Chat for Quick Base

Chat for Quick Base

Inspiration

Trinity uses chat extensively. But chats associated with projects or clients (think CRM) are lost or disconnected from the Quick Base apps that we use constantly during our QSP work. What if we could build real time chat right into Quick Base?

What it does

Brings real time chat capabilities to any Quick Base application. Shows the user only the records they are associated with (Projects, Clients, etc.). Shows the user those that are actually online using Quick Base. Displays the number of unread chat messages.

How we built it

Developed using Quick Base, Quick Base XML API and a Chrome Extension.

Challenges we ran into

First time building a Chrome Extension and ran into various challenges of how to build a Chrome Extension for real time communications.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is truly real time using web sockets!

What we learned

How to maintain state across various browser windows and tabs as a user would normally move around. A great challenge of our skills that extended our capabilities to provide great Quick Base solutions for clients.

What's next for Chat for Quick Base

Full productization to sell to clients that would like the chat capabilities for their Quick Base applications. Future enhancements include:

"@" capability
Sound indicators when messages come in
Twilio text messaging for off line users
Configuration capabilities of the Chrome extension (this is presently hard coded to one app in the Trinity realm)