MCF Tech Solutions

Since 2007, we’ve put our heads together to complete 1,213 client projects. Over a decade later, we’re using our extensive expertise to bring you tips and tricks on how to land a great Quick Base partner.

When designing an application, it’s important to be aware that some partners will offer a wide range of services, while others will only provide narrow functional capabilities. What follows is our list of the top five things to consider when evaluating a third-party partner and assessing whether or not that partner is the right fit for you and your app.

1. Design

Our mantra for application success? Start with the right design.  A good partner will always make sure they fully understand your requirements before presenting you with a design solution. When your partner follows this model, you stand a better chance of securing a design that meets your needs from the get-go. Plus, you’ll most likely be able to see exactly how the design will solve your particular business challenges.

Keep in mind an excellent application design should always have some kind of database diagram, along with a technical specification that outlines the functions required to meet your business needs. These outlines should include plans for tackling security (and assigning security roles), integration, workflows, and anything else that affects your business. In other words, you, the client, should always have clear visibility into every aspect of the application that’s being built for you.

 2. Integration & Workflow

 While you may be comfortable designing and creating your own basic Quick Base application or even maneuvering your way through some advanced techniques, you might need assistance when it comes to the more complicated technical work (i.e., integrations, workflows, and/or advanced customization).

To avoid pitfalls or potential disasters in this area, make sure you understand both the integration and advanced technical capabilities of every partner you investigate. Remember: Not every third party will have the same level of experience in working with integrations or workflow development. The best partners, however, will have pre-existing frameworks integrated with tools such as Workato, AngularJS, etc. And ideal partners will also provide examples as to how they use these tools in order to extend Quick Base functionalities.

3. Security/Governance/Compliance

 As your application increases in size, importance, and user numbers, you may start bumping into issues surrounding governance requirements and security compliance.  If you’re not familiar with managing compliance programs for a business application, the process may feel a little overwhelming. Not to worry, though. A great Quick Base partner can help you navigate these tricky waters and help you define a plan to make sure you’ve covered all your security and governance bases.

Some things to consider in this regard include your application life-cycle management, the configuration of security roles within your application, and your overall compliance (particularly if you have special regulatory restrictions such as those required by HIPAA or other privacy watchdogs).  Make a point to ask any potential partners what experience they have in the fields of privacy management and government compliance, and ask them what security assurances they can offer you should you choose to employ their services.

Since 2007, we’ve put our heads together to complete 1,213 client projects. Over a decade later, we’re using our extensive expertise to bring you tips and tricks on how to land a great Quick Base partner.

Executing product demos for big box retailers entail many moving parts involving many SKUs of inventory. Different SKUs are transported from multiple sources to many different event destinations. The logistical overhead involved can be extensive, to say the least.

The problem compounds further when the scale of product demo reaches multiple locations and concurrent events. This led to coordination problems with on-site sales reps and issues with inventory and material deliveries to the event organizers.

This is exactly where a custom inventory management system comes in handy.

Why choose a bespoke, real-time inventory management system?

An inventory management system improves the overall experience around product demos with up-to-date and easily available information. It seeks to reduce inventory issues (overages, shortages) which improves employee confidence and eliminates management time in inventory planning.

This, in turn, saves on inventory shrinkage that can translate to a 5-figure dollar amount. A robust inventory management system provides accurate and visible, real-time reporting across operation providing peace of mind for leadership.

Leveraging Quick Base data within Power BI as your data visualization tool can be a powerful combination.  There are a whole host of options to bring your Quick Base data into Power BI, with certain positives and negatives associated with each method.  In this post, we will be covering the “API_DoQuery” method by utilizing Quick Bases’s API within Power BI.

API_DoQuery allows us to query Quick Base and obtain records from specific tables.  By utilizing this API call, you are able to bring Quick Base data into Power BI directly.  This method is relatively simple and can get you utilizing Quick Base data in Power BI very quickly.  Let’s see how we can go through the process of doing this:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click the “Get Data” button in the top left-hand side of your screen. See the image below.

2. This dropdown provides the different methods that we currently have available for obtaining data from other sources. Go ahead and search and find the “Web” connector as shown below:

3. Now we need to utilize Quick Bases’s “API_DoQuery URL Alternative“. We need to construct a URL to provide the “Web” connector in Power BI.  Using the URL example below – fill in the red text items to match your specific Quick Base application.

This solution enables quick and effective decision making with the help of highly automated order and inventory processing. This adds value across the supply chain. In this case, product demos to receive the benefits of a one-stop inventory management console that depicts real-time data during site-to-site transfers. A typical product demo is characterized by a lot of inventory moving from the source to the event destination. It is evident that the logistical overheads involved in such a temporary transition will be extensive.  It may happen that the demo products need to be transported to multiple locations and proper coordination is needed with the on-site sales reps to tally the count and integrity of the products moving out of the source location. Also, event organizers need to be informed beforehand about the quantum of inventory and associated marketing materials that will reach the event location on a specific date.

How good it will be if all these hassles are taken care of by technology from one centralized portal?

This is exactly what an inventory management system does.

This solution enables quick and effective decision making with the help of highly automated order and inventory processing. This adds value across the supply chain. In this case, product demos to receive the benefits of one-stop inventory management console that depicts real-time data during site-to-site transfers.

Quick Base has released a native connector to the Power BI Platform that allows for an easy to set up data transfer. If you are using Quick Base and Office 365, this is for you.

What is the Power BI Connector?

The Quick Base Power BI Connector enables Power BI users to pull Quick Base data into their models, using the friendly, native Power BI table navigator experience! The connector was developed with the Quick Base no code/low code community in mind; allowing users to design reports in Quick Base. These reports can then be consumed directly in Power BI without having to write queries and do manual data transformations, like some of you have been doing with the web connector.