5/9/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S14-E05

Duration: 64 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.

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 – 00:03:16 –

Meet the Creators – 00:28:37 –

Meet Chris Talley and Steven Zhang.

Chris and Steven are both former Airtable developers who have joined forces to build new apps on Airtable. Check out their latest projects at https://www.warntracker.com/ and https://www.climatetechlist.com/

Visit them online

An App a Day – 00:48:30 –

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Calendar Sync App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Chris and Steven share how to implement Calendar syncing in Airtable.”.

Automate Create – 01:00:34 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille explains the repeater functionality in Automations.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:16

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:28:37

Chris Talley and Steven Zhang –

Meet Chris Talley and Steven Zhang.

Chris and Steven are both former Airtable developers who have joined forces to build new apps on Airtable. Check out their latest projects at https://www.warntracker.com/ and https://www.climatetechlist.com/

Visit them online

Segment: An App a Day

Start Time: 00:48:30

Airtable App Showcase – Calendar Sync – Chris and Steven share how to implement Calendar syncing in Airtable.

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Calendar Sync App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Chris and Steven share how to implement Calendar syncing in Airtable.”.

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 01:00:34

Airtable Automations – Looping in Automations

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille explains the repeater functionality in Automations.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:43] We are back with episode five
[00:01:46] of season 14.
[00:01:47] Good to be with you
[00:01:48] myself, Dan Fellars and Kamille Parks,
[00:01:51] our host back
[00:01:52] with you
[00:01:54] and we have two new faces with us.
[00:01:57] We've got Chris Talley and Steven Zhang or
[00:02:00] Zhang?
[00:02:02] Zhang.
[00:02:03] All right, welcome. We will get to hear
[00:02:06] their stories. I'm gonna remove our
[00:02:08] banners so we can see our faces
[00:02:12] and we'll get to hear their stories
[00:02:15] a little bit, but we will go through,
[00:02:17] I'll walk through what we're
[00:02:18] gonna be talking about today.
[00:02:20] The BuiltOnAir podcast
[00:02:21] is always a four segment
[00:02:23] show about an hour long where we will
[00:02:27] get you up to speed
[00:02:28] on everything Airtable.
[00:02:29] We always start with our Round the
[00:02:30] Bases to talk about
[00:02:32] anything new in the communities
[00:02:35] involving Airtable.
[00:02:36] Then a quick spotlight on On2Air,
[00:02:38] our primary sponsor,
[00:02:40] then we'll meet the creators,
[00:02:43] Chris and Steven
[00:02:44] and learn their stories and
[00:02:46] how they're involved in the world
[00:02:48] of Airtable.
[00:02:49] Then they will walk us through a
[00:02:51] demo of calendar syncing
[00:02:54] of some cool stuff
[00:02:56] that they've got going on
[00:02:58] and then a quick shout out
[00:03:00] to our community, how you can join.
[00:03:01] And then finally, Kamille
[00:03:03] will walk us through automations
[00:03:05] and looping and
[00:03:06] repeating the repeating
[00:03:07] functionality in automations.
[00:03:10] So with that,
[00:03:11] we'll go through our Round the Bases.
[00:03:15] Couple of shout outs,
[00:03:16] the first thing next week is DareTable.
[00:03:18] So in San Francisco,
[00:03:22] I don't know if there's any spots left,
[00:03:24] there might have been a few spots left
[00:03:26] but
[00:03:27] excited to see everybody there.
[00:03:29] We're gonna do a show from
[00:03:31] there so we won't be
[00:03:31] doing our show next Tuesday.
[00:03:34] So next week we're gonna do it live
[00:03:36] at the DareTable. We'll try to get
[00:03:39] people on and,
[00:03:40] and talk about what's going on
[00:03:43] at the Dare Table conference.
[00:03:45] So look forward to that.
[00:03:46] That will likely be on
[00:03:47] either. We
[00:03:48] likely Wednesday. I think we're
[00:03:50] gonna try to do it Wednesday.
[00:03:51] If not, then Thursday, it's a two day
[00:03:54] event next week at Airtable
[00:03:56] headquarters.
[00:03:57] So excited to be there,
[00:03:58] Chris or Stephen,
[00:03:59] you either of you gonna be there?
[00:04:03] I
[00:04:03] don't think so. Yeah,
[00:04:04] I don't think either one of us
[00:04:05] will be there this time.
[00:04:06] OK.
[00:04:06] We'll get you next time.
[00:04:09] So that's the, the first thing.
[00:04:12] And then second thing,
[00:04:14] our friend Gareth at
[00:04:15] Gap consulting, put out a video
[00:04:18] Kamille, what do you know
[00:04:19] about this video?
[00:04:20] So,
[00:04:23] sometime last year,
[00:04:25] I helped at Gap to build
[00:04:27] a system that uses
[00:04:29] Airtable and stripe.
[00:04:32] And in some cases also calandly
[00:04:34] all sort of
[00:04:36] integrated together
[00:04:37] to auto invoice and auto bill
[00:04:40] clients when a new record in Airtable
[00:04:43] is either created or marked as
[00:04:45] invoiceable or something
[00:04:46] of that effect. And then
[00:04:48] you're just recently put out a video
[00:04:49] that explains that process.
[00:04:50] So,
[00:04:51] you know, highly recommend
[00:04:53] checking it out. It's a
[00:04:55] an interesting process.
[00:04:57] It involves using make
[00:04:58] as opposed to Zapier
[00:04:59] to connect all of these
[00:05:01] different pieces together.
[00:05:02] But you know,
[00:05:04] fun build and
[00:05:06] useful for a lot of different businesses.
[00:05:08] I think Stripe has
[00:05:09] a pretty
[00:05:11] beginner friendly API.
[00:05:12] So if you're looking for a good
[00:05:14] API to sort of dip your, dip your toe in
[00:05:18] and
[00:05:20] don't mind working with money,
[00:05:22] you stripe or you could use
[00:05:23] their test account.
[00:05:24] So no real
[00:05:25] world money has to actually
[00:05:27] move anywhere if you just wanna
[00:05:29] get the practice of working
[00:05:30] with API S and connecting
[00:05:32] them to Airtable.
[00:05:33] Yeah.
[00:05:34] Yeah. So a good video Gareth
[00:05:36] always puts out really good
[00:05:38] tutorial videos how to.
[00:05:41] And so yeah, this one Kamille
[00:05:43] helped put together.
[00:05:44] So I thought it was worth
[00:05:46] giving a shout out there.
[00:05:48] Next one, here's a good one.
[00:05:50] I first noticed this,
[00:05:52] I think Bill French posted
[00:05:54] this in the BuiltOnAir Community
[00:05:56] and then I saw it posted on Twitter a
[00:05:58] couple other places.
[00:06:02] Co-founder, Howie Liu talking about,
[00:06:05] you know, a I this article,
[00:06:07] I only read the article,
[00:06:09] there's a podcast where
[00:06:10] maybe he talks more.
[00:06:12] But just talking about, you know,
[00:06:15] how our Airtable is thinking about A I.
[00:06:17] So it gives a little bit of
[00:06:20] insights there.
[00:06:23] So worth a read
[00:06:24] at
[00:06:24] some point, I'll go back and,
[00:06:26] and listen to the full podcast
[00:06:28] and see if there's
[00:06:28] any more insights.
[00:06:30] But the main thing he talks about
[00:06:33] is at Airtable, they're thinking
[00:06:35] about how to weave A I
[00:06:37] into the go to market
[00:06:38] plan.
[00:06:39] Important thing, we're going to engage
[00:06:41] with customers and frame the value of
[00:06:43] our product because we actually
[00:06:44] can deliver a lot of value
[00:06:46] through A I on our
[00:06:46] platform
[00:06:47] rather than us just trying
[00:06:50] to add another tackle on A. I
[00:06:52] think it's more foundational.
[00:06:54] We're trying to be very clear and
[00:06:56] opinionated about our approach to A I.
[00:07:00] So that's how CEO Howie Liu
[00:07:02] is thinking about Airtable and A I
[00:07:06] good stuff there worth listening.
[00:07:08] I'd noticed, I feel like
[00:07:10] I believe there's a, there's a summit
[00:07:13] for like the top customers of Airtable
[00:07:16] happening
[00:07:17] maybe as we speak,
[00:07:19] I know it's this week. And
[00:07:21] so I think around these summits,
[00:07:23] they did one back in November,
[00:07:25] I believe,
[00:07:27] and they make a lot of announcements.
[00:07:30] So I would say be prepared for probably
[00:07:32] tomorrow for some
[00:07:33] big announcements coming.
[00:07:35] You can see Howie starts to do
[00:07:37] kind of the the press scene and,
[00:07:39] and get his name out there more
[00:07:40] around these conferences. So
[00:07:42] I think we'll be seeing
[00:07:44] some big exciting
[00:07:45] announcements coming this week. So
[00:07:48] excited for that.
[00:07:51] All right, next up
[00:07:53] from the BuiltOnAir Community
[00:07:56] Hannah posts
[00:07:58] what do you know
[00:08:00] about
[00:08:00] using Airtable that you wish
[00:08:03] you knew when starting out?
[00:08:05] And
[00:08:05] a couple of comments here,
[00:08:07] Hannah says linked records are life.
[00:08:09] Justin says it completely that it would
[00:08:12] completely change my life
[00:08:14] Bill says that the split
[00:08:17] formula would still
[00:08:18] not be implemented.
[00:08:22] Not to agonize over the expensive
[00:08:25] pro license says Kuovonne
[00:08:26] and then Rebecca on a
[00:08:28] previous one said that it doesn't
[00:08:30] scale intuitively and that still holds.
[00:08:32] And then I like John's, I wish I knew
[00:08:34] how to explain to users how much the
[00:08:36] spreadsheets they have inherited
[00:08:39] created and use suck
[00:08:40] for data collection and
[00:08:41] analysis.
[00:08:43] I feel that last one in my soul. Actually,
[00:08:47] A lot of what I do now is
[00:08:49] helping teams move from
[00:08:52] whatever system they're currently
[00:08:53] using into an Airtable based system.
[00:08:55] And a lot of times it's
[00:08:56] a traditional spreadsheet
[00:08:58] and the initial ask is,
[00:09:00] hey, can you do this in
[00:09:02] Airtable?
[00:09:03] And then it makes no sense
[00:09:04] to do it that way in Airtable,
[00:09:06] it makes perfect
[00:09:07] sense to do it that way as a,
[00:09:08] as a spreadsheet, but sort of
[00:09:11] getting around that we're gonna,
[00:09:13] we're gonna tweak things
[00:09:15] slightly so that it's
[00:09:15] more performance and,
[00:09:17] you know,
[00:09:18] you gotta become a bit of a salesman
[00:09:20] as you're doing some of this
[00:09:22] transition work. But, yeah.
[00:09:25] And also with each passing day,
[00:09:27] I also want a split formula.
[00:09:28] That'd be nice.
[00:09:30] Yeah.
[00:09:30] Yep.
[00:09:31] Steven, Chris, anything you know now
[00:09:33] that you wish you knew at the beginning?
[00:09:37] I think, yeah, I think the kind of
[00:09:40] Kamille's point is great that there's
[00:09:43] like a very much a relearning. It
[00:09:46] it looks a lot like a spreadsheet
[00:09:48] when you're starting out and it's very
[00:09:50] tempting to think of it as a spreadsheet.
[00:09:52] And
[00:09:53] if you haven't worked with
[00:09:55] like SQL databases before then
[00:09:58] having that
[00:09:59] mental model shift,
[00:10:00] I think a lot it's easy
[00:10:02] to fight against it.
[00:10:03] But man, once you actually accept it
[00:10:06] and realize how valuable having like typed
[00:10:09] columns is and, and structured
[00:10:11] data instead of a spreadsheet,
[00:10:13] it is just like
[00:10:14] super, super powerful. So I think,
[00:10:18] yeah, for people that we help
[00:10:19] get onto Airtable,
[00:10:21] that's probably like the
[00:10:21] number one thing
[00:10:22] is we're like, no, it's not
[00:10:23] quite a spreadsheet,
[00:10:25] but it's so much better
[00:10:26] and I need to need to show you why.
[00:10:32] All right, next one
[00:10:33] also from the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:10:36] I think we know who posted this Kamille.
[00:10:39] So you were the first to point this out.
[00:10:43] Yeah. So
[00:10:45] experiencing
[00:10:48] I've been building a lot
[00:10:50] of interfaces, practically every day
[00:10:52] I'm working in interfaces
[00:10:53] now and then very
[00:10:54] suddenly
[00:10:56] on
[00:10:57] a form view I was creating, I could
[00:10:59] hide certain fields based on condition.
[00:11:03] So I apologize for the quality
[00:11:04] of this screenshot and I couldn't take it
[00:11:06] directly from that computer.
[00:11:08] But some things that I liked
[00:11:11] about the feature was
[00:11:12] not only can
[00:11:15] you hide a whole field,
[00:11:17] you can force things
[00:11:19] like select fields to only
[00:11:21] present certain options,
[00:11:23] which I believe you can
[00:11:24] also do in a shareable form
[00:11:26] view.
[00:11:26] But you can also enforce
[00:11:28] a default value. And when you
[00:11:30] do that,
[00:11:32] you can say,
[00:11:34] you know, basically force that
[00:11:36] whoever's filling it in to use only that
[00:11:38] default values,
[00:11:39] you can disable the form field
[00:11:41] so they can't change it from
[00:11:43] whatever
[00:11:44] you've said is the default.
[00:11:45] So that's very useful
[00:11:47] for making sure when a new
[00:11:48] record is created certain,
[00:11:51] you know, utility fields,
[00:11:53] if you will
[00:11:54] come in with a value instead of blank
[00:11:56] or with the correct value.
[00:11:58] If you have like a status field
[00:12:00] where the first
[00:12:00] one is under consideration,
[00:12:03] you don't want someone to go
[00:12:04] in and say no, no, no, it's complete.
[00:12:06] It's not. So
[00:12:08] that I think is a well implemented
[00:12:11] piece. I haven't used it on every possible
[00:12:15] field type yet. So I don't know how
[00:12:17] enforcing defaults work on certain fields.
[00:12:20] Not every field type
[00:12:21] normally has a default value they can set.
[00:12:24] It's single selects and numbers and
[00:12:26] currency and
[00:12:29] single line text can all have
[00:12:31] default values.
[00:12:32] I haven't tested it on any of
[00:12:34] the others but
[00:12:35] just something I noticed
[00:12:37] as I was working in interfaces.
[00:12:40] Yeah.
[00:12:40] So that's cool.
[00:12:41] Maybe though that might be part of
[00:12:43] their announcements coming in
[00:12:44] this week, but they're
[00:12:46] rolling out a few features early.
[00:12:48] So that's cool.
[00:12:50] Yeah, in a perfect world I could have
[00:12:54] like
[00:12:55] when you drag and drop
[00:12:57] on the interface designer, you,
[00:12:59] you create like rows of different fields
[00:13:02] or elements on the page,
[00:13:03] but you have to still move
[00:13:04] them individually
[00:13:05] if you want to move a row up and
[00:13:07] down.
[00:13:08] Ideally,
[00:13:09] it can preserve whatever container
[00:13:11] I've just made by putting a bunch of stuff
[00:13:13] next to each other and then I can hide
[00:13:15] the whole container
[00:13:16] conditionally.
[00:13:18] That would be great.
[00:13:19] And once that's in there,
[00:13:20] then you don't need multiple
[00:13:21] forms for different like
[00:13:23] access levels. You don't need one form
[00:13:26] for an editor and one form for,
[00:13:28] you know, a, a
[00:13:29] manager or something like that.
[00:13:31] You'd be able to have one
[00:13:33] form and just hide
[00:13:33] certain sections of the form based
[00:13:36] on whoever the current login user is.
[00:13:38] That's what I'm hoping
[00:13:39] they add eventually.
[00:13:41] Yeah,
[00:13:42] that would be cool.
[00:13:44] All right, let's move on.
[00:13:46] OK. This is pretty cool.
[00:13:48] Ben shout out to Ben Green.
[00:13:51] So there, there's a well known
[00:13:53] limit of 500 fields in a single table
[00:13:56] and Ben shows a screenshot of 501 fields
[00:14:02] or hidden fields.
[00:14:03] So I think he got to 502.
[00:14:05] Yeah, this is updated.
[00:14:07] So he got to 502.
[00:14:08] So everybody's saying like
[00:14:10] how did this happen?
[00:14:12] You know, Mel mentions
[00:14:14] that she can only go up to 500.
[00:14:17] So everybody's like,
[00:14:18] oh maybe they're increasing
[00:14:20] the the field limit.
[00:14:22] That's not the case.
[00:14:24] So Ben then does share his secret
[00:14:26] of how he did it.
[00:14:28] And once you read how he did it,
[00:14:30] you're like, OK, this is,
[00:14:32] this is a nice little hack.
[00:14:33] I don't think that this is
[00:14:36] or something that you want to try
[00:14:38] to implement. I don't know if he was
[00:14:39] intentionally doing this or was just bored
[00:14:41] one day and was just playing around
[00:14:43] with
[00:14:44] a table of 500 fields.
[00:14:45] But basically what you have to do
[00:14:48] is you have to sync
[00:14:48] that table to another sync
[00:14:52] to another base
[00:14:56] and
[00:14:58] let's see,
[00:15:02] I guess you have to have two tables
[00:15:04] with 500 each and then multi
[00:15:06] sync them into a single one
[00:15:09] and then that will then add
[00:15:11] an extra field to get to five oh one
[00:15:14] because it always adds that extra sync
[00:15:17] source field.
[00:15:20] And then I think you can then
[00:15:22] change that field type
[00:15:23] to something else and then
[00:15:25] you can then do that again
[00:15:27] to another base to get to five oh two.
[00:15:29] So you have to like
[00:15:30] take advantage of their multi
[00:15:32] sync um feature that adds
[00:15:34] that extra field, that sync source field
[00:15:38] to it to tell you like where it came from.
[00:15:40] And then you can then
[00:15:42] change the the type of field.
[00:15:44] So quite, quite the workaround.
[00:15:46] I don't know how he came across this or if
[00:15:49] this just happened to
[00:15:51] take place and he noticed it.
[00:15:54] We'll have to get Ben on a future
[00:15:56] episode to, to share a secret there of
[00:15:59] how he came to this. But
[00:16:01] kind of interesting. I don't,
[00:16:02] I don't think I would
[00:16:03] recommend this if you really
[00:16:04] need to get to 500
[00:16:06] Bill and Bill is always
[00:16:07] quick to point out that
[00:16:09] any table should not
[00:16:11] require that many fields.
[00:16:14] But yeah, so
[00:16:16] pretty, pretty nice little
[00:16:18] hack going on with Ben.
[00:16:20] I'll just see the
[00:16:23] I was gonna say I'd love to see
[00:16:25] the support person's heart rate
[00:16:26] when he calls in
[00:16:27] with an issue and they go into
[00:16:28] this base and, and see that.
[00:16:32] Yeah, Chris and I have both been
[00:16:33] on the other end of that, right.
[00:16:34] We were both engineers
[00:16:35] at Airtable and I think
[00:16:37] one of the pretty interesting things
[00:16:40] about Airtable as a product is there's
[00:16:42] just so much complexity
[00:16:44] in code. So if you add a new feature,
[00:16:47] you're not just like adding
[00:16:48] 10 more, you know, permutations,
[00:16:51] you're multiplying by 10
[00:16:52] because now you have the existing
[00:16:54] feature set and you can combine it
[00:16:55] in any sort
[00:16:55] of way with the new feature set, right?
[00:16:57] So I'm sure this was just,
[00:16:59] you know, one of those complexities,
[00:17:00] there's probably other
[00:17:01] like sort of oversights in the,
[00:17:04] in the product. But
[00:17:06] yeah,
[00:17:07] just a little background.
[00:17:08] Yeah.
[00:17:09] And I'm, I'm excited.
[00:17:10] I've got a lot of questions
[00:17:12] for the two of you.
[00:17:12] When we dive into your background.
[00:17:15] There is, there is one thread on the
[00:17:20] official Airtable community forums
[00:17:22] where talking about the new released
[00:17:26] a color palette.
[00:17:28] And then I pointed out that
[00:17:30] for some reason,
[00:17:31] button fields can use every color
[00:17:32] except any of the teals.
[00:17:34] And I think that's just my,
[00:17:36] my funniest example of like
[00:17:37] just a minor oversight, but
[00:17:39] it's not, not really a feature.
[00:17:41] It's just for some reason
[00:17:43] you can have every
[00:17:44] color except teal.
[00:17:47] So
[00:17:47] yeah,
[00:17:48] sometimes,
[00:17:49] sometimes there's actually a reason
[00:17:52] behind that and I could talk
[00:17:53] more about like,
[00:17:54] you know, behind some of the
[00:17:55] features. I, I have to,
[00:17:57] I
[00:17:57] have to know, I don't know what it is.
[00:17:59] You could,
[00:18:00] you could probably file a bug and
[00:18:03] probably get a response.
[00:18:04] I will not rest until
[00:18:06] I can have teal everywhere.
[00:18:09] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:10] Actually I need to bring that in.
[00:18:14] I will bring that in over here.
[00:18:15] Let's talk about that now. Yeah,
[00:18:17] let's,
[00:18:18] so here it is the teal,
[00:18:21] so here's the new color palette.
[00:18:23] So they, they added more colors
[00:18:25] and then of course, everybody's saying
[00:18:28] that's great, but not enough.
[00:18:30] We need custom colors.
[00:18:31] Yeah, I think what happened was they,
[00:18:33] they had a very similar color palette with
[00:18:35] three of those four rows
[00:18:37] and then they added 1/4 even darker
[00:18:39] color palette and
[00:18:40] then they also adjusted some
[00:18:41] of the values to make them more
[00:18:44] contrasting I think,
[00:18:45] which I think is a good
[00:18:47] move from a U I perspective,
[00:18:48] especially if you have
[00:18:49] visibility challenges,
[00:18:51] et cetera. But then there's
[00:18:52] like in my, my response,
[00:18:53] there is me just pointing out
[00:18:55] that you could have some
[00:18:56] of these colors somewhere
[00:18:57] and some of these colors somewhere else,
[00:18:59] including the mysterious lack of teal.
[00:19:01] And so it's just like,
[00:19:04] you know, every now and again,
[00:19:07] looking through you're like, oh,
[00:19:09] I wonder how
[00:19:09] you know why this feature
[00:19:11] that exists somewhere else
[00:19:13] doesn't make its way to
[00:19:14] this other thing. Like we were talking
[00:19:16] about forms and interface forms
[00:19:18] earlier in the show, like sometimes
[00:19:21] it takes a while to build a feature
[00:19:23] that's compatible with the new shiny thing
[00:19:25] that has fresh, new code base and whatnot
[00:19:29] color I thought was odd just because it's,
[00:19:31] you know,
[00:19:32] exo
[00:19:32] decimal values.
[00:19:35] Yeah.
[00:19:37] Yeah. So more colors
[00:19:39] that's always good. But yeah, consistency.
[00:19:41] They did say that they're
[00:19:43] hoping to consolidate and, and
[00:19:45] bring them all consistent. So hopefully
[00:19:48] they do that.
[00:19:51] OK. Next one,
[00:19:54] this one I thought was worth pointing out.
[00:19:56] So Karlsten in the BuiltOnAir
[00:19:58] community talks about
[00:19:59] limitations of automation
[00:20:02] scripts versus scripts
[00:20:04] in the scripting app.
[00:20:07] And actually, I, I didn't,
[00:20:08] I, this was new to me.
[00:20:10] I, I don't remember using
[00:20:12] values by linked record ID.
[00:20:15] And so that's why I was like,
[00:20:17] oh, that's interesting.
[00:20:18] So this is only available in the
[00:20:20] scripting app
[00:20:21] that it's not available in the
[00:20:22] automation script.
[00:20:23] So that variable values
[00:20:25] by linked record ID.
[00:20:29] And so you have to basically
[00:20:31] loop through to get that information.
[00:20:37] Then he says
[00:20:46] anyways, yeah, so there's more there. So
[00:20:49] I think I forgot that was a function
[00:20:51] like I don't know if I,
[00:20:52] I probably used it once when I was first
[00:20:55] learning Airtable's scripting
[00:20:56] environment and then
[00:20:58] never again because it just
[00:20:59] didn't come up. I,
[00:21:01] I'm gonna guess it doesn't
[00:21:03] matter that he's not including the,
[00:21:05] you know, functional
[00:21:06] parentheses at the end of that,
[00:21:07] you know, I'm sure he's tried.
[00:21:09] Is it a function or a variable?
[00:21:11] That is it?
[00:21:12] See,
[00:21:13] I don't know, I don't know what this is.
[00:21:14] I never used it. I think,
[00:21:15] I think it's like
[00:21:17] an array of the values. Oh,
[00:21:20] well, that would be useful.
[00:21:22] I wonder if it's something to do
[00:21:24] with because automation scripts
[00:21:26] are not done,
[00:21:27] they're done on like the server
[00:21:28] and not on the, your local machine.
[00:21:30] And so it's more tax
[00:21:31] on the Airtable environment
[00:21:33] to pull presumably
[00:21:34] all field values, all 502
[00:21:38] field values that we've just
[00:21:40] discovered is possible.
[00:21:41] Versus if it's on your local machine,
[00:21:44] you know, it's, it's not taxing
[00:21:46] Airtable at all to just
[00:21:47] pull your
[00:21:48] memory to like grab all that data
[00:21:51] without being explicitly queried for it.
[00:21:55] I'm gonna guess that's why
[00:21:57] I
[00:21:58] don't know.
[00:21:59] It could just be an oversight too.
[00:22:01] It could just be an
[00:22:02] oversight.
[00:22:04] See, I I'm very 50 50.
[00:22:05] Sometimes I'm like, yeah,
[00:22:06] I could see why that
[00:22:08] I do
[00:22:08] know that sometimes I like records.
[00:22:11] There's definitely like
[00:22:12] some complexity here because,
[00:22:14] you know, I think that there's,
[00:22:16] you can link up to
[00:22:18] at least last year, you could link up
[00:22:21] to as many linked records as
[00:22:22] there are rows in a base.
[00:22:24] So you could have a
[00:22:26] linked record with like,
[00:22:27] you know, 50,000, 100,000 or
[00:22:29] 50,000 cells and it your base
[00:22:32] becomes unusable there.
[00:22:33] So can be probably write
[00:22:34] something with performance.
[00:22:37] looks like it could definitely be
[00:22:39] some performance consideration.
[00:22:41] Yeah,
[00:22:42] yeah, so definitely worth but yeah,
[00:22:45] in general, there are definitely some
[00:22:47] differences if you're writing scripting
[00:22:49] and automations versus the,
[00:22:51] the scripting apps that you
[00:22:52] need to be aware of those.
[00:22:54] All right, one more I wanna get to,
[00:22:57] to Steven and Chris.
[00:22:59] OK. Last one, this was
[00:23:01] basically a known limitation
[00:23:03] or a Jonathan's asking,
[00:23:05] is it a known limitation that
[00:23:07] when attempting to place
[00:23:08] a static filter on a list
[00:23:09] view interface,
[00:23:11] the ones that take up the whole page,
[00:23:14] you can't filter based on a field
[00:23:16] that's not showing in the list.
[00:23:18] So in a in a normal view,
[00:23:20] you can filter on any field.
[00:23:22] But apparently in a list view,
[00:23:24] I wasn't aware of this.
[00:23:27] That field that you filter on
[00:23:29] needs to be visible in the view.
[00:23:32] You can't hide it.
[00:23:35] Yeah, it's not
[00:23:37] clear. There's no like warning or,
[00:23:39] or pop up that tells you this.
[00:23:41] But if you,
[00:23:43] you know, run into an issue
[00:23:44] like why can't I filter by it,
[00:23:46] then you would need
[00:23:47] to take a look at what fields
[00:23:49] you've exposed and whatever that view is.
[00:23:51] I believe the same thing
[00:23:53] is true of grid view,
[00:23:55] calendar and timeline are different
[00:23:57] in that there's only certain
[00:24:03] what happens with
[00:24:04] calendar and timeline, right?
[00:24:06] You're showing a specific set of fields
[00:24:09] that may or may not be actually visible
[00:24:11] to the user because if the time
[00:24:13] is too short to contain
[00:24:15] all of the text that
[00:24:16] you've defined as a label
[00:24:18] for that record, you might not see it.
[00:24:21] And
[00:24:21] if you click on it, normally it will have
[00:24:24] that little pop up that has every
[00:24:25] field that you've
[00:24:26] identified it as a label.
[00:24:27] Those are the ones that you can
[00:24:28] filter by.
[00:24:30] But if you turn off
[00:24:31] editing,
[00:24:33] but then you also turn on,
[00:24:35] you can open up this record
[00:24:37] into like a detail view,
[00:24:39] you bypass that little
[00:24:40] window.
[00:24:41] So effectively, what you can do is say
[00:24:44] here's all of these fields
[00:24:46] I want to show the user
[00:24:48] when in reality,
[00:24:49] you're using that as your filter basis.
[00:24:51] And then the user
[00:24:52] actually never sees them.
[00:24:53] They only see them
[00:24:54] if you were to include them in a
[00:24:55] detailed view
[00:24:56] or if you just
[00:24:57] disable detailed views at all,
[00:24:59] you you never see
[00:25:00] them to begin with.
[00:25:01] It's a very odd explanation of,
[00:25:04] of that behavior,
[00:25:05] but that's what I've noticed.
[00:25:08] And I think
[00:25:09] the and I put it in my reply here.
[00:25:11] I think the reasoning behind
[00:25:13] not letting you filter by a field
[00:25:15] that isn't visible
[00:25:17] to the users because they
[00:25:18] wanted to remove the possibility
[00:25:20] of someone accidentally exposing
[00:25:23] certain
[00:25:25] data that you haven't
[00:25:27] explicitly given that person
[00:25:29] the rights to view.
[00:25:32] So
[00:25:34] it works differently
[00:25:35] than a shared view link,
[00:25:37] right? If you create a grid view
[00:25:39] and regular data view
[00:25:40] and then you filter it
[00:25:41] some way and give it a share link.
[00:25:44] When they go to that share link,
[00:25:46] they don't know whatever
[00:25:47] filters are applied,
[00:25:48] they can add their own
[00:25:50] and take those away.
[00:25:52] But they can never see
[00:25:53] or know what the filters you've
[00:25:55] applied to that shared view.
[00:25:56] It works differently in interfaces where
[00:25:59] you have a default set
[00:26:01] of filters and then you can
[00:26:03] allow the user to create
[00:26:05] new filters on top of that,
[00:26:07] but they
[00:26:08] have to be within the same set of fields.
[00:26:10] Or at least that's my understanding.
[00:26:14] Yep.
[00:26:16] Good, good overview there.
[00:26:18] So, yeah, let's move on.
[00:26:21] So we got time for
[00:26:22] our other segments.
[00:26:24] First a quick shout out to On2Air
[00:26:26] our primary sponsor,
[00:26:28] it's an all one tool kit
[00:26:29] to run your business on Airtable.
[00:26:30] Suite of apps that help you
[00:26:32] do more with your Airtable.
[00:26:34] So if you're
[00:26:35] using Airtable to run your business,
[00:26:37] you need to check out on2air.com
[00:26:39] and check out the suite of apps
[00:26:41] that we have. And for today,
[00:26:44] I've been holding on this announcement,
[00:26:46] it's taken a couple extra weeks,
[00:26:47] but
[00:26:48] this week we are,
[00:26:49] it's actually live now.
[00:26:51] We haven't fully announced it.
[00:26:52] It still says that it's
[00:26:54] closed for new registration, but
[00:26:57] I'll give the, the sneak peek here
[00:26:59] that it is actually live
[00:27:01] as of a few days
[00:27:02] ago,
[00:27:03] but we are launching
[00:27:05] and it's really a relaunch of our On2Air
[00:27:07] Actions app. But we're relaunching it
[00:27:11] as On2Air Docs and focusing
[00:27:13] primarily on our document creation.
[00:27:16] So what that means is creating
[00:27:18] all sorts of invoices, quotes,
[00:27:21] anything that you can create in Google,
[00:27:24] DOCS or Google Sheets
[00:27:26] or Google slides
[00:27:27] and use those as a template
[00:27:29] for your documents
[00:27:31] On2Air Docs is the app for you.
[00:27:34] It allows you to create
[00:27:36] placeholders and dynamic data
[00:27:39] that comes from Airtable
[00:27:41] automatically gets populated
[00:27:44] into your Google file and
[00:27:45] then will automatically convert
[00:27:48] that into a PDF or even Microsoft Word or
[00:27:51] Microsoft powerpoint,
[00:27:53] any kind of file that is compatible
[00:27:56] and then we'll automatically
[00:27:58] save it back to Airtable as an attachment
[00:28:01] or whatnot. So that whole workflow
[00:28:03] of document creation,
[00:28:04] dynamically creating documents
[00:28:07] and saving them back into Airtable as an
[00:28:10] attachment
[00:28:11] is available in here. So
[00:28:14] you can sign up,
[00:28:15] it's On2Air Docs and start playing with it
[00:28:19] today. So we're excited to relaunch that
[00:28:22] as On2Air Docs.
[00:28:27] So in a future one,
[00:28:28] I'll go through and,
[00:28:29] and how you actually do that,
[00:28:31] but we won't do that today.
[00:28:33] Today, we're gonna learn
[00:28:35] about Chris and Steven.
[00:28:36] We're excited to have the two
[00:28:37] of you on.
[00:28:39] I think what we would do is
[00:28:44] why don't you tell maybe your, your pre
[00:28:46] Airtable life and then now
[00:28:48] a little bit about your post Airtable
[00:28:50] and then I'm
[00:28:51] sure Kamille and I have some
[00:28:53] questions about life at Airtable.
[00:28:58] Oh, yeah, I'll start.
[00:28:59] So actually, my pre
[00:29:01] Airtable life
[00:29:03] started
[00:29:05] like
[00:29:05] quite a bit before
[00:29:07] I started working there.
[00:29:09] So I started working as a full time
[00:29:11] software engineer.
[00:29:12] 2014, my first company was Tableau.
[00:29:15] So I actually have a joke that
[00:29:17] I can only work at companies
[00:29:19] where Table is in
[00:29:19] his name because Table an Airtable.
[00:29:21] So the two companies I've worked at
[00:29:23] and while I was there,
[00:29:24] like the first year
[00:29:26] I signed up for Airtable,
[00:29:27] I later found out once I started
[00:29:29] working there,
[00:29:30] I like queried the database and
[00:29:31] figured out I was like user 2000
[00:29:33] of like
[00:29:34] Airtable Airtable.
[00:29:36] So used it a lot actually for
[00:29:39] personal use cases,
[00:29:40] like quantified self,
[00:29:42] like tracking my runs,
[00:29:43] tracking headaches, health stuff.
[00:29:45] And I never thought
[00:29:46] about the collaborative
[00:29:47] aspect, which is obviously
[00:29:49] where like most of the value at is.
[00:29:51] So I worked five years
[00:29:53] as a software engineer at Tableau
[00:29:54] and then I joined Airtable afterwards.
[00:29:57] And in the last year since I've left
[00:30:00] Airtable, I've been working mostly
[00:30:02] in the space around
[00:30:03] climate and clean energy
[00:30:04] companies. So I run a job board
[00:30:06] for software engineers
[00:30:08] looking into climate tech.
[00:30:09] I do some advising for founders.
[00:30:10] So it turns out a lot of these,
[00:30:12] if you're a founder and you're doing
[00:30:14] like very hardware heavy company,
[00:30:16] you actually have a lot of
[00:30:17] operational needs that
[00:30:19] should be done using low code in Airtable.
[00:30:21] So I've been helping
[00:30:23] founders with that as well.
[00:30:25] Cool,
[00:30:27] nice. Yeah, I have not been using
[00:30:29] Airtable quite as long as Steven,
[00:30:31] he's a little bit more,
[00:30:33] you know, more O G Airtable than I am.
[00:30:36] But I started using Airtable in
[00:30:38] probably 2019. Before that,
[00:30:40] I was
[00:30:40] a
[00:30:41] yeah, software engineer at Sales Force
[00:30:43] and then Facebook and then
[00:30:46] airbnb and then Airtable. So I guess
[00:30:48] Steven's only doing
[00:30:50] Table companies, I guess
[00:30:51] in the last like five years,
[00:30:53] I'm only doing air companies
[00:30:55] because it was Airbnb
[00:30:55] and then Airtable.
[00:30:57] So
[00:30:58] yeah, while I was at Airtable,
[00:31:00] I was a software engineer
[00:31:01] on the growth team.
[00:31:03] I had a lot of fun,
[00:31:04] learned a ton from the people who,
[00:31:06] who work there.
[00:31:07] It's a really, really awesome group
[00:31:09] of people to work with.
[00:31:10] And
[00:31:12] since leaving,
[00:31:13] I have been working
[00:31:14] on a couple of different things.
[00:31:16] I
[00:31:16] run a website for real estate
[00:31:19] investors to help them
[00:31:20] kind of like analyze
[00:31:21] deals. I help some real estate
[00:31:24] folks manage their portfolios using low
[00:31:27] code and, and no code tools like Airtable.
[00:31:30] And then yeah, Steven and I
[00:31:33] have also been doing some
[00:31:35] some low and no code work
[00:31:37] with folks in different industries.
[00:31:39] I think the main ones have been
[00:31:41] real estate teams, you know,
[00:31:44] venture capital folks. And then some
[00:31:47] like charitable organizations who are
[00:31:51] managing their giving
[00:31:54] and yeah, that's kind of been,
[00:31:55] been my journey.
[00:31:57] And you've been out of Airtable
[00:31:59] about the same time, about a year?
[00:32:01] Yeah.
[00:32:02] Yeah.
[00:32:03] Got you.
[00:32:04] Yeah.
[00:32:05] And Steven, what team
[00:32:06] were you on at Airtable?
[00:32:07] Yeah, I did three teams.
[00:32:09] So when I first joined,
[00:32:11] there was only 20 engineers
[00:32:12] and
[00:32:13] they were like,
[00:32:14] were understaffed
[00:32:15] in the core product team.
[00:32:16] So this was the time when Airtable
[00:32:18] was, like, really focusing on blocks
[00:32:20] or formerly, formerly known
[00:32:22] as blocks right now,
[00:32:23] it's extensions and apps in
[00:32:24] between.
[00:32:25] So
[00:32:26] the feature I was working on
[00:32:28] actually was getting rich text
[00:32:30] out the door,
[00:32:30] which, you know, it still hasn't really,
[00:32:33] as far as I can tell when you
[00:32:34] create a text column, right?
[00:32:36] It's not default rich
[00:32:36] text, it's
[00:32:37] long text and
[00:32:39] I can go into some of the
[00:32:40] complexities on why that is but
[00:32:42] worked on that.
[00:32:42] That was the first team
[00:32:44] I worked on and then
[00:32:44] Airtable kind of in 2020
[00:32:46] transitioned into like,
[00:32:48] we need to like grow as
[00:32:49] much as possible.
[00:32:50] And so I was on a sister team
[00:32:53] to Chris, which was called activation.
[00:32:56] So we were trying to teach people
[00:32:58] how to use Airtable once they signed up,
[00:33:01] which is quite hard actually because
[00:33:04] you know,
[00:33:04] like how do you pitch
[00:33:06] such a complex product, right?
[00:33:09] The probably the biggest two features
[00:33:12] I worked on was onboarding.
[00:33:13] So If you sign up for a new account, now
[00:33:16] you'll have some of these
[00:33:17] pop-ups that will like
[00:33:18] guide you
[00:33:19] through how to use the base.
[00:33:22] Some of the key features
[00:33:23] of the base and then a probably
[00:33:24] bigger one was
[00:33:25] importing. So
[00:33:26] the very first version of importing
[00:33:28] when I joined was like,
[00:33:29] you can only upload
[00:33:29] CS V S.
[00:33:31] There was no type conversion,
[00:33:32] everything was like a plain text column,
[00:33:34] I think.
[00:33:34] And then we added type detection
[00:33:36] and then we added this like interface that
[00:33:38] or not interface, a model
[00:33:40] that pops up that lets you auto toggle
[00:33:42] all some of these
[00:33:43] the types and stuff.
[00:33:45] And then the last team I worked on
[00:33:47] was around was a backup team around how
[00:33:50] to make Airtable some
[00:33:51] more support, more records,
[00:33:53] the performance, like nothing
[00:33:55] that the customer would see.
[00:33:57] Cool.
[00:33:59] Kamille. Any questions?
[00:34:01] Well, I just wanna say the
[00:34:04] improvements to
[00:34:06] importing
[00:34:07] I think is probably one of the more
[00:34:09] unsung improvements in the,
[00:34:11] you know, past couple of years
[00:34:13] just because it was originally
[00:34:15] or at least from
[00:34:15] what I remember
[00:34:17] importing CSVs was
[00:34:18] a
[00:34:19] then block then
[00:34:20] app now extension
[00:34:22] that you like open
[00:34:23] in a side bar. And it was
[00:34:25] not
[00:34:27] convenient
[00:34:28] and
[00:34:29] fast forward to today where
[00:34:31] I build my
[00:34:32] financial management system
[00:34:34] out of Airtable
[00:34:35] where I'm constantly uploading
[00:34:38] CSVs from my bank.
[00:34:39] I have four different accounts. So I'm
[00:34:41] every month I have four
[00:34:42] different CSVs to import
[00:34:44] and it is so much smoother now.
[00:34:46] So thank you for
[00:34:47] you and your team's very hard
[00:34:49] work in improving that.
[00:34:50] Glad to hear that.
[00:34:51] Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:34:53] So there's, there's things like that
[00:34:55] that are like an obvious improvement for
[00:34:57] end users like Yeah, of course,
[00:34:59] it's easier to import your data into a
[00:35:01] database. Is there like a feature
[00:35:03] that you worked on
[00:35:04] both you and Chris that
[00:35:06] you're like,
[00:35:07] I'm not sure anyone noticed this
[00:35:08] great new thing that they added? Because
[00:35:10] sometimes that hasppens.
[00:35:13] I'll start actually like
[00:35:14] that very first project,
[00:35:16] like Rich Text even today,
[00:35:18] you know, I'll help a friend or
[00:35:19] like some founder who's like
[00:35:22] doing Airtable or screen share,
[00:35:23] I'll like walk them through,
[00:35:24] through them stuff and people
[00:35:26] still don't know that, you know,
[00:35:28] rich text exists and then
[00:35:30] that's, that's one thing.
[00:35:31] But I'm, I'm the other thing is like very,
[00:35:34] very few people know that rich
[00:35:35] text,
[00:35:36] you know, is actually a mini
[00:35:38] Google Doc in the sense
[00:35:39] that it's collaborative real time,
[00:35:41] like you could have 10 people typing
[00:35:43] in there. But, you know,
[00:35:45] one of the things
[00:35:46] Airtable never prioritized
[00:35:47] shipping
[00:35:48] was like some sort of
[00:35:50] cursor that you could see,
[00:35:52] you know, where people are typing.
[00:35:53] So I think that's probably part of it.
[00:35:55] Obviously, it was a hackathon project
[00:35:57] a couple of us did a while back and
[00:35:59] you know, when you get to a company
[00:36:00] at Airtable size and you have all these
[00:36:01] other initiatives going,
[00:36:03] I think it's just really hard
[00:36:04] to like figure out how to
[00:36:05] prioritize. So that was never shipped.
[00:36:07] But I would say collaborative rich text
[00:36:08] editing
[00:36:09] is my vote.
[00:36:11] Yeah. Yeah. For me,
[00:36:13] a lot of the things I worked on
[00:36:14] were things that you would
[00:36:15] interact with before or
[00:36:17] in the process of signing up. So
[00:36:20] honestly, I'll, I'll probably a lot
[00:36:22] of the stuff I worked on are things that
[00:36:24] everybody has been through these flows,
[00:36:26] but kind of you don't go through them
[00:36:28] every day. So you don't necessarily
[00:36:30] think about them as much.
[00:36:31] But we're, you know,
[00:36:33] we're measuring metrics
[00:36:34] to make sure that we are
[00:36:35] successfully onboarding customers faster.
[00:36:38] And, and all of that stuff.
[00:36:39] So I think,
[00:36:40] yeah, the list is probably pretty long
[00:36:42] of things that were
[00:36:43] kind of maybe
[00:36:46] not readily noticeable to end users,
[00:36:48] but in the numbers, we could see that they
[00:36:50] were successfully getting people
[00:36:51] through these flows
[00:36:52] faster and into their Airtable
[00:36:53] bases faster. So
[00:36:56] things like, yeah,
[00:36:57] changes to the sign up flow
[00:36:59] and you know, onboarding flows.
[00:37:01] So we have like, you know, experiment with
[00:37:03] different types of quizzes and,
[00:37:05] and questions that we ask
[00:37:07] so that we can feed that information
[00:37:08] into the system that Steven built,
[00:37:10] that helps you on board
[00:37:11] and gives you, like, you know, a,
[00:37:13] a walkthrough of how to set up
[00:37:14] your first base, all of that stuff
[00:37:17] was, yeah, probably
[00:37:19] everyone's seen it,
[00:37:20] and probably doesn't quite
[00:37:22] remember exactly what it felt
[00:37:23] like.
[00:37:24] And let me just add one more
[00:37:26] comment to that. I think,
[00:37:27] it's worth noting,
[00:37:28] like,
[00:37:28] the thing with onboarding is like
[00:37:30] the moment you've done it once you're,
[00:37:32] you can't test that same user again,
[00:37:34] right? Like once you've seen a flow,
[00:37:36] it's really hard to get that beginner
[00:37:38] mindset or like completely beginner
[00:37:40] mindset again.
[00:37:41] I notice this all the time when I try sass
[00:37:44] ups, you know,
[00:37:44] for some of the things I'm doing
[00:37:46] and like,
[00:37:47] I'm just, I, I noticed afterwards,
[00:37:49] I'm like, oh, did I actually,
[00:37:50] why did I skip that tutorial?
[00:37:52] Probably was useful. I don't know,
[00:37:53] I just skipped it because it was like
[00:37:54] the unconscious thing I always do.
[00:37:56] I always skip the tutorial,
[00:37:57] right? Stuff like that.
[00:37:58] So it's actually quite a tricky thing to
[00:38:00] be on the other side,
[00:38:01] you know, trying to help people on board.
[00:38:04] Yeah.
[00:38:05] So I, my question for both of you is
[00:38:08] us on the other side and Kamille
[00:38:11] and I are probably in
[00:38:12] the power user category
[00:38:14] and we talk with a lot of other,
[00:38:16] you know, probably power users and
[00:38:18] there's like lists out there of like
[00:38:20] feature fixes of just like the little
[00:38:23] things that need improvement.
[00:38:25] Like, how did you as a team,
[00:38:27] what's that?
[00:38:29] I said teal again.
[00:38:29] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. And
[00:38:33] how did you like evaluate,
[00:38:35] how did you prioritize
[00:38:36] like the big picture,
[00:38:37] new things that, that you were
[00:38:40] moving to versus like fixing
[00:38:42] the little things like filling
[00:38:44] in the cracks?
[00:38:44] Like how did, how did the team
[00:38:46] think about strategically, product,
[00:38:49] you know, things to work on?
[00:38:52] Yeah, I'll start with the last team
[00:38:54] I was on. So this was a performance
[00:38:56] infrastructure team and
[00:38:57] that one, the mandate
[00:38:59] was actually pretty clear, it was like,
[00:39:01] where are our most valuable bases?
[00:39:03] Because we we were mostly supporting
[00:39:05] enterprise clients, right?
[00:39:07] The the ones with big contracts. So
[00:39:09] it's like the base went down.
[00:39:11] OK. Well, why did it go down?
[00:39:12] Let's go fix that.
[00:39:13] OK.
[00:39:14] So we need to be able to like
[00:39:16] have more of X, right?
[00:39:17] Whether that's like rows or
[00:39:18] linked records or whatever
[00:39:20] or like prevent people
[00:39:21] from doing that in the future.
[00:39:22] So then
[00:39:23] the base won't crash or you know,
[00:39:25] all of these things.
[00:39:26] So I think that was actually
[00:39:27] pretty straightforward,
[00:39:28] like
[00:39:28] sort of just prioritizing
[00:39:30] what the largest enterprise
[00:39:31] customers wanted.
[00:39:32] And I'll tie back
[00:39:33] to my experience at Tableau.
[00:39:34] If you think about Tableau and
[00:39:35] Airtable, they're actually very similar
[00:39:37] surface areas. So Tableau's data
[00:39:39] visualization tool, right?
[00:39:40] You can import any
[00:39:41] database CS V, whatever
[00:39:43] and do charts with it.
[00:39:45] All these industries like
[00:39:46] similar to Airtable, you know,
[00:39:48] cross cutting industries,
[00:39:49] but Tableau had no
[00:39:50] self-service motion.
[00:39:51] So like you could not sign up
[00:39:53] for Tableau on your own.
[00:39:53] You always have to like
[00:39:55] talk to the salesperson
[00:39:56] and the
[00:39:57] product management,
[00:39:58] like feature prioritization function
[00:40:01] there was
[00:40:01] to boil it down simplistically like
[00:40:03] what, what are the top asks?
[00:40:05] Rank them by how much
[00:40:06] contract value are and then
[00:40:08] just do those right?
[00:40:09] Obviously, there's some downsides there.
[00:40:11] So I'll talk about the other
[00:40:12] two teams I was on
[00:40:13] were much more focused on
[00:40:14] like self serve
[00:40:16] growth. And I understand like Airtable
[00:40:18] sort of deprioritized
[00:40:19] some of that in the last couple
[00:40:20] of months. But back then,
[00:40:22] one of the things we had to
[00:40:23] balance was like, we wanna, you know,
[00:40:25] get new users on board
[00:40:27] but also like make old users happy.
[00:40:29] So, you know, we don't want old users to
[00:40:31] like die of 1000 paper cuts, right? So
[00:40:34] one thing I thought was pretty
[00:40:35] effective
[00:40:36] that we tried to later on was kind of
[00:40:37] have these weeks where
[00:40:39] you can just, we, I think we call them B
[00:40:40] ba bug bashes. So you can work on
[00:40:43] the bugs that you want.
[00:40:44] And we always had like
[00:40:45] a prioritized list that would,
[00:40:46] you know, as like a lead
[00:40:48] on the team, I would like triage them
[00:40:49] and then
[00:40:50] we just like go work through
[00:40:52] them for a week
[00:40:53] instead of building new features.
[00:40:55] Yeah. Yeah, same on,
[00:40:56] on my team is, yeah,
[00:40:58] very similar, like you kind of,
[00:41:00] you, you have these,
[00:41:01] these things that come in.
[00:41:02] The, the thing is every bug
[00:41:03] report that comes in, you know, the
[00:41:06] the majority of, of bug reports
[00:41:08] that come in,
[00:41:09] especially in a tool as complex as
[00:41:11] Airtable,
[00:41:12] it very often turns out that
[00:41:14] you look at the bug report and you go,
[00:41:16] oh, actually, you know,
[00:41:18] maybe this is like a misunderstanding
[00:41:20] of what the functionality
[00:41:21] is or maybe,
[00:41:23] you know, and that doesn't mean
[00:41:25] that the fault is on
[00:41:26] the user sometimes that
[00:41:27] that still is valuable
[00:41:28] for us to go, oh, like
[00:41:29] this explanation we had here is
[00:41:31] actually not very clear
[00:41:32] or the design here
[00:41:33] maybe should be iterated on.
[00:41:35] So those things are still valuable but
[00:41:37] all of that stuff takes time,
[00:41:39] all of that triaging
[00:41:40] investigation and triaging
[00:41:41] process.
[00:41:42] So once things make it through
[00:41:44] onto the the engineering teams,
[00:41:47] you know, onto the engineering team's
[00:41:50] triage list,
[00:41:51] we generally are looking
[00:41:52] at a few factors, we're looking at
[00:41:55] how, how serious is this bug?
[00:41:58] And that means like is it
[00:42:00] critically preventing
[00:42:01] someone from doing something
[00:42:02] or is it like maybe a small visual detail?
[00:42:05] And where on that spectrum
[00:42:07] does it fall?
[00:42:08] The other thing is we look at how
[00:42:10] many people is this affecting?
[00:42:12] And you know, that that matters if it's a
[00:42:15] critical detail,
[00:42:16] if, if it's a critical bug for a flow,
[00:42:18] it doesn't matter how many people
[00:42:20] it's affecting, it needs to be fixed.
[00:42:21] But if it's something that maybe
[00:42:23] as
[00:42:23] a
[00:42:23] very straightforward workaround or,
[00:42:26] you know, is, is very much like,
[00:42:29] you know, something that is just a
[00:42:31] minor inconvenience, then we go to the
[00:42:33] next phase, which is like how many,
[00:42:34] how many people is this affecting?
[00:42:36] And then the third thing is how long
[00:42:38] is this gonna take for us to fix?
[00:42:39] And how many, what kind of, you know,
[00:42:41] resourcing do we have to put into
[00:42:42] this?
[00:42:43] And then we, you know,
[00:42:44] we'll have some scoring formula on that
[00:42:46] that lets us come up with
[00:42:48] the,
[00:42:49] the prioritized list of,
[00:42:51] of bugs that we need to fix. And then,
[00:42:53] yeah, like Steven said,
[00:42:55] it basically,
[00:42:55] there's like ongoing every week,
[00:42:57] there's on,
[00:42:57] on all of these engineering teams,
[00:42:59] there's somebody who is like on,
[00:43:00] on call,
[00:43:01] and they're kind of responsible
[00:43:03] for triaging incoming bugs and,
[00:43:06] investigating them and,
[00:43:08] and getting them prioritized.
[00:43:09] And that person might
[00:43:10] actually dedicate a lot
[00:43:12] of that week to fixing bugs,
[00:43:13] that come in if, if they can.
[00:43:16] And then we will have these like
[00:43:18] bigger bug bashes where they say everybody
[00:43:21] stopped your feature work,
[00:43:22] we're all just gonna fix bugs
[00:43:23] and it's usually
[00:43:23] gamified, it's like
[00:43:25] there's a leader board
[00:43:26] and we're seeing who can fix
[00:43:27] the most bugs and whoever
[00:43:28] does, you know,
[00:43:29] gets I don't know, Amazon gift card
[00:43:32] or or something like that.
[00:43:34] And yeah,
[00:43:35] but it's always a always
[00:43:37] a challenge kind of, yeah,
[00:43:38] balancing that technical debt
[00:43:40] with feature work that
[00:43:42] that also has to be done.
[00:43:44] But I will say Airtable
[00:43:46] takes the brand
[00:43:47] and the user experience really,
[00:43:50] really, really seriously and they put
[00:43:53] like painstaking detail into
[00:43:56] making sure that that the product is,
[00:43:59] is delightful to use. So they
[00:44:00] compared to other companies
[00:44:02] I've been to, they
[00:44:03] really, really do pay a lot of attention
[00:44:06] to the bug reports that come in and do,
[00:44:08] I think especially for a company
[00:44:10] of their size, they do a
[00:44:11] really good job of
[00:44:12] of managing those things and,
[00:44:14] and making sure that they,
[00:44:16] they get responded to.
[00:44:17] But I know as a user
[00:44:18] it can still be frustrating and feel
[00:44:19] like things are,
[00:44:21] are moving at a glacial pace.
[00:44:24] Yeah, go ahead.
[00:44:25] I, I was gonna say some
[00:44:26] sometimes as a user,
[00:44:27] it's helpful to remember like if,
[00:44:29] if the bug is like
[00:44:31] this field disappeared,
[00:44:32] that's what I'm experiencing as a user.
[00:44:34] And you guys are investigating
[00:44:36] and you find, oh, it's actually this very,
[00:44:39] that's a side effect of a bunch
[00:44:41] of other stuff that I didn't see.
[00:44:43] That's part of the reason why
[00:44:45] some things take longer than others to get
[00:44:47] resolved. It's not that, you know,
[00:44:48] it's just been brushed under the rug,
[00:44:50] it's,
[00:44:50] you have to, you can't just treat
[00:44:52] the symptom, you have to treat the,
[00:44:54] you know,
[00:44:55] the whole thing holistically sometimes.
[00:44:58] So, yeah, it's such a complex product.
[00:45:00] Yeah. Yeah. Some of those investigations
[00:45:02] can be really involved because it's
[00:45:03] just such a complicated product
[00:45:05] and so many things
[00:45:06] interacting with each other.
[00:45:07] So, yeah, definitely.
[00:45:09] So, one more question before
[00:45:11] we move on for me.
[00:45:12] So having looked under the hood,
[00:45:14] what's your confidence level
[00:45:16] for Airtable as a product
[00:45:18] in the future of Airtable?
[00:45:21] I am super bullish on Airtable still.
[00:45:25] Yeah, I think it's like
[00:45:27] such a, such a strong product
[00:45:29] for what it does and like
[00:45:32] just
[00:45:33] I, I I'm biased, I guess because I'm,
[00:45:35] I'm so familiar with it.
[00:45:36] Like when I'm in Airtable,
[00:45:38] it's like being in my living room,
[00:45:39] right? Like it just is
[00:45:41] so comfortable. But
[00:45:42] when I go to, to other tools,
[00:45:45] you know, they can be great
[00:45:47] for certain things. But I think,
[00:45:49] yeah, the design and the polish
[00:45:51] and the, the attention
[00:45:52] to detail that I can kind
[00:45:53] of feel in the user experience
[00:45:55] of the of the product is,
[00:45:57] is really
[00:45:59] yeah, for me, a a differentiator.
[00:46:01] Steven, how do you feel?
[00:46:02] Yeah, I'll, I'll add on
[00:46:04] to that. I think
[00:46:05] just the product itself is really good.
[00:46:08] Like one of the reasons I joined Airtable
[00:46:10] as an engineer back in 2019 was
[00:46:13] they had a super strong
[00:46:14] engineering team, right?
[00:46:15] Like under the hood looking at
[00:46:16] the code base and that,
[00:46:18] that comes from top down.
[00:46:19] Like, I think the,
[00:46:20] the, the co-founders,
[00:46:22] the technical co-founders especially
[00:46:24] really emphasized that
[00:46:27] my caveat would be,
[00:46:29] I don't, you know,
[00:46:30] a lot of these things aren't about,
[00:46:32] like whether a company
[00:46:34] it becomes like $100 billion company
[00:46:36] or $10 billion company or whatever.
[00:46:38] Right? A
[00:46:39] lot of it doesn't have anything
[00:46:41] to do with the product itself.
[00:46:42] It's like, can you sell it?
[00:46:44] Do you have the distribution channels?
[00:46:45] I mean, the classic example,
[00:46:47] we always talked about both at Airtable
[00:46:50] and
[00:46:50] Tableau was slack,
[00:46:52] right? Basically superior product teams,
[00:46:54] but Microsoft could just distribute it
[00:46:56] for free.
[00:46:56] Same thing happened at Tableau,
[00:46:58] there was Power B I
[00:46:59] which is basically distributed
[00:47:01] for free by Microsoft. And
[00:47:03] I don't think it like ate Tableau's lunch,
[00:47:05] but it definitely like forced Tableau
[00:47:06] in a position where they,
[00:47:07] you know, offer to get acquired
[00:47:09] by sales force instead
[00:47:10] of continuing being its
[00:47:11] own company. So
[00:47:12] that's the part I don't know about.
[00:47:14] And that's the question mark for me. Yeah.
[00:47:16] Yeah,
[00:47:17] that's fair.
[00:47:18] Cool. Thank you both
[00:47:20] Chris and Stephen.
[00:47:21] And it's always awesome to,
[00:47:22] to hear those insights.
[00:47:24] If you want to get
[00:47:26] whichever one is gonna share your screen.
[00:47:28] If you want to get that ready?
[00:47:30] We will move on
[00:47:33] and it sounds like
[00:47:35] and just quick shout out
[00:47:36] so they can find you workflow
[00:47:38] wizards dot Co looks like
[00:47:39] that's what you guys
[00:47:40] are spending some of your time on
[00:47:42] today?
[00:47:44] Yeah. Yep. So, one of the things
[00:47:46] that we've been working on recently is,
[00:47:48] you know, we've been doing
[00:47:50] builds for folks in different industries.
[00:47:54] And like I mentioned before,
[00:47:56] they've been
[00:47:57] the industries that we've kind of had
[00:47:59] the most focus on
[00:48:00] are like real estate teams.
[00:48:03] So like teams of real estate agents
[00:48:05] and helping their operations,
[00:48:07] kind of really get dialed in using
[00:48:09] Airtable and other no code tools.
[00:48:12] Venture capital firms that have,
[00:48:13] you know, funds that they're trying to,
[00:48:15] to manage and all of these different
[00:48:17] investments and reports that they need
[00:48:19] to send out.
[00:48:20] And then some, some charitable giving
[00:48:22] organizations who are tracking their,
[00:48:24] you know, they're, they're giving
[00:48:26] in their portfolios.
[00:48:27] So what I'm gonna show
[00:48:28] today
[00:48:29] is a feature that we built for,
[00:48:32] for real estate teams that I think is
[00:48:35] probably hopefully very applicable
[00:48:38] to a lot of other
[00:48:40] businesses and, and verticals too. So
[00:48:44] I will go ahead and,
[00:48:47] and it's good we've got Kamille
[00:48:48] on, Kamille's nickname
[00:48:50] is the Calendar queen. So
[00:48:52] she, she's
[00:48:53] awesome things in this world as well.
[00:48:55] I, I don't know how this happened.
[00:48:57] I will provide insight if I can.
[00:49:01] I would love insight. Yeah. Awesome.
[00:49:04] Let me,
[00:49:06] let's see.
[00:49:10] Oh, you know what I have to.
[00:49:12] Yeah,
[00:49:12] you
[00:49:12] might
[00:49:13] have
[00:49:13] to enable permissions.
[00:49:16] Yeah, I have to enable permissions.
[00:49:18] Do I need to leave and join again?
[00:49:20] I have to
[00:49:21] believe.
[00:49:24] Ok, let me see. Ok,
[00:49:25] I will be right back guys.
[00:49:27] I'm so sorry about that
[00:49:29] happens all the time
[00:49:32] now we can you can keep
[00:49:33] asking me Airtable questions if you want.
[00:49:35] I was just kidding.
[00:49:37] Will it ever get to millions
[00:49:39] of records?
[00:49:40] Is that how big of an obstacle is that
[00:49:42] to increase the record size?
[00:49:46] Not, I can't say too much,
[00:49:47] but I'll say that that's definitely,
[00:49:49] you know, that's like one of the
[00:49:52] leadership definitely
[00:49:54] has had that as
[00:49:56] a
[00:49:57] one of the goals.
[00:49:58] I can't say like what, what the,
[00:50:03] but it is possible from a technical,
[00:50:07] I think anything is possible
[00:50:09] from a technical point of view.
[00:50:10] It's just a matter of like, how much time
[00:50:12] can you dedicate to, to do it? Right.
[00:50:15] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:50:18] Sorry about that. So
[00:50:21] yeah, so the the thing
[00:50:22] that we're like our,
[00:50:23] one of our overarching forms that
[00:50:25] we try to apply when we're
[00:50:26] working with clients is
[00:50:27] we want to make it so that
[00:50:29] they can do as much stuff
[00:50:31] outside of Airtable as possible
[00:50:34] and pull that information into Airtable,
[00:50:36] right? And the reason for that is imagine
[00:50:38] an operations person
[00:50:39] on a real estate team,
[00:50:40] they need to get all of their real
[00:50:42] estate agents to adopt this new system.
[00:50:44] And realistically, they just are like,
[00:50:47] it's like good luck getting
[00:50:48] real estate agents
[00:50:49] to log into Airtable every day
[00:50:51] and mark their tasks
[00:50:52] as done or when a closing date
[00:50:54] got moved from Monday to Friday.
[00:50:56] We're not gonna go into Airtable and those
[00:50:59] things updated. So
[00:51:01] you know, to solve this problem
[00:51:03] and to help them be able to keep people
[00:51:04] compliant with the system
[00:51:06] and improve adoption.
[00:51:07] We try to do these things
[00:51:09] where we let people take action
[00:51:10] in the tools
[00:51:11] that they're more comfortable with.
[00:51:13] And then we sync that
[00:51:14] information between
[00:51:15] between that comfortable space for,
[00:51:18] for the end user and Airtable,
[00:51:19] which is kind of the
[00:51:21] the main point for
[00:51:25] you know, for the
[00:51:26] the operations person. So
[00:51:29] what I'll show here is,
[00:51:31] let's see. Can you guys see my screen?
[00:51:34] Yeah,
[00:51:35] awesome.
[00:51:36] So
[00:51:37] we have we've set up this thing,
[00:51:39] we call it like it's like a task manager,
[00:51:42] right? So this is where an
[00:51:43] operations person will go
[00:51:45] in and they will create all
[00:51:46] of their tasks for
[00:51:48] for the
[00:51:52] for the team for a particular deal.
[00:51:54] And we have this,
[00:51:55] they can mark certain tasks
[00:51:57] as having a calendar invite.
[00:51:59] And when something has a calendar invite,
[00:52:01] obviously, we create a calendar invite,
[00:52:04] we put it on the calendar
[00:52:06] of the task owner.
[00:52:07] And then
[00:52:09] we allow the task owner
[00:52:11] to change that calendar invite
[00:52:13] and those changes will
[00:52:14] reflect in Airtable and similarly
[00:52:17] the ops person can make changes
[00:52:18] in Airtable and that will reflect in the
[00:52:20] calendar invite.
[00:52:21] Now if I switch tabs, is it going to,
[00:52:27] it looks like you only shared
[00:52:30] the one tab. So let's see,
[00:52:32] let me just share the window
[00:52:33] and improve that. Yeah.
[00:52:35] So
[00:52:38] yeah, let's see.
[00:52:40] Chrome
[00:52:40] tab window. Yeah, there we go.
[00:52:44] Great.
[00:52:50] So
[00:52:52] yeah,
[00:52:52] that was me start. Yeah,
[00:52:54] there we
[00:52:54] go.
[00:52:56] Awesome.
[00:52:58] So
[00:52:59] in here, what you'll notice is
[00:53:02] let me go ahead and hop to
[00:53:08] let's see
[00:53:10] the operations calendar,
[00:53:12] you'll notice that we have
[00:53:14] a calendar event here
[00:53:16] for this closing date, right?
[00:53:19] And so again, this is on June 8th,
[00:53:23] I can go ahead in here
[00:53:25] and change this
[00:53:27] to the ninth and you'll notice
[00:53:29] after a couple of seconds
[00:53:31] this will get synced
[00:53:32] from
[00:53:33] this will get moved
[00:53:35] from the eighth to the ninth.
[00:53:37] This is the right deal.
[00:53:39] Yep, there it goes.
[00:53:40] So the eighth to the ninth and similarly,
[00:53:42] I could do the same thing
[00:53:43] I could move,
[00:53:44] move this over on my calendar,
[00:53:45] send the invite and it'll get synced
[00:53:47] into Airtable. So in just a second,
[00:53:49] I'll see this go from
[00:53:51] the ninth to the eighth.
[00:53:52] So basically what this sync
[00:53:54] does is it's, it's three pieces,
[00:53:56] right? So first off when the
[00:53:58] calendar or when a task gets created.
[00:54:00] We need to create the calendar
[00:54:02] invite and link the Airtable record
[00:54:05] to the calendar event.
[00:54:07] Secondly, when the record
[00:54:09] gets updated in Airtable,
[00:54:10] we need to propagate that change
[00:54:13] to the calendar event.
[00:54:14] And then third,
[00:54:15] if the calendar event changes,
[00:54:16] then we need to propagate that
[00:54:18] change into Airtable.
[00:54:20] Now I'm guessing most of the
[00:54:22] audience is probably
[00:54:23] comfortable setting up these
[00:54:25] kind of automations in Airtable.
[00:54:28] The one thing
[00:54:29] that we found for this that was like
[00:54:32] kind of a gotcha
[00:54:33] is
[00:54:34] the whole point here is that
[00:54:36] this Glenn Franklin who you know,
[00:54:38] this is the task owner.
[00:54:40] So this isn't
[00:54:41] this isn't the event owner because the
[00:54:43] event owner is
[00:54:45] whichever like
[00:54:47] it's the same account
[00:54:48] that is connected
[00:54:50] to the Airtable automation
[00:54:51] that's always sending out
[00:54:53] these invites
[00:54:54] and then it's adding the task owner as
[00:54:56] an attendee.
[00:54:57] Does that make sense so far?
[00:55:01] So the thing is Airtable,
[00:55:03] when you create Google
[00:55:05] calendar events with Airtable,
[00:55:06] you can't or as far as I'm aware,
[00:55:09] you can't create them
[00:55:10] in a way that gives the attendees
[00:55:12] permission to edit the event.
[00:55:14] But we need him to be able
[00:55:16] to edit the event because again,
[00:55:17] I want my real estate agent
[00:55:19] to be able to manage
[00:55:20] his calendar and have those
[00:55:21] changes propagate to Airtable.
[00:55:23] So for that what we have
[00:55:25] as we have this Zapier
[00:55:26] integration
[00:55:28] when we have to do this through Zapier
[00:55:30] because the Zapier
[00:55:31] Google calendar
[00:55:34] integration is, is a little bit
[00:55:36] more flexible there.
[00:55:39] I won't go through all of
[00:55:41] the configuration. But
[00:55:42] but yeah, this is essentially the,
[00:55:44] the behavior that we have.
[00:55:45] And then similarly,
[00:55:47] again, like kind of leaning into
[00:55:49] that idea of letting people
[00:55:51] work where they're
[00:55:51] comfortable already working.
[00:55:54] We will add these call to actions
[00:55:57] in emails and in calendar events.
[00:55:59] So if they want to mark this task
[00:56:01] as done again, I kind of know that this
[00:56:04] this real estate agent is probably
[00:56:05] not gonna log in into Airtable on their
[00:56:06] phone and like go mark the task
[00:56:09] is done in an Airtable base.
[00:56:11] So we use hooks. And
[00:56:14] hooks are just, you know,
[00:56:16] they can click this link,
[00:56:18] it will send a get request to
[00:56:21] this Zapier
[00:56:21] hook and then I have a,
[00:56:24] you know, a ZAP
[00:56:25] automation that is that or a Zap
[00:56:27] that is listening to that hook
[00:56:29] and updating the record.
[00:56:31] So I'll say click here
[00:56:32] to mark this task is done.
[00:56:34] And if they click this
[00:56:36] Google is gonna warn me
[00:56:38] and then there it goes.
[00:56:39] So it gets gets mark was done.
[00:56:40] So our goal is to kind of
[00:56:41] let people take as much action
[00:56:43] outside of Airtable
[00:56:44] as possible and then just
[00:56:46] have Airtable be kind of
[00:56:48] the central glue that's
[00:56:49] pulling all of these different
[00:56:51] systems that they're
[00:56:52] comfortable with together.
[00:56:55] Yeah, happy to talk about any
[00:56:56] further details on that,
[00:56:58] but I don't wanna get
[00:56:59] so in the weeds that
[00:57:01] that it's not helpful.
[00:57:03] Got you.
[00:57:04] So the syncing is happening with Zapier?
[00:57:08] Yeah,
[00:57:08] Zapier,
[00:57:09] so we have, yeah, I, I
[00:57:11] do prefer to use Airtable automations
[00:57:14] whenever I can just for,
[00:57:15] you know,
[00:57:16] billing purposes and
[00:57:19] like it's just a little bit cleaner
[00:57:21] that way. So
[00:57:23] the only one that's done through Zapier
[00:57:24] is the calendar event creation.
[00:57:26] And that's because I need to create
[00:57:29] the calendar event
[00:57:31] in a way that gives attendees
[00:57:32] edit permissions,
[00:57:34] which I can't do with the Airtable
[00:57:35] calendar integration.
[00:57:37] The other two, so updating the calendar
[00:57:39] event when the Airtable record
[00:57:41] changes and vice versa,
[00:57:43] those are done through like
[00:57:44] native Airtable automations.
[00:57:49] Awesome.
[00:57:51] So this is
[00:57:52] a
[00:57:53] point.
[00:57:53] Yeah, go ahead.
[00:57:55] I was just gonna point out that
[00:57:58] you know, you could use
[00:58:00] an Airtable calendars I
[00:58:02] sync feature
[00:58:03] and that will, you know,
[00:58:05] get it to appear in your,
[00:58:06] your Google calendar or your
[00:58:07] Microsoft calendar.
[00:58:09] But those are extraordinarily slow.
[00:58:10] I don't think it's an Airtable problem.
[00:58:12] I think it's an I
[00:58:13] problem just in general.
[00:58:15] Also
[00:58:16] services like these are very
[00:58:18] important if you need things to update,
[00:58:20] you know,
[00:58:22] quickly.
[00:58:23] Just my goodness working,
[00:58:25] working with some of the limitations of
[00:58:27] I
[00:58:28] syncing in general is not,
[00:58:30] not fun. So
[00:58:32] I appreciate this being built.
[00:58:34] Yeah.
[00:58:36] Yeah. Yeah, totally. It's, it's
[00:58:38] and it's always a little bit
[00:58:40] of patchwork
[00:58:41] trying to sync these different systems
[00:58:43] together with no code tools because
[00:58:46] I feel like there's always
[00:58:47] some edge case that like, oh man,
[00:58:49] that doesn't quite work the way I want.
[00:58:51] You know, another
[00:58:52] example of this is like Zapier
[00:58:54] Hooks. You notice when I
[00:58:55] clicked this link for the hook,
[00:58:58] it just gave me this like
[00:58:59] ugly looking
[00:59:00] Json response, right? And like
[00:59:02] it works, it does the job,
[00:59:04] but it's not the most
[00:59:05] delightful user experience.
[00:59:06] An alternative here is you could use make,
[00:59:09] and you can with make
[00:59:11] if you can send back like a custom
[00:59:12] html response so that you could give them
[00:59:14] something a little bit more.
[00:59:17] you know,
[00:59:17] pretty to look at,
[00:59:18] like a little bit
[00:59:20] better to interact with,
[00:59:21] but this gets the job done
[00:59:23] and keeps clients
[00:59:24] from having to pay for yet another,
[00:59:26] you know, monthly license.
[00:59:29] That was gonna be my question
[00:59:30] because I know you can do that in Make
[00:59:32] and I was wondering
[00:59:33] if you can do that in Zapier?
[00:59:35] If you can customize
[00:59:36] the web hook response?
[00:59:38] If you can, I would love to know
[00:59:41] how I have not seen a good way to do that.
[00:59:43] But if there is a way to do that,
[00:59:45] that would be really, really awesome.
[00:59:48] Yeah, I, I don't believe so.
[00:59:50] Well. Yeah, it's, it's too bad.
[00:59:53] All right.
[00:59:54] Awesome. Thank you Chris for sharing that.
[00:59:57] And that's a good example
[00:59:59] of the types of
[01:00:00] applications that Chris and Steven
[01:00:02] can, can help build for you. So
[01:00:04] check them out at
[01:00:05] workflowwizards.co
[01:00:08] and thank you for, for being on the show.
[01:00:11] Quick, shout out to joining our community.
[01:00:13] If you aren't in our community,
[01:00:15] we'd love to have you at
[01:00:17] builtonair.com/join
[01:00:18] that will get you in
[01:00:19] the Slack community
[01:00:21] and join our newsletter
[01:00:23] and subscribe to our youtube channel
[01:00:25] Kamille. We could,
[01:00:26] we've got a few minutes.
[01:00:28] Do you wanna go or do you want,
[01:00:29] do you wanna hold off till next time?
[01:00:31] I can do it.
[01:00:33] Yeah,
[01:00:33] we'll do it. Kamille's gonna
[01:00:35] power through on automations.
[01:00:38] Are we, am I sharing right now?
[01:00:42] Yep.
[01:00:43] OK.
[01:00:44] So really quickly,
[01:00:45] I was gonna walk through
[01:00:47] a pretty simple use case for the new
[01:00:49] repeater action in automations.
[01:00:52] I've set up a,
[01:00:53] a simple base that kind of mimics a
[01:00:56] use case I came across recently where
[01:00:59] we had multiple versions
[01:01:00] of a particular thing.
[01:01:02] And
[01:01:03] you know, you work on one,
[01:01:04] it's under consideration,
[01:01:06] you work on an alternate
[01:01:06] version, you have a couple
[01:01:08] of different options for whatever,
[01:01:09] whatever it is. And at one point
[01:01:11] you're gonna pick one of these options
[01:01:14] for 2023 as the final or the official.
[01:01:17] And then someone wanted all
[01:01:19] of the other ones
[01:01:20] that weren't chosen to be marked
[01:01:22] as archive.
[01:01:23] You could do that with a formula.
[01:01:25] I guess if you're,
[01:01:26] you could do it with a
[01:01:28] linked records and roll ups
[01:01:29] if plan here was a link to another table.
[01:01:32] But this is actually
[01:01:33] a decent use case for implementing
[01:01:35] a repeater action as opposed to using an
[01:01:38] automation script,
[01:01:39] which would be
[01:01:40] in this case a little bit overkill.
[01:01:42] So
[01:01:43] we have two single selects
[01:01:45] to sort of pay attention to
[01:01:47] really quickly walking through
[01:01:49] what this automation is doing.
[01:01:51] I'm trying to archive everything
[01:01:53] that wasn't marked as
[01:01:55] final.
[01:01:56] So when something
[01:01:57] is given the status of final
[01:02:00] in my table,
[01:02:01] I want to use a find record step
[01:02:03] to find anything else in that
[01:02:04] table with the same plan year.
[01:02:07] And that isn't already marked
[01:02:09] as final and isn't already
[01:02:11] marked as archives.
[01:02:12] And then
[01:02:13] we get to use the repeater action. So
[01:02:16] there are two different types
[01:02:18] of groups in automations,
[01:02:20] you can have one that
[01:02:22] is
[01:02:22] conditional.
[01:02:24] So if this condition is met,
[01:02:26] do this, otherwise do this,
[01:02:28] otherwise do this
[01:02:29] or you can have repeaters,
[01:02:31] you can't use both in one automation.
[01:02:34] But for repeaters,
[01:02:35] what you do is you feed it an input list.
[01:02:38] In this case, the list of records
[01:02:40] that I found anything
[01:02:42] that is the same year
[01:02:43] and isn't
[01:02:44] already marked as archive
[01:02:46] and then whatever you put
[01:02:48] within this group
[01:02:49] is going to repeat for any item in
[01:02:51] that list.
[01:02:52] So I'm saying update
[01:02:54] a record in table one.
[01:02:56] If I modify this token,
[01:02:58] you'll see
[01:02:59] the interface I'm given,
[01:03:01] the current item in the list.
[01:03:03] So as it's iterating, update this record,
[01:03:06] OK, then move on to the next one.
[01:03:08] Update that record
[01:03:09] pulling in that record ID.
[01:03:11] And then I'm simply
[01:03:12] marking the status as archive.
[01:03:14] So if I turn this automation on
[01:03:18] and I say version four
[01:03:20] is the one I wanna mark as final.
[01:03:22] Hopefully.
[01:03:24] Yeah, as you could see sort of one by one,
[01:03:27] everything got updated as archive.
[01:03:29] And it didn't include the 2024 versions,
[01:03:32] which is what I wanted.
[01:03:34] So again, this is much simpler
[01:03:36] to set up and more easier
[01:03:38] to understand than
[01:03:39] using
[01:03:40] an automation script where
[01:03:42] I might query the table and say, OK,
[01:03:45] give me all of these record records
[01:03:47] and then you know,
[01:03:49] do update records a sync
[01:03:50] and then have to do with the 50
[01:03:52] record limit per operation call.
[01:03:56] This is pretty
[01:03:57] simple to set up.
[01:03:58] And I think a decent example
[01:04:01] of how you might be able to
[01:04:03] use the repeater action
[01:04:04] in conjunction with find records.
[01:04:06] Now, you can have more than one
[01:04:08] action in here
[01:04:09] so I could keep going and have
[01:04:10] even more complex rules
[01:04:12] if I wanted to. But that was just a
[01:04:14] little precursor of how to implement
[01:04:17] the
[01:04:18] list,
[01:04:18] you don't have to use find records,
[01:04:21] you can provide it any array.
[01:04:24] But
[01:04:25] I think most people are probably
[01:04:26] going to be using the
[01:04:28] find record step as the
[01:04:28] source of
[01:04:30] their list. Now, I do wanna point out
[01:04:34] that the find record step can only
[01:04:36] find up to 100 records.
[01:04:38] So if you know that
[01:04:39] your list is possibly gonna be
[01:04:41] larger than 100 you're gonna want to use
[01:04:44] some other
[01:04:46] a source that might be an automation
[01:04:48] script because that can pass any length of
[01:04:50] array.
[01:04:51] So that's it.
[01:04:53] Yeah. And this also saves
[01:04:55] the alternative would be
[01:04:57] to have a trigger on the list
[01:04:58] of records
[01:05:00] table, but then you'd run
[01:05:02] one for every individual.
[01:05:06] I do wanna show really quickly
[01:05:08] that it's also very nice from a reviewing
[01:05:11] standpoint and run history. Like
[01:05:12] if one of those failed,
[01:05:14] for whatever reason,
[01:05:15] I'd be able to look at my run
[01:05:17] history for
[01:05:18] that trigger and then I can see
[01:05:21] each item that was iterated
[01:05:23] over and whether or
[01:05:24] not it succeeded or failed.
[01:05:25] So if I wanted to see more
[01:05:27] information on that one
[01:05:28] specifically,
[01:05:29] I could take a look at it.
[01:05:31] So does that imply the fact
[01:05:33] that they're not in order
[01:05:34] that they actually don't run in order?
[01:05:37] Correct.
[01:05:38] So I have found that just in general the,
[01:05:41] the order of the array,
[01:05:44] I am, I am unsure whether or not
[01:05:47] it's consistent
[01:05:48] because the find record step
[01:05:49] isn't sorted in any way.
[01:05:52] It's just take all this information if I
[01:05:55] fed it a view,
[01:05:56] I think the array is ordered properly.
[01:06:00] But I'm unsure if the
[01:06:01] repeat
[01:06:03] is done in order because I
[01:06:06] they're done asy
[01:06:08] asynchronously. I think.
[01:06:10] So that should be one after another.
[01:06:12] But I'm unsure if
[01:06:15] yeah, they even actually even tell you
[01:06:17] it, it may run in a different order.
[01:06:19] Why? I wonder,
[01:06:20] I wish it didn't. But
[01:06:22] so far it, it's fine, I guess.
[01:06:25] I can add a little commentary there.
[01:06:27] So part of the reason you see some of
[01:06:29] this like complexity around ordering
[01:06:31] is that sorting a view is actually very
[01:06:33] expensive computationally, right? Like,
[01:06:36] you know, if you have 50,000 records,
[01:06:39] it's a lot of data and compute to,
[01:06:41] to sort it. And we've done a bunch
[01:06:42] of our Airtable has done a bunch of
[01:06:43] optimizations
[01:06:45] on it in the past. But
[01:06:47] probably in this case, it was like,
[01:06:49] you know, for performance reason to,
[01:06:52] to not have the order.
[01:06:53] And then if you're ever confused
[01:06:55] about an order, if you're like,
[01:06:56] this is always ordered
[01:06:58] in some way, but I don't know what it is.
[01:06:59] The answer is probably
[01:07:01] the first grid view in your view list.
[01:07:04] That's like usually the
[01:07:05] the default.
[01:07:06] Yeah.
[01:07:06] Yeah. Yeah.
[01:07:08] Awesome. Thank you Kamille
[01:07:10] for sharing that insight.
[01:07:12] And Stephen and Chris,
[01:07:13] thank you again for coming on.
[01:07:15] We love your insights.
[01:07:16] We'll try to have you
[01:07:17] back on in the future
[01:07:19] and excited to see
[01:07:20] what you all work on next.
[01:07:23] Awesome. Thank you so much
[01:07:24] for having us.
[01:07:24] It was really, really great to chat
[01:07:26] with you guys.
[01:07:27] Take care
[01:07:28] and we will see everybody
[01:07:29] that's going to DareTable next week or,
[01:07:31] and we'll do our live show from then.
[01:07:33] So we won't see you on Tuesday.
[01:07:35] We'll see you Wednesday or Thursday.
[01:07:37] See you all.
[01:07:39] Yeah,
[01:07:39] I see.