6/28/2022 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S11-E09

Duration: 55 minutes

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The BuiltOnAir Podcast is Sponsored by On2Air – Integrations and App extensions to run your business operations in Airtable.

In This Episode

Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast, the live show.  The BuiltOnAir Podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable world.

Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com. Join our community, join our Slack Channel, and meet your fellow Airtable fans.

Alli Alosa – Hi there! I’m Alli 🙂 I’m a fine artist turned “techie” with a passion for organization and automation. I’m also proud to be a Community Leader in the Airtable forum, and a co-host of the BuiltOnAir podcast. My favorite part about being an Airtable consultant and developer is that I get to talk with people from all sorts of industries, and each project is an opportunity to learn how a business works.

Kamille Parks – I am an Airtable Community Forums Leader and the developer behind the custom Airtable app “Scheduler”, one of the winning projects in the Airtable Custom Blocks Contest now widely available on the Marketplace. I focus on building simple scripts, automations, and custom apps for Airtable that streamline data entry and everyday workflows.

Dan Fellars – I am the Founder of Openside, On2Air, and BuiltOnAir. I love automation and software. When not coding the next feature of On2Air, I love spending time with my wife and kids and golfing.

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:00 –

Scripting Time – 00:34:24 –

Explore Scripting with “Understanding Async/Await”.

For beginners to Javascript, one thing that is difficult to understand is how/when to use asnyc/await. We will explain the concept and when to use them..

Audience Questions – 00:43:49 –

Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “Nested IF Referencing Multiple Fields with String Return”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille walks through how to manage nexted Ifs

Field Focus – 00:52:29 –

A deep dive into the Advanced Linked Record Filters – Airtable recently launched ability to select specific items within Linked Records as part of the filters 

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:00

Roundup of what’s happening in the Airtable communities – Airtable, BuiltOnAir, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Segment: Scripting Time

Start Time: 00:34:24

Scripting Time: Understanding Async/Await

Explore Scripting with “Understanding Async/Await”.

For beginners to Javascript, one thing that is difficult to understand is how/when to use asnyc/await. We will explain the concept and when to use them..

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:43:49

Airtable Question – Nested IF Referencing Multiple Fields with String Return

Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “Nested IF Referencing Multiple Fields with String Return”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille walks through how to manage nexted Ifs

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:52:29

Learn about the Advanced Linked Record Filters – Airtable recently launched ability to select specific items within Linked Records as part of the filters

A deep dive into the Advanced Linked Record Filters – Airtable recently launched ability to select specific items within Linked Records as part of the filters 

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir podcast,
[00:01:44] season eleven, episode nine.
[00:01:46] Good to be with you as always
[00:01:49] myself, Dan Fellars
[00:01:50] and Kamille and Alli are with
[00:01:52] us again. Welcome back.
[00:01:55] Good to have you with us.
[00:01:57] You got a new background behind you,
[00:02:00] shaking things up a bit for us
[00:02:02] a little bit
[00:02:04] downstairs in my living room today.
[00:02:07] Nice, very nice.
[00:02:08] So welcome everybody.
[00:02:09] We're glad you could join us
[00:02:10] every episode,
[00:02:11] we do four different segments.
[00:02:13] Keep you up to date on everything
[00:02:15] going on in the Airtable world.
[00:02:17] I'll go through quickly
[00:02:18] what we're gonna be
[00:02:19] talking about today.
[00:02:21] As always we'll go through
[00:02:22] all the different communities
[00:02:24] and share with you
[00:02:25] what's going on
[00:02:26] to keep you up to date
[00:02:27] then we will do a
[00:02:28] spotlight on On2Air, our primary sponsor.
[00:02:31] We will then do a Scripting Time getting
[00:02:34] into the code a little bit
[00:02:36] then we'll answer a question
[00:02:38] that was asked recently
[00:02:40] on the Airtable community
[00:02:42] and then a plug for our community
[00:02:45] and then finally
[00:02:47] we'll learn more about some
[00:02:49] new functionality that came to Airtable
[00:02:52] in the filters. So with that we will
[00:02:55] start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:57] is talking about the
[00:02:59] different highlights of
[00:03:00] communities and news from Airtable.
[00:03:03] So let's start, we'll just give a quick
[00:03:07] plug for the Interface Designer
[00:03:10] contest that is happening.
[00:03:12] We talked quite a bit
[00:03:13] about this last week
[00:03:15] or the week before
[00:03:16] so I won't go into too much detail but
[00:03:18] if you have something cool, worth sharing
[00:03:21] Alli I don't think you were on this,
[00:03:23] are you planning to
[00:03:24] to enter?
[00:03:27] Yeah, definitely.
[00:03:28] Alright, so there's money,
[00:03:31] free money going out.
[00:03:32] So there's three different
[00:03:34] categories, best design,
[00:03:37] best use case solution,
[00:03:38] and wildcard category.
[00:03:40] So you can submit
[00:03:41] for each category.
[00:03:43] So you can submit three different
[00:03:45] interfaces and likely get some
[00:03:48] cash prize out of that. So
[00:03:50] worth checking out
[00:03:52] it's due by the end of July,
[00:03:53] so you've still got a month left
[00:03:55] to submit for that.
[00:03:58] Alright. Airtable did put out,
[00:04:01] did make some changes.
[00:04:03] I think they've realized
[00:04:04] they do them Tuesday afternoon
[00:04:06] instead of Tuesday morning,
[00:04:08] although we might see
[00:04:09] an early Tuesday morning change that
[00:04:12] we might share with you.
[00:04:14] But one big change
[00:04:16] was apps are now extensions.
[00:04:18] So
[00:04:20] this we kinda knew
[00:04:21] this was coming.
[00:04:22] I don't think we knew
[00:04:23] exactly when it would,
[00:04:24] but it is now a change.
[00:04:27] So it's only change in name only.
[00:04:30] I don't think there
[00:04:31] was any real functionality
[00:04:33] that changed with this.
[00:04:36] so yeah, so now
[00:04:37] everything is called an extension
[00:04:40] in the marketplace.
[00:04:43] Yeah, so,
[00:04:45] you know, and this post
[00:04:46] goes over the history,
[00:04:48] they used to not exist.
[00:04:49] And then when they were added,
[00:04:51] they were called blocks. And then
[00:04:53] sometime after the blocks contest
[00:04:56] they were renamed to apps and then now
[00:04:59] they're being renamed to extensions.
[00:05:02] So this is,
[00:05:03] you know, hopefully the last name
[00:05:05] applied.
[00:05:07] I don't know,
[00:05:08] I think a lot of people weren't
[00:05:11] the biggest fans
[00:05:12] of the term app. I didn't mind it.
[00:05:15] But I think a lot of people consider
[00:05:18] the entirety of your Airtable the app.
[00:05:20] And so probably this move is to help
[00:05:24] clarify that, you know,
[00:05:26] block slash apps slash extensions
[00:05:28] are like a little piece
[00:05:30] of a puzzle and not the whole puzzle.
[00:05:32] Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:33] This is what matters to me
[00:05:36] that these two sentences here,
[00:05:38] there'll be a way to enhance your views,
[00:05:40] interfaces and more.
[00:05:41] We're working towards
[00:05:42] a future in which developers
[00:05:44] can build and share,
[00:05:44] share custom extensions
[00:05:46] across any major surface in Airtable.
[00:05:50] Yeah, that's cool.
[00:05:51] I think they talked about
[00:05:53] in one of their A. M. A. S. That you know,
[00:05:56] in a perfect world,
[00:05:57] you'd be able to create your own
[00:05:58] view type the same way you
[00:05:59] could make your own
[00:06:01] extension using their custom
[00:06:05] it's I think it's still called
[00:06:07] the custom blocks A. P. I. But you know,
[00:06:08] custom extensions api
[00:06:09] you could code your own view type,
[00:06:11] that's something,
[00:06:12] you know, they're thinking of way down
[00:06:14] the line and with Interface Designer,
[00:06:16] each piece on your page
[00:06:18] is called an element. And so
[00:06:21] maybe they're thinking of a world
[00:06:22] in which there's no elements,
[00:06:23] it's all extensions and you just,
[00:06:25] you know, put them together like that.
[00:06:27] Yeah.
[00:06:30] Yeah and I probably
[00:06:31] I think it's fair to say
[00:06:33] that this is still a ways off.
[00:06:36] This is not something coming next month,
[00:06:40] I'd be shocked if it was
[00:06:42] it would be amazing,
[00:06:44] but I would be very surprised
[00:06:47] based on what little I know
[00:06:49] what's going on at Airtable.
[00:06:52] Okay. But I mean
[00:06:53] I think I was okay with apps.
[00:06:56] I was okay with blocks too,
[00:06:57] but I like the name extensions
[00:07:00] and I do think it does
[00:07:01] free up the word apps to
[00:07:02] be used in a more
[00:07:04] specific way or broader,
[00:07:06] I guess broad and specific at the
[00:07:08] same time, it's like
[00:07:10] you can build whatever you want
[00:07:12] and you can call that your app
[00:07:13] I guess.
[00:07:14] Yeah,
[00:07:15] yeah, we're still struggling
[00:07:18] with, at On2Air
[00:07:19] of how do we name our things now,
[00:07:21] because we've been calling them apps, but
[00:07:25] not everything we have is an extension,
[00:07:28] we do have extensions to our apps and so
[00:07:30] we're struggling
[00:07:32] with our naming convention and
[00:07:34] so if you or others have input
[00:07:36] on how we should name our things,
[00:07:38] we're definitely open to that.
[00:07:40] Clearly you have to start
[00:07:41] using blocks now.
[00:07:42] Yeah,
[00:07:44] we'll just go back to blocks.
[00:07:48] So definitely yeah,
[00:07:50] so exciting.
[00:07:50] I think it's good laying
[00:07:52] the foundation for the
[00:07:53] future
[00:07:54] that I hope is their vision,
[00:07:56] I think it's what makes sense to really
[00:08:00] make their platform,
[00:08:01] you know, extendable for,
[00:08:03] for all use cases.
[00:08:04] so
[00:08:06] hopefully there's more to come
[00:08:07] on that front,
[00:08:08] but right now it's just a name
[00:08:09] change
[00:08:11] and some good discussion there
[00:08:14] if you want to look into it
[00:08:16] okay,
[00:08:17] there was also a feature release
[00:08:20] a feature update.
[00:08:22] And so the the ability to
[00:08:25] create filter options
[00:08:27] for linked records.
[00:08:28] So when you have a filter,
[00:08:30] the only thing you used to be
[00:08:32] able to do was just whether
[00:08:34] it contained text and
[00:08:36] now there's more functionality.
[00:08:38] But Alli is gonna do a
[00:08:39] deep dive into this new
[00:08:40] functionality in one of our
[00:08:43] one of our segments,
[00:08:44] so we won't steal her thunder
[00:08:46] here. So this is cool.
[00:08:48] This is exciting.
[00:08:49] I think a lot of people were happy to
[00:08:51] see this
[00:08:55] dive into that one.
[00:08:57] So hang on for later
[00:08:58] in today's episode and we'll dive deep
[00:09:01] into the new filter options.
[00:09:04] This was one,
[00:09:05] I don't know if you guys
[00:09:07] saw this. Maybe I'm just late to the
[00:09:09] game in this,
[00:09:10] but they just sent out a newsletter
[00:09:13] Airtable did from the
[00:09:15] community Manager
[00:09:17] or somebody on the marketing team. And
[00:09:20] it had a thing in there
[00:09:22] about some new advanced features
[00:09:25] and Airtable syncing.
[00:09:27] And
[00:09:31] is this has this been around
[00:09:33] for a while or is it new? The ability to
[00:09:36] where are we?
[00:09:39] couple of things.
[00:09:40] The ability to change the primary field.
[00:09:43] I don't think that
[00:09:45] I think it's relatively new.
[00:09:47] I feel like I saw it maybe,
[00:09:49] but I also don't work
[00:09:50] in sync tables so often
[00:09:52] that I can pinpoint
[00:09:53] exactly when it is it's it wasn't
[00:09:55] there at launch, That's for sure.
[00:09:58] Right. What you
[00:09:59] what you had been able to do prior
[00:10:01] was select fields and if you
[00:10:03] for example have two data sources
[00:10:05] syncing into the same table then you could
[00:10:07] point different fields at,
[00:10:09] you can say I want this field
[00:10:10] from this table
[00:10:11] and this field from this table to
[00:10:12] go into this new field in the sync table
[00:10:15] into the same field
[00:10:16] which is super powerful in a lot of cases,
[00:10:19] but the primary field was not
[00:10:22] touchable in that case
[00:10:23] and this is really, really cool.
[00:10:25] I know a lot of people
[00:10:26] that are gonna be super excited
[00:10:28] about this.
[00:10:29] Yeah and let me and Melanie mentions
[00:10:31] that it just was announced this morning
[00:10:34] on the what's new? That's where I
[00:10:35] saw that in the in the letter
[00:10:37] but they haven't announced it
[00:10:39] in the community.
[00:10:40] So thank you Melanie for that.
[00:10:44] But I think to be clear,
[00:10:46] I don't think this actually
[00:10:49] changes the primary field
[00:10:51] that shows in your table.
[00:10:52] I think if I'm understanding correctly
[00:10:55] this is just
[00:10:55] the field that it uses
[00:10:58] to uniquely identify a sync.
[00:11:02] But maybe
[00:11:03] maybe it is changing
[00:11:05] the actual field
[00:11:07] that shows up on the left.
[00:11:10] I feel like
[00:11:12] I feel like it should be the one
[00:11:14] that's on the left. It does.
[00:11:15] It seems weird.
[00:11:16] I mean uniquely identify should be
[00:11:19] based on the record I. D
[00:11:21] Yeah and that's my preferred
[00:11:24] implementation.
[00:11:25] Yeah. Time to research
[00:11:27] Excuse me while I go sync a table. Yeah,
[00:11:30] Maybe we'll showcase this in a bit
[00:11:33] or next week
[00:11:34] or next show this is really cool.
[00:11:37] This this would be
[00:11:39] useful for
[00:11:41] like I mean one use case
[00:11:42] that I've had people bring up
[00:11:44] and when they ask me is
[00:11:45] this possible?
[00:11:46] And now I can say yes,
[00:11:47] hopefully. It's like if they're syncing
[00:11:50] out a subset of data
[00:11:51] and they've got, you know,
[00:11:52] a long formula for their primary
[00:11:54] field and their source base,
[00:11:56] but they want to share it
[00:11:57] with somebody that
[00:11:58] they don't necessarily want them
[00:12:00] to see that formula
[00:12:01] or it might be confusing so
[00:12:02] they want to just change
[00:12:03] whatever they're seeing
[00:12:04] on that side that they're
[00:12:05] syncing out.
[00:12:07] That would be hugely powerful.
[00:12:09] So that is similar to this next one.
[00:12:14] You can change the field type
[00:12:18] in the sync table.
[00:12:21] So that might imply
[00:12:25] that if it's well let's see,
[00:12:29] I'm trying to remember
[00:12:31] in the sync table,
[00:12:32] can you see the actual formula if
[00:12:34] you're syncing over a formula,
[00:12:36] it doesn't show you
[00:12:37] can't click in to see the
[00:12:38] formula.
[00:12:39] It comes in as a long text field,
[00:12:41] text field.
[00:12:43] So this actually allows you
[00:12:45] to change from a long text field
[00:12:47] to a single line
[00:12:47] text field.
[00:12:48] It's still not editable.
[00:12:50] So it's still read only the sync field.
[00:12:53] But I thought that was interesting.
[00:12:56] What other
[00:12:57] what other field types
[00:12:59] would you change?
[00:13:01] Would it work for a single select?
[00:13:03] Maybe
[00:13:06] I'm going to have to explore this in a
[00:13:08] future segment. You could
[00:13:13] I guess if you had a number field
[00:13:16] and wanted to have a display as a rating
[00:13:18] that's
[00:13:19] you know a compatible field type.
[00:13:21] That might be one
[00:13:22] potential
[00:13:24] you know option.
[00:13:25] Yeah
[00:13:26] but I wish like the wreck. I wish,
[00:13:30] I doubt you could
[00:13:32] implement your own linked records
[00:13:34] within your sync base.
[00:13:36] That would be nice
[00:13:38] if there is somewhere to
[00:13:40] to
[00:13:41] I wonder if the combination of the two
[00:13:44] if you can change what your primary field
[00:13:47] is. I wonder if that allows you to.
[00:13:52] That is interesting.
[00:13:54] I
[00:13:54] I'll have to play around
[00:13:56] with that for sure. I am.
[00:13:58] I've finally settled on
[00:14:00] like
[00:14:01] My best practice for link
[00:14:02] like syncing two tables out
[00:14:04] and linking them back
[00:14:05] together.
[00:14:06] I'll have to do a segment on that
[00:14:08] at some point because I think I have like
[00:14:10] I think I got it down to a science.
[00:14:12] Yeah the cleanest way
[00:14:13] now it's gonna change
[00:14:14] everything. Yeah
[00:14:15] that would be
[00:14:16] that would be a good segment
[00:14:19] because I know that
[00:14:20] comes up quite a bit.
[00:14:21] Yeah actually I definitely will do that
[00:14:24] but I would love to
[00:14:25] play with this for a single select
[00:14:27] because I had
[00:14:27] a use case for this
[00:14:29] the other day where I had
[00:14:30] two data sources.
[00:14:31] I wanted to sync into the same table,
[00:14:34] One had a status,
[00:14:34] single select field
[00:14:36] but the other one had
[00:14:37] no status field and I wanted to fill
[00:14:39] them all out and just add
[00:14:41] to that single select
[00:14:44] but if I used a formula
[00:14:46] on one side then it all changed to
[00:14:48] the just text
[00:14:49] and I couldn't have the
[00:14:50] single select anymore
[00:14:52] so
[00:14:53] I'll have to try that out. Really
[00:14:55] interesting.
[00:14:57] It also is interesting
[00:14:59] if you then change the type in the
[00:15:04] oh so if you change it
[00:15:05] in the target
[00:15:06] then it will take precedence.
[00:15:07] So if you change it in the source
[00:15:09] it's not gonna override the target
[00:15:11] which is
[00:15:11] probably the right way to handle that.
[00:15:13] Awesome.
[00:15:14] What else is there more down here?
[00:15:18] Advanced
[00:15:20] I think that's always been there.
[00:15:26] Field has been manually edited.
[00:15:30] What does that mean?
[00:15:36] I mean you can actually
[00:15:39] oh that's just showing you
[00:15:41] the type has been edited
[00:15:43] so
[00:15:45] yeah
[00:15:46] but I think it's still,
[00:15:47] I don't think that means
[00:15:48] you can edit the data.
[00:15:50] Okay I have done a test
[00:15:52] in the background
[00:15:53] and changing the primary field does
[00:15:56] change what field is the primary field
[00:15:59] in your sync destination.
[00:16:00] Which is useful
[00:16:01] you have to do it on new syncs.
[00:16:04] It will not let you change a
[00:16:06] sync that has already been
[00:16:08] done. So
[00:16:09] anytime you create a new sync table
[00:16:12] you know you could make that adjustment.
[00:16:15] I did test it directly from if you're
[00:16:17] in your origin table
[00:16:20] it there's like an option that says
[00:16:23] sync this view to somewhere else.
[00:16:25] If you do it from there
[00:16:26] it's not going to give you
[00:16:28] the advanced options that
[00:16:29] need that you need to say
[00:16:31] okay now pick this one
[00:16:32] is my primary field so it's
[00:16:34] gonna make that source
[00:16:36] and then you won't be able to
[00:16:37] change it later
[00:16:38] because like I just said once
[00:16:39] it's there you can't change
[00:16:41] what the primary field is.
[00:16:42] So
[00:16:44] go to your origin view,
[00:16:46] make sure that toggle
[00:16:48] for allow it to be sync is
[00:16:50] turned on
[00:16:50] and then go to your destination base
[00:16:53] and then create the sync table
[00:16:55] from there
[00:16:56] and then you'll see the advanced options
[00:16:58] and be able to select
[00:16:59] after
[00:17:01] Very useful
[00:17:02] hot off the press. That's good stuff.
[00:17:07] So yeah we'll probably
[00:17:09] we'll probably in the future
[00:17:11] future episode we'll dive
[00:17:12] deep into these changing
[00:17:15] changes
[00:17:16] and get you caught up on everything.
[00:17:19] Alright. Very cool.
[00:17:21] So those are kind of some of the updates
[00:17:23] Melanie says it's a precursor
[00:17:26] to two way sync.
[00:17:27] Maybe. Maybe that would be
[00:17:29] interesting.
[00:17:32] So moving on,
[00:17:33] there are a couple of other things
[00:17:35] that have changed but they
[00:17:37] weren't shared on the Airtable community.
[00:17:39] So we're going to the BuiltOnAir
[00:17:41] community and some people noticed
[00:17:44] a couple of things that are coming out so
[00:17:48] Justin mentioned this.
[00:17:49] I haven't seen this yet.
[00:17:51] I don't know if either of you
[00:17:53] have seen this. I have yeah
[00:17:55] only in my free bases
[00:17:57] interesting
[00:17:58] so for the first time
[00:18:01] this today you did? Yeah
[00:18:03] okay so yeah so this is coming out.
[00:18:07] So what it is
[00:18:08] is it's a button on the plus
[00:18:10] button where you
[00:18:11] down in the lower left
[00:18:13] where there's been like a circle plus
[00:18:15] button to add a new record.
[00:18:17] They made that into
[00:18:18] kind of a pill
[00:18:19] that has an add button that allows you to
[00:18:22] click and then it has
[00:18:24] bring up here a
[00:18:25] bigger pop up that comes up with all
[00:18:28] sorts of things that you can add
[00:18:30] different views or automations.
[00:18:32] So it's more kind of a
[00:18:34] a quick start guide
[00:18:36] to adding new things to your base.
[00:18:42] So that's good and bad.
[00:18:43] I think people found annoying.
[00:18:45] I think they saw it was a
[00:18:46] bug like it wouldn't go away
[00:18:48] the pop up bubble.
[00:18:50] So that's definitely annoying
[00:18:52] if that sticks around.
[00:18:56] That's all that was going on there.
[00:18:59] So that and then let's see here
[00:19:06] we're gonna come back to this one.
[00:19:09] This is one that
[00:19:10] I actually brought up
[00:19:12] but I only see this in one base.
[00:19:14] So this is a new ui
[00:19:16] that is starting to roll out
[00:19:18] that moves automations up
[00:19:21] into the upper left
[00:19:23] and creates three menu items. Data
[00:19:26] is your standard grid base.
[00:19:29] Then there's automations
[00:19:31] and then interfaces is
[00:19:33] accessible up at the top.
[00:19:35] Have you
[00:19:36] have you guys seen this in any bases yet?
[00:19:39] No, I was waiting for it
[00:19:41] to start appearing
[00:19:42] and it has not
[00:19:44] Yeah, I don't know why
[00:19:46] it's just in this one base.
[00:19:48] Yeah, I haven't seen it in
[00:19:49] any other bases.
[00:19:54] I think I like the move
[00:19:57] right now, automations and
[00:20:01] extensions are options
[00:20:03] that are on the same line
[00:20:06] as your tabs for your
[00:20:08] different tables.
[00:20:09] So if you have a lot of tables
[00:20:11] it's eating up not a whole lot
[00:20:12] of space, but some space
[00:20:13] in your real estate
[00:20:15] and then interface is up at the top
[00:20:17] next to the name of the base and it's a,
[00:20:21] you know,
[00:20:22] a interfaces is still in beta and b
[00:20:25] it's you know,
[00:20:27] there's a sort of
[00:20:29] precedence or
[00:20:31] I don't know, it
[00:20:32] it seems to have like
[00:20:34] such a high level compared to other
[00:20:36] things that you might want to access
[00:20:39] with a lot of frequency and so
[00:20:41] putting them at a similar sort of line
[00:20:44] and then next to the name of your base I
[00:20:46] think might be a good move.
[00:20:48] I also like that their
[00:20:50] you know, showing you
[00:20:51] that you're looking at your
[00:20:53] your data presumably that
[00:20:54] still includes your con Bond views,
[00:20:56] galleries, calendars, et cetera.
[00:20:57] That aren't just the grid view
[00:20:59] but they're all still looking
[00:21:01] at just your data
[00:21:02] effectively.
[00:21:04] But extensions is
[00:21:06] missing.
[00:21:07] Where is it?
[00:21:08] I didn't yeah,
[00:21:10] I cut it off on the screenshot
[00:21:13] of it's over on the right,
[00:21:15] is it on the same line as data
[00:21:18] and it's no it's down with the table names
[00:21:22] Strange.
[00:21:23] So it's the same place where
[00:21:25] it is now but automations is gone,
[00:21:28] automations is moved up
[00:21:30] so now it's just extensions over there.
[00:21:32] I guess
[00:21:34] the thought process there is
[00:21:36] you wouldn't have reason
[00:21:38] to look at your extensions
[00:21:39] and your automations at the same time
[00:21:42] and you can't have an extension and an
[00:21:44] interface yet so you wouldn't be there
[00:21:46] but you might look at your extensions
[00:21:49] which might include a chart
[00:21:50] or something like that at the same time,
[00:21:52] you would look at your data so
[00:21:54] that
[00:21:54] might make sense.
[00:21:56] My guess is they're still
[00:21:58] trying to figure out
[00:21:59] what to do with extensions so
[00:22:01] they just left it where it is.
[00:22:03] Could be
[00:22:04] I'm excited about one thing
[00:22:06] I get annoyed about
[00:22:07] with having automations
[00:22:08] and extensions next
[00:22:10] to each other is when I
[00:22:11] I do have to switch between
[00:22:12] the two of them
[00:22:13] because like sometimes I'll have a
[00:22:14] script in a scripting extension
[00:22:17] taking some getting used to saying.
[00:22:19] But I'll have to go back and there's no
[00:22:22] way to click on extensions.
[00:22:23] Once you have automation
[00:22:25] open you have to close
[00:22:26] automations and then extensions
[00:22:28] again which is frustrating to me.
[00:22:30] But this
[00:22:32] for me the my major problem
[00:22:34] was automations and apps
[00:22:36] both start with an A.
[00:22:37] And so I would click one
[00:22:38] meaning to click on one
[00:22:39] and I would click on the other
[00:22:40] on accident now they don't start
[00:22:42] with the same letter
[00:22:43] anymore but they'll be
[00:22:44] even further away
[00:22:45] so I can't do that accidental click.
[00:22:47] Yeah,
[00:22:48] the cool thing about this is
[00:22:50] now it's much easier
[00:22:51] to jump between data and
[00:22:53] interfaces before it was like
[00:22:55] impossible to get out of interfaces.
[00:22:58] So this is a big improvement.
[00:23:01] One thing that's kind of annoying is it
[00:23:04] doesn't remember your state,
[00:23:06] so when you're in interfaces
[00:23:08] and then you jump back
[00:23:09] to data,
[00:23:09] it doesn't remember like
[00:23:11] what interface you were in,
[00:23:12] you have to then go back
[00:23:14] and I'm pretty sure
[00:23:16] that's how it works but and
[00:23:18] same with automations, like,
[00:23:20] it doesn't remember
[00:23:22] if you're like inside a step
[00:23:24] that's how it is now too,
[00:23:26] which is annoying.
[00:23:27] The interface is one thing I find
[00:23:29] annoying about,
[00:23:30] I mean there's a lot of things about
[00:23:31] the navigation about with
[00:23:32] interfaces that needs to be fixed, but
[00:23:34] the
[00:23:35] overview page,
[00:23:36] like when you get to that,
[00:23:38] there's no way to like
[00:23:40] go back to all of your different
[00:23:42] interfaces, icons,
[00:23:43] you have to hit the back button
[00:23:46] if that makes any sense, that
[00:23:48] on the screen. But yeah,
[00:23:50] yeah, maybe that's changed.
[00:23:52] We could do
[00:23:53] we could do in the future one once it
[00:23:56] starts to roll out more,
[00:23:58] we'll dive more into it,
[00:24:00] but it's good, it's coming,
[00:24:03] I could see
[00:24:04] I feel like now that they've changed
[00:24:06] interfaces or extensions
[00:24:09] to extensions, I feel like
[00:24:11] eventually they're gonna reintroduce apps
[00:24:14] and it'll probably be up in here and
[00:24:16] those will be like full blown apps
[00:24:19] that take over the entire ui
[00:24:23] I could see that coming
[00:24:25] or maybe interfaces is where that happens,
[00:24:27] I don't know, but
[00:24:29] this opens up more flexibility
[00:24:31] to add more more functionality
[00:24:34] at the top level.
[00:24:36] So with that as far as what's coming
[00:24:40] here's some interesting tidbits.
[00:24:42] Hopefully I don't get in trouble for this.
[00:24:44] I thought this was like a public
[00:24:47] sharing of Airtable.
[00:24:49] Somebody said maybe it
[00:24:50] was just for enterprise customers,
[00:24:53] I don't know, but we'll see it's out
[00:24:55] there so
[00:24:57] but basically what's coming next
[00:25:01] at a glance
[00:25:03] of Interface Designer, enable
[00:25:06] advanced permissions
[00:25:08] app like capabilities,
[00:25:10] creation experience.
[00:25:12] So coming soon is record creation,
[00:25:15] new button types and better navigation and
[00:25:19] then the advanced stuff in the future.
[00:25:23] So as far as record creation,
[00:25:25] the ability to create a
[00:25:27] new form layout sometime
[00:25:29] in this quarter.
[00:25:30] And then trigger a form
[00:25:33] in a model from an existing page.
[00:25:36] So that's coming
[00:25:38] advanced permissions
[00:25:41] invite users to the interface
[00:25:43] without granting access
[00:25:45] to the underlying base
[00:25:46] sometime later this year.
[00:25:48] So that's exciting.
[00:25:52] new button types,
[00:26:03] new button types
[00:26:04] that will be able to
[00:26:06] open other U. R. L. S.
[00:26:08] And pages
[00:26:10] start automations
[00:26:11] it looks like off of a button.
[00:26:14] So that's coming
[00:26:16] exciting
[00:26:22] customizable detailed views, detail
[00:26:26] review
[00:26:27] detailed view with
[00:26:28] the power of Interface Designer.
[00:26:30] Yeah, so that's my most
[00:26:32] anticipated
[00:26:34] change and I'm curious to see
[00:26:36] if it only exists an Interface Designer.
[00:26:38] If it also exists in the data tab,
[00:26:41] if they, you know,
[00:26:43] launch that new top level
[00:26:44] navigation for everybody
[00:26:46] because that's been a
[00:26:49] sought after feature for a while. The,
[00:26:52] what is shown to you in terms of the
[00:26:56] order of fields
[00:26:57] and the visibility of fields
[00:26:59] has been somewhat of a mystery for
[00:27:01] a while. It's highly dependent
[00:27:03] on from where you've clicked on a record.
[00:27:07] but like yeah,
[00:27:09] I just, you know, I wish
[00:27:11] that you could
[00:27:13] very easily be able to say
[00:27:15] under what circumstances
[00:27:17] I want to show such and such
[00:27:19] fields and it looks like
[00:27:20] they're gonna let you do,
[00:27:21] you know perhaps a two column
[00:27:22] layout because having everything
[00:27:25] in one column
[00:27:25] is not super convenient if you
[00:27:27] have a lot of fields.
[00:27:30] Yeah,
[00:27:31] that would be interesting.
[00:27:33] Absolutely. I'm
[00:27:35] that was my first question too
[00:27:37] is is this only going to be
[00:27:38] available in interface
[00:27:39] designer or is it gonna be universal?
[00:27:42] You know, all expanded records.
[00:27:43] But I would hope that,
[00:27:45] I mean
[00:27:46] it makes me think of coda,
[00:27:47] that's something I really loved
[00:27:49] about Coda,
[00:27:49] is that you can design
[00:27:51] different layouts
[00:27:52] for your expanded records
[00:27:53] and you can,
[00:27:54] I think even choose
[00:27:55] which one is visible when
[00:27:57] I can't recall if that's exactly true,
[00:28:00] but that's where we're going.
[00:28:01] I would be super excited.
[00:28:03] Yeah. And then the other
[00:28:05] little tidbit up here,
[00:28:07] you see desktop and mobile.
[00:28:08] So they've got different experiences.
[00:28:12] They might be getting into the mobile app
[00:28:16] design world.
[00:28:19] So yeah, exciting stuff.
[00:28:21] It'll be interesting to see
[00:28:24] how this plays out
[00:28:27] one more
[00:28:29] updated editor.
[00:28:30] So improvements to the editor.
[00:28:33] Some interesting
[00:28:35] Yeah, it's been out for a while
[00:28:38] so I've gotten used to
[00:28:40] a lot of the particulars
[00:28:42] with the Interface Designer editor
[00:28:44] but it is you know, fairly finicky,
[00:28:46] especially if you have multiple columns
[00:28:49] already on the page and you want to move
[00:28:50] something to the top
[00:28:52] of a column in a row.
[00:28:53] Sometimes it thinks you want to start
[00:28:55] a new row as opposed to
[00:28:56] just reordering within that column.
[00:28:58] so
[00:29:00] you know, the more complex your
[00:29:02] your page has become,
[00:29:03] the more difficult it is
[00:29:04] to place things exactly
[00:29:06] where you want it.
[00:29:07] I know some other editors for,
[00:29:09] you know, what you see
[00:29:11] is what you get, type design experiences.
[00:29:13] They have a thing on the left
[00:29:15] usually that's like a
[00:29:16] basically your table of contents
[00:29:18] of all of the elements on the page.
[00:29:19] Where if you want to drag stuff
[00:29:21] you could just drag it in that
[00:29:23] table of contents
[00:29:24] and then you don't have to
[00:29:25] worry about moving your mouse
[00:29:27] at exactly the right pixel
[00:29:29] for it to go where you
[00:29:30] need it. That might be one way
[00:29:32] that they could be,
[00:29:33] you know, improving the drag and drop
[00:29:36] functionality but it looks like there
[00:29:38] also adding perhaps new templates
[00:29:40] and other experiences
[00:29:41] to the editor as well.
[00:29:43] Yeah, yeah,
[00:29:46] so yeah, stuff coming to interface,
[00:29:49] they're definitely working on that
[00:29:52] and we
[00:29:52] shall see in the coming months
[00:29:55] so something's coming soon to the world of
[00:29:58] interface. So
[00:30:01] excited to see what's coming there.
[00:30:04] So that's kind of what
[00:30:05] we've got for what's
[00:30:06] going on in the Airtable world,
[00:30:10] some exciting new features
[00:30:13] and so let's move
[00:30:15] on.
[00:30:16] So a quick spotlight on On2Air
[00:30:18] is our primary sponsor, it's
[00:30:20] an all one toolkit to
[00:30:22] run your business on Airtable.
[00:30:24] It's just that of apps or extensions or
[00:30:27] something else
[00:30:28] that we don't know what to name,
[00:30:30] that allow your business to
[00:30:33] execute to its maximum
[00:30:35] potential on Airtable
[00:30:37] for today's spotlight.
[00:30:39] We're gonna continue with
[00:30:40] the theme of sneak peeks.
[00:30:42] So we launched our
[00:30:44] so our very, our second product
[00:30:47] that we launched was an
[00:30:49] integration with Jot form
[00:30:51] and so we call that our
[00:30:53] On2Air forms
[00:30:54] and it was kind of we wanted to kind of
[00:30:57] test case
[00:30:58] getting something quick and dirty
[00:31:00] that allowed people to build more
[00:31:03] advanced forms solution
[00:31:05] and we decided at that time to go with
[00:31:08] jot form because it allowed
[00:31:09] it was really the only form builder
[00:31:11] out there that
[00:31:12] allows you to build kind of
[00:31:14] on top of it or inside of it.
[00:31:16] And so it allowed us
[00:31:17] to build little widgets
[00:31:19] that we could incorporate
[00:31:21] Airtable data. But it also
[00:31:23] introduced a lot of
[00:31:25] issues that made it challenging
[00:31:27] and jot form
[00:31:29] has some quirks that
[00:31:31] has made that bit difficult to get going.
[00:31:34] And so it's probably been
[00:31:37] a year in the making,
[00:31:39] we decided to build our own
[00:31:41] form solution
[00:31:43] and we were getting very close to that.
[00:31:45] So I wanted to today give the very first
[00:31:47] sneak peek of
[00:31:48] of what's coming in there.
[00:31:50] And of course
[00:31:52] Murphy's law came into effect.
[00:31:54] I made a quick change
[00:31:56] last night and broke something
[00:31:58] and so I can't get a full
[00:32:00] functional form running.
[00:32:02] I didn't have enough time
[00:32:04] to get it running,
[00:32:04] but
[00:32:05] this is one that is still
[00:32:07] in some state of functionality.
[00:32:09] Just to give you a quick glimpse
[00:32:11] what we're gonna do is the next three
[00:32:14] episodes that we have
[00:32:15] up until this launch.
[00:32:17] The goals to launch this at the end
[00:32:18] of July beginning of August
[00:32:21] and so we're gonna, I'm gonna sneak peek
[00:32:24] different functionality
[00:32:26] that we have coming in the form solution
[00:32:29] but it will be a full functional
[00:32:32] standalone form,
[00:32:33] won't be dependent on jot form
[00:32:35] or anything.
[00:32:36] And it will have the full ability
[00:32:38] to edit existing records,
[00:32:39] create new records,
[00:32:41] edit linked records,
[00:32:42] create as many linked records as you
[00:32:45] want at existing linked records. Full
[00:32:49] visibility into attachments.
[00:32:52] The ability to create new options
[00:32:54] for select or multi select records
[00:32:57] on the fly
[00:32:58] and everything will be configurable.
[00:33:01] Dynamic ability to hide and show records,
[00:33:05] even update records, things like that. So
[00:33:09] very very excited for this,
[00:33:11] this is kind of
[00:33:12] taking everything that I've learned
[00:33:15] from our first form solution
[00:33:17] as well as what
[00:33:17] we a lot of what we learned from
[00:33:20] our amplify product building into a
[00:33:23] standalone form solution. So
[00:33:25] this has been a lot of work
[00:33:27] and there's still a lot of work
[00:33:29] yet to go to get it
[00:33:29] all ready
[00:33:30] but just wanted to showcase this
[00:33:33] and start getting it out there.
[00:33:35] So if you have must have features
[00:33:37] that you want to see from a form solution,
[00:33:40] let us know,
[00:33:41] we might be able to sneak it
[00:33:43] in before we launch this.
[00:33:44] So we'd love to hear feedback
[00:33:46] on what people absolutely need from a form
[00:33:49] solution.
[00:33:51] That's exciting.
[00:33:53] Yes, very very excited for that.
[00:33:56] Melanie only right now
[00:33:59] we're launching with just
[00:34:02] a single field per row.
[00:34:04] We're not we're not
[00:34:05] launching with a
[00:34:07] you know Interface Designer,
[00:34:09] so it will be just kind of
[00:34:11] a standard like
[00:34:12] Airtable's form at launch
[00:34:14] but designer will be
[00:34:16] in a future release after that
[00:34:20] Alright, our first segment
[00:34:23] I will be handling this Scripting Time.
[00:34:26] So one thing that
[00:34:28] that especially for beginners
[00:34:31] if you're just dabbling with
[00:34:33] with scripting one of the
[00:34:36] first things that you'll probably like
[00:34:39] hit your head against is
[00:34:41] understanding what these keywords
[00:34:43] are a sync and await
[00:34:45] it came up recently in the BuiltOnAir
[00:34:49] community Russell Bishop.
[00:34:52] Hopefully you're okay with me
[00:34:55] using this as a test case, but
[00:34:58] he actually is doing this
[00:34:59] outside of Airtable.
[00:35:01] So this is just in code but
[00:35:02] it's still javascript
[00:35:04] so it'll work pretty similarly
[00:35:06] but trying to understand
[00:35:07] the concept of a promise.
[00:35:09] So I want to try to help people
[00:35:12] understand what a
[00:35:13] promise is because
[00:35:14] you'll need to know what that is
[00:35:16] if you're doing any
[00:35:17] scripting within Airtable
[00:35:20] or writing any code
[00:35:21] in javascript in general,
[00:35:23] this isn't anything Airtable specific.
[00:35:27] So let's add a scripting extension
[00:35:32] to our base
[00:35:34] and you'll notice an Airtable.
[00:35:38] when you're dealing with
[00:35:41] any data from Airtable,
[00:35:44] let's use one of their here we go.
[00:35:48] What you'll notice is
[00:35:50] their functions to get data from a table,
[00:35:55] they always end with a sync.
[00:35:57] And so that's kind of
[00:35:59] I think they did that is just
[00:36:00] to make it obvious that this is
[00:36:04] what's called a promise.
[00:36:06] So a promise means
[00:36:09] you're gonna have to help me with this.
[00:36:14] I understand conceptually what the
[00:36:17] process of using a sync and await
[00:36:20] and for some reason my brain has never
[00:36:22] connected the concept of a promise,
[00:36:24] which is the same thing.
[00:36:26] So
[00:36:27] yeah, who knows how much help I'll be
[00:36:31] basically what the what it
[00:36:35] means is in javascript
[00:36:37] when you, when it's executing code
[00:36:40] it has the ability
[00:36:41] to kind of step outside
[00:36:45] of that linear code
[00:36:47] to perform some action.
[00:36:50] And so if you know anything about
[00:36:52] how computers run your computer has a CPU
[00:36:54] which is kind of the brain
[00:36:56] of the computer
[00:36:57] and it's executing one line at a time.
[00:36:59] Well if you have a task
[00:37:01] that might take a long time, for example,
[00:37:04] the most common one is
[00:37:05] making a request out to the internet
[00:37:08] and asking for some
[00:37:09] data.
[00:37:10] from a U. R. L.
[00:37:11] That could take a long time
[00:37:14] because it has to go across
[00:37:16] the internet and wait for it.
[00:37:18] What they do is they say
[00:37:20] while you're waiting for
[00:37:21] that code to execute somewhere else,
[00:37:24] we're gonna continue on with the code that
[00:37:27] that we have here.
[00:37:29] And so they allow you to be
[00:37:32] executing code
[00:37:33] while you're also waiting for some
[00:37:36] other response for something
[00:37:39] happening outside of
[00:37:41] your code of execution.
[00:37:43] So that's kind of what a promise is.
[00:37:46] It it allows you to
[00:37:48] to wait or
[00:37:50] to kind of send away code
[00:37:54] to be executed on another
[00:37:57] environment and then you can
[00:37:59] continue on
[00:38:00] and then later come back to that code
[00:38:02] once it's done.
[00:38:04] And so what the a sync
[00:38:06] and await does is
[00:38:08] tells it that no I don't want to
[00:38:12] execute anymore and tell
[00:38:14] that other
[00:38:15] thing is done.
[00:38:17] And I want to wait for what that
[00:38:19] that other piece of
[00:38:21] code that's executing is completed.
[00:38:24] And so right here, what we're now doing is
[00:38:27] we're saying we're going to wait
[00:38:30] for this asynchronous function
[00:38:33] to finish and
[00:38:34] return
[00:38:35] before we execute the next line of code.
[00:38:40] So if we didn't put this await here,
[00:38:44] this would actually return
[00:38:47] what's called a promise,
[00:38:49] which is this placeholder,
[00:38:52] that is not the is not what
[00:38:55] you would be expecting.
[00:38:58] And so that's why it actually
[00:39:01] it actually gave me this error
[00:39:04] now because it
[00:39:04] doesn't exist.
[00:39:06] The records property
[00:39:08] doesn't exist on a promise.
[00:39:10] And so if you don't have that await
[00:39:12] there then you're it's not going to do
[00:39:15] what what you expected to do
[00:39:17] now what you could do is
[00:39:19] there's two ways
[00:39:20] you can deal with promises.
[00:39:22] One is to just say
[00:39:23] I wanna wait right here for it
[00:39:26] and that's the way that I
[00:39:27] would likely
[00:39:29] that that's the way
[00:39:31] I usually do things now.
[00:39:33] I come from,
[00:39:34] I actually did javascript
[00:39:36] before this kind of was out
[00:39:39] or popular and it was a
[00:39:40] nightmare. What you would have to do is
[00:39:44] there's another way where
[00:39:45] you can deal with promises
[00:39:47] where you can
[00:39:48] and wait, you can call dot then
[00:39:51] and wait for
[00:39:53] and then get the result as a
[00:39:56] parameter into here
[00:39:57] and then use a function that then
[00:40:00] process that so you can
[00:40:02] have this chain of all of these
[00:40:04] then, of whenever it's finished
[00:40:07] then it executes this code but what
[00:40:11] you would notice is,
[00:40:13] and this is what Russell was seeing
[00:40:15] with his code is he was
[00:40:17] implementing dot then
[00:40:20] if we go back to that example
[00:40:24] right here,
[00:40:26] this stop find
[00:40:27] this is kind of the equivalent
[00:40:30] of a promise
[00:40:31] callback.
[00:40:32] So this code right here
[00:40:34] won't get executed until it actually makes
[00:40:38] that call to the server,
[00:40:40] but then he had this line right here
[00:40:44] and what he was noticing
[00:40:46] and trying to understand was
[00:40:49] that this gets
[00:40:50] executed before this does
[00:40:52] and that's because when you
[00:40:55] call this base this is a
[00:40:58] promise
[00:40:59] and it's making an api call
[00:41:01] to the rest api of Airtable.
[00:41:04] Now it's going to return instantly
[00:41:07] and then it will execute this
[00:41:09] and then come back to this code
[00:41:12] inside of here
[00:41:13] because this is the callback.
[00:41:15] So that's
[00:41:17] so it's basically saying
[00:41:19] I'm gonna call this
[00:41:20] and I'm gonna continue on
[00:41:22] and then whenever
[00:41:23] I get the response back
[00:41:24] from the server, then I'm going to
[00:41:26] call this function
[00:41:27] and execute what's inside of there
[00:41:29] and then it's going to continue on
[00:41:32] to any any code after
[00:41:34] this. So if he instead used
[00:41:37] an await right here,
[00:41:38] then it would wait right
[00:41:40] there in that line
[00:41:42] and not process anything.
[00:41:43] It would basically just stall and
[00:41:45] then once the server came back
[00:41:47] then it would continue on,
[00:41:49] which is usually what
[00:41:50] people want to do
[00:41:51] unless you're really trying to
[00:41:53] do a lot of things at the same time,
[00:41:55] there might be times when you want to use
[00:41:57] the other approach.
[00:41:59] so hopefully that helps
[00:42:02] understand the difference between
[00:42:06] you know whenever
[00:42:08] in Airtable because they
[00:42:10] use all the standard naming
[00:42:12] convention of putting a
[00:42:13] sync on everything
[00:42:15] that helps you understand
[00:42:16] that you probably need
[00:42:18] to put in await in front of
[00:42:19] it unless you
[00:42:20] want to use the promise approach.
[00:42:24] So hopefully that helps
[00:42:26] explain it anything to add there?
[00:42:28] I can confuse the audience with a metaphor
[00:42:31] that's always fun.
[00:42:33] To me
[00:42:33] with the two approaches
[00:42:36] that we have shown
[00:42:38] when you're using await,
[00:42:40] think of when you're
[00:42:41] cooking something for dinner.
[00:42:43] So your started cooking,
[00:42:45] you realize you don't have
[00:42:47] the ingredients when you use
[00:42:49] await, you're basically
[00:42:51] telling your roommate to go to the store,
[00:42:53] give me the ingredients I'm missing,
[00:42:55] come back and as soon as you have them in
[00:42:57] your hands, you continue cooking
[00:42:59] with, then
[00:43:01] it's more like, alright,
[00:43:02] you're cooking,
[00:43:03] you realize you have stuff missing,
[00:43:05] you send your roommate to the store
[00:43:08] and in the interim
[00:43:09] you make a salad and then
[00:43:10] at some point your roommate
[00:43:12] comes back
[00:43:13] and then you finish cooking whatever it
[00:43:14] is you were cooking
[00:43:15] and at the end
[00:43:16] you've already made your side dishes.
[00:43:17] So
[00:43:19] you know it's so good.
[00:43:20] I love that
[00:43:21] convoluted metaphor.
[00:43:23] That's what I'm here for.
[00:43:24] Very good.
[00:43:25] So hopefully that didn't completely
[00:43:28] scare people away from scripting.
[00:43:30] It's not that hard.
[00:43:31] Once you figure that out,
[00:43:33] it's definitely something that is
[00:43:34] confusing at first, but
[00:43:37] once you get it then
[00:43:38] then it's pretty straightforward.
[00:43:42] So let's continue on to our next segment,
[00:43:47] Kamille is gonna go through
[00:43:48] an audience question with us.
[00:43:50] Sure would be helpful
[00:43:52] if I shared my screen.
[00:43:55] Hold on.
[00:44:00] Okay, so
[00:44:05] am I sharing?
[00:44:06] Okay so there was this question
[00:44:09] on the Airtable community forums
[00:44:11] and it was a fairly good one
[00:44:13] because I think it comes up
[00:44:15] often and there's a
[00:44:16] billion different ways that you could
[00:44:18] you know, start to solve the issue.
[00:44:21] So essentially they had a series of
[00:44:23] fields.
[00:44:24] I think it was four different date fields.
[00:44:27] Some of them have values
[00:44:29] in them and some of them don't
[00:44:31] and they wanted to have
[00:44:32] another field
[00:44:33] that summarized each of those four fields
[00:44:35] together.
[00:44:36] But if one of those date fields was empty,
[00:44:38] just not include the value for that
[00:44:41] field.
[00:44:42] That sounds simple
[00:44:43] and it is simple
[00:44:45] unless you want to have a separator in
[00:44:47] between each of your fields.
[00:44:49] Because if you just sort of
[00:44:51] contaminated a bunch
[00:44:52] of fields together,
[00:44:53] including the separator
[00:44:55] and then one of your fields is empty,
[00:44:56] what you're going to end up with,
[00:44:58] it's just a floating separator.
[00:44:59] And then
[00:45:01] her initial approach was to
[00:45:03] concatenate things together
[00:45:05] and then use an if
[00:45:06] statement that's like if,
[00:45:09] you know the edit date
[00:45:11] and or the format date
[00:45:13] is there then put in the semi
[00:45:14] colon. Otherwise,
[00:45:16] you know,
[00:45:16] don't put anything
[00:45:17] and that's one way you could do
[00:45:19] it. But that gets really complicated
[00:45:21] once you have several, several fields that
[00:45:23] you're trying to concatenate together.
[00:45:26] And it's also, you know,
[00:45:28] difficult if it doesn't matter
[00:45:31] whether or not format
[00:45:33] versus production is empty.
[00:45:35] Some processes are very
[00:45:37] sequential where,
[00:45:38] you know, if production start has a value,
[00:45:41] then format must have a value.
[00:45:43] That's not the case here,
[00:45:45] it didn't matter which
[00:45:46] ones were empty
[00:45:47] and which ones weren't.
[00:45:48] So the actual formula to put in the
[00:45:50] separators was what was making
[00:45:53] the problem a little bit difficult.
[00:45:56] So what I ended up doing
[00:45:57] is I just recreated
[00:45:59] the setup and just had
[00:46:01] some values filled in some not
[00:46:04] and then I used RegEx
[00:46:06] in order to handle my separator.
[00:46:09] So I have
[00:46:12] in here
[00:46:13] fairly simple lines
[00:46:15] for each of my four date fields, so
[00:46:19] if there's a value for edit,
[00:46:21] then put in the name
[00:46:23] of the field and then format
[00:46:25] the edit date, so that it's
[00:46:28] you know, readable,
[00:46:30] you have to do this for
[00:46:31] any sort of date field,
[00:46:33] put it in a date time format,
[00:46:34] otherwise you'll get the,
[00:46:36] you know UNIX timestamp
[00:46:38] which isn't so pretty.
[00:46:39] I did that for each of my four
[00:46:42] and no matter
[00:46:43] which field it was all of them as
[00:46:46] part of their formatting
[00:46:47] include the semi colon
[00:46:49] and a space at the end.
[00:46:50] I could have also just concatenate
[00:46:52] concatenated a semicolon and space at the
[00:46:55] end. However it didn't matter.
[00:46:57] I was already using date time format,
[00:46:59] I just collapsed
[00:47:01] that into one
[00:47:03] function.
[00:47:04] And then
[00:47:05] outside of that
[00:47:06] outside of my concatenation
[00:47:08] I have a RegEx replace which is
[00:47:10] taking any semi colon
[00:47:13] and then a space
[00:47:15] followed by the end of a line.
[00:47:17] So the when you're using RegEx
[00:47:20] there are different
[00:47:23] variables or placeholders
[00:47:25] for very specific items.
[00:47:27] In this case I'm using the
[00:47:29] dollar sign because in reject
[00:47:31] a dollar sign means
[00:47:33] this is the end of the text
[00:47:35] or end of the line.
[00:47:37] I am using RegEx replace.
[00:47:40] So it's taking any semicolon and space
[00:47:43] followed immediately
[00:47:44] by the end of the line
[00:47:46] and replace it with nothing.
[00:47:47] Just blank space.
[00:47:49] And with that
[00:47:50] I ended up with this field.
[00:47:53] This other field is just separating
[00:47:55] them into you know, one line each.
[00:47:57] Just so that it's easier to see and read.
[00:47:59] You'll notice that each field
[00:48:02] ends with a semicolon unless it's the last
[00:48:06] one and it doesn't matter
[00:48:07] which is the last one. If I delete
[00:48:10] this value,
[00:48:13] it will update
[00:48:14] and it start is now the last
[00:48:16] option. So even though
[00:48:18] it is supposed to have
[00:48:20] a semicolon at the end,
[00:48:22] it doesn't have one anymore.
[00:48:23] If I were to fill in the format start
[00:48:27] and put that in
[00:48:28] edit start gets its semicolon back.
[00:48:31] But format start doesn't have it anymore.
[00:48:33] And then
[00:48:34] once more, if I were to delete edit start,
[00:48:36] format start is now the first and
[00:48:38] the last,
[00:48:38] it doesn't need the semicolon,
[00:48:40] so it's disappeared.
[00:48:41] I thought that was
[00:48:43] the simplest way
[00:48:44] to handle multiple different fields being
[00:48:46] contaminated together
[00:48:47] and it will work for
[00:48:48] basically any separator,
[00:48:49] as long as your separator
[00:48:52] doesn't happen to be
[00:48:53] one of these RegEx replaces
[00:48:56] if it
[00:48:57] for instance
[00:48:58] you wanted to use a dollar sign
[00:49:00] as your actual separator,
[00:49:02] then your code would look something like
[00:49:05] you have to
[00:49:06] what's called escape the character
[00:49:09] so proceed it with a couple of
[00:49:11] slashes and then put that in
[00:49:13] and then that's what,
[00:49:14] that's what would
[00:49:15] allow you to use the dollar sign
[00:49:17] as your separator.
[00:49:17] But that's it.
[00:49:20] I put that same formula in this
[00:49:23] thread so you'd be able to
[00:49:26] copy it for yourself.
[00:49:29] That's awesome.
[00:49:30] I've never experimented with
[00:49:33] RegEx because I find it super
[00:49:35] intimidating and scary.
[00:49:37] This makes me really want to
[00:49:39] because this is actually
[00:49:41] a use case that like I
[00:49:42] have so many formulas
[00:49:43] that are super long
[00:49:45] because I'm like if or anything that
[00:49:47] came before it
[00:49:48] and something after it
[00:49:49] then put a comma blah blah blah.
[00:49:50] This makes it so simple and clean.
[00:49:52] I love it.
[00:49:53] Yeah, when RegEx was added it was
[00:49:55] a lot of
[00:49:56] like, well I could do this with
[00:49:58] regular
[00:49:59] you know, formula functions
[00:50:01] and you could
[00:50:03] but you could also write a much
[00:50:04] smaller formula
[00:50:06] if you just did it this way. And
[00:50:10] I find RegEx really intimidating.
[00:50:13] I don't have all of these you know,
[00:50:16] placeholder values memorized in my head.
[00:50:18] I every single time I write a RegEx
[00:50:20] formula, I click on the guide
[00:50:23] so that I can see
[00:50:24] you know the breakdown of what
[00:50:26] each
[00:50:27] character actually means.
[00:50:28] But you could,
[00:50:29] it allows you to do stuff like this
[00:50:31] which will save you a lot of
[00:50:33] headache if you could just
[00:50:35] you know think to yourself.
[00:50:37] Alright let me standardize
[00:50:38] everything and put a
[00:50:39] semicolon there every time and then
[00:50:42] you know replace only the semicolons
[00:50:44] at the end. Really the hard part is
[00:50:46] thinking of
[00:50:49] you know, recognizing situations
[00:50:51] where RegEx could work.
[00:50:53] And then the other
[00:50:54] hard part is actually working with reg ex
[00:50:57] I can't even imagine
[00:50:59] but this looks hugely powerful.
[00:51:01] It's almost kind of like an
[00:51:03] array function
[00:51:04] in a way
[00:51:04] it's like looping kind of
[00:51:06] to look for the line,
[00:51:06] the end of each line.
[00:51:08] Yeah it opens a whole lot of doors
[00:51:11] and you know there's
[00:51:13] infinite solutions that
[00:51:14] are easier with RegEx
[00:51:16] and some that weren't even
[00:51:18] really possible without
[00:51:20] you know
[00:51:20] several, several formula fields
[00:51:22] working in tandem to do stuff and
[00:51:25] this was one of those instances
[00:51:27] where I was like, aha,
[00:51:29] I'm pretty sure RegEx
[00:51:30] could do this in a shorter
[00:51:32] formula.
[00:51:33] Yeah. And and your RegEx Yeah,
[00:51:36] it's only the replace at the end.
[00:51:39] Yeah. So
[00:51:41] that's fairly simple.
[00:51:42] Yeah. If you're doing RegEx,
[00:51:44] there's websites out there
[00:51:46] that you'll live on
[00:51:48] that help you test, is this valid?
[00:51:50] Does this work?
[00:51:51] You probably want to do it there
[00:51:53] instead of just continually
[00:51:55] updating a formula
[00:51:56] saving and see if it worked.
[00:52:00] Very cool stuff.
[00:52:03] Thank you. Kamille.
[00:52:06] Alright, moving on.
[00:52:08] Just a quick plug for
[00:52:09] our BuiltOnAir community.
[00:52:11] We'd love to have you join us
[00:52:12] if you're not already in.
[00:52:14] We have an active slack
[00:52:15] community of thousands of Airtable users
[00:52:18] and always stuff going on.
[00:52:19] So please join us
[00:52:21] builtonair.com/join to sign up.
[00:52:24] And our final segment
[00:52:26] Alli is gonna walk through
[00:52:28] advanced linked record filters.
[00:52:32] Alright, am I sharing here?
[00:52:35] Excellent. Okay,
[00:52:36] so this is something that's super
[00:52:40] exciting.
[00:52:40] It's not as exciting I think
[00:52:43] as some people thought it was based on
[00:52:45] the name of the release
[00:52:47] with the advanced filter options
[00:52:48] for linked records.
[00:52:50] it literally is only talking about
[00:52:52] the filtering function.
[00:52:54] It's nothing special
[00:52:55] about being able to filter the
[00:52:57] choices by your linked record
[00:52:59] which hopefully
[00:53:00] is coming sometime in the future
[00:53:01] but this is still very powerful.
[00:53:05] so actually this is something
[00:53:06] I kind of touched on
[00:53:07] a few weeks ago before this
[00:53:08] was something that was available.
[00:53:11] And a little trick
[00:53:12] that I had used in the past
[00:53:14] and sometimes will probably still use
[00:53:16] because I like having the color of a
[00:53:18] single select field
[00:53:19] is on my locations table. I actually have
[00:53:23] that single select here.
[00:53:25] For each one
[00:53:26] and even if this is still reading
[00:53:28] sometimes they'll have the
[00:53:29] name actually read the single select
[00:53:31] but neither here nor there.
[00:53:34] And then because I have each record
[00:53:36] on my company vehicle table linked to a
[00:53:38] location,
[00:53:39] I'm able to look up that single select.
[00:53:42] And then I could use that
[00:53:44] as
[00:53:46] a filter to be able to
[00:53:47] actually choose an option.
[00:53:50] And that was to get around
[00:53:52] having to type in
[00:53:54] the actual code for a linked
[00:53:56] record.
[00:53:56] If I'm trying to filter
[00:53:58] by the actual physical location
[00:54:01] because it's on contains
[00:54:02] it still stays there.
[00:54:03] So this is interesting that works
[00:54:04] out pretty well.
[00:54:06] Previously you'd have to
[00:54:07] actually type in here you know
[00:54:09] instead of just picking it from the list.
[00:54:12] Can with a single select
[00:54:15] but
[00:54:16] now
[00:54:18] we have all of these pretty options here.
[00:54:20] So instead of just contains
[00:54:23] or is
[00:54:24] or does not contain.
[00:54:26] Now we have has any of
[00:54:28] has all of
[00:54:29] is exactly
[00:54:30] and has none of
[00:54:32] which all pertained to a actual selector
[00:54:36] for those linked record fields.
[00:54:38] So just like I could have
[00:54:39] with my single select
[00:54:40] field.
[00:54:41] Now, this is going to function
[00:54:43] very similar to how
[00:54:44] actually choosing a linked
[00:54:46] record works in a field.
[00:54:48] I can actually go and find
[00:54:50] that linked record.
[00:54:51] It's gonna show me other
[00:54:53] information about that linked record,
[00:54:55] just like it does in the linked record
[00:54:56] picker
[00:54:57] and now I can go through
[00:54:59] and pick my locations
[00:55:01] just like I could with that
[00:55:02] single select,
[00:55:04] which is super, super helpful.
[00:55:07] Like I said, I still probably
[00:55:08] will use my little hack
[00:55:10] with the single select
[00:55:10] cause I like the colors but
[00:55:12] this makes things a lot easier
[00:55:14] because previously
[00:55:15] you'd have to kind of rely on
[00:55:17] knowing what that linked record
[00:55:18] was called and
[00:55:19] actually having the
[00:55:21] correct spelling nomenclature, whatever
[00:55:23] it is for your naming convention,
[00:55:25] like somewhat memorized
[00:55:26] or just have to guess,
[00:55:27] like did I type it in white shirt
[00:55:29] or yellow t shirt,
[00:55:30] white or whatever it is.
[00:55:31] Like there were,
[00:55:33] there were like three major problems
[00:55:35] with the contains does not
[00:55:36] contain
[00:55:37] because it didn't have is
[00:55:40] so if your name was like
[00:55:42] carl
[00:55:42] and then another person's name is carlita.
[00:55:46] When you're looking for contains
[00:55:48] carl,
[00:55:49] you're going to get both of those people
[00:55:51] and their different people and
[00:55:52] then
[00:55:53] if carl were to change their name
[00:55:57] to Phil or something
[00:55:59] that's no longer going to contain it,
[00:56:01] even though you were looking for a very
[00:56:02] particular record.
[00:56:03] It no longer contains carl
[00:56:05] so it's not gonna lose that
[00:56:07] this
[00:56:08] implementation I've tested it before
[00:56:11] has does
[00:56:12] not have
[00:56:12] has any of
[00:56:13] has none of
[00:56:14] they're looking at the record I.D.
[00:56:17] So if you were to rename that
[00:56:19] to say whatever, it's still gonna pick,
[00:56:22] you know,
[00:56:23] that specific record that was found.
[00:56:26] Exactly.
[00:56:27] So to demo what Kamille just said
[00:56:29] if I had just previously,
[00:56:31] if I'm relying on
[00:56:32] contains and I had typed in
[00:56:33] Cape or which was the name of my record,
[00:56:36] went here and changed the name
[00:56:38] of my record. Now to test,
[00:56:40] my view is now completely broken.
[00:56:41] There's nothing there
[00:56:43] not really broken but still
[00:56:45] however, if I actually use
[00:56:48] that selector
[00:56:50] has any of
[00:56:52] now it's called test
[00:56:55] and I go back and change my name back.
[00:57:01] It still works
[00:57:03] and it actually
[00:57:05] look it's gonna load. That's cool.
[00:57:07] So now it stays with
[00:57:08] the actual name of that record
[00:57:10] and it's not gonna break
[00:57:11] that link.
[00:57:13] So super exciting stuff.
[00:57:15] And the last issue
[00:57:16] with contains does not contain is if
[00:57:18] you wanted to look at
[00:57:19] two different people,
[00:57:20] you have to have two separate
[00:57:21] filters says you know,
[00:57:23] contains carl
[00:57:24] or contains Phil and have that as like a
[00:57:26] conditional group
[00:57:27] and you have to do that for
[00:57:29] however many records and that's
[00:57:31] deeply infeasible
[00:57:32] depending on how many record types
[00:57:33] or whatever that you were
[00:57:34] looking for and now it's just one line
[00:57:37] makes it super easy
[00:57:39] and someone from our chat
[00:57:40] pointed out that it's not
[00:57:42] just in, you know, the data view,
[00:57:44] it's also an Interface Designer
[00:57:46] and also in
[00:57:47] automations if I'm not mistaken
[00:57:49] for conditions,
[00:57:50] so yeah, it's everywhere and it's
[00:57:52] super useful.
[00:57:53] It's super super useful.
[00:57:55] Yes, I'm very excited about it.
[00:57:57] I think it's gonna make for
[00:57:59] a much easier user experience without
[00:58:01] your users don't have to
[00:58:02] remember how your name, everything,
[00:58:04] they can just find it from the list.
[00:58:08] Yeah,
[00:58:09] that is awesome.
[00:58:11] Good stuff for today.
[00:58:13] So next week we're gonna be off for a
[00:58:16] week because of the fourth of
[00:58:18] July holiday here in the States.
[00:58:20] So we will be back in two weeks
[00:58:23] and then we'll have three shows in
[00:58:27] in July to
[00:58:27] end out the season.
[00:58:29] So thank you for joining
[00:58:31] and Kamille and Alli for sharing
[00:58:33] your amazing insights with the community
[00:58:35] and until then
[00:58:37] we will see you guys next time. Take care.