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Update on the retirement of Application Webhooks UI and QB Actions

BrianCafferelli's avatar
BrianCafferelli
Quickbase Staff
8 months ago

Top of FormQB

NOTE: Since we originally published this article, we have updated the date when Application Webhooks UI and QB Actions will reach End of Support. The new date is June 30, 2025 – when both creating and editing actions and webhooks will be locked. Note that locking create and edit does not apply to Webhooks APIs or the Webhooks channel in Pipelines.  

 

Quickbase makes it easy to reduce repetitive tasks and orchestrate workflows, uniting disconnected data onto one platform. With Pipelines, business users can manage both automations and integrations in one place. And we have been hard at work enhancing our Pipelines capability based on your feedback. Now, as we continue to look toward the future, we must also evaluate the role of older and less flexible features like the Application Webhooks UI and Quickbase Actions. These two features will reach End of Support on June 30, 2025, and existing actions and UI-based webhooks will become read-only at that time.

 

What this change means for you

After June 30, 2025, the Application Webhooks UI and QB Actions will no longer be supported. At that time, there are some changes we are making to those features:

  • Any actions you’ve already created will continue to run. However, at that time they will become read-only, so you will not be able to edit them or create new ones.
  • Any webhooks you’ve already created will continue to run. However, at that time the ability to create or edit Application Webhooks through the UI will be disabled.
  • You will still be able to enable and disable existing actions and webhooks after this point.

We strongly recommend that you migrate any remaining actions and webhooks to use pipelines instead, which enable more powerful and flexible workflows.

If you are an app builder, you already have access to create pipelines. If you do not see the Pipelines link below, please contact your account administrator to get access.

 

 

The Pipelines Advantage

We have been continuously adding new capabilities and tools that make it easy for you to transition your workflow automations to our newer and more powerful Pipelines technology. Not only will this ensure that you don’t experience any disruption to your business or your processes, but it also opens the door to new workflow ideas that can connect across multiple systems.

  • Pipelines supports all QB Actions and Webhooks features – Pipelines supports all the features you’ve been leveraging within QB Actions and Webhooks, including the ability to query the previous value of a field.
  • Pipelines enables more sophisticated logic than Quickbase Actions and Webhooks – Pipelines supports more powerful business logic than QB Actions and Webhooks, including branching and looping, as well as parsing text.
  • Pipelines gives you the ability to scale workflow across systems – In addition to orchestrating workflow within your Quickbase ecosystem, Pipelines includes drag-and-drop integration with over 40 products including Outlook, Slack, and Sharepoint.

 

Recent Pipelines Improvements

We are making major improvements to Pipelines, which make it easier to build, enable more powerful pipelines, and make them easier to govern and manage.

 

 

Easier to build:

More powerful and reliable pipelines:

  • New integration channels for Fastfield and Snowflake
  • Improved Outlook channel enables replying to email thread
  • Improved Quickbase channel enables exporting records to CSV
  • Pipelines trigger up to 5x faster
  • Increased limit on outbound webhooks from 20/second to 50/second

 

Improved governance:

 

Focus areas for improving Pipelines

We’ve gotten feedback from many of you on Pipelines about what’s going well and where we have opportunity to improve. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Getting this perspective is essential to help us evolve our product and make sure we are serving the community well. Looking forward, we are exploring a number of Pipelines enhancements:

  • Support for official service accounts
  • New bulk trigger step
  • Initial trigger time improvements
  • Connection Central improvements

We plan to keep existing actions and webhooks running for the foreseeable future. If this changes, we will make sure to provide a reasonable amount of notice first.

Learn more

Updated 4 months ago
Version 4.0
  • ben_simon's avatar
    ben_simon
    Community Manager
    8 months ago

    Hi Everyone, if you are attempting to Add a comment here and unable to, it's likely due to a security setting in how your account was first configured. We'll be addressing this in our site maintenance on April 1st. In the meantime, if you have concerns over the announcement in this blog, you can share them in this discussion: 

    https://community.quickbase.com/discussion/bringing-attention-to-the-end-of-life-for-webhooks#bma069ed71-4ccd-4f47-882f-018e5c871027

  • BrianCafferelli's avatar
    BrianCafferelli
    Quickbase Staff
    8 months ago

    Hi everyone, thank you for the great feedback!

    I want to reiterate that we are exploring improvements to Pipelines to address sharing, bulk triggering, and trigger speed. From all we've heard from the community, it sounds like these are the primary concerns folks have at this point but we are definitely interested to hear about the experiences you've had with Pipelines so we can help set you up for success.

  • BrianCafferelli's avatar
    BrianCafferelli
    Quickbase Staff
    8 months ago

    Also, Jim you mentioned that the process of setting up a new pipeline feels slow to you. Can you tell me know about what you're seeing? I'm curious whether you have tried out our new pipeline designer. You may also be able to accelerate the setup by importing a pipeline via YAML.

  • JimHarrison's avatar
    JimHarrison
    Qrew Champion
    8 months ago

    "Also, Jim you mentioned that the process of setting up a new pipeline feels slow to you. Can you tell me know about what you're seeing? I'm curious whether you have tried out our new pipeline designer. You may also be able to accelerate the setup by importing a pipeline via YAML."

    First you have to log on to a service account using incognito mode. When you log in to the service account, you have to wait for the verification code from Quickbase. The verification code may or may not show up in your inbox in the ten minutes you have to enter the verification code.

    Once logged in there are about 400 Pipelines and you can only see the top 10 or so. Unless you know the exact name of the pipeline or it is tagged properly, there is no easy way to find the pipelines associated with a table or App. There is no way to organize the Pipelines into folders, which may feel archaic but it is the best way to organize large amounts of files. (at this point you are already testing the Webhook.)

    If you are adding a new pipeline, the first step wants you to pick an app. So the step has to query your realm and get a list of apps, this can take about 15 seconds. Then once you have selected the App, you have to select the table. The table load query can also take about 15 seconds.

    From there forward the process is easy. 

    Now you want to test. How do I test this thing without it changing every record in the table? How do I stop the Pipeline once it is started? I turned the pipeline on and it is slowly changing all the data in my table because I made a mistake and there is no way to stop the pipeline. 

    The pipeline environment needs to store all Apps and tables and fields in an organized visual manner. The visibility can be provisioned via User_Token. User_Tokens should also provision Users or Groups. I am a Realm Admin. I create a User_Token and add three builders to it, who can also see all the Pipelines in a folder structure in the Pipeline UI.

    This way if I am in the Pipelines environment and someone has added a pipeline with the agreed upon User_Token, I too can see that Pipeline. Maybe that user can set the User_Token to r/w or r only so it is under each builders control to hold or share.

    Finally Troubleshooting. The audit log is a bog. Each Pipeline needs its own Audit log container. The UI of the audit log needs to take up less space on the page. Users who are looking at the Audit log need to be able to see as much information in one screen as possible. The way it is currently set up, it looks like a social media page. You have to dig and expand to get to the details of each step. 

    In Pipelines, it's been long enough now that I have lost the will to live. My Webhook was done about an hour ago and I have moved on. Hopefully my pipeline doesn't fail because I will have no idea if it did. The email sent only displays a long number without any information. In a Webhook, I get an error. I know the App, the table and the error message. I can't clear the error but at least I know where to look. 

    Brian I hope this is enough information to answer your question. If you would like to meet and record my observations for further analysis feel free. I am certain Edi is aware of all these problems and is working his team into the ground to solve them but it's not ready. 

    As a reminder the New Style Reports still aren't working. New Style forms aren't working. Taking things that are mostly working away from your customers is questionable. It just seems to me that this decision should be reconsidered until the customers agree it is good enough to replace Webhooks. 

    We will have to write Webhooks into code pages so we can trigger Workato.

  • MikeT's avatar
    MikeT
    Qrew Trainee
    8 months ago

    Mark, 

    Tell him he should just use a Webhook. He will be done in 60 seconds :)