A Plethora of New Features

Over the past few weeks we've been very busy wrapping up a large number of new platform features. Below are summaries of some of the more significant items we've deployed recently, although not a comprehensive list. Until  we have time to update documentation and record a new set of Rollbase videos, please contact us if you need help diving into any of these features:

• Sequential and Parallel Approval Processes
• Online Surveys, Survey Takers, Questions Library and Ranking
• Multi-Column Page Layouts
• Tabs in View Pages
• Posting Records to Portals
• Mass Upload (Import and Parse Documents)
• Unique Indexes
• Dynamic View Filtering
• Detailed Search Component
• Grid Edit Component
• Filtering by Related Fields
• Ability to Filter by Viewed/UnViewed and Flagged/Unflagged
• ZIP Code Radius Search
• Global Portal Pages
• Document Template based Reports

Sequential and Parellel Approval Processes
A new Approval object attribute enables you to create new Workflow Actions to invoke a sequential or parallel approval process for any record by triggering sequential emails to either the first assigned approver or all approvers on the list respectively. When an approval process is initiated on an object record you can optionally change the list of assigned approvers at runtime.

Only users who have been assigned the new "Approver" option can be added as approvers to any Workflow Action or record on the fly. In addition, by defining an appropriate number of Workflow Actions for approvals you can have predefined lists of approvers based on location, function, department, etc.

Online Surveys, Survey Recipients, Questions Library and Ranking
New object attributes "Survey" and "Survey Taker" allow you to build question and answer capabilities into any two related objects. For example you may want to build customer survey functionality into your custom Rollbase CRM application. To do this you might create:

- An object called Customer Survey with the new "Survey" attribute. This attribute enables a  "Questions" library for that object allowing you to create any number of questions which can be attached to any record to form a questionnaire. Each question's answer can be ranked to assign kind of score or ranking to survey responses.

- An object called Customer Response with the new "Survey Taker" attribute. This attribute enables a related Survey record's assigned list of questions to be embedded in a portal or backend page where recipients can provide answers to the questions.

Questions are like special kinds of fields whose values are designed to be ranked and added to form an overall survey score. The following Question types are currently supported:

• Checkbox
• Group of Checkboxes
• Currency
• Date
• Date/Time
• Email
• Integer
• Picklist
• Picklist (Multi-Select)
• Radio Buttons
• Text
• Text Area
• URL

Multi-Column Page Layouts
While the contents of any page Section can be organized in 1, 2 or 3-column layouts, up until recently Rollbase pages could only present Sections in a single column. Now in Generic pages you can specify whether to use a 1 or 2 column page layout. If a 2-column page layout is used each section can be placed in the left or right column, or you can choose to have a section span both columns.

To enable multi-column layout on any generic page:
1. Edit the page by clicking "Edit this page"
2. Click on the page title
3. In the Properties box change the new "Columns" property to 2
4. Now select any section and change the new "Alignment" property to Left, Right or Span
5. Notice that the page editor will update in real-time to show you a WYSIWYG layout preview

Tabs in View Pages
As your applications become more sophisticated, record view pages can become very long with large numbers of sections containing fields and many related lists below. To address this from a usability standpoint, now Pages can be organized into any number of tabs. You can create and manage page Tabs within the Page Editor, and easily move sections between tabs as well as re-order tabs as necessary.

To enable Tabs in any view page:
1. Edit the page by clicking "Edit this page"
2. Click on the page title
3. In the Properties box select the new "Enable Tabs" property
4. You will now see tabs at the top of the page. Click "Add Tab" to add as many tabs as you'd like
5. Click on any tab to go to that tab in the editor and use the Properties box to change the Tab label
6. Select any section and assign it to a new tab by changing its' "Tab" property
7. Notice that the page editor will update in real-time to show you a WYSIWYG preview

Posting Records to Portals
A new "Postable" attribute allows you to define objects whose records can be "posted" to specific portals. For example, you may have multiple portals representing product catalogs. By enabling the "Postable" attribute you can choose which portals each record should be shown on. In addition, in some cases you can also specify which "New" form is used to respond to any posted record. For example, you might select which request information form should be used when a prospect wants more info on a product in one of our catalog portals.

In addition, a new Workflow Event type called "Post/Unpost on Portal" allows you to control when certain records are posted to or taken down from specific portals based on any criteria and time delays you define.

Mass Upload (Import and Parse Documents)
Now any object with the Document as well as Contact and Location attributes provides a new menu called "Mass Upload". This new tool allows you to place any number of Word, RTF, PDF or TXT files into a queue and then upload them via AJAX. Rollbase will parse each document and create a new record by attaching the document and populating name, contact and location related fields with information gatherd from the document. You can watch the process take place in real-time through a dynamic user interface.

Unique Indexes
As you may already know, many fields provide an advanced property called "Do not allow duplicate values in this field". By enabling this property no two records of that object type can have the same value in this field. By enabling this on more than one field you can define significant duplication protection. However, until recently you could not combine fields together to form a more advanced dup validation mechanism.

Now each object definition has a new component called Unique Indexes. A Unique Index is basically a list of fields which form a combined value that cannot be duplicated and hence, prevent duplicate records from occurring. For example, if a Unique Index consists of fields X, Y and Z, then no two records can have the same values for X and Y and Z. However, for example, this does not prevent two records having the same values for X and Y but different values for Z. This is a very powerful new way to define duplicate prevention based on your specific application needs (you can even use Lookup fields to define unique indexes).

Dynamic View Filtering
You may have noticed a new "Filter" link associated with currently selected Views. This activates the filtering component directly above the View on the current page you are viewing allowing you to qucikly filter and refresh your selected View without having to switch to full View Edit model and committing yourself to any changes to your filter criteria. This same type of dynamic filtering is also available for Reports.

Detailed Search Component
A new Detailed Search component can now be embedded in any Generic pages in Portals as well as backend Pages. This component allows you to provide a small object-specific search form allowing users to locate records based on specific criteria relevant to the situation at hand. For example, you may place a Detailed Search comoneont in the home page of a product catalog portal to allow users to search for products based on price range, availability, type, brand, etc. Like other page sections, this component can be configured to display fields in 1, 2 or 3-column layouts. In addition, for each field chosen to appear in the component you can specify the operator used in the search such as "equals", "greater than", etc.

Grid Edit Component
Now you can create and edit related records in a dynamic grid component in any New and Edit pages. Simply drop the "Grid Edit" component into any New or Edit page and save your changes. Then click "Configure" to select which fields should be used as columns in the Grid.

Grid Edit allows you to create multiple related records at the same time you are creating a parent record. For example, when creating a Purchase Order you might use a Grid Edit component to add an arbitrary number of Line Item records associated with the PO you are creating. (We will cover this new component in more detail in a future post.)

Filter by Related Fields
In all Views, Charts, Reports and anywhere else you can filter data in Rollbase you can now also filter on related field values. For example, suppose you have a Customer object related to a Partner object and the Partner object has a User lookup field called Partner Owners. Now Rollbase will let you create a filtered Customers View filtered by Partner Owners. This seamingly small addition greatly broadens the ways data can be filtered in Rollbase.

Ability to Filter by Viewed/UnViewed and Flagged/Unflagged
Up until recently you could not search for or define filters to find or hide records that have been viewed, not viewed, flagged or not flagged. This is now available in the filter mechanism for Views, Charts, Reports and object-specific Search.

ZIP Code Radius Search
The object-specific search page for each Object with the "Location" attribute now includes a new ZIP code radius search capability allowing you to find records within a certain mile-based radius of any given US ZIP code. This can be useful for finding nearby leads, contacts, etc.

Global Portal Pages
All portal pages can now be shared among any number of portals. For example, you may want to use the same New Lead form in three different portals without having to duplicate it. Rollbase now allows you to assign portal pages to the specific group of portals you'd like to use them in.

Document Template based Reports
Rollbase now allows you to go beyond 1, 2 and 3 layer Tabular reports to build custom document (HTML, TXT Word and Excel) templates to be used for report generation. Using a robust set of merge fields including filterable functions such as SUM, COUNT, etc, Rollbase now provides a powerful mechanism for generating reports in a format specific to each customer's requirements. (We will cover this new functionality in more detail in a future post due to the extensive merge field options available and the virtually limitless display and formatting capabilities.)

Organization Management: Enabling Small, Medium and Large-scale Implementations

As a Rollbase user you may have noticed that four new Object definitions have recently appeared in your account: Location, Department, Function and Group. In addition, as of last week a new Organization Management application has been published to the Application Directory to provide a simple way to manage these new features.

The Location, Department and Function objects are somewhat special new objects in Rollbase. Not only do they allow you full control over fields, pages, views, workflow, etc (as with any other object definition in Rollbase), they also come with special hierarchical view components providing an easy way to visualize the structure of any sized organization -- whether you are managing a small business are a global company with over 10,000 employees.

By enabling the new "Organization" attribute in any of your object definitions, you can assign data records to specific positions in any of these hierarchies. This in turn determines who can access these records based on what Groups your users are assigned to.

The Group object is also a new object definition with some unique capabilities, the most important of which is its capability to restrict specific portions of the Location, Department and Function hierarchies that a set of users can have access to.

For example you might create different Groups for Sales Managers in US, Canada, APAC, EMEA, etc. While users assigned to these Groups may have the same Role and User-specific permissions, they will only be able to access data associated with different portions of the hierarchies based on their Group asignments.

Each user can be assigned to any number of Groups (you will now see a new "Groups" picklist associated with your User object definition for this purpose). In this way you can model complex organizational structures and leverage these structures to segment data access for tens, hundreds and even thousands of users in an intuitive, scalable, and easy to manage way. The below screenshot shows an example hierarchy of Functions in a fictitious organization:

 It is helpful to think of Groups as a way to restrict access to any Rollbase data for a particular set of users before any Role and User specific permissions are applied. With these additions there are now several layers of permission management available to enable very simple as well as more sophisticated, larger-scale Rollbase implementations.

All of this functionality is now available to every Rollbase user and has been automatically added to your account using our new Managed Applications capabilities. For any users wishing to explore this further, we recommend installing the Organization Management application into your account.

New Features: Custom Field Validation, Field-level Permissions, 3-Column Layout, Workflow Processes, Heirarchical App Navigation, etc

Over the past two weeks a number of significant new features and enhancements have been released, some of which we've highlighted in this post:

Custom Field Validation

Many of you have been looking forward to more control over field validation and it is finally here. Now, as with formulas and workflow event conditions, you can use the full power of JavaScript to define validation rules that are as simple or as sophisticated as your business needs demand.

While many fields already allowed you to specify some validation rules such as a text field mask or
bounds for a numeric field, until now you could not write your own. Next to each field you will now see a new link called "Validation" which allows you to define a custom JavaScript-based formula.

The syntax of validation formulas is the same as that used to define Formula fields and Workflow Event conditions. See the Rollbase Formula Guide for more information.

Returning any non-null String indicates an error and that String will be displayed to the user as a field-level error as shown here:

Field-level Permissions

Until now Rollbase did not allow you to define permissions for individual object fields. Now you will find a new "Permissions" link next to each field providing a way to specify whether any given role can see that field, and if they can see it, whether or not it should always be read-only for users with that role. This provides much more fine-grained access control over your data structures.

3-Column Layout

Previously in Rollbase you could organize page sections into one or two-column layouts, but three-column layouts were not possible. We've now expanded the page editor and backend page rendering mechanism to support 1, 2, and 3-column layouts as shown here:

Workflow Processes

Rollbase Workflow Statuses, Actions and most significantly Events provide a broad palette of options for designing both user-driven as well as automated business processes. However, previous to this weekend's update there was no way to allow more than a single user-driven workflow process per object definition. This might be limiting for companies with different processes for say new employees depending on the department they've been hired into, or asset requests depending on asset type.

Now all Objects have a new component called Workflow Processes. Each Workflow Process represents a sequence of Statuses and Actions that records can be moved through. Every object with the "Workflow" attribute now has a new field corresponding to this called "Workflow Process" allowing you to select or pre-populate new records with the appropriate Workflow Process definition. When a particular process is selected, the "Workflow Status" field will only allow selection of statuses associated with the selected process. In this way, you can support any number of workflow processes for any object definition.

Hierarchical Application Navigation

In the spirit of Web 2.0 we've been focusing on ways to reduce the number of clicks it takes to get where you need to go in any Rollbase application. Many of you may have already noticed the newly expanded "Applications" sidebar component allowing you to drill down to any major function within an application from here rather than by navigating from page to page. This was a user-requested feature that is already saving us time internally.

Along with this we've also introduced the notion of page children, allowing you to create new pages and attach them to parent pages, providing a way to create an application hierarchy deeper than the default three levels (any depth is now possible).

Custom OnLoad JavaScript for Pages

Now you can define any JavaScript to run on a page's OnLoad event (i.e. when the page has been fully rendered by the browser). This applies to both back-end application and portal pages. You will find a new "OnLoad" action next to each Page in an Object's details page. This is one of the first steps we've taken toward providing Rollbase app developers with more dynamic JavaScript-based control over forms. Stay tuned for field-level event control capabilities in a future release.

Portal Cloning

Entire Portals can now be cloned, allowing you to make a copy of an existing portal that may need small modifications for a unique but similar purpose. Rather than re-building much of the same functionality from scratch, you can use the "Clone" action next to each Portal to make a full copy.

Portal Page Synchronization

The recent page synchronization feature has been popular for users managing pages with large numbers of fields. However, this only applied to back-end application pages. Users managing multiple Portal pages had no way of synchronizing page changes until now. The "Save & Synchronize" button is now available when editing object-specific Portal pages.

Setup Filters for Easier Application Management

Now Rollbase Administrators can filter the Objects, Tabs, Portals and Permissions pages by Application, providing a way to narrow in on the appropriate application components and related permissions much faster by selecting an application. This is another user-suggested feature that is already saving us time internally. As shown here, a new picklist appears at the top of the Objects page allowing you to narrow your view to only Objects associated with the selected Application:

What is a Rollbase Application? (Part 3: Relationships)

In Part 1 we summarized the basic components of Rollbase Objects and in Part 2 we took a quick look at Fields which are the primary building block of Objects. Beyond fields the most important Object components are Relationships.

Relationships are established between two objects as a way to connect different types of data in your applications. For example, lets say we're building an application to create Quotes which consist of Quote Line Items, where each Quote Line Item is associated with a specific Product. In this example a Quote object is related to a Quote Line Item object, and the Quote Line Item object is related to a Product object. Since each Quote has many Quote Line Items, we say there is a "One to Many" relationship between the Quote and Quote Line Item objects. Similarly, since each Quote Line Item only has one Product associated with it, but each Product can be used in any number of Quote Line Items, there is a "Many to One" relationship between Quote Line Item and Product.

Note: This "One to Many", "Many to One", "One to One", or "Many to Many" terminology is referred to as the Cardinality of the relationship.

By creating relationships between objects in Rollbase you can rapidly model sophisticated business applications with simple or complex interdependencies. Once a relationship is established, information about that relationship can be used to customize pages, views, templates, charts, reports and many other application components based on your application's needs. For example, in the screenshot below we're showing a Quote View page with a Related View component displaying all of the Quote Line Items associated with a particular quote record via a relationship. This Related View also demonstrates how each Quote Line Item is displaying information about related Product records here and we are able to execute formula-based calculations on fields from multiple related objects.

As another example, below we are showing a spreadsheet generated from a Document Template associated with the Quote object. This template was constructed from merge fields using Quote fields and fields from the related Quote Line Item object definition, as well as fields from other objects such as Customer and Account.

We will discuss Document Templates in a future post, but suffice it to say here, like many other object components they allow us to loop through related items and use information about each item to generate an appropriate result -- in this case an Excel Spreadsheet showing all line items, subtotals, totals, etc. A similar output could be just as easily generated in the form of a Word document or rich HTML email. None of this would be possible without Relationships.

When creating a relationship in Rollbase you are first presented with a list of object definitions to choose from. Choose the object you want to establish a relationship with (don't worry about the complex implications of creating multiple relationships between the same objects, Rollbase will handle this for you under the covers). Once you select the target object you'll need to specify whether the relationship is a Simple Relationship or a Complex Relationship.

Simple Relationships

Simple relationships are direct relationships between two objects. For example a simple relationship created between object A and object B means that records of type A can directly reference records of type B and vice versa.

When defining a new Simple relationship you must define relationship properties, cardinality, orphan records control and cloning control settings (discussed below). Relationship properties require you to assign singular and plural names for each side of the relationship, as well as a unique integration name. For example, if you are creating a relationship between Quote and User objects, you might use “Owner” and “Owners” to represent the user side of the relationship.

Relationship cardinality determines whether records of each type can have one or more than one related record. You can select One-to-One, One-to-Many, Many-to-One, Many-to-Many.

Complex Relationships

Complex relationships are used in cases where information about the relationship itself is required to be stored and managed. In our example above, a Quote Line Item essentially represents a complex relationship between Quote and Product objects in order to manage relationship data such as Quantity.

When you create a complex relationship a new object definition is automatically created to represent the relationship between the source and target objects. Simple relationships are then created between the source object and the intermediate object, and between the intermediate object and the target object. In this way you can create fields and other components in the intermediate object to store as much information about the relationship as you need.

Orphan Records Control

Orphan records control allows you to specify whether or not related records get deleted whenever a parent record is deleted. For example if we delete a Quote we might also want to delete all of the related Quote Line Item records as well. But the opposite case is not true, that is if we delete a Quote Line Item we do not want to delete the related Quote record. Rollbase allows you to control this kind of behavior for each relationship.

Cloning Control

Cloning control allows you to specify whether or not related records get cloned whenever the parent record is cloned. For example if we clone a Quote we might also want to clone all of the related Quote Line Item records as well. But the opposite case is not true, that is if we clone a Quote Line Item we do not want to clone the related Quote record. Rollbase allows you to control this kind of behavior for each relationship.

Lookup Fields

When creating a new relationship Rollbase will also create Lookup fields and Related View components for each object. Lookup fields are used to select one or more related object records when editing or creating a new record.

By default Lookup fields allow you to pick one or more records by displaying a Selector Page in a popup (we will discuss selector Pages and popups in a future post). However, often times it is faster and more convenient to allow users to select records using a picklist or multi-select picklist. Rollbase allows you to change whether a Lookup field displays as a popup selector or a picklist/multi-select picklist via a page level property.

Related Views

Related Views are used to display a list of related records for objects with One-to-Many or Many-to-Many relationships. For example, the Quote View page shown in the beginning of this post contains a Related View component that displays all related Quote Line Item records. Related Views are identical to View components only they are inherently filtered by the relationship established between the object record being viewed and its related records (we will discuss Views and Related Views in more detail in a future post).

Although we have only presented a few small examples of how Relationships can be used here, they are a critical component of almost every Rollbase application you will install or buld and are pre-requisites for many advanced features such as Multi-layer Reporting, Workflow Event Conditions, Formula Fields, Templates, etc. Stay tuned for Part 4 where we will introduce Object Pages and the Rollbase Page Editor.

What is a Rollbase Application? (Part 2: Fields)

In Part 1 we introduced Rollbase applications and took a brief look at Objects and their components, where we described Fields as follows:

Fields are the basic building block of object definitions. Objects can have an arbitrary number of fields associated with them. Fields are used in Pages, Views, Charts and other object components to display and input object data. Fields determine what kind of data is stored with each object record. If you think of an object definition kind of like a spreadsheet or a database table, a field is analogous to a column.

For example, a Product object might have fields for Name, Description, Unit Price, Model #, etc. When defining Objects in Rollbase one of the first things you need to do is think about all of the fields you need to create for that Object along with the type of data each field needs to store.

Rollbase allows you to pick from up to 25 different types when creating your fields. In the above example Unit Price might be a Currency field and Model # might be a Text Field.

STANDARD FIELD TYPES

• Checkbox: Users can select a Checked (true) or Unchecked (false) value.
• Currency: Users can enter a dollar or other currency amount.
• Date: Users can enter a date or pick a date from a calendar popup.
• Date/Time: Users can enter a date and a time, or pick a date from a calendar popup (when a date is selected from the calendar popup, that date and the current time are entered into the Date/Time field).
• Decimal: Users can enter any number including decimals. You can optionally define a maximum number of decimal places.
• Email: Users can enter an email address which is checked to ensure that it is a valid format.
• Integer: Users can enter any number (without decimals).
• Percent: Users can enter a percentage number including decimals, % sign is automatically added.
• Picklist: Users can select a value from a list of values defined by you.
• Picklist (Multi-Select): Users can select any number of values from a list of values defined by you.
• Text: Users can enter any combination of characters. You can optionally define an input mask to enforce certain kinds of input.
• Text Area: Users can enter multiple lines of text (you can set a maximum limit of up to 32,000 characters). You can optionally enable a rich text editor so users can enter text as formatted HTML.
• URL: Users can enter any website address.
  

ADVANCED FIELD TYPES

• Auto-Number: An automatically generated sequential number or code that uses a display format defined by you. This number is incremented for each new record created.
• File: Users can upload a file which can be accessible through this field, and optionally indexed as part of the search engine. You can specify a maximum size for files from 128KB up to 2MB.
• Image: Users can upload an image which will be accessible through this field. You can specify a maximum size for images from 128KB up to 2MB.
• Shared Image: You can upload an image to be shared as a merge field in any object pages and templates. Shared images are also stored and distributed with published applications.
• Formula: A non-editable field that is automatically populated from a formula expression defined by you. A formula field is automatically updated when any of the fields used in the expression change value.
• Template: A non-editable text field that is automatically populated from a template expression defined by you.
• Document Template: A link which generates a document on the fly using a pre-defined document template (Word, Excel, Text, HTML, etc)
• Related Field: Value of a field from a related object
• Integration Link: A custom link to integrate Rollbase data with external URLs, your intranet, or other systems.

PORTAL-SPECIFIC FIELD TYPES

• Captcha Image: Require that the user type the letters of a distorted image to ensure that the user is in fact a human rather than a computer. Form submission will not work if the entry is not correct.
• Hidden Input: Capture a parameters from the original URL such as a campaign id, source name or keyword.
• IP Address: Capture and resolve the IP address of portal visitors.

Each field has a set of properties and advanced properties associated with it that affect global field behavior. For example when creating a field of type Currency, the following properties are available:

Based on the field's type you will see a different set of properties and available advanced properties. For example, many fields allow you to "Index this field as part of the text search engine," which tells Rollbase to make this part of the global search engine (we will discuss searching in more detail in a future post). You can also "Track all changes to this field in each record's Audit Trail for a complete historical log." This is particularly useful for compliance purposes such as SOX, HIPPA, etc.

Fields also have a few other properties such as description and integration name which is used as a unique way to reference the field in Templates, Formulas, Merge Fields, and via Rollbase Web APIs.

Once a field is created it can be added to any object and portal Pages and it will be displayed as expected based on the field's type. For example when added to any form pages a Currency field will be displayed as a text box that only allows input of a valid currency value. Rollbase enforces valid field values via server-side validation.

Fields can be created manually when working with Object definitions in the Rollbase Setup area, or they can be created on the fly from within the Rollbase Page Editor (dynamic field creation from within the page editor is a recently completed feature we will be covering in an upcoming post).

Each field's global properties will be enforced at the individual page level. However, you can also apply page-specific properties to fields from within the editor to affect local field behavior on that page only. For example, page-specific properties for a Text Area field include Required and Read Only as well as Rows and Columns allowing you to dynamically change its size on that page.

Beyond Pages, fields are used in Views, Charts, Reports, Advanced Search, Templates, Portals, HTML and Script components, and many other places throughout Rollbase. Understanding fields and their numerous uses in your applications sets the stage for building objects with capabilities to manage virtually any kind of business data.

Stay tuned for Part 3 where we will introduce Object Relationships, the fundamental links between Objects that are required for building sophisticated business applications in Rollbase.