QuickBase Appointment Creator issue
April 20th, 2007 – by MattThere’s an issue with the tool that has to do with the way QuickBase reports information. It appears to be a QBase bug, but maybe it’s by design for some reason - I’m looking into it.
What happens is that you might select a field to be included in the appointment, but the data for that field never shows up.
The problem is that when I query QBase for the view information, it returns ALL fields rather than just the fields displayed in that view.
The solution is to edit the view in QuickBase and make sure that ALL fields are shown in the “Outlook Appointments View” or whatever you call it. It is necessary to always use a special view if you want to avoid either creating duplicate appointments or else needing to manually de-select already-created appointments every time.
I can also display an error message of sorts, or I can double-query the view for schema and then data to discover the REALLY real fields that are available, and only show those in the list of available fields.
What are your thoughts/which would you prefer? Error messages (so that you can go and update the view) or only show available fields (avoiding blank fields, but maybe you will wonder why available fields aren’t showing up)
tagged: QuickBase Appointment Creator
Kirk Trachy
| November 8th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Way cool utility. Good go! How big of a deal would it be to use this same concept but for tasks and todos?
For example. We have a project management application and we assign tasks to users. Some people want their QuickBase tasks to automatically generate a task in Outlook.
Thanks for the effort.
Matt
| November 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
The concept is pretty universal - it would work for tasks and todos. I only use Outlook Appointments, so that’s what I created the tool for :-).
Joe Carpenter
| February 27th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
This sounds like an awesome tool - I haven’t tired it yet, but will be doing so as soon as I finish this post. A couple of thoughts first:
The appointments synch is cool, but being able to synch appointments AND tasks, well - that is like peanut butter and chocolate - 2 great tastes that taste great together. Is there any way that we can bribe you to code up a task syncher?
What Quickbase is surprising lacking is the ability to generate RSS. This would (presumably) resolve most of these issues and allow for people to simply subscribe to a given task list, calendar, project, etc. That’s my wish list.
Joe
Matt
| February 28th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Hi Joe,
There’s no particular barrier to syncing tasks. I wrote the tool because we needed it in the iLab as we use QuickBase to schedule customer visits and needed a batter way to generate the Outlook appointments. Unfortunately, I don’t use Outlook tasks, so I didn’t create a sync tool for that. Instead of a task entry, I create Appointments and schedule time to complete the task. I’ve tried using Outlook tasks in the past, but I never seem to get them done unless I allocate time.
It would certainly be possible to use this sync tool to generate Outlook appointments from any type of QBase table, including “tasks”.
- Matt
Kevin | June 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Does this only work for Outlook 2003? With 2007 I get an Object Variable Error.
Any updates planned?
Debbie | July 2nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I am having the same problem that Kevin is with Outlook 2007.
The error I get is:Error: Object Variable or With Block Variable Not Set.
Is this specific to 2007? Is there a fix I can apply?
Thanks,
Debbie
Matt
| July 9th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Unfortunately, I don’t have Outlook 2007… I’ll have to see if I can get that and test with it.
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