8/27/2024 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S19-E08

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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 – 00:01:40 –

An App a Day – 00:01:41 –

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Formstack App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Jen Rudd will give a Formstack demo of automated file processing. This will showcase how to use it for a sales pitch.”.

View App

A Case for Interface – 00:01:42 –

Explore Interfaces with “Confirmation Modals”.

Builders can now configure buttons in an Interface to trigger a confirmation modal. The modal's title, message, and button can all be customized..

View Script

Field Focus – 00:01:42 –

A deep dive into the Synced Linked Records Linked Records – Synced Tables now supports Linked Record Field types and all the complexities that come with that. 

Learn More Here

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:01:40

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

Segment: An App a Day

Start Time: 00:01:41

Airtable App Showcase – Formstack – Jen Rudd will give a Formstack demo of automated file processing. This will showcase how to use it for a sales pitch.

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Formstack App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Jen Rudd will give a Formstack demo of automated file processing. This will showcase how to use it for a sales pitch.”.

View App

Segment: A Case for Interface

Start Time: 00:01:42

Confirmation Modals

Explore Interfaces with “Confirmation Modals”.

Builders can now configure buttons in an Interface to trigger a confirmation modal. The modal's title, message, and button can all be customized..

View Script

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:01:42

Learn about the Synced Linked Records – Synced Tables now supports Linked Record Field types and all the complexities that come with that.

A deep dive into the Synced Linked Records Linked Records – Synced Tables now supports Linked Record Field types and all the complexities that come with that. 

Learn More Here

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:00:00] intro: Welcome to the Built On Air Podcast, the variety show for all things Airtable. In each episode, we cover four different segments. It's always fresh and different, and lots of fun. While you get the insider info on all things Airtable, our hosts and guests are some of the most senior experts in the Airtable community.

[00:00:26] Join us live each week on our YouTube channel every Tuesday at 11:00 AM Eastern and join our active [email protected]. Before we begin, a word from our sponsor on. On2Air Backups provides automated Airtable backups to your cloud storage for secure and reliable data protection. Prevent data loss and set up a secure Airtable backup system with On2Air Backups at on2air.

[00:00:49] com. As one customer, Sarah, said, Having automated Airtable backups has freed up hours of my time every other week. And the fear of losing anything. Long time customer [00:01:00] David states, On2Air backups might be the most critical piece of the puzzle to guard against unforeseeable disaster. It's easy to set up, and it just works.

[00:01:08] Join Sarah, David, and hundreds more Airtable users like you to protect your Airtable data with On2Air backups. Sign up today with promo code built on air for a 10 percent discount. Check them out at onto air. com. And now let's check out today's episode and see what we built on air.

[00:01:37] Dan Fellars: Welcome to the built on air podcast. We are in our final episode of this season 19. Good to be with you all myself, Kamille and Allie back, and we have returning guests, Jen Rudd. Welcome Jen. 

[00:01:51] Jen Rudd: Hi, thanks for having me. 

[00:01:52] Dan Fellars: Good to have you back. We'll learn, we'll get caught up with Jen a little bit later in the show.

[00:01:58] I'll walk us through what we're going to be talking about. [00:02:00] We'll first start with our route in the bases and keep you up to date on everything new and exciting going on with Airtable. Then highlight our sponsor, On2Air and On2Air Backups. And then Jen's gonna walk us through a demo of using Formstack and using that.

[00:02:20] And then, Kamille's gonna walk us through the new confirmation models. Then shout out to join our community and then we'll wrap up with the new synced linked records with Ali. 

[00:02:34] ROUND THE BASES - 00:02:34

[00:02:36] So with that, around the bases, let's see what's going on. Checking out the what's new page to start. Confirmation models to interface buttons.

[00:02:46] That's what Kamille is going to walk us through. So let's get started. That was the only new one, posted on the what's new that we've since the last time we talked about it. But there was a couple, at [00:03:00] least one other thing Max, for him said was delete records and copy link to record actions plus require confirmation, which is what we're going to be talking about.

[00:03:12] So these are inside the button dropdown of the actions that you can do along with. The other ones of going to a link and performing an automation, things like that. But it looks like Kamille delete records that's been there for a while. 

[00:03:31] Kamille Parks: It has for me. Sometimes it's difficult to tell for me how long a feature has been available publicly versus just on enterprise plans.

[00:03:39] But I, I have been able to delete records from a button for a while, but copy link to record. I have personally haven't seen. 

[00:03:48] Alli Alosa: It's been there. It. Maybe like, I want to say six months to a year, but 

[00:03:57] Jen Rudd: well, 

[00:03:59] Alli Alosa: [00:04:00] It's, I, I almost forget about it cause I honestly don't find it useful. I would really love to have like, you know, copy a value in a field as an option and like point it at a field that would be very useful.

[00:04:17] Dan Fellars: So the cop that puts it like on your clipboard, the URL to that page and record. 

[00:04:25] Kamille Parks: And with side sheets, the URL is often like encoded. So like, It ends up being quite long depending on like what page you're on and how many things you've clicked on previously. So I could see that definitely being useful, obviously delete record has been useful.

[00:04:44] And then now that you can have a confirmation modal, it's, you know, even more useful and that you don't like delete stuff willy nilly. You, you can have a little bit more of a stop gap for accidental deletions. 

[00:04:58] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. And. [00:05:00] There was some discussion on what plans it was available for. This one is available on all plans.

[00:05:06] Josh was excited about that. Okay, and we'll, we'll dive deeper into the confirmation modals. All right, next one from Ben Green and the Facebook community. Nice discussion. What do you wish Airtable would change? He'll go first. His was Add link records in a sub form if you have a new company form and want a sub form to add contacts.

[00:05:32] Jen Rudd: Yes, having that conversation constantly of being able to add child records in a form. Yeah, 

[00:05:39] Dan Fellars: that would be nice. Any others in here? I don't know if you guys went through this. 

[00:05:43] Kamille Parks: I like Ben Bailey's response a little bit. He said intratable reciprocal linking. So if you have a people table and you link a person to their manager, who is another person, your table, isn't going to create the reverse field like it would, if you were linking [00:06:00] between tables, it would be so useful if it did, I, to this day, I'm confused why they never implemented it just seems like they're like, ah, we don't need that.

[00:06:11] We do though. 

[00:06:13] Jen Rudd: Yep. I wrote a script that 

[00:06:16] Dan Fellars: does that. Like in the early days, like when the scripting first came out and I still get inquiries about using that. And that was like 5 years ago.

[00:06:28] Alli Alosa: I also did the same. It's definitely something I wish they would fix. 

[00:06:37] Dan Fellars: Yeah. 

[00:06:38] Alli Alosa: Yeah. 

[00:06:38] Dan Fellars: What else? What's on your top of the list? 

[00:06:42] Jen Rudd: Editing. 

[00:06:44] Dan Fellars: What? 

[00:06:45] Jen Rudd: Editing records via forms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:06:50] Alli Alosa: And then I really, perhaps one of my top ones is what Chris Dancy wrote. If you scroll up a little bit more auto sort, linked record setting, [00:07:00] that would be incredible.

[00:07:02] Seems like pretty simple. They could just put in a little toggle, you know, field to sort by. That would be lovely. I did demo a script to get around that on this show. Like, probably over a year ago, I linked to it in the replies to Chris's comment.

[00:07:24] Dan Fellars: Yeah. I wonder 500 isn't enough fields. Do you ever run into that? I don't run into that limit. 

[00:07:33] Kamille Parks: I have experienced running into that limit once and it was a very poorly designed table. You I worry that you were routinely meeting more than 500 records per table. That, to me, suggests that perhaps your, your database would be better served if it were more vertical than horizontal.

[00:07:53] But then you get into air table does have record limits as well. I would love to have more records is generally [00:08:00] speaking. I think a lot of the Hard limits. X number of automations. I think it's 50. You know, X number of records depending on what plan you're on those. I would like an increase on, but not not fields.

[00:08:13] Not for me. 

[00:08:17] Alli Alosa: Yeah, I agree. I've run into that in a place where there was like 60 people and they were all adding fields all willy nilly and didn't know what they were doing. Back in, but, yeah, I think you could benefit from reworking your structure. If you're running into that limit often, and then 

[00:08:38] Jen Rudd: I, 

[00:08:40] Alli Alosa: yeah, I wrote, I mentioned it in our last episode.

[00:08:45] I would love like to be able to access kind of like you can in a view in the data layer of the base. You can say, suck up all the records on this view. I'd love to be able to. Have that as like a user specific [00:09:00] option in the interfaces. So if somebody clicks the button on a list view, that's our list layout, rather that's like filtered a certain way.

[00:09:09] And they want to send an email to everyone they see on their screen. I'd be able to do that. Like there's really the only way to simulate that now is like by giving the user like a checkbox field or then, but then it's like, do you give everybody their own, cause the people over each other and then that's just.

[00:09:27] Not scalable, so I'd love to love to be able to access how the user has it currently configured on their screen. So you can, you know, more personalized automations. 

[00:09:40] Kamille Parks: I agree. I think generally kind of expanding on that right now. And automation can be tied to a particular record. You know, you click a button on this record and it'll fire an automation with that as its trigger.

[00:09:56] I would love if we could fire it based on a list [00:10:00] or an array of records rather, and just have the trigger effectively be a find record step where whatever view I'm looking at, here are the records, immediately punt me into a repeat. Step or something like that, because there's so many use cases where I want to email myself this list, or I want to send this list to some other A.

[00:10:24] P. I. or I want to summarize this list in some way. And you have to do a bunch of extra steps if you want to do that. 

[00:10:31] Jen Rudd: It's like when you're in wave and you want to like, accept a bunch of transactions that you've already coded. You just press a button and it just 

[00:10:39] Dan Fellars: loops through all those records. Yep.

[00:10:42] Here's mine right here. Extensions and interfaces. Yep.

[00:10:49] Jen Rudd: Scripting lock would be nice since the 30 30 2nd time limit. And automations doesn't always have semester. 

[00:10:57] Kamille Parks: Yeah, there, there are quite a few, [00:11:00] like, basic air table made extensions that I would love if they formalized as part of their product. Like, it is the import. I use all the time now. And although you can directly import a CSV on a table, the CSV extension allows you to like merge records, which is very useful.

[00:11:21] And you get to map which field is what it's a very simple extension. It's one of the oldest ones, but it's actually pretty nice. And you can't do it from an interface. And I would love if you could, but you can't.

[00:11:38] Dan Fellars: All right. The list is very long. Yeah, there's another request from the lot. Founder Dominic. 

[00:11:49] Alli Alosa: I'm happy to say that they, it seems like they've made a lot of movement in the past year or so to, like, kind of check off a lot of the ones that people have been asking for for a long time. Like, [00:12:00] it's like, think like synced link records, dynamic filtering.

[00:12:05] Those have been Like day one request. So I'm really excited about what's to come. 

[00:12:11] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yep. Very good. Well, add yours to the list and see if hopefully Airtable is looking and adding to their roadmap. Okay. Here's a cool one posted in the Airtable community from Shamil. Basically built a football manager, football club simulator, and actually opened it up for people to join.

[00:12:38] So if you want to see like a life, live use case built in an air table, I always like to see live demos. That is a nice one. Shout out to Shamil. And if you want to manage your football team, you can join here and do so. And football is soccer. This is soccer. [00:13:00] Everyone's on the same page.

[00:13:05] All right. Okay. Julian posts an interesting. Discussion on LinkedIn. So explored many air table alternatives. I choose to stick with air table. Here's why he gives his explanation. I like the meme here. This is a popular meme going around. Stop using air table or draw 25 and he's got a full deck, so he's continues to draw and stay with air table.

[00:13:34] Jen Rudd: Excellent. 

[00:13:35] Dan Fellars: Yep. So it is every once in a while we look at competitors, but, keep coming back to air table. 

[00:13:46] Jen Rudd: Great. 

[00:13:48] Dan Fellars: All right. Next one. This is from air table. It looks like the marketing team got together and posted a couple of pictures. So if you want, you're want to know who. [00:14:00] On the marketing team.

[00:14:02] There's a couple of pictures there. Moving to X air table is an incredible tool. Ryan Hildebrandt says in the right hands with the wrong tables, fields, et cetera, it may as well be a pretty Google sheet with the right setup. It can 10 X the capacity of your business. And says previously 99 percent of Airtable setups are crap and cap your business around 50 to 100k max.

[00:14:30] If the term foreign key, relational database, and user story don't sound familiar, you may be a victim. Don't know about that. I've seen many people use it. Well, But basically, this is also a different use case of like trying to run your business on it. If you're like, or is kind of a different use case than what a lot of people do to just manage their internal workflows in a corporate setting.

[00:14:59] Jen Rudd: [00:15:00] Yeah, I think that that's just 2 different avatars of people using our table. And there is the, I want to replace 5 or 6 admins. With air table versus somebody who's trying to run a couple marketing team workflows directly in air table. So there's totally different animals. Yeah, 

[00:15:16] Kamille Parks: yeah, I have seen a little bit of both and I've seen greater tables built by, you know, lay people in either sense.

[00:15:24] I'm trying to run my whole business or I'm just trying to. Run this, you know, small little operation, perhaps even for like a hobby, not even business related at all. And sometimes they're really good and sometimes they're, they're pretty sprawling. There's a lot of Google sheet syndrome where that's what you're familiar with.

[00:15:43] And so you, you attempt to replicate what you've built in a different platform rather than adjusting what you're trying to build for the platform you're currently in, but you don't know how to do that until you know the platform, right? So I think with time, anybody can, can get a system [00:16:00] that works for them and kind of works within the limits.

[00:16:03] If you can afford whatever plan Airtable is offering for you. But yeah, there, there, there's at least a little bit of a learning curve, I think, for adapting to how do you work in a, in an Airtable like environment that's not Google sheets. 

[00:16:22] Jen Rudd: And I think like trying to rebuild whatever software you were in before is like the worst way of trying to get into it, just because it just garbage in and garbage out if that software was working for you.

[00:16:33] Then why are you leaving other than just shiny app 

[00:16:37] Dan Fellars: syndrome? Okay. Next one. This is a little bit more humor.

[00:16:44] Startups are awesome. Feels so good to close a hundred thousand dollar deal. Then after paying for AWS stripe, everything air tables included in this list, you're left with a whole 77 leftover software can get expensive. [00:17:00] Well, you might not need all of that. Probably 95 percent of that is AWS. I'm guessing.

[00:17:11] Kamille Parks: This is a perfect time for me to shout out Outsetta again. The platform I use to run my business, they handle of this list, they handle what Zendesk does, Stripe. And technically Zapier, if you think about it, they, they do a lot for, I think, a very reasonable price. If you have a subscription based model I highly recommend them.

[00:17:37] They're great. 

[00:17:39] Dan Fellars: Good shout out 

[00:17:40] Kamille Parks: there. And MailChimp. They also, they do emailing as well. You could do email campaigns. They're great. Love them. 

[00:17:49] Dan Fellars: Okay, next one. It's a good reminder. Justin learned maybe the hard way. There is an automation limit of 50 automations per base says [00:18:00] it's time to rework some automations when it gets time.

[00:18:03] Ran up against the limits. 

[00:18:06] Jen Rudd: Mm-Hmm, . 

[00:18:08] Dan Fellars: So that's a good reminder. 

[00:18:10] Kamille Parks: That's a fun one. And there's no, is there like a, an, not an alert, but a, any sump, anything on the UI that tells you you're at 49 outta 50. Automation that's the limit for everybody. Every plan just put it on the screen. So people aren't surprised when they suddenly run out.

[00:18:32] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know. That's the limit. 

[00:18:37] Alli Alosa: I also wish you could just do a search. Like for automation, like you can use control F like that, that will work. But like it would be great to just have a little search bar, not just for automation, but for your run history as well. That would be, 

[00:18:55] Dan Fellars: yeah, that's what, yeah.

[00:18:56] I was trying to figure out, I knew there was an automation that did [00:19:00] something, but I couldn't remember what it was named, and I had a list of automations I wish I could see, but I knew that it had just run. And I want to see all the run history across all of them instead of going to each one. So then I could have been like, okay, this is the one that came from because it just ran.

[00:19:19] Alli Alosa: I am really appreciative of the, the new little small gray text underneath each automation that tells you how many runs it's done this month so far. That's been really helpful just to get where you're at. I like that. 

[00:19:35] Dan Fellars: Yeah, that's good. So sorry, Justin, you ran into that. But usually you can, you can optimize, you can combine, especially with the new branching.

[00:19:48] You could potentially combine automations. So that's an option there. 

[00:19:54] Jen Rudd: Yeah. 

[00:19:54] Dan Fellars: Okay. Next one from Greg. If you use [00:20:00] Webflow and you're looking to use air table is kind of your data source, but Webflow for your CMS, you can sync that. It does require a third party tool called WhaleSync that's been on our show in the past.

[00:20:13] So here's a quick three minute tutorial that walks you through how you can get that all set up. So that's a good use case. And speaking of WhaleSync. Just a shout out to them. Looks like they added a new connector. Copper, which is a CRM. Copper CRM, I'm assuming. That's the one it is. Copper ink. 

[00:20:37] Jen Rudd: Yeah. 

[00:20:37] Dan Fellars: So if you want to sync between Airtable and other tools, WellSync is a, is a good solution there.

[00:20:47] Alli Alosa: Excellent. I've been seeing a lot of ads for Copper recently. 

[00:20:51] Jen Rudd: I looked at it like in 2020. It was similar to HubSpot. I haven't looked at it since, though. 

[00:20:56] Dan Fellars: It's built inside of Gmail, so [00:21:00] it's kind of Incorporated with Google. So it's basically a CRM on top of Gmail.

[00:21:09] Jen Rudd: Yeah. 

[00:21:11] Dan Fellars: All right. Couple more from the speaking of sinking. It looks like here's a new entrance sync grip. So right now it looks like just air table on the sauna with plans to add more. So if that's a use case, you want to try out a new tool. They just posted showcase in our community. So sync grip.

[00:21:32] com it's like that will be a new competitor in this space.

[00:21:39] Okay. Last one, this one I thought was kind of funny. So this was from Carlston. So kind of comparing Excel, what happens if you type in like a 10. 5, it tried, it converts it to a timestamp or a date. And then if you see [00:22:00] here, I did the air table version. I don't know if people will, this is, this is still a bug, right?

[00:22:05] Where it's like, if you do math, it's not exactly like it adds this. This very long decimal value to at the end of it, for some weird reason, they've got a floating point bug that's been there from day one. 

[00:22:23] Alli Alosa: It's in Excel as well. It's, it's frustrating. Yeah. You could add 12 and 0. 5 and it's gonna exactly what Dan put there.

[00:22:35] Yeah. Give you a long trailing decimal. 

[00:22:40] Dan Fellars: Yeah, yeah, which is the pain because if you try to do if you try to compare like that value with like, if it's equal to 12. 5, do this and it won't be equal. Like, you'll, you'll just see some bizarre behavior 

[00:22:56] Jen Rudd: around it. Try doing math. Just, yeah, [00:23:00] exactly. 

[00:23:04] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:23:07] We've we've run into that. I think we talked to Airtable about it, and I don't think there's any plans to fix it. Maybe it's an inherent computer issue. I don't know. I think 

[00:23:19] Alli Alosa: it has to do with, this is way over my head, but when I first ran into this in Excel, and I was like, how does a computer get math wrong?

[00:23:27] I was like, how does it think 1 plus 1 is 2. 0003? Like, that just doesn't make any sense. And I was like, I, I did not, I don't have a degree in computer science, so like, I, I wish I did, but my very rudimentary understanding is it has something to do with binary and it's a zero becoming a one somewhere under the hood.

[00:23:46] And it messes stuff up. 

[00:23:50] Dan Fellars: I do have a degree in computer science, and I still don't know. 

[00:23:54] Kamille Parks: I almost got a degree in computer science. 

[00:23:59] Jen Rudd: I'm considering [00:24:00] getting an MCS. There you have it folks, the 

[00:24:03] Kamille Parks: full range. 

[00:24:07] Jen Rudd: My husband's getting an MSCS cause he's bored, but I'm, yeah, he has too many degrees. 

[00:24:13] Dan Fellars: I had one more. All right.

[00:24:18] That concludes our around the bases. Now, you know, everything going on in air table and they're up to date. 

[00:24:24] ON2AIR SPOTLIGHT - 00:24:36

[00:24:26] If you are running your business on air table, best practice and industry standard is to use To make sure your data is stored outside of air table itself. That's where onto where it comes in. You can store it to box drop box and Google drive and soon to come one drive that should be coming out in a week or two.

[00:24:45] And we just released our restore functionality. So you can now restore your backups back into air table. And that has not been fully announced. It's still working out a couple of kinks, but that is available [00:25:00] to all onto our customers for now. So try it out at onto air. com. Okay. Jen, you want to show your screen?

[00:25:10] Jen Rudd: Yeah. Give me one. 

[00:25:11] AN APP A DAY - FORMSTACK WITH JEN RUDD - 00:25:23

[00:25:15] Dan Fellars: Move form stack. 

[00:25:17] Jen Rudd: Screen's over

[00:25:24] here. Screen screen,

[00:25:36] sorry, but you back and forth computers all day. 

[00:25:43] Dan Fellars: There you go. So 

[00:25:43] Jen Rudd: you see the chaos going on here. Okay. Did, okay. So we are also a partner of farm stock. We were, we've been working with farm stock for quite a few [00:26:00] years now. And what we like a lot from form stack is the ability to create documents from our table information.

[00:26:07] But recently form stack asked us to kind of provide a demo for them for a potential customer to kind of show the full range of like form intake into air table, generate a document and send it for signature. So I wanted to show that. First up, like, what that looks like from the client perspective, but then also stress some of the behind the scenes of how works and some of the cool things.

[00:26:31] I was just brought, Ali was talking this week about trying to find a way to create documents and contracts from air table and wanted to show form stack as an option. So here, 1st, we have a simple form and form stack. One thing I like about Formstack forms versus Airtable is that you can calculate information directly in the form.

[00:26:52] So Airtable doesn't do calculations until the information's at rest. So third party tools [00:27:00] like Formstack allow you to do calculations and kind of clean up data before it goes into Airtable. Which is 1 of the features and then also display information to somebody who's filling in the form. So, like, if they put in a dollar figure and you want them to fill in more information, because that dollar figures over a certain amount, something like farm stock will do that.

[00:27:20] Whereas our table, because it's not calculating, because the information is not arrest, you have to wait till it's submitted before you can say, hey, we need more information. So, super simple and just to show you some conditional logic and the forms here. Because it's an individual, we're asking for our first name and last name.

[00:27:41] And then I'm going to put in,

[00:27:50] and then here I put my email address in.

[00:27:57] You can also do file uploads. [00:28:00] But then once this form is submitted, does this correctly, it should show up in Airtable almost immediately. There it is. And so here's Do 

[00:28:13] Dan Fellars: you need to use Zapier or Make for that, or does it automatically go to Airtable? 

[00:28:18] Jen Rudd: It goes directly to Airtable, and I can show you that part.

[00:28:23] So here we have, In form stock, I can show the module and farm stock. You can send information into a web hook and then it comes through as a Jason with nested values and so forth.

[00:28:40] So, then I didn't put the file in here, but it basically creates a record and the file in from table and then also create the secondary record and another table. So that child record relationship, you can kind of create. Or simulating form stack. [00:29:00] And then so here you'll see that thought entry came in.

[00:29:04] Almost instantaneously and then it creates the address and so forth, and then also creates the client file at the same time. So the person fills in 1 form and you got a link record relationship. And then here, I'm going to show you what the document looks like with form stack. You can use either build a document directly in their document module, or you can just upload a, we're a document and you can even do like, if then statements, like, if this information is there, put in this information in the document. So you're able to create, like, a complete merge document, not just have, like, 1 document per. And decision tree of information, so here we have a document that just says, like, when I send the information from air table, fill in these fields.

[00:29:57] And so I'll do that here, I'm just going to put in a [00:30:00] transaction date and interest rate. I'm sure it's higher than that. And then I just put in some information into a document that I found on the Internet. And so what I want to do is when I click this button. Right now, it's both creates the document and shows it in here, and it also sends it out to the client for signature, ostensibly, what you could do is also have a 2 step process where generates document.

[00:30:24] 1st, you check to make sure, and then maybe have another action for the user to send that for a signature. I just flattened it for sake of information. And then what you'll see here is that our table is going to receive the document merged. very much. So all that information I just put in shows up in the form in the document, and it's a multi-page document.

[00:30:52] And in the meantime

[00:30:56] I also got [00:31:00] a, request as a person's email address to sign the document.

[00:31:08] And then here we just use merge tags again, but we have a, a merge field, which is for the signature block and it's just whited out so you can't see where that merge tag is and then you can submit it. You can also grab, like, the finished document and add it back to the file. But what I do like about form stack 2 is it gives you, the validation of the signatures.

[00:31:37] So it's like this signature here, but it also gives you, a completion certificate, which is nice.

[00:31:47] Alli Alosa: Absolutely. 

[00:31:50] Jen Rudd: And then, so automation is Formstack sends the information from the web into a web hook. And then this one, this is [00:32:00] a button click. And basically you'll see there's a lot of transformation because you want to make sure that the. Transaction amount prints correctly. So it's that pretty prints formula that I don't even know who did that, but I still love them every day for that one.

[00:32:16] And like, we concatenated the address into 1 field and so forth and then basically you ingest all the information from that record or the buttons created and then you have the URL for the documents and then you just set up your API key and secret. Okay. Inform stock, and then you just send the Web URL parameters that you're grabbing from error table.

[00:32:43] And then it will, create that document and then you also get a webhook of that final document including like, what's like, what you sent there. So, like, you can find the record ID and like something, you know, update it here. [00:33:00] I'm sure you can also just wait for the response from form stack, but that's a, this was a quick demo.

[00:33:06] So I can show some of the behind the scenes too.

[00:33:15] Yeah, I was just sitting here. 

[00:33:20] Dan Fellars: Trying to remember the, so they acquired the document solution from somebody. 

[00:33:31] Jen Rudd: Yeah, it's something else. 

[00:33:34] Dan Fellars: Webmerch, that's right. 

[00:33:35] Jen Rudd: Yeah, Webmerch is like, you see some of the URLs are from Webmerch. And like here, like the form. A foreign builder island take, and then in the settings, you can set like the the actions.

[00:33:55] But send a notification email, and then also send to a webhook [00:34:00] here. And then documents

[00:34:17] here, you can kind of, like, manage the file. It gives you the most, you know, most for most complete version. You can upload new files. I just use the word, the word doc just because people like formatting and things like that. And then you can set delivery. So, like, it's 2 steps where you first make the merge and then you make the delivery.

[00:34:39] Yeah, it's extremely powerful because

[00:34:51] I know people get sticker shot from it, but like, actually, the fact that you can do all of this without having to get a secondary contracting platform and things like that. And the fact that you can [00:35:00] send all that nested information and air table and then just use air table automations to do all of it.

[00:35:06] There's also workflows. I haven't really played with workflows and form stock just because I Air tables, like our data store and data transformation for most of the most part, but it's pretty cool tool. 

[00:35:17] Alli Alosa: I did. I have that data routing tool is. Really powerful. I have a use case where we've got, like, we want to generate like a packet of like benefits information and depending on certain things, like whether the employee is full time or part time, they get certain pages added and certain pages not added.

[00:35:44] And we actually have an air table, all the pages that Would be possibly added and this can go and, like, suck them up from air table and then add the individual pages, like, just depending on certain conditions. It's so cool. Very [00:36:00] powerful stuff. 

[00:36:01] Jen Rudd: Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, happens a lot in a lot of different settings from, like, you know.

[00:36:05] Employee benefits from like loan loan documentation and things like that. When there's just so many, like, I remember when California, like, the, the different disclosures for the California real estate packet was just insane. So if you know what, like, what combination of things, you can generate pretty comprehensive documentation.

[00:36:28] Dan Fellars: Awesome. Cool. Thank you, Jen. And we didn't get a chance to you've been on the show a few times. Give us an update on who you are and what you've been up to. 

[00:36:38] Jen Rudd: Definitely. So yeah, we're a consulting firm for Airtable. We're an Airtable Gold Services partner even in business and sports. 2011 to 13 years consulting on air table since 2018, work with a lot of like complex builds for enterprise customers and sometimes SMBs that just need a lot of scripting [00:37:00] a lot of integration with other tools and kind of make air table their data convergence and kind of place for their team to work.

[00:37:09] We've been, we have about 11 team members in total and it's been growing over the last couple of years, which has been great. 

[00:37:15] Dan Fellars: Yep. Very good. People can find you at your website. 

[00:37:19] Jen Rudd: Yes. Radconsulting. io. Radconsulting. 

[00:37:22] Dan Fellars: io. Thank you, Jen. It's good to have you back on. 

[00:37:30] A CASE FOR INTERFACE - 00:37:54

[00:37:32] Hey, let's move on interfaces. New confirmation models with Kamille.

[00:37:38] There you go. 

[00:37:39] Kamille Parks: All right. Well, as we had just seen a confirmation models are a relatively new addition. And. For air table interfaces and after doing a little bit of testing, I've seen it's pretty consistently implemented across buttons in the newer interfaces. So [00:38:00] if I open up an individual. Detail page for a record.

[00:38:05] I have some buttons here and then a button up at the top of this gallery view. Both of those can have the confirmation modal attached. So it's a fairly straightforward feature. So, I'll just go to one of these that doesn't have a, Define status to it and there's basically 3 buttons that I have.

[00:38:31] I still wish air table would allow me to show more than 2 buttons at a time. But alas, so really what I could do is click on any 1 button. Let's say I want to hire this person. And this is the default messaging that comes with this particular button action. Are you sure you're making updates to this record?

[00:38:54] Very generic, but you can customize this text. If the action were to [00:39:00] create to go to a Different URL. What the default text is something like, are you sure you will be redirected to and then whatever address it is as the default. Your options are cancel. And yes, continue. You can customize this text.

[00:39:17] Yes, continue. But you can't, customize the cancel text, which is the default. To me. All right. But each button can be controlled individually for what it's text does. And then whether or not this button has a confirmation model to begin with. And then for an example of some customized text for this button up here I said, What this button will do is I'll actually take you to our, forum to join our slack community.

[00:39:47] So I said are you sure you should be? It's a welcoming, useful slack community that will keep you up to date on all things air table. And then for the confirmation, I said, let's get it rather than yes, get it. So, [00:40:00] yeah, you can put a decent amount of text in the confirmation modal. If I click on this button, you'll see a new toggle under action.

[00:40:12] It says, require confirmation, and that's where you can customize the title itself. So go to form for instance, and if I were to click on it now, Go to form would be up here. And then this is where you would customize your message. I have tested. It is not markdown friendly. So if I do, entering a couple of carriage returns and then putting it in.

[00:40:40] Wrapped in asterisks. And then now we're to look at it, it gets rid of any carriage returns and does not format this in Markdown. That's just something to keep in mind. But that is basically the feature. I think it's fairly useful. I think we talked about it a little bit earlier [00:41:00] on the show, but one of the button actions is to delete a record.

[00:41:04] So if I create a new button really quickly button, I'm going to call this

[00:41:15] Delete. And then if I set this to delete record, require confirmation is on by default. And it looks like you actually can't turn it off for delete record, which is interesting. Feel like I would want that to be toggle able because, you know, if I'm an admin, for instance, you know, I know when I want to delete something.

[00:41:40] So. Clicking delete the default text is this will delete the record. So air table is pretty thoughtful and what the default text is for each of these. Each of the different actions that you could select for a button. This is petty, but are you sure feel [00:42:00] aggressive?

[00:42:04] Jen Rudd: It's funny, too, but if you would like, delete and like a list view, it's not like that clicky. You can just delete it pretty quickly. 

[00:42:10] Kamille Parks: Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like it would be great if you didn't have to have this on. I believe, yeah, that's the only action that you must have the, the button or the confirmation being on 

[00:42:32] Dan Fellars: interesting.

[00:42:36] Yeah. I wonder it's probably. A year or 2 ago when, the delete, well, I guess that was for deleting a field. They didn't have a confirmation on that. And there was quite a bit backlash. Yeah, 

[00:42:54] Kamille Parks: I think in a grid or a list, it's pretty easy to delete something by accident. This. [00:43:00] It less so it feels more deliberate.

[00:43:03] I like having the ability to have a confirmation model. I don't know if I necessarily always need it. However, but a pretty sort of powerful move you could do is also to couple confirmation models with visibility rules. So you can say if this is my record, if I'm assigned to it, then show me the.

[00:43:24] Ability to delete using the visibility options here. And if I, if it's not my record, don't even give me the button to click on in the 1st place. And then the same thing with all of the other options as well. You can have very similar buttons set up with a different confirmation messages that are visible based on, you know, a status field.

[00:43:50] Dan Fellars: Cool. Very useful tool coming in handy. All right, let's move on. [00:44:00] Ali, 

[00:44:01] BUILTONAIR AIRTABLE COMMUNITY - 00:44:01

[00:44:03] first, if you haven't joined, you can go to Kamille's new portal that she built. Click on that button. It will take you to builtonair. com. Slash join, and we'll get you in our built on air community to join thousands of other Airtable users.

[00:44:17] Users and fans and lots of daily conversations going on. So join us at built on air. com slash join. All right. Ellie 

[00:44:27] FIELD FOCUS - SYNCED LINKED RECORDS - 00:44:28

[00:44:30] teach us the new synced linked records. 

[00:44:34] Alli Alosa: Oh, right. Okay. So one point of interest, I am still. Getting the hang of this. It's not as straightforward as I had expected it to be. I mean, it is in some ways, but so to show to and air table also breaks these out within their support documentation [00:45:00] you might have existing bases set up that.

[00:45:04] You've got two tables sinking into a new destination base, and maybe you want, to now take advantage of this new feature. So kind of like up convert what your already existing setup is. We'll look at that quickly and then we'll look at just from scratch if you were doing today with these new features.

[00:45:28] So right now I've got. An existing base set up with my opportunities table and the interactions table, both being synced into this other base and previous to this new feature, I would always use the same kind of methodology where I'd think over the record I. D. from the source. Base of whatever the record is I want to link to [00:46:00] and then I'd use an automation and I'd, I'd first I'd use a, a roll up to be like, am I linked to the correct record?

[00:46:06] Right? So this interaction record I know should be linked to this opportunity's record ID. It is linked to a opportunity here. If I were to wipe this out. Now this formula knows that there's something wrong and the automation then just goes and fixes it and finds the correct opportunity to link it back up.

[00:46:24] So that's how the functionality is currently working in this base. If I want to take advantage of the new feature, I'm going to have to do a couple things. So in my source, base. I'm going to go to both my tables here and also just best practice is always to create a separate view when you're syncing something.

[00:46:52] I like to name it with a little gear and a lightning bolt saying, you know, this is a synced view so that way anybody [00:47:00] else that's in here and I also lock it when I'm done. I keep it locked so nobody can accidentally come in here and change these filters. But on this view, I currently don't have the Field that's linking from opportunities to interactions.

[00:47:15] So I'm going to add that. So I'm going to add my interactions field here, and then I'm going to go to my interactions table, and I'm going to add reciprocal. So the opportunity field there. Now, when I go into my existing base here, things should already have synced up and I've got this. Field called opportunity.

[00:47:41] Kind of funny. This is one thing I've noticed is that you can now have double field names. It's really weird. And all my testing I found sometimes when it brings this field in, it puts a two after it. Sometimes it doesn't. I have no idea why. I'm just going to call this new [00:48:00] just so we don't have the same field.

[00:48:02] Name twice. And you can see there's this new little blue dot and that is indicating like, hey, this is actually a linked record field and it knows that we have the table that it's linking to in this database. So we can click on it and it'll say convert to linked records. Now, if I had this linked record field in here and I did not have the opportunities table, I believe I'd still see this.

[00:48:31] And it would prompt me like, hey, you could pull in your opportunities table and use this to link to it as well. So it is smart enough to just know that, like, this is a linked record field and it knows whether or not what it's trying to link to is here in this database or not. If I choose convert to Linked records.

[00:48:52] It's going to say this cannot be undone and I'm going to go ahead and say connect takes a second. At first I freaked out. I was [00:49:00] like, what's going on? Why? But then populates and there we go. I have tested adding duplicative Values. So if you, you know, hopefully all your records are named uniquely, but if they're not, that shouldn't be an issue with this feature.

[00:49:20] It knows, I think it goes off of record ID, not off of the name, which is what I would expect, but I did verify. Now here's the part that I am a little lost on and I can't find. Anything in the documentation around it. If I now go to my opportunities table, I would expect to see the reciprocal of this new linked field on my opportunities table.

[00:49:46] I do not. It's not there. So, theoretically, I guess you could just stop there, but I wouldn't I would come here and finish that loop up. [00:50:00] So I'm going to again go to that interactions field and I'm going to rename it to new because it came in with the same name and convert it to link to the interactions table.

[00:50:16] It's all going to go away, but that it should come back.

[00:50:21] There we go. Excellent. Now, when I click on one of these, just like in the source base, I'm still seeing this little white line saying, yep, this is a record on the interactions table, which is great. And then what I would do from that point on is try and move all of my dependencies from my old linked record field to my new linked record field.

[00:50:50] One thing I have noticed as well is on this new linked record field. It's going to say there are no dependencies, which I haven't quite [00:51:00] figured out why that is, because this theoretically is a linked record field linking to the interactions table, therefore, I would expect opportunity new this other linked record field to be it's dependent field.

[00:51:16] I'm not really sure. What's going on under the hood there yet? Still need to learn, but I would right click on my old interactions field and then just kind of move all the interactions or all the dependencies for this to my new one and then you can ultimately phase this one out. I 

[00:51:39] Dan Fellars: can't remember. Oh yeah.

[00:51:41] Any question? So there, it's showing the dependency, but what were you 

[00:51:45] Alli Alosa: saying? 

[00:51:46] Dan Fellars: I was saying, yeah, this dependency. So it shows it on the old one. On the old one, but not the new one. That's interesting. Mm-Hmm. . 

[00:51:56] Alli Alosa: That's bizarre. Not the new one. If I were to add, it's [00:52:00] really weird, right? But if I added a lookup now.

[00:52:05] Like, let's just say we're going to get the interaction types and now I click and look at the dependencies. It will show that look up, but it's not showing the reciprocal on the opportunities table. It's like, they're disconnected. Like, you can hook 1 side up and leave the other side not hooked up. 

[00:52:24] Dan Fellars: Right?

[00:52:25] Alli Alosa: I feel 

[00:52:26] Kamille Parks: like when you, you make that selection on either 1 of the 2 linked fields, i, what I'm about to say is probably going to be annoying, but I think would be a stronger implementation is let's say when you synced in your linked record fields from the source, you only synced in the linked record from the interactions table and not opportunities, rather than letting you convert that to a linked record, I would prefer if it [00:53:00] said, when you do this, we're going to make sure that that.

[00:53:04] It's reciprocal field is added to the sink to the opportunities to make sure that both. Sides of the equation are present and then converts them both and then links them together or like you would with any other linked record field. It to me, it's very confusing that they're not connected in that way, even though they're connected by proxy.

[00:53:28] It's not. It's you want to see that in your dependencies. And then, Kavon, who's been on the show previously has a trick for if you don't have the access to the dependency checker by right clicking a field, if you right click and delete a field, it will give you a confirmation window. If there are any dependencies.

[00:53:50] So if you want to play fast and loose, you will always get this modal. So if you. Desperately need to see if there are [00:54:00] dependencies or, you know, there are dependencies and you can't remember, like, if there's additional ones, that's one way to do it. If you don't have access to the dependency thing.

[00:54:09] Alli Alosa: Exactly. Yep. For linked record fields, you can, if you try to, if you attempt to delete one, actually, because this one doesn't say that there are any dependencies. Well, it won't let me delete it because it's a synced field, that actually, but you could, Oh, and no. You can't there's no, configuration settings you can do on this new linked record field.

[00:54:37] That is 1 of the, 1 of the, what's the word my brain just limitations. Thank you. And like, dynamic filtering is not inherited. You can't do this with any fields like we were talking about earlier. If you're doing a self linking field on the same [00:55:00] table that is not supported when you switch over, it won't do that.

[00:55:08] So that's, there's a couple, couple little gotchas. But I do like, you know, you can right click and say, I'd look up fields still, you can, it does function the same way. Now if I were starting from scratch. There's still a couple of things that I'm a little, I don't really understand why they made these decisions, but I'm going to just duplicate and say, you know, a new one for each table here.

[00:55:43] I'm going to create new views and sync these new views into a new base. But here is where the weirdness is. So if I hide this field. [00:56:00] And hide this field and go into my share settings here. So I'm going to enable this view to be synced by allow it to be synced. This synced link tables thing, it's going to say there are zero tables linked, and that's because I don't have that linked record field in this view.

[00:56:21] If I go and put it in this view.

[00:56:27] Now it's going to say one of one tables are syncable and it's going to say, okay, this opportunity field is a linked record field and it wants you to pick a default view on your opportunities are on my opportunities table. But the 1 I just created is not available yet because I haven't enabled it to be synced.

[00:56:51] So I'm going to go do that. And again, zero tables linked. So it does know, you know, what's on this [00:57:00] view and if it's linked to another table. But as soon as I add that linked record field, now it's like, okay, this is syncable, this default view. I have not been able to figure out what, what it does. I've been, I've set this up in here.

[00:57:19] I set it up in. The other table to say, okay, now I want this to go to my new view, but I don't feel like it actually does anything. I think you can change it later on in the destination. So that's a question mark for me. And the help article, the support stuff is not helpful. It tells you you can do that.

[00:57:42] And then it's like, okay, now go and create the tables in the other base. But there's, it doesn't actually. Bring that those connections with it, which is really strange. So what I've found, like, if I actually say, you know, sync this view [00:58:00] and go into their built in wizard, those changes in the linked records that I did, that nothing's going to come with it.

[00:58:08] It like skips a step. So I do not recommend using that built in wizard. I would instead, let's just go here and copy the link after you've set up the ability to sync. And now if I go to the base that I want to add these tables to and click my add or import button and say from air table base. And just paste in that link.

[00:58:40] This I find pretty clean. If I go to next, so now it's like, alright, do you want to also sync in the interactions? And so this is where, you know, that default view setup, see it defaulted to this, but I can now change it. So you don't [00:59:00] really even need to set the default view because you have to pick it again once you sync it in over here.

[00:59:05] Which is just weird to me. If I leave this checked and hit next, it's gonna add not only The opportunities table, but also 

[00:59:13] Jen Rudd: the and

[00:59:22] we lost her. Oh, 

[00:59:25] Alli Alosa: no, 

[00:59:26] Dan Fellars: you're back. You're back. 

[00:59:29] Alli Alosa: Okay. Where did where'd you lose me 

[00:59:32] Dan Fellars: just a 2nd ago, just in creating this new 1. 

[00:59:35] Alli Alosa: Okay, great. So, if if you. Once you hit create, it does add both of those tables. So it knows it's like they're kind of a package deal. And they come in already linked together, but again, no dependency.

[00:59:57] Kamille Parks: That does, that makes even less sense to me. I can [01:00:00] kind of see it. The first way you did it where you independently turned on convert this into link record. I can see them making a decision. Well, maybe they don't want the other one to be linked for whatever reason. If it comes in fresh as both of them linking.

[01:00:18] To the opposing table, then they should be dependent on each other. It's, it's very odd that they're not. 

[01:00:24] Alli Alosa: It's very odd. And to make it even more confusing, I, I experimented with syncing in more than just these two tables, right? Cause in my source base, I have my interactions table and it's not only linked to opportunities, but it's also linked to a contact.

[01:00:46] I could not get it to bring in all 3 tables and have them all linked together, like, even though I, like, configured everything and set it up so that they should be 1 of those fields was still not converted [01:01:00] every time. And I'd have to go in and reconvert it. It's very weird if it's, but if you're dealing with something simple and it's just these two tables that it does work nicely.

[01:01:13] And then the, the kicker of all of it, that's really nice is if I go into my settings for those views and allow edits, and then I want to allow creating new records, and I guess I could just do that on both. You don't need to, but, now. I can go and on my interactions table. Oh, I need to also set up on this side editing.

[01:01:45] So I turn this on on both screens

[01:01:53] and now I can, like, hit the plus. And create a new [01:02:00] interaction,

[01:02:04] and I've been noticing this. It hasn't been popping open automatically, but if I just say, you know, this is new, doesn't matter. Let's just say now and then if I go back into my interactions table in the source, there's that new one that I added and it came from that synced base, which is awesome.

[01:02:36] Dan Fellars: That is cool. 

[01:02:37] Alli Alosa: Yeah, I'm very into that. 

[01:02:41] Dan Fellars: Very good. Was there, did I read that there's like a limitation on the number of like linked records you can have that's like lower than the number of actual records you could have? I saw that somewhere. 

[01:02:57] Kamille Parks: I have not seen. [01:03:00] There is some kind of limit. I forget what it is.

[01:03:03] But yeah, I do remember there being some kind of limit listed somewhere. 

[01:03:09] Dan Fellars: Go down in the FAQ. Integration limits. Sync integration limits. 

[01:03:19] Jen Rudd: Where is that? 

[01:03:21] Dan Fellars: In the FAQ, the third one.

[01:03:32] Yeah, I don't know. Anyways. Thanks. If we find it, we'll share. Let's see, 

[01:03:40] Alli Alosa: managing went over limits. It 

[01:03:44] Dan Fellars: doesn't say what the limits are. 

[01:03:46] Alli Alosa: Yeah. Yeah, I am not sure. 

[01:03:52] Dan Fellars: Okay. Yeah, I thought I thought somebody was like, Oh, we can't use it yet. Because it. It has a limit on the number of synced [01:04:00] records or something.

[01:04:01] Alli Alosa: You can't do, it does not support multi sources. So, if you have two different sources coming into the same table, like syncing into the same table, this, the linked records does not work. 

[01:04:17] Kamille Parks: That doesn't necessarily surprise me. I guess Airtable wouldn't know. What record to add to, like which of the two sources should the new record come in as?

[01:04:33] Exactly. 

[01:04:36] Dan Fellars: All right, let's wrap things up. We had Jen had to jump off, but want to thank Jen for joining us. And thank you for another great season of Built on Air. We'll be off for the month of September and we'll be back in October for season 20. Excited for that. See everybody in a bit.

[01:04:59] [01:05:00] Close with that guy and end stream.

[01:05:16] OUTRO - 01:05:16

[01:05:17] Thank you for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out our sponsor, On2Air Backups, automated backups for air table. We'll see you next time on the built on air podcast.