Knack's Next-Gen Database Platform: Let's Check a Few Things Out

I’m writing this from a beautiful lake in Guatemala, surrounded by mountains and hoping the audio from my video still turns out okay. But let’s jump straight into today’s topic: Knack's Next-Gen Platform.

This isn’t meant to be a formal review—more like a field journal of discoveries, quirks, and “huh?” moments as someone who has spent years building in Classic and is now stepping into Next-Gen with some real client work.

If you’re coming from Classic, these are the things you’ll probably bump into too.

The First Head-Scratcher: Rich Text Formatting

One of the first things that caught me off guard was how rich text blocks work.

In Classic, I could drop in a simple line divider or some spaced text without a problem. But in Next-Gen, every individual content piece comes wrapped in its own container and border.

That means if I want just a simple line between two items, I can’t drop it in cleanly. I get a whole bordered block instead.

The only workaround I’ve found so far? Manually matching background colors and removing shadows using hex values. It works, but… it feels like it shouldn’t be necessary.

Tables: Auto-Added Elements & Missing Metrics

Next, I jumped into tables.

Auto-Added “Edit” Button

Whenever you add a table, Next-Gen inserts an “edit in detail” button automatically. Personally, I’m not a fan—it ends up in places I don’t want, and I usually place “detail” links far left so things don’t spill horizontally. For now, I just have to deal with it.

Where Did the Total Record Count Go?

In Classic, table headers showed you the number of records right at the top. Now the count is only at the very bottom.

If you’re grouping records, you do get a group count, which is nice. But if you want a total count, you’ve got to scroll all the way down. I haven’t found a way to move it back up.

There are new collapse/expand options for grouped tables. That part is actually pretty slick.

User Roles: Why Isn’t My Page Changing?

This one threw me off for a bit.

I removed a user role from my account—specifically “International Rep”—and refreshed the page. The role-specific menu item still showed up.

At first I thought:“Did they change how page access works?”

Nope.

In Next-Gen, user-role updates don’t take effect until you log out and log back in. Once I did that, the menu corrected itself.

Not a huge deal, but easy to get tripped up on.

Horizontal Navigation: Nice Touch, But Needs Setup

Next-Gen gives you an option for horizontal navigation, which is new and pretty cool.

However, you can’t modify the default app navigation—you have to build your own. I’ll play with that more in a future deep dive.

Custom Code: My Snippet Library Is Basically Grounded

This one hurts.

I have a big library of code snippets I use to tweak form layouts, move instructions above fields, apply italics, clean spacing—you name it.

Right now, in Knack's Next Gen, I can’t use most of that.

For example, I have a snippet that pulls field instructions into a better location (between the label and the input). That’s not usable in the new environment yet.

Over time, we’ll get new approaches and new libraries, but at the moment, this slows me down.

Using Fields More Than Once in a Table? Not Anymore.

Here’s another limitation.

In Classic, when building a table or detail view, you could use the same field multiple times. I used this a lot when grouping—for example, grouping by year and then repeating the year again as a column header so it wouldn’t disappear when scrolling.

In Next-Gen? You can only use each field once per table. No duplicates allowed.

I’m hoping this changes, because the use cases are real.

Creating Forms: Button Linking Is No Longer One Click

This change isn’t huge, but it’s noticeable.

In Classic, when you create a form, there was an option to “link this form to menu,” which instantly turned it into a button.

In Next-Gen, that option is gone.

Now you have to:

1. Add a link group (which creates a button)

2. Configure that button to link to your form

3. Then manually place the form underneath

   
   

More steps. Not the end of the world, but it slows down the quick-build flow Classic users are used to.

OK, that about it for this one. I'm actually digging the new builder, just need to get used to it more.

One important thing to note: All new apps are now required to use Next Gen.There’s no toggle back to Classic. Maybe support can switch it for special cases, but at this point, Next-Gen is the default moving forward.

I’ll be sharing more observations as I build more apps in it.

Thanks for reading—and stay tuned for more discoveries from Guatemala and beyond.

Interested in my Knack database services? ... Book a call with me here: https://calendly.com/daveparrish/callwithdave