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Relationship Therapy: Deeper Connections for your QuickBase Apps
Adam Hoover is a sales engineer at Intuit who has worked with QuickBase since 2013. In his presentation, he discusses relationship types in QuickBase like one-to-many and many-to-many relationships. He explains how to create and diagram relationships between tables to connect related data. Hoover also covers limitations of one-to-many relationships and how to address them using techniques like reverse relationships, report links, and synchronizing or importing external data.
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Relationship Therapy: Deeper Connections for your QuickBase Apps
- 2. Relationship Therapy Deeper Connectionsfor Your QuickBase Apps Adam Hoover Sales Engineer, Intuit
- 3. #EMPOWER2015 A QuickBase SalesEngineer since 2013, Adam is a passionate supporter of the Intuit philosophy of making complex processes more accessible. Having worked for Homeland Security, providing automation support to an organization that is incredibly large, and also at a startup with less than 50 employees, Adam loves to use his experience, spanning the full spectrum of industry size, and is always trying to gain and provide insights to an increasingly diverse community of QuickBase users. About Me Adam Hoover Sales Engineer
- 4. #EMPOWER2015 ① Back toBasics: The One to Many Relationship ② When Basics Aren’t Enough: Many to Many Relationships ③ Talking Back: Creating Reverse Relationships ④ Help from an Outsider: Using Report Links ⑤ Keeping the Connection Alive: Synchronizing Data Relationship Therapy
- 5. Back to Basics: TheOne to Many Relationship1
- 6. #EMPOWER2015 Relationships in QuickBaseare connections between tables of data, allowing those tables to share information • The problem of having stand-alone tables comes up when you have information in one that you know is connected to information in the other • A person may intuitively understand this connection, but software, like QuickBase, cannot logically make that connection without being provided with some context • A relationship allows us to tell software that the data is connected, which in turn helps the application to give us access to all of the information we need, in the right place Why do we need relationships?
- 7. #EMPOWER2015 Solving the problemof Stand-alone Data • Here we can see a Project Record which has plenty of information about a specific Project and it’s properties • Even with all the details on this Record, and the ability to add additional Fields to track more data, we cannot see any information from another Record here What problem does a Relationship Solve?
- 8. #EMPOWER2015 The problem canbe seen from both tables • Here we can see a list of people on a Resources Table that is unrelated to the Project we just looked at • These Resources are all available to be assigned to Projects, but when looking at a specific Resource, notice that there is no Project information available What problem does a Relationship Solve?
- 9. #EMPOWER2015 QuickBase uses theconcept of a One to Many Relationship • This is a connection between a Parent table and a Child table, in this case “Projects” and “Resources” • Determining which table becomes the Parent, and which the Child, is done when we make our selection from two possible directions for the relationship Using One to Many Relationships
- 10. #EMPOWER2015 When planning outan application, it is helpful to create a diagram of the Tables and their Relationships: ① Add your Tables ② Choose the direction that data will flow, by placing the Parent on top ③ Draw the Relationship between tables Diagraming a One to Many Relationship Projects Resources
- 11. #EMPOWER2015 ① On theSettings Page, find “Table-to- Table Relationships” ② When creating a new relationship, select the other table to relate to ③ Choose the Parent and Child ④ Review the results and select the fields you want to carry over from the Parent to the child Actually Adding a Relationship
- 12. #EMPOWER2015 The Parent Tablewill now have a section to view and add any Child Records Viewing the Results
- 13. #EMPOWER2015 The Child Tablewill also contain detailed information being looked up from the Parent Table Viewing the Results
- 14. #EMPOWER2015 Relationships in QuickBaseare clearly capable of solving the issue of connecting data, but there are still a few problems that a One to Many relationship does not solve ① A relationship does not provide a way to relate Many records to Many other Records ② There is no function to lookup data that exists on a Child Record, from the Parent Record ③ Any unrelated data is not reportable using the fields created by a Relationship ④ Data from external sources or outside applications cannot be aggregated or synchronized through the use of a One to Many relationship The Limitations of One to Many
- 15. #EMPOWER2015 In order tosolve some of the limitations, it is important to know how Relationships Work • A field on the Parent table is used as the “Key Field” • A “Related” field is created on the Child table to store the Key Field value * The Record ID # is used as the default Key, as it is always a unique value How do Relationships Work?
- 16. When the BasicsAren’t Enough: Many to Many Relationships2
- 17. #EMPOWER2015 We can’t relatea Child to many Parent Records • In the example with Projects and Resources, Projects can currently have as many Resources as necessary • On the Resources table, a new Record is created each time we assign a person to the parent Project Record • This will lead to duplications The Limitation of a One to Many
- 18. #EMPOWER2015 A Many toMany Relationship is a third table that helps connect data from the two tables you are already trying to connect ① Add a Third Table to the App, in this case we can create “Assignments” ② Then create a One to Many relationship between each of the two tables we are trying to connect, and the new Table Diagramming a Many to Many Relationship Assignments ResourcesProjects
- 19. Talking Back: Creating ReverseRelationships3
- 20. #EMPOWER2015 We can’t reporton the details of a Child Record from the Parent Record • There is a report that shows Child Records embedded on the Parent Record form • The report only displays the child records, it does not carry any of their data over • A lookup field, which is reportable, can only be created on the Child Table The Limitation of a One to Many
- 21. #EMPOWER2015 In this Examplewe will add a Child Table on which we need to see the “Current” Record ① Add a table and name it “Status” ② Projects will have many Statuses in this example, as the user may want to track the history of a projects status, or the average time spent in a status Diagramming a Child Lookup Assignments ResourcesProjects Status
- 22. #EMPOWER2015 To solve theissue of not being able to see the “Current Status” at the Project Level, we will create a Reverse Relationship ① Create a Summary of the Max Record ID ② Create a second relationship between the Parent and Child table, this time going in the opposite direction ③ Use the Summary as the Reference Field Finalizing the Reverse Relationship Assignments ResourcesProjects Status Summary
- 23. Help from anOutsider: Using Report Links4
- 24. #EMPOWER2015 There are somecircumstances where there will be two tables which are handled separately, but users may still want to be able to look in one place for all the information they need. • The Embedded report that we saw created automatically on the Projects table when adding a new relationship, is actually a tool that we can use for this type of situation as well • While using the Projects table we were working with earlier, if we add a list of Companies, and a table of Contacts, we may want to see the Contacts for each Company on a Project • In order to do that, we can create a new Report Link field on the Projects table, which can display the correct data, even without a relationship The Limitation of a One to Many
- 25. #EMPOWER2015 We will needto match at least one field on Projects, to a field with the same value on Contacts, using a third table may help ① Add a Companies Table ② Add a relationship from Companies to both Projects and Contacts to get the Company lookup field added to both ③ We can then match those Company fields Diagramming Report Links Assignments ContactsProjects Status Companies Resources
- 26. Keeping the ConnectionAlive: Synchronizing Data5
- 27. #EMPOWER2015 When there isdata on a table in another application, or even on another platform, there are situations where we need to be able to take that data and consolidate it in QuickBase • This allows us to make QuickBase a front end for data, regardless of the origin of that information • Whether it is from separate QuickBase applications or from external tools, we can pull that data into a single QuickBase table • Once QuickBase has access to bring that data in, it is possible to build reports, dashboards, workflow, and other Business Intelligence using that information Why do we Import or Synchronize Data?
- 28. #EMPOWER2015 The first wayto Import Data, is using a manual Import ① Using the Import/Export wizard in QuickBase, you can Import many records at once by simply uploading a spreadsheet, or finding another table in QuickBase ② The wizard will ask you for the source data, and then give you an option of where in your table you would like to put that new data ③ If you are using a Table to Table Import, to grab data from another QuickBase application, it will store the Import for you, so that you can run it again as necessary Table to Table Import
- 29. #EMPOWER2015 Another strategy tokeep data synchronized is to use our new “Sync” tool, which will keep a “Connected Table” up to date with data from another source Sync • Bill.com • Intacct • Netsuite • Salesforce.com • Zendesk – More on this in • Zuora • Intuit QuickBooks • Intuit QuickBase – e on this in the Sync presentation * For more information about Sync, please join us for the Sync Presentation
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