Changelog

We’re excited to release our biggest update ever to Basedash. We’re introducing two new major features, along with many other smaller features and improvements.

We made a quick 5 minute video showing off the full process of building an internal app with actions.

We’re also live on Product Hunt with these changes, join the discussion here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/basedash-apps-actions

Apps

Apps are a new way to organize your views + queries. Each app can have its own set of members, so you can create one for each team in your company. You can also create sections within apps to organize your pages further.

With apps, we’re now letting different teams within the same company work together, while still providing robust permissioning and access controls. Some ideas of apps that you can create:

• Engineering
• Support/CX
• Sales
• Investor metrics
• Content moderation

Actions

With actions, for the first time, we’re expanding Basedash beyond the database.

You can create actions to integrate with any third-party service with an API. You and your teammates can trigger actions to call an API (either internal or external) with the click of a button. Actions can also be triggered on database records, allowing you to take action directly on your data.

Before creating an action, you need to create a connection to an API. We have some templates for common third-party APIs, but you can always add your own.

Some ideas of what you can do with actions:

• Send an email to a user through SendGrid
• Refund a purchase on Stripe
• Trigger a workflow on Zapier/Make
• Update records through your internal API for complex validation
• Create an order on Shopify
• Update a customer on Salesforce/Hubspot

Other features

Pricing

We’ve updated our pricing to remove the limit on number of members and number of connections. You’re now free to add as many members as you’d like on any plan, including the free plan.

See our updated pricing page here: https://www.basedash.com/pricing

Sections

You can add sections to further organize your apps. Sections contain pages, and show up in the sidebar so you can easily find the page you’re looking for.

Form layout

We added a new layout type that only allows users to create new records in a database table. When this layout is selected, all other layouts will be disabled for that collection page (to prevent viewing and editing of existing data).

Display image

You can now explicitly set a display image on your collection pages. This image shows up in both list and card layouts, as well as in the record details panel. This is incredibly useful for data that revolves around images, such as users, products, properties, or companies.

Collection page description

You can now set a description on a collection page, which will show up in the record details panel when no records are selected. You can use this to describe how a collection page should be used by users.

Collection page permissions

You can now set certain permissions directly on a collection page:

• Record creation
• Record deletion
• Record editing
• CSV exporting

These are all enabled by default, but you can disable them by editing a collection page and navigating to the “Info” tab.

Sidebar search

You can now search for pages directly from the sidebar. Just hit ‘/’ and start typing to filter items in the sidebar.

Other improvements and fixes

• Improved responsiveness of fields
• Fixed some hidden attributes still appearing when creating a record
• Updated command bar to allow navigation to pages within an app
• Fixed loading spinner showing on collection pages unnecessarily
• Updated styling of login and signup pages
• Updated animation of modals and dialogs
• Improved precedence of keyboard shortcuts depending on focus
• Added link for new users to join the demo workspace directly
• Added an empty state to list and card layouts
• Added information about when a collection page was created and last updated
• Changed the default collection page layout from table to list
• Improved styling of date picker in dark mode
• Improved layout of rows in list layout
• Removed restriction of primary attribute always showing as the first column in a table
• Improve interface for adding and removing attributes in a collection page
• Update styling of switch inputs
• Added new icons to some inputs
• Removed roles. Apps provide all the same functionality, plus allow for more organization of pages
• Improved support for collection pages with many columns
• Improved stability of keyboard navigation in list and card layouts
• Added field to set an icon on collection pages and queries within edit mode
• Removed navigation footer on mobile

‍

Connection summary

After connecting a database, we now show you all the steps we take to humanize your data in Basedash, including setting primary attributes, obscuring personally identifiable information, and prettifying table and column names.

You can review your database schema, and compare the humanizations made in Basedash. Note that we don’t make any changes to your database schema itself, just the way it’s

Sidebar search

You can now search the contents of any sidebar in the app to quickly find the page you’re looking for. You can also focus the search bar immediately with the keyboard shortcut “/”.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added tabs to view settings sidebar
• Added the ability to delete records on tables with no primary key
• Added support for real-time avatar list of more than 3 users
• Moved view icon switcher to view settings
• Moved query icon switcher to query settings
• Moved ‘remove connection’ flow to a modal from the connection settings
• Updated URL paths for connection-related pages
• Updated styling of outlined buttons
• Fixed workspace switcher text color
• Fixed the activity page crashing the app in rare cases
• Fixed accessing favorited views from the Home tab
• Fixed connections not being removed after being deleted by another user
• Fixed roles not being removed after being deleted by another user
• Fixed new connections not immediately appearing in the sidebar

Card layout

We’re excited to launch our third ever layout type for views. It’s called Card layout.

Card layout is great for data that revolves around images, like users, companies, and products. It shows each record as a card with a prominent image and any other important info that you choose to be visible.

We think that card layout fits in nicely with our other two layouts, table and list, in letting you build the perfect admin dashboard for your data.

Try it out by creating a view and selecting “Card” as the layout. You can get an image to show up by clicking an image URL attribute in the view settings sidebar, and setting “display as” to image.

List layout images

Like with Card layout, you can also now show images in your list layouts. They’ll show up in the list so you can easily identify records based on their image.

Page descriptions

We also added quick descriptions to each top-level page to describe how each primitive in Basedash works. You can jump straight to the docs page for each page, and see quick video tutorials on how to do basic tasks.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added animations and transitions to various components
• Added a progress bar to the welcome flow
• Added a progress bar to the new connection flow
• Improved the flow for trying to create view when at the limit
• Improved feature flag system to allow users to access beta features
• Improved placeholder UI for home page favorite cards
• Updated styling of buttons
• Updated cards on home page to use the view’s base table name instead of “records”
• Updated list layout to allow any column to be shown first in the list
• Updated placement of “Update credentials” button
• Fixed views from the old workspace showing up after logging out and logging in as a new user
• Fixed persistent loading screen when trying to load a workspace that no longer exists
• Fixed alignment of traffic light icons on macOS desktop app
• Fixed table column header width sometimes not matching the rest of the column
• Fixed attribute dropdown in filter popover being too big
• Fixed Basehash font not loading for obscured attributes

Creation and deletion permissions

You can now set permissions on individual views to prevent record creation and deletion. This lets you create views for members of your team that should only have access to certain actions on your data.

You also still set database-level permissions to limit view and edit access on specific tables or columns.

Other improvements and fixes

• Fixed tabbing through records in the list layout
• Fixed filtering on UUID columns
• Fixed button styling when adding a connection
• Fixed crash when navigating from one query to another
• Fixed password in credentials page not showing the correct value
• Improved error message when attempting to update credentials
• Updated indentation on connections sidebar
• Removed auto-focus on the first record in list layout

Improved list layout

We introduced the List layout last year, as our second ever layout type (after the humble table). This week, we’re shipping big improvements to the list layout that make it much more functional and beautiful.

First, we totally revamped the visuals of the list layout to make it look nicer. This includes better hierarchy, improved text styling, and cleaner element spacing.

Then, we improved the responsiveness of the list by allowing elements from a single record to stack. This makes the list layout experience much nicer on mobile, but also lets you expand the record details to take up the majority of the canvas on desktop.

Finally, we added the ability to select all records from the list layout for easier mass deletions.

Let us know what you think about the new list layout improvements in our Slack community here: https://www.basedash.com/community

UUID support

We also added better support for tables that use UUIDs as their primary key. Now, when creating a record in one of these tables, we’ll automatically generate a UUID to use as the primary key. You can always override the value with your own if need be.

Other improvements and fixes

• Updated styling of the top bar on desktop
• Fixed foreign keys and enums not loading when starting a session on a view
• Added pagination to activity page
• Updated “favorite” icon
• Updated view layouts to be user-specific preferences, rather than tied to the view
• Fixed deleted views & queries still showing in the sidebar
• Improved performance of favoriting views & queries
• Updated tables to show their display name in the header, rather than the raw name
• Fixed some views not showing up when adding views to a role
• Added the ability to edit values in views with joins
• Improved email sequence showing off features for new users
• Fixed link to record from edits in the activity feed
• Changed ordering of views to put published before drafts
• Added database-specific icons in the Connections page sidebar
• Fixed icon on tables
• Added icons to profile dropdown
• Fixed boolean filters showing an unnecessary dropdown
• Improved responsiveness of inputs in record details panel
• Fixed redirection to welcome flow when trying to access the signup page while already authenticated
• Fixed reloading records not showing a loading spinner
• Fixed sidebar not showing tables immediately after connecting a database
• Improved styling of list items in Roles settings
• Added ability to add roles to a view from the view’s settings
• Enabled SSL by default on Supabase databases

Record creation form

With the introduction of our new details panel last month, we decided to make use of it and improve the record creation experience.

The old method of creating records had a couple issues:

1. It was only possible through the table layout
2. It didn’t work for views where a required column was hidden
3. It required a lot of horizontal scrolling for tables with many columns

Our new method puts the record creation experience in the details panel, in a simple form. We split the attributes into two sections: Required and Optional. This makes it easy to skim through just the required fields to quickly create records.

We also added the ability to “Create more”, which keeps the record creation form open, allowing you to create many records in quick succession.

As usual, the feature includes full keyboard navigation and was built with accessibility in mind.

Other improvements and fixes

• Updated default for Supabase databases to have SSL enabled
• Fixed alignment of tooltips with content
• Fixed deleted views appearing in view creation UI
• Fixed null booleans not being editable

New filtering system

We’ve implemented a new system for how filters are applied and persisted for views for different users. This involves a few different changes:

• Filters applied from a view no longer alter the root filters on the view, they only apply for the current user
• These non-root filters can be applied by any user, regardless of permission level (e.g. Admin, Can edit, Can view)
• Non-root filters are persisted across sessions per-user
• Non-root filters can be easily reset
• Non-root filters are applied to the URL, so you can easily share your current filters with your teammates

Together, these changes mean that anyone can explore data on their own within Basedash, without inadvertently affecting what other users are seeing. We think that this will open up the ability for users to more freely explore and edit data as needed.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added interface to show member limit when inviting a member
• Updated demo database
• Fixed Slack alerts
• Fixed views not being able to be created in some cases
• Fixed table layout UI for views with large row heights
• Improved responsiveness in views and collections
• Improved responsiveness of record details panel
• Improved error messages when data fails to load
• Improved filtering UI for enum columns
• Improve error messages when connecting a database
• Added Easter egg in changelog

Improved Views and Data pages

Today we’re shipping a brand new experience to the Views and Data pages that shows you all of your views and collections in a searchable list, complete with full keyboard navigation. Before today, this list was only available after searching, but now the list will show up by default when you open the page.

You can take actions on views directly like favoriting, or right click on a view to quickly edit or delete it.

We’ve also added a Recents section so that you can quickly open up a view or collection that you had open recently.

Improved mobile responsiveness

From early on, we decided to build Basedash to support mobile devices, so that you can quickly monitor and make quick edits on-the-go. While mobile doesn’t make up the bulk of usage, it’s really important for use cases that come up every once in a while.

We just made a big update to our UI responsiveness to improve the experience on mobile. That includes:

• Updated breakpoints for key UI changes
• Full-width sidebar
• Addition of workspace switcher

3x faster startup performance

After some deep digging into our app startup code, we managed to speed up the startup time for the app by 3x. This means that you’ll be able to jump into views and start editing way faster than before.

Performance is one of our top priorities while building Basedash. If you notice anything that doesn’t feel lightning fast, please let us know in our Slack community.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added confirmation dialog before deleting records
• Added record details panel to view settings
• Added support for filtering on enum columns
• Added support for tables with primary composite keys
• Added support for tables with no primary key
• Updated sizing of various UI elements across the app
• Updated SQL views to reset pagination after re-running a query
• Improved styling of JSON and rich text cells in table layout
• Fixed bug preventing editing of the first cell when creating a new record in table layout
• Fixed record details header appearing on view creation page
• Fixed view limit callout not being shown when at the limit
• Fixed “Connect a data source” CTA not being hidden immediately after connecting a data source
• Fixed logging out causing a redirect loop
• Fixed new record row not showing “default” on columns with default values
• Fixed markdown cells removing consecutive line breaks

Improved details panel

Last year, we introduced List layout to Basedash, which is an alternate way of viewing your data as a simple list, with a panel for viewing details and editing the record. Today, we’re shipping a suite of improvements to the details panel.

First, we’re adding the panel to the Table layout, and tables in the Data tab. With List layout, we were forced to design an interface for editing the data of a single record. After using it in List layout for a year, we realized that the form-based layout would be equally valuable in Table layout, where vertical screen real-estate is limited.

Next, we added the ability to resize and collapse the panel. We didn’t want to force the panel to take up horizontal screen real-estate on all views, so now you can decide when you want it open, and how much space you want it to take up.

Finally, we cleaned up the styling of the panel to make use of some of our new UI components and styles. The panel can also be opened on mobile devices now.

Here's a video of that panel in action:

Moving forward, this panel will act as a launch pad for a slew of upcoming features. We’re not ready to reveal these features yet, but if you’re interested, you can join the beta for them once they become ready by joining our Slack community.

Other improvements and fixes

• Reduced client bundle size to improve initial load performance
• Improved loading time performance on Safari
• Improved styling of permissions on the Members page
• Improved logic for when to show upgrade callout
• Added user emails to the Members page
• Removed back button from view builder header
• Updated icon in collection header from Database to Table
• Fixed joined table attributes not being available to add to a view until after refreshing the app
• Fixed SQL queries getting overwritten by other queries in some cases
• Fixed SQL queries containing colons or dollar signs failing
• Fixed icon colors on dark mode in role settings
• Fixed app crashing when opening views with rich text in list layout

Roles

Today we’re shipping a big new feature to help bigger teams manage access to views. Roles are custom groupings of users that can be assigned access to certain roles. Some ideas for roles that we’re using internally at Basedash are Engineering, Marketing, Support, Investors, Core team. The possibilities are endless.

Members are only be able to access views that are assigned a role they are part of. All other views are hidden and inaccessible. In a view, a member’s existing permissions (Can edit or Can view) determine whether they can make edits to the data.

Members of a workspace can be assigned multiple roles (e.g. Engineering + Support), and views can be assigned multiple roles too. By default, all new members are assigned the Everyone role, and you can choose to just use this if you don’t have complex access requirements.

We think that roles will make a big impact on how big teams use Basedash. You can try roles out now by opening the Roles page in your Basedash settings. Try creating a new role, assigning some members, and adding some views to it. You’ll probably also want to remove access to that view from the Everyone role.

Other improvements and fixes

• Added member limit progress bar to invite member modal
• Fixed theme picker styling
• Improved flow for downgrading plans
• Fixed rich text content overflowing beyond cells while editing
• Fixed rich text cells appearing below other cells while editing
• Fixed creating views on databases where the base table name exists in multiple schemas
• Fixed onboarding flow triggering twice for new users
• Fixed onboarding flow not triggering for users invited to a workspace
• Added page title to onboarding flow
• Fixed data sources not loading after switching workspaces for the first time