On the 14th of July, we held the inaugural Squirrel365 Experience. A virtual event with over 3 hrs of content exclusively for the Squirrel365 community. This online experience covered a wide range of topics, I’ve summarised a few of them below.

A squirrel project makeover

The idea for this session was to take a real-world example of a standard, vanilla-looking project and bring it to life.
We went inside the mind of a Squirrel designer and found out what they think about when it comes to making a user interface stand out. We learned that you don’t need to be a designer. By following the design basics, you can apply a set of rules to improve your project. And with a few simple techniques in Squirrel, this is easy.

Doing more with the Zapier Connector for Squirrel365

Mitch Lewis from Evaluator Group blew the audience away with his innovative use of Squirrels Zapier connector. Mitch showed how he connects Squirrel to Zapier, adding another dimension to their interactive quotation tool. Evaluator Groups customers can use the tool to generate a quote and have it emailed to them (as a PDF). The details are then saved in Hubspot so they can see who has been interacting with the tool and follow up on any leads.

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It’s an innovative example of how Zapiers 4000+ integrations can extend the capabilities of Squirrel.

Top tips with Donald MacCormick

For anyone who thinks they know Squirrel, this session had us thinking again. Diving into some of the lesser known Squirrel features (and time-saving tips and tricks), Donald demonstrated tip after tip for getting the most out of Squirrel. The buzz in the ‘virtual room’ was palpable as everybody learned something. Some of the great tips included:

• Keyboard shortcuts for whizzing around the spreadsheet
• Turning off real-time updates for better performance
• Clicking on the cell binding tooltip to jump to the cell/range in the spreadsheet
• Getting to the start screen by clicking the Squirrel icon in the top left of the designer
• Setting publishing settings on the project in the canvas properties.

A resounding success

For me personally, there were so many highlights. But, without a doubt, the biggest was seeing how passionate the Squirrel365 community are to learn and share their knowledge.

After such a successful first event, the Squirrel team are already thinking about the next Squirrel365 Experience. In the meantime, we have created the Squirrel365 Marketplace for add-ons. Soon we will be adding templates and resources. The marketplace provides a space to contribute to the Squirrel365 community by creating and publishing add-ons, templates and other resources.