were lucky enough to be working with a QuickBase form this Monday morning, you might have noticed the cool new format for dropdowns (picklists).
Dropdowns were designed poorly on the web - they always respond to the last letter you typed. So if you look for Presidents and start typing Wa, the W will bring up Washington, but then the a will switch you to Adams!
QuickBase's new format is much more intelligent -- it pays attention to your whole word, instead of the last letter.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the new feature slowed down the QuickBase servers so much that they had to roll it back. But it is good to know they are working on this. Hopefully, we will see it again soon, this time for good!
03-08-2010
QuickBase Speed
I was in Florida on vacation recently and on a Saturday morning one of my clients had a data emergency. I didn't mind doing some work, as the weather in Florida was about the same as in New England!
So I started working and I couldn't believe how fast QuickBase was responding! I got my work done in half the time it would normally take.
So it made me think - does QuickBase really run a lot more quickly in off hours? Is the Internet just less busy? Or is this a figment of my relaxed, vacationing brain?
We're doing a little research to resolve that question. Make sure you read the next QuickBaseStraightUp, which will have the straight dope.
01-22-2010
Project Linqq Webinar
In case you missed our webinar about Project Linqq, you can watch the recording at: QuickBooks Project Integration - Project Linqq01-03-2010
QuickBooks Project Management
Join us on January 21st when we'll be presenting a webinar with Kirk Trachy of Intuit featuring our Project Linqq application. We'll show full featured project management capabilities using QuickBase and a tight integration with QuickBooks. We'll also discuss how we can customize a solution for you. Registration is required, so signup today!
12-15-2009
Connecting to QuickBooks
We were the first to connect QuickBase to QuickBooks, and that continues to be an important part of our work. But QuickBase is not the only way to connect QuickBooks to web forms and web reports.
SalesForce and Method also connect with QuickBooks, and all three approaches have their plusses and minuses.
To stuff our opinions into one sentence, we would say QuickBase is the most customizable, Method has the easiest link to QuickBooks, and SalesForce has the most active market of add-ons.
We work with all three, and if you'd like to evaluate which is best for your company, give us a call at 781-777-1119.
11-17-2009
QuickBase and hand-helds
We're looking at a number of approaches for putting QuickBase on handhelds. This means looking both at different software solutions, and different devices (Iphone, Android, Blackberry, etc).
Last summer's release of QuickBase was billed as optimized for the Iphone, but in fact the changes were more of a nudge in that direction than a full-fledged movement.
We'd like to hear from you -- what smart phone do you use? What do you wish you could do with it? Help us break some trail here, and you will earn our eternal gratitude.
10-16-2009
QuickBase Techies
If you are technical at all, consider signing up for the QuickBase TechFest. Experts will be presenting QuickBase from a lot of different angles, and there will be something to learn for everyone.
Intuit has never done this before, so this is a special opportuity.
Afterwards, if you have any questions about anything you saw, please give us a call!
10-02-2009
See You in Chicago!
Next week is Intuit's annual gathering of Intuit Solution Providers (ISP's). It's in Chicago this year, and we will be there -- please stop by our Booth!
And just in time for the conference, we are unveiling the Data Collaborative Partner Program -- now, if you are an ISP or a database consultant, you can sell QuickBase Solutions, while Data Collaborative does the work. See our partner page for details!
09-30-2009
Content Management Fantasy Comes True
You might have noticed that our web site went live with our new look today. I always thought a company should be able to totally change the look of its web site in 10 minutes -- if the content stays the same, there is no reason it should take any more time than that.
And I am happy to say that it worked. Using Qontent, our QuickBase content manager, we changed the entire look of our site in ten minutes, with all the content seemlessly shifting over to our new look.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me - Eric Segal
09-21-2009
Chrome Speedier?
Ramon Z-G, a reader of QuickBase Straight Up, reports that QuickBase is running 2-3 times faster for him with Chrome than with IE 7. We have not seen a change of that magnitude but Chrome does seem speedier than IE or Firefox.
What's your experience?
Response 1 chrome, like firefox does work faster at displaying the java; however as a developer there are areas of the system in development terms that don't function correctly. For instance, you cannot copy and paste from a field list in QB into excel - it will all paste into one field, so you have to do this from ie. When you're in the Reports Matrix, you have to do this in ie because the headers scroll instead of staying on the page so you know which role is getting what report. Also custom html dashboards don't show up quite the same in firefox as they do in ie. IFrame rich text pages only seem to show one iframe instead of all four (in my case), but ie is OK. Editing, updating, viewing and running reports is all great in chrome and firefox for speed, but don't try to do everything!
From: Anonymous
09-02-2009
Growing while Cutting Costs
Some recent clients have really impressed upon me how creating a Customer Portal has helped their business grow.
Without any heavy lifting or big checks to write, QuickBase has allowed them to set up Portals where customers can monitor job progress and provide threaded feedback. The Customer is happy, and the final product is better for the customer's input.
Give us a call if you think a Customer Portal might make sense for your company!
08-13-2009
Free File Attachment Space
At our sister site, QuickBaseNation.com, we're about to launch, in beta, our application to provide free file attachment space to QuickBase users. File Attachment space has long been a bugaboo for QuickBase -- only 100 MB is provided for the basic plan.
At QuickBaseNation.com, you'll get 500 MB for free, and more available soon - and it's all synced right into QuickBase. Sign up for a membership at QuickBaseNation and we will let you know how you can get this very handy tool.
07-23-2009
Flickering Screen with IE8
Is your screen flickering when using QuickBase and Internet Explorer 8? Its due to the fact that the new IE 8 browser and QuickBase are currently not fully compatible.
Until this is resolved by Intuit, there is a way around it. IE8 has a "Compatibility View" option that allows you to run a website in IE8 as if it were on an older version of IE. Running in the Compatibility View resolves the screen flickering issue with QuickBase.
Compatibility View is domain specific. To enable it, first log into QuickBase. Then, look just to the right of your address bar and you will see a padlock icon. Between that and the refresh button is the new button to enable Compatibility View (looks like a page torn in two) . Once you press this button your QuickBase application will function correctly.
Anne Murray, Senior Solution Provider
07-14-2009
Caveat on Conditional Dropdowns
For years, QuickBase customers told QuickBase that they wanted conditional dropdowns, and for years QuickBase staff told us they wanted to do it but it was tricky. I didn't get it at the time but now I do.
It's not just a matter of basing a set of choices on the value in another field. What if the original field is a proxy field? What if there are multiple conditional dropdowns? What if you're editting in grid edit, or with the API, or with Search and Replace? And what if a couple of these things are happening simultaneously?
Bottom line, the developers did a nice job but there are definitely some bugs left. There is one that causes a javascript error, which then prevents a page from loading. Another crops up if you have non-alphanumeric fields.
It usually works, but if you are trying something fancy and it looks like it's not working, it is probably not your eyes deceiving you. Let QuickBase support know; they will get it cleaned up little by little!
Eric Segal, President
07-02-2009
QuickBase Nation Mapping
We are getting a great response to our free mapping service over at QuickBase Nation. One user called it "a whole new kind of report -- one that QuickBase has not offered before."
However, this is just the beginning of what we are planning for QuickBase Nation. The next utility will be for filing emails into QuickBase. If you'd like to be a beta tester for that, let us know. It should be ready for testing in a week or so.
Eric Segal, President
Response 1 Sounds awesome!!!
From: Anonymous
