The best part of Quickbase's annual Empower event is the Product Keynote and associated product sessions.

These sessions allow us to look behind the curtain and see what the mad scientists (aka Product Managers) at Quickbase are cooking up.

This year did not disappoint!

Watch the Full Product Keynote (1h 36m)

Features large and small were met with applause and excited cheers from the audience 🥳

Here's a rundown of what I'm most looking forward to.

Quickbase's Safe Harbor Disclaimer: Content is provided for information purposes only and is subject to change without notice. Quickbase has no obligation or commitment to develop or deliver any future release, upgrade, feature, enhancement or function described in this presentation.

 Forms

It's been at least a decade since forms got an overhaul (maybe more as I scoured the Quickbase release notes going back to 2011 and couldn't find any reference to a form update).

Sure, there have been enhancements and improvements here and there, but nothing as major as what was unveiled at Empower.

Quickbase Product Manager, Ryan Murray, opened with this statement:

"I'm here today to talk to you about an investment that we are all really passionate about here at Quickbase, and that's completely redesigning our forms from the ground up."

Let's see how he's planning to deliver on that big goal with these highlighted form features.

• Add fields in place and drag & drop through a visual designer
  
• Organize form elements by row, column, and section
• Helper text is displayed below the field
• Set the background color for different sections/columns
  
• Updated date picker
  
• Optional longitude/latitude in place of street address
• New star rating interaction
  
• Option to 'revert' to the prior saved value while editing
• More sophisticated workflow experiences with steps
  

This new type of form will definitely improve both the user and builder experience.

I'm most excited about adding color to sections, creating step based forms, and having a more WYSIWYG building experience.

From what I understand, when this new type of form is available, you will need to rebuild any forms you want to update and the old form builder will still be available (at least for a while).

When will it be available?

Beta planned for Fall 2022

Watch the Future of Form Session (1h 2m)

 Pipelines

In late 2019, Quickbase acquired a company called CloudPipes and a few months later launched a new way of integrating separate cloud-based systems called Pipelines.

Over the past 2+ years, the product team at Quickbase has been learning about how builders interact with Pipelines, gathering feedback on what's working (and what's not working), and researching the future of iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service).

Group Product Manager, John Karas, has been leading this effort.

John kicked off by sharing new channels Asana and Trello with several more coming soon (Snowflake, Procore, and Autodesk).

Then it was time to dive into the good stuff! Enhancements to the pipeline builder (yes please) plus governance and error notifications.

Let's look at what's coming:

• New Pipeline designer
  
• Options to insert steps
  
• Option to move steps up or down
  
• App Connections Central – a way to manage and visualize app connections
  
• Pipelines Granular Permissions – not just who has access, but what channels they have access to.
  
• Error notifications (an actual error I got over the weekend 😱)
  

I'm very excited about the new Pipeline designer. It reminds me a lot of Zapier's Zap designer which was pretty intuitive to learn.

Good governance options & error notifications are MUST HAVE features, so I'm glad that Quickbase is adding them (even if it's late IMO).

More is still needed as Automations reach retirement, but the future is looking bright for Pipelines.

When will it be available? 

Trello and Asana channels: Now

Snowflake channel: Private Beta Now

New Pipeline Builder: Private Beta Now

App Connections Central: Private Beta Summer 2022

Granular Permissions: Open Beta Now

Error Notifications: Private Beta Now

Note: Not all plans will have access to all features

Watch the Connections Roadmap Session (42m)

 More New Stuff

While Forms and Pipelines were the BIG news, they were not the only news.

There were several additional product sessions. These are a bit less impactful and/or are still in the ideation phase... and I want to know when I can get my hands on them.

• Report customization panel (available now for Kanban reports)Watch the full Session (13m)
• Performance Insights (coming in Q3)
  Watch the full Session (44m)
• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) - Sandbox (no specific timeline given)
  Watch the full Session (38m)
• QB Labs - Automating Insights and Predictions (no specific timeline given)
  Watch the full Session (42m)

Stay tuned as these new features are released over the coming months.

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