Rolling out a Quickbase app: an overview

This topic gives you the big picture. Read on to learn the basic steps you'll follow and find out the best way to roll out your app.

Step one: Create and design your app

Examine your workflow and select and design your Quickbase app around it. To help you through this process, you may want to read the following topics:

• Creating an app

• Planning your app structure

• What's a table?

• What's a field?

• Visual Builder

• Relating tables in Quickbase

Step two: Plan for your audience

Who's using your app? Is it one kind of user? Is it two kinds of users: say staff members and managers? Or more? Quickbase lets you design the same app for any number of audiences. For example, your shipping clerk probably needs to see and enter very different information from your department manager. So, have Quickbase show them different forms, reports and home pages.These topics can help you plan:

• About roles

• Setting up access permissions

• Customizing app home pages

• About custom forms

• If appropriate, associate custom forms with roles
  

Tip: As you create roles, you can test them yourself. To do so, temporarily change your role to view how users in that role interact with the app. You can also create a secondary user account, either by creating a new user profile or, better yet, by registering for Quickbase with an alternate email address, like your Gmail account. Then share the app with your alternate account in the role you want to test. Sign out and sign back in as your testing persona. Access the app and make sure you see what users in that role should see.

Step three: Test your app

Gather a small group of test users and share your app with them to check with the following:

• Make sure the roles you've designed are working as intended. You can test them yourself, using the Test as a Role and Test as a User features available from the user drop down in the global bar.

• Is your app easy to use? Do your testers find their tasks easy to accomplish? Does your setup make sense? Could you design the app differently to help them out? Get their feedback and make changes. The more people like your Quickbase app, the more likely they are to adopt it and use it.
  

Tip: Help your users by providing guidance for them. You can annotate your data-entry forms with help. Tell users how to enter information. Also, customize your app's home page to include instructions and quick links to important features. You can even show different home pages and report lists to different kinds of users. It's also a great idea to write a guide for your app. If your instructions are short, you can insert them in a text section. Or let Quickbase help you compose an attractive web page and post a link to it on your app's help panel. Read more.

Step four: revise your app

Based on feedback you got in step three, make changes to your app. Fix problems you've found and redesign forms and other elements to help your audience use your app.

Tip: Whenever you make a big change to your app (especially a change which may impact your data), it's always a good idea to test the change out on copy first. If all goes well, then implement the same change on your live app. Read how to copy an app.

Or, consider applying application lifecycle management with your app, and use a Quickbase sandbox for developing, testing and deploying app changes.

Step five: roll it out

When you're ready, first decide how you should share it with the entire audience. Quickbase offers the following options:

• Share with groups. Read about groups to find out more, then create groups and share your app with them.

• Share with individuals. You can share with a small list of users or a large list. Read how.

• Share with users in your company. Limit access to user within your company organization. Read more.

• Share with the world. If you want, share some or all of your app with Everyone on the Internet. How?