10/19/2021 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S09-E06

Duration: 72 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.

Todays Hosts

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 – 00:03:27 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Reddit] is dark mode a thing? : Airtable

[Twitter] (12) VentureBeat on Twitter: "Starting soon! "How @Zapier Uses @Airtable To Transform Product Development & Deliver Great Customer Experiences" with @aofstad, @chrisgeoghegan, and @wendyschuchart. Watch now: https://t.co/a7axrORCeH https://t.co/1ZZHOaVpSe" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Folders, folders, folders – Show and tell / Product Suggestions – Airtable Community Forum

[Airtable Community] Account Switching – Show and tell / Product Suggestions – Airtable Community Forum

[Facebook] (20+) Airtable Community | Airtable's Billy Littlefield talking about the long tail for @airtable uses | Facebook

[Twitter] (21) John Hashem 🚢 on Twitter: "Any business, (or app) I start, starts with Airtable https://t.co/eHEjDZFDYk" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Scheduled maintenance and downtime on October 15 – Announcements – Airtable Community Forum

Scripting Time – 00:28:42 –

Explore Scripting with “Delete Duplicates Script”.

We will perform a deep dive into an existing script from the marketplace to see how it works and analyse the code to learn and improve as scripters..

View Script

Field Focus – 00:45:43 –

A deep dive into the Button Field Button – We review the Button field, its uses, and how it works within a synced table environment to reference back to the source table record. 

Learn More Here

Industry View – 00:56:00 –

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the No-Code Software Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your No-Code Software organization established in Airtable.

No Code is becoming quite the buzzword around the Internet. We look into its meaning, how Airtable fits into that description, and what it means for you.

Click Here

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:27

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

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Reddit] is dark mode a thing? : Airtable

[Twitter] (12) VentureBeat on Twitter: "Starting soon! "How @Zapier Uses @Airtable To Transform Product Development & Deliver Great Customer Experiences" with @aofstad, @chrisgeoghegan, and @wendyschuchart. Watch now: https://t.co/a7axrORCeH https://t.co/1ZZHOaVpSe" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Folders, folders, folders – Show and tell / Product Suggestions – Airtable Community Forum

[Airtable Community] Account Switching – Show and tell / Product Suggestions – Airtable Community Forum

[Facebook] (20+) Airtable Community | Airtable's Billy Littlefield talking about the long tail for @airtable uses | Facebook

[Twitter] (21) John Hashem 🚢 on Twitter: "Any business, (or app) I start, starts with Airtable https://t.co/eHEjDZFDYk" / Twitter

[Airtable Community] Scheduled maintenance and downtime on October 15 – Announcements – Airtable Community Forum

Segment: Scripting Time

Start Time: 00:28:42

Scripting Time: Delete Duplicates Script

Explore Scripting with “Delete Duplicates Script”.

We will perform a deep dive into an existing script from the marketplace to see how it works and analyse the code to learn and improve as scripters..

View Script

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:45:43

Learn about the Button Field – We review the Button field, its uses, and how it works within a synced table environment to reference back to the source table record.

A deep dive into the Button Field Button – We review the Button field, its uses, and how it works within a synced table environment to reference back to the source table record. 

Learn More Here

Segment: Industry View

Start Time: 00:56:00

Airtable for the No-Code Software Industry

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the No-Code Software Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your No-Code Software organization established in Airtable.

No Code is becoming quite the buzzword around the Internet. We look into its meaning, how Airtable fits into that description, and what it means for you.

Click Here

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:42] Welcome everyone to the
[00:01:44] BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:45] This is season nine,
[00:01:46] episode six.
[00:01:47] We're halfway through this season.
[00:01:50] It's good to be with you.
[00:01:52] We've got myself, Dan Fellars
[00:01:54] and Kamille Parks with us. Hello,
[00:01:56] Kamille.
[00:01:57] Good morning.
[00:01:58] Welcome back. We missed you last week.
[00:02:02] Sorry,
[00:02:03] it's good. You're allowed.
[00:02:05] We're Alli's out this week,
[00:02:07] so it's just Kamille and I,
[00:02:09] and Kamille
[00:02:11] looks a year wiser today. Well,
[00:02:17] just a little bit
[00:02:19] Kamille had a birthday last week,
[00:02:22] so. I did, yeah, I'm old.
[00:02:26] That's right. I'm still plenty older,
[00:02:28] so you don't have to worry.
[00:02:31] All right, well, as always
[00:02:33] on our episodes,
[00:02:34] we do four different segments,
[00:02:35] talking about all things Airtable.
[00:02:38] Our first one will go through the
[00:02:40] different communities
[00:02:41] and talk about what's going on
[00:02:43] in all the different Airtable communities.
[00:02:46] They will do a spotlight
[00:02:47] on our primary sponsor On2Air.
[00:02:49] Well then do a Scripting Time,
[00:02:51] diving deep into a script
[00:02:53] and learn more about
[00:02:54] that.
[00:02:55] Then we will do a Field Focus
[00:02:57] on the button field
[00:02:58] and how you can use that.
[00:03:00] And then we'll talk about the BuiltOnAir
[00:03:02] community and then finally,
[00:03:03] we'll end with an Industry View.
[00:03:06] So that's the agenda for today,
[00:03:09] as always, with our Round the Bases
[00:03:11] we go through and figure out what people
[00:03:13] are talking about
[00:03:15] and what we can learn from that.
[00:03:17] We always like to start with the Airtable
[00:03:19] community
[00:03:20] and the big news from last week
[00:03:23] was the maintenance in the down time
[00:03:27] and it was, I was impressed.
[00:03:29] I was actually up, It was Friday night,
[00:03:32] 10 o'clock my time actually
[00:03:34] I guess 11 o'clock
[00:03:36] 10 o'clock pacific your time and
[00:03:38] it was
[00:03:40] what five minutes?
[00:03:41] I don't know if you watched it or not.
[00:03:43] No, I've been
[00:03:44] joking for the past week
[00:03:46] that I would be because
[00:03:49] that was my birthday and it was
[00:03:51] so much was going on. I actually was not
[00:03:55] Using Airtable at 10 p.m.
[00:03:57] Which is you know a typical for me.
[00:04:01] That's good.
[00:04:02] It forced you to get out
[00:04:03] so that's good. But yeah I was watching I
[00:04:05] did get a handful of emails from Zapier.
[00:04:08] Well it was down, the API was down.
[00:04:11] So the big question is
[00:04:13] have you noticed any difference?
[00:04:16] I haven't, and I feel like
[00:04:19] if there's some
[00:04:22] this is where I get fired
[00:04:24] if I haven't noticed it.
[00:04:27] Yeah I mean it hasn't been noticeable.
[00:04:30] I have, I logged into a client that's
[00:04:33] that's an enterprise client
[00:04:35] and has a pretty large base.
[00:04:38] And I actually did
[00:04:39] notice significance
[00:04:41] on the initial load of the data.
[00:04:44] What it seemed a bit faster
[00:04:46] but it wasn't like night and day.
[00:04:49] So hopefully it was more kind
[00:04:51] of preparatory for things to come.
[00:04:54] But I do think there was some speed ups
[00:04:59] in their database loading
[00:05:01] so hopefully that's here to stay
[00:05:04] more to come.
[00:05:06] So that was good. Definitely, definitely
[00:05:10] we'll see what comes
[00:05:12] from that in the future.
[00:05:14] All right, next one.
[00:05:16] This one was interesting,
[00:05:19] this one was,
[00:05:20] there's a question about folders
[00:05:23] and organizing workspaces
[00:05:26] into folders and I
[00:05:27] like this because you get two
[00:05:30] animated people,
[00:05:31] Bill French and Kuovonne going at it
[00:05:33] a little bit one day
[00:05:34] we're going to get Bill and Kuovonne
[00:05:36] at the same time and
[00:05:37] just give them a topic to go at it.
[00:05:41] Would be good. So
[00:05:42] actually Bill is,
[00:05:43] we've already had Kuovonne on,
[00:05:45] Bill's coming on,
[00:05:45] Bill's scheduled to join us
[00:05:48] but if we got the two of them,
[00:05:50] that would be interesting.
[00:05:52] But yeah, so talking about folders
[00:05:55] you know how to organize all your
[00:05:57] workspaces and there's kind of some
[00:06:00] back and forth between
[00:06:01] Bill and Kuovonne on
[00:06:02] different strategies
[00:06:04] and pricing aspects
[00:06:06] how that plays into it. Any thoughts
[00:06:08] on folder organization?
[00:06:11] Yeah, I think it was a good point
[00:06:13] to bring up because it's such a simple
[00:06:16] sort of move allowing people
[00:06:18] to move things into folders.
[00:06:21] It's pretty it's a
[00:06:22] thing that everyone's used to
[00:06:24] and it's not a foreign concept to a lot of
[00:06:27] I guess similar sorts of products.
[00:06:32] But the point that was raised was
[00:06:35] Airtable's pricing is based on
[00:06:37] workspace and
[00:06:40] one of the main reasons
[00:06:41] why you would separate things
[00:06:43] across workspaces is to
[00:06:44] have finer control over permissions.
[00:06:47] And so
[00:06:48] if you were to allow sub folders within
[00:06:52] a workspace, it follows
[00:06:54] that you would want to apply
[00:06:56] different permissions to
[00:06:57] the individual folders within a workspace,
[00:07:00] which sort of negates the
[00:07:03] sort of strategy that they based
[00:07:05] their pricing structure on.
[00:07:06] So you would have to
[00:07:07] they would have to make adjustments
[00:07:09] to make that make sense
[00:07:10] Financially, I think
[00:07:11] from their perspective.
[00:07:14] And
[00:07:15] you know there's arguments
[00:07:17] to be made about
[00:07:19] work space based pricing not
[00:07:21] being the best just to begin with.
[00:07:25] And I think many people would prefer
[00:07:29] folders, but I think if you
[00:07:31] add the concept of folders it,
[00:07:35] you don't need workspaces anymore,
[00:07:37] if that makes sense? Like if you change
[00:07:39] everything to be like Google drive
[00:07:41] where you just have a drive and as many
[00:07:44] folders and sub folders as you need,
[00:07:46] I think that is
[00:07:47] ideally how I would like
[00:07:48] to structure things,
[00:07:50] but you would need to develop a
[00:07:51] pricing model that would
[00:07:54] support that.
[00:07:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think,
[00:07:57] you know that decision,
[00:07:59] I'm sure it was that was
[00:08:01] as far, you know, I imagine workspaces
[00:08:04] was there from day one and just kind of
[00:08:06] how they set it up and
[00:08:08] now they're years into it
[00:08:10] and might be rethinking,
[00:08:12] you know what makes sense.
[00:08:14] I think they haven't decided fully,
[00:08:17] you know what their long term
[00:08:20] pricing structure looks like.
[00:08:22] And so until then I doubt they
[00:08:24] make any changes to
[00:08:25] adding folders or anything until they
[00:08:28] determine that pricing.
[00:08:29] Yeah,
[00:08:31] so but yeah, there's definitely good,
[00:08:33] good back and forth good points on both
[00:08:35] sides of
[00:08:37] of
[00:08:38] you know what they should do
[00:08:40] and things of that nature.
[00:08:42] But I don't I don't foresee folders
[00:08:44] coming to work spaces any time soon.
[00:08:48] Yeah, I don't I heard no whispers
[00:08:51] so I don't know.
[00:08:53] Yeah, for sure there.
[00:08:55] So anyway it's good,
[00:08:57] good discussion there.
[00:08:58] All right, next one.
[00:09:00] This is an oldie but goodie.
[00:09:03] So originally started in 2017
[00:09:06] brought up recently
[00:09:09] and just thinking about this,
[00:09:11] so the question is account switching.
[00:09:14] So especially if you're a consultant
[00:09:17] or work with lots of clients
[00:09:20] switching in and out of accounts
[00:09:22] within Airtable,
[00:09:24] you pretty much have to log
[00:09:25] out and log back in.
[00:09:27] So people are demanding
[00:09:30] asking for ways to easily switch
[00:09:33] between accounts so that you can
[00:09:35] get into your client accounts
[00:09:37] pretty quickly.
[00:09:39] And so this was brought back up,
[00:09:42] it was originally asked in 2017 and more
[00:09:46] people and you know it's been three years
[00:09:49] people saying come on Airtable,
[00:09:51] we know you can do this.
[00:09:54] You know again
[00:09:55] this is probably similar to
[00:09:59] similar to the other question
[00:10:02] about folders is because you can
[00:10:05] get a base or
[00:10:06] workspace can be shared with you
[00:10:08] in theory you could have
[00:10:10] one account and just
[00:10:11] share, you know and get access
[00:10:13] to others but then that
[00:10:15] would get billed and so
[00:10:16] sometimes it's easier to
[00:10:18] to log in separately
[00:10:20] and so it kind of gets tricky,
[00:10:22] trying to do that.
[00:10:25] Any thoughts there?
[00:10:27] Yeah, I mean that's also
[00:10:28] tough and I don't know what the
[00:10:30] right answer is,
[00:10:31] but it's right now whoever
[00:10:34] owns the workspace pays for it.
[00:10:39] but like you said, if you share it with,
[00:10:42] I don't know 15 people
[00:10:43] and they all have more or less
[00:10:46] the same amount of access
[00:10:47] and permissions as you do,
[00:10:49] they're not charged but you are
[00:10:52] but what you could in theory do
[00:10:55] is make as many
[00:10:57] bases or workspaces as you want with
[00:11:04] what I'm saying doesn't make sense
[00:11:05] I'm just not realizing
[00:11:06] because you're charged
[00:11:07] by the number of editor permission users.
[00:11:14] but it only goes to,
[00:11:15] it still only goes to that one person
[00:11:17] and not there's no
[00:11:18] way to split it
[00:11:19] amongst the accounts, which is
[00:11:22] which could be an issue I think
[00:11:24] for some companies because it means you
[00:11:27] have to make sure that you have one
[00:11:29] company account that sets up all of your
[00:11:33] workspaces.
[00:11:35] Yeah,
[00:11:36] so anybody struggling with this,
[00:11:39] I'll tell you what I do
[00:11:41] because I do log into
[00:11:42] many different Airtable accounts.
[00:11:45] So there's a chrome
[00:11:47] extension called session box
[00:11:49] sessionbox.io that allows you
[00:11:52] to have if you're using chrome
[00:11:54] have different tabs
[00:11:55] that have different sessions
[00:11:57] so you can actually and
[00:11:59] then you can save your sessions so
[00:12:01] if I open up mine
[00:12:03] I've got many Airtable logins
[00:12:05] that I've got access to and I
[00:12:07] just click on it
[00:12:08] and it will automatically
[00:12:10] log me into that one.
[00:12:10] So it's free for personal use.
[00:12:13] There is a paid version
[00:12:15] for commercial use and
[00:12:17] very very useful.
[00:12:18] It's a lifesaver. I don't
[00:12:20] it would be a pain to have
[00:12:22] to log out and log in to
[00:12:24] each of those every time.
[00:12:25] So check out sessionbox.io
[00:12:28] if this is a challenge for you
[00:12:30] to have to log
[00:12:31] in and out.
[00:12:32] Looks like David
[00:12:34] that could work for you
[00:12:36] if you're listening.
[00:12:38] All right.
[00:12:39] That was it for the Airtable community.
[00:12:41] Not a whole lot I think you
[00:12:43] know they're not going to release
[00:12:44] any new features
[00:12:45] with the database upgrades.
[00:12:46] So now that the databases upgraded,
[00:12:49] let's see maybe they've got some new
[00:12:51] features that might be
[00:12:52] coming out this week.
[00:12:54] We shall see.
[00:12:56] All right. Next one onto Reddit community.
[00:13:01] So I know a lot of people like dark mode.
[00:13:04] So this is a question about is there a
[00:13:06] dark mode in Airtable?
[00:13:08] I know a lot of people like that.
[00:13:11] I typically don't do dark mode.
[00:13:14] I probably should
[00:13:16] for the eyes but if you
[00:13:18] are looking for dark mode,
[00:13:20] Airtable doesn't support one
[00:13:22] natively but there are
[00:13:24] Chrome extensions and
[00:13:25] browser extensions that do
[00:13:27] that and they're suggested there's some
[00:13:29] suggestions in this thread. So
[00:13:32] worth
[00:13:34] worth checking out.
[00:13:35] I remember we saw a screenshot
[00:13:37] of a dark mode of Airtable base
[00:13:39] a week or two
[00:13:40] ago and we're trying to figure out
[00:13:42] if that was natural but I'm assuming that
[00:13:44] came from a
[00:13:45] chrome extension.
[00:13:47] Yeah, I know, I know there's a bunch
[00:13:49] of different tools that let you do that
[00:13:50] with any website
[00:13:52] and it would be nice I think
[00:13:54] if it were available especially
[00:13:55] for the desktop app
[00:13:57] I am a fairly recent converter into
[00:14:01] using dark mode for most of my apps.
[00:14:04] So
[00:14:06] you know for a while it didn't bother me
[00:14:10] and are you using an extension?
[00:14:12] I'm not because it doesn't
[00:14:14] bother me that much
[00:14:16] but, soon as they have it, you'll use it
[00:14:19] I'll switch over if I
[00:14:20] if they make it available.
[00:14:23] Got ya. Makes sense.
[00:14:25] All right, next one.
[00:14:26] This one's a big one
[00:14:28] I think you know a little bit about
[00:14:29] this one. So our friend Chris
[00:14:32] over at the Facebook Airtable community
[00:14:36] shared and I know they
[00:14:39] talked about it on their weekly
[00:14:42] Youtube chat. And I think you are
[00:14:45] on that episode as well.
[00:14:47] So you might have some insights here.
[00:14:50] So he shared a link to a live episode with
[00:14:54] Billy Littlefield from Airtable
[00:14:58] and they went through actually
[00:15:00] I guess there was more people
[00:15:02] on the
[00:15:03] the episode from Airtable
[00:15:05] and it was kind of some
[00:15:07] of their developers and
[00:15:08] talking about what's going on
[00:15:11] within the product
[00:15:12] and gave some good insights
[00:15:14] into what's coming
[00:15:16] and sang to share some of
[00:15:18] what Chris, Chris took some
[00:15:21] screenshots and shared
[00:15:22] them with the Facebook community
[00:15:24] that you should join as well.
[00:15:27] It's a good community of thousands of
[00:15:31] Airtable users within Facebook
[00:15:32] but, let's check out some
[00:15:34] of these screenshots that I
[00:15:35] think are interesting.
[00:15:38] So one of them was the future of sync.
[00:15:41] So they shared about bidirectional
[00:15:44] syncing between their different
[00:15:47] syncing sources.
[00:15:48] So Salesforce, big one, so that
[00:15:50] it will automatically sync back and forth.
[00:15:53] So two way syncing between Airtable
[00:15:55] and Salesforce
[00:15:56] or any of their other
[00:15:58] sources that can perform a two way sync.
[00:16:03] So I think that is pretty
[00:16:05] powerful.
[00:16:08] it gives insight into, you know,
[00:16:10] I think you can tell from their product
[00:16:13] development but that they think
[00:16:16] this is a pretty
[00:16:17] critical element of Airtable's
[00:16:20] future
[00:16:21] is being able to sync to other sources.
[00:16:24] So I think that's pretty cool.
[00:16:27] I do think for sync to really shine,
[00:16:31] they got to be able to increase
[00:16:33] the record limit.
[00:16:34] It's just the volume of
[00:16:35] data that's in these other systems
[00:16:38] that they're trying to sync with will just
[00:16:40] bog down Airtable's limits. So
[00:16:43] once they opened that up,
[00:16:45] I think there's a sort of three
[00:16:48] limitation thing with the current syncing,
[00:16:51] it's only one run directional.
[00:16:53] So if they make it bidirectional
[00:16:54] or two way sync,
[00:16:55] like the slide is saying that'd
[00:16:56] be great.
[00:16:57] Right now you can only have
[00:16:59] three sources syncs into a single table.
[00:17:02] I think that limit should probably be 10.
[00:17:05] I can see people wanting like
[00:17:09] 100 different things going
[00:17:11] into one and that's, you know, a lot,
[00:17:15] But 10 seems like a nice round number
[00:17:18] that gets to a lot of what smaller kind of
[00:17:21] companies sort of need sometimes.
[00:17:23] And then the third one is the limit of the
[00:17:27] total number of records
[00:17:28] you could have in a base. So,
[00:17:30] once those three are adjusted,
[00:17:32] I think syncing, native
[00:17:34] syncing in Airtable
[00:17:36] will be a lot more powerful.
[00:17:38] Yeah, that would be cool.
[00:17:40] So that's one of them.
[00:17:42] There's another one that may be
[00:17:44] more excited about.
[00:17:46] Let's see here actually,
[00:17:48] there's more comments.
[00:17:51] All right, this one.
[00:17:53] So there have been rumors
[00:17:55] and hints within the Airtable community of
[00:17:59] custom apps coming into custom views.
[00:18:02] This I think is the first public
[00:18:05] information shared on that regard.
[00:18:08] So there's a screenshot that shows all the
[00:18:12] custom apps within the sidebar,
[00:18:14] but also custom views
[00:18:16] within the actual body
[00:18:18] of the of the Airtable.
[00:18:20] So basically being able to generate
[00:18:23] custom view that takes the full screen.
[00:18:25] So this I'm excited about.
[00:18:27] I'm sure you are as well as a developer.
[00:18:30] Yes. So last week was sort of a
[00:18:33] the whirlwind of
[00:18:36] Airtable based
[00:18:38] announcements, I guess
[00:18:41] they had their
[00:18:42] weekly table talk and they had
[00:18:45] their AMA, their first Ask Me Anything
[00:18:51] both involved Taylor Savage
[00:18:54] and who is on the product team at Airtable
[00:18:58] and is pretty involved with
[00:19:00] like the developer community
[00:19:01] and then there was this
[00:19:04] this event that you have the screen
[00:19:07] shots from with Billy Littlefield and all
[00:19:09] three of those events talked
[00:19:12] about the sort of moved to
[00:19:14] making it easier for people
[00:19:16] to develop customized views
[00:19:18] and there's not a
[00:19:19] whole lot of information
[00:19:21] that has been revealed
[00:19:23] because it's still very much
[00:19:24] under development
[00:19:26] and it probably won't see any
[00:19:28] sort of beta until I'm guessing
[00:19:29] 2023. That's like no one said that number,
[00:19:33] I'm guessing based on the
[00:19:35] amount of information that
[00:19:37] I have been told at this point.
[00:19:40] but what Taylor had said was
[00:19:44] he was talking about the move from
[00:19:47] Gant which used to be an app and is now a
[00:19:49] view and now timeline more recently
[00:19:51] used to be an app is now a view and he was
[00:19:54] saying if you were to look at the code
[00:19:56] if you went in the inspector in chrome
[00:19:58] and looked at what,
[00:19:59] how timeline interacts,
[00:20:01] it's the same code as it was
[00:20:04] when it was an app,
[00:20:05] it's now a view.
[00:20:06] So I think what they're doing
[00:20:08] is making it so that the same
[00:20:10] sort of scripting environment,
[00:20:12] developers are used to now
[00:20:13] with the custom apps
[00:20:14] development, making expanding it
[00:20:16] to being able to develop a custom view.
[00:20:19] That is my interpretation
[00:20:21] of all that I have heard
[00:20:23] in the past week or so and
[00:20:25] it's a long way out
[00:20:26] but it's very promising
[00:20:29] that
[00:20:31] that's where that's the move
[00:20:32] they're sort of getting
[00:20:34] because apps are great but
[00:20:35] views are a much more core
[00:20:37] piece of Airtable functionality.
[00:20:40] For long time users you may
[00:20:42] remember that apps didn't used to exist,
[00:20:46] used to only be views
[00:20:48] and then they sort of introduced
[00:20:50] apps and then years later
[00:20:52] they introduced the
[00:20:53] app development environment
[00:20:55] so third parties can make
[00:20:56] their own apps but views
[00:20:58] have been at the core of Airtable
[00:21:00] since like the get go,
[00:21:02] so making those custom
[00:21:03] I think. Well
[00:21:05] built a much stronger
[00:21:07] product overall. Yeah,
[00:21:10] yeah, that's that was the
[00:21:11] thought I had as far as the
[00:21:13] gant and the timeline,
[00:21:14] so they've proven that it's doable now,
[00:21:18] they just have to open it up to the,
[00:21:20] to the developer community
[00:21:22] which both Kamille and I are part of.
[00:21:24] So definitely fingers crossed,
[00:21:27] hopefully it's not 2023, 2022 hopefully
[00:21:30] That's just me being pessimistic
[00:21:32] because I mean it could come sooner,
[00:21:34] but if I say 2023,
[00:21:37] I'll be happier when it comes a
[00:21:39] little bit sooner. There you go,
[00:21:41] that works, so cool.
[00:21:43] So there was there was one other that
[00:21:46] just talking about the automation
[00:21:48] and being kind of more of a programming
[00:21:51] environment maybe hinting towards
[00:21:53] something similar
[00:21:55] to like an Integromat or
[00:21:56] you can really build more advanced
[00:22:00] functionality so we might see more along
[00:22:03] those lines. But even you know
[00:22:05] we talked about when they release this new
[00:22:07] view here of
[00:22:09] of automations that it was clear
[00:22:11] they were moving in
[00:22:12] kind of this direction.
[00:22:14] I don't think you make that ui
[00:22:17] change without thinking down the road.
[00:22:19] So
[00:22:20] yeah it was it was
[00:22:23] it was too much room
[00:22:26] to give a strictly linear process
[00:22:29] so I think we're going to get branching
[00:22:32] automations at some point
[00:22:37] still a guess but I'm pretty sure
[00:22:39] I'm pretty solid about that one.
[00:22:41] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So
[00:22:44] yeah, so those are kind of some
[00:22:46] of the insights from that episode and
[00:22:49] and we'll see if they do that again
[00:22:51] we'll try to get the word out.
[00:22:53] It was kind of
[00:22:54] this one the other ones,
[00:22:56] they're normal table talk
[00:22:57] and I mean I think
[00:22:58] were better advertised, this one.
[00:23:01] Yeah, I hadn't heard that was
[00:23:02] the one that I hadn't
[00:23:04] been to of the three
[00:23:04] because I never heard of it
[00:23:06] but the other two,
[00:23:08] it's the posts on the forums,
[00:23:10] it was on Twitter or Yeah.
[00:23:12] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:23:13] so good stuff coming.
[00:23:15] Always I always love seeing
[00:23:17] what Airtable is
[00:23:19] thinking as far as the future
[00:23:20] of the products.
[00:23:22] Any time there's
[00:23:23] something public out there.
[00:23:24] I want to make sure we share it
[00:23:25] with the community.
[00:23:27] All right. Moving on
[00:23:29] on to Twitter. See what we got here.
[00:23:32] We've got to refresh.
[00:23:42] This one is an article
[00:23:52] and watched it all.
[00:23:57] Looks like I'm
[00:23:59] bugging out here.
[00:24:01] Yeah I can't see your screen right now.
[00:24:04] Well I can see it but there's
[00:24:05] nothing.
[00:24:09] Yeah I think I've got some internet,
[00:24:12] it's loading still.
[00:24:16] So venture be did a presentation with
[00:24:21] Zappier and Airtable I believe
[00:24:24] actually I think it's with just Zapier.
[00:24:27] Yeah. So just Zapier.
[00:24:29] But talking about how
[00:24:31] Zapier uses Airtable
[00:24:32] so it's Zapier is a heavy
[00:24:34] customer of Airtable.
[00:24:36] They use it for all their stuff.
[00:24:38] I actually did
[00:24:40] have Airtable.
[00:24:41] So I had one of the co founders Andrew.
[00:24:43] I haven't heard
[00:24:44] much regarding his name. So
[00:24:48] this is one I'm going to
[00:24:50] add to my list to watch
[00:24:52] the replay of this.
[00:24:53] So if you're interested to see
[00:24:56] a real life use case of how a
[00:24:58] company like Zapier uses Airtable,
[00:25:00] check this one out
[00:25:02] and we'll see if that one's any good.
[00:25:06] So I'll watch that in the next time.
[00:25:09] I'll give an update if there's
[00:25:11] anything worthwhile in there.
[00:25:14] All right,
[00:25:16] this one I just think was cool.
[00:25:18] So this is somebody who
[00:25:20] started a business and
[00:25:21] they basically said anytime
[00:25:23] I build a business or an app,
[00:25:24] I start with Airtable
[00:25:25] and he gives his process of
[00:25:28] starting a new app
[00:25:30] and how Airtable fits into that.
[00:25:33] So if you have an app idea,
[00:25:35] and by app, he's not talking about like an
[00:25:39] Airtable app,
[00:25:40] I think he's talking about kind of
[00:25:41] any kind of general purpose
[00:25:42] web app.
[00:25:44] And using Airtable
[00:25:46] as the back end database.
[00:25:48] And not so he's not
[00:25:50] necessarily talking about Airtable apps,
[00:25:53] just apps in general.
[00:25:54] So this tweet is pretty cool
[00:25:56] if you've got ideas that
[00:25:58] you're not sure where to
[00:25:59] get started.
[00:26:01] This could give a good framework
[00:26:03] and how Airtable can help in that
[00:26:05] effort.
[00:26:08] So it definitely worthwhile,
[00:26:10] we're seeing we've had
[00:26:12] on previous episodes,
[00:26:13] people mentioning, you know,
[00:26:15] seven figure,
[00:26:16] I think there is an eight figure
[00:26:17] company who's built entirely
[00:26:20] on top of Airtable,
[00:26:22] so you can build businesses
[00:26:24] on Airtable.
[00:26:26] That's a good way.
[00:26:28] All right, that ends our Round the Bases.
[00:26:31] And what's going on with Airtable
[00:26:33] community. So
[00:26:35] you are now up to date
[00:26:37] with everything being discussed
[00:26:39] next. We're talking about On2Air
[00:26:42] On2Air's the primary sponsor
[00:26:44] of the BuiltOnAir podcast
[00:26:46] and I'm the founder of On2Air,
[00:26:48] it's a suite of tools that help
[00:26:50] you run your business on Airtable
[00:26:52] a variety of different ways that you can
[00:26:54] enhance your Airtable experience
[00:26:56] and workflows.
[00:26:57] Today we're gonna talk about,
[00:26:59] we just released a new
[00:27:01] article that goes deep into our
[00:27:04] integration with Google sheets.
[00:27:06] So if you want to get your data
[00:27:08] from Airtable into Google sheets,
[00:27:10] this article is the one
[00:27:12] that you should be reading
[00:27:14] and it's very powerful.
[00:27:16] It talks about how you can actually build
[00:27:20] charts within your Google sheets
[00:27:22] and dynamically convert those charts into
[00:27:25] images. So something that you
[00:27:28] can't do within Airtable charts is like
[00:27:31] like extract that chart as an image
[00:27:33] to be populated into a
[00:27:35] document or something
[00:27:36] by using Google sheets
[00:27:38] and they're charting,
[00:27:40] you can do that use case,
[00:27:41] there's a good video that goes with it,
[00:27:44] so great walk through everything
[00:27:47] going on there,
[00:27:48] so check it out, it's in our resources
[00:27:51] section, our tutorials and
[00:27:53] guides
[00:27:54] and very powerful stuff.
[00:27:57] So you can actually
[00:27:59] migrate, you can sync an entire view
[00:28:02] or table over into a sheet or you can do
[00:28:06] on a per record basis.
[00:28:07] So you can use, I've used
[00:28:09] Google sheets as like a
[00:28:10] template for invoices.
[00:28:12] We also have support for Google docs
[00:28:14] but there are some
[00:28:15] advantages to doing templates
[00:28:17] and things like that
[00:28:19] within Google sheets as well.
[00:28:20] So if you have any needs
[00:28:23] for templates and things like that
[00:28:26] or getting your data
[00:28:28] into a Google sheet,
[00:28:30] check out On2Air actions
[00:28:32] and our Google integrations.
[00:28:36] So that is our On2Air spotlight.
[00:28:39] Now we're going to move on
[00:28:42] to Scripting Time.
[00:28:43] So in Scripting Time is a chance
[00:28:45] if you are new to scripting
[00:28:47] or even experienced,
[00:28:49] it's a great way to learn more
[00:28:51] about scripting and how it can
[00:28:53] enhance your Airtable experience.
[00:28:56] So what we're going to be looking at is
[00:29:00] there if you haven't already,
[00:29:03] if you go into add an app
[00:29:06] and you click on this scripts tab
[00:29:09] there's actually a growing library.
[00:29:11] It could be better
[00:29:13] I probably need to add to this
[00:29:16] library but I haven't yet.
[00:29:19] but Airtable has a lot
[00:29:20] and there's other people
[00:29:22] that have added, Kuovonne's
[00:29:24] got a few in there
[00:29:25] and these are basically scripts
[00:29:27] that will automatically
[00:29:29] install into your scripting app
[00:29:32] and you can do them
[00:29:33] and if you're learning how to script
[00:29:36] these are great ways to
[00:29:37] see existing code that's working
[00:29:40] and you can kind of go line by line.
[00:29:42] So that's what we're gonna do now.
[00:29:44] I chose this, delete duplicates
[00:29:46] which is basically a way that it will
[00:29:48] automatically find and delete
[00:29:51] duplicates based off of
[00:29:53] the field values within a
[00:29:54] single table. So you would just click
[00:29:57] add and it would automatically populate
[00:29:59] into here and then now
[00:30:00] if we go into the editor
[00:30:02] let's take a look at this code
[00:30:05] sometimes you gotta do it
[00:30:07] multiple times
[00:30:08] to get it to pop full screen.
[00:30:10] So let's look at this.
[00:30:12] So we've got right here
[00:30:14] this input.config what
[00:30:16] that does is this will generate
[00:30:19] a ui that allows for asking information.
[00:30:23] It generates a form that you can
[00:30:25] actually see over here on the right
[00:30:27] that asks for information from the
[00:30:30] user that can then be used to inside of
[00:30:34] your automation.
[00:30:35] And the cool thing is
[00:30:37] they don't need to do this every
[00:30:39] time. So it will actually save
[00:30:41] the information
[00:30:42] that was entered and then the
[00:30:44] next time you come
[00:30:45] it will already be configured.
[00:30:47] You can always click on the
[00:30:49] settings button to come back to it
[00:30:52] like this to see it.
[00:30:54] So it's always there
[00:30:56] but it's a way to to store
[00:30:58] information from the user.
[00:31:00] So it's basically asking.
[00:31:02] So depending on this field right
[00:31:05] here or this function.
[00:31:06] So this is asking for which
[00:31:08] table that do you want to run it on?
[00:31:11] You know, the first identifying field,
[00:31:14] the second identifying field.
[00:31:16] So this is asking for a field,
[00:31:19] this parent table,
[00:31:21] which is
[00:31:26] you're so the map
[00:31:29] in.
[00:31:31] In this first choice
[00:31:41] and my internet. There we go. I'm back.
[00:31:44] You can then
[00:31:48] extract that information
[00:31:51] from the settings like so
[00:31:53] and then now these are
[00:31:54] variables that you can use
[00:31:56] inside of your script.
[00:31:59] So now we go through here.
[00:32:01] I'll come back to this
[00:32:02] choose function which will be
[00:32:04] used in second
[00:32:05] and then here this I thought
[00:32:08] was interesting. I've never used this
[00:32:11] I'm pretty sure that's
[00:32:13] the same as just doing this,
[00:32:14] which is the syntax I use.
[00:32:16] So this is an object, this is an array.
[00:32:19] So an array is just when you
[00:32:21] have multiple items,
[00:32:23] so it could be an array of
[00:32:25] strings or it could
[00:32:27] be an array of objects.
[00:32:29] but these brackets signify that
[00:32:32] it's multiple items.
[00:32:34] This object is a single object that has
[00:32:38] key and value fields associated with it.
[00:32:42] It's a different syntax there.
[00:32:46] So now we're basically getting all of the
[00:32:49] records from our table
[00:32:51] and they are being a good citizen
[00:32:54] and they pass in the
[00:32:55] only the fields that they need
[00:32:58] so that it doesn't give the error,
[00:33:01] if you remove this it would
[00:33:04] pull all fields but it would give
[00:33:06] you a warning sign.
[00:33:07] So this is a way to just
[00:33:08] limit and say I only care
[00:33:10] about these three fields.
[00:33:12] So just return those in my
[00:33:13] array.
[00:33:14] So now it's just looping
[00:33:16] through all the records
[00:33:18] that got returned from our
[00:33:19] selection out of the table.
[00:33:21] And this is interesting.
[00:33:23] So what they need to do
[00:33:25] is they need to generate a
[00:33:27] unique identify or using the two fields
[00:33:31] that were picked in our form.
[00:33:33] So we have our first field
[00:33:35] and our second field.
[00:33:37] And so right here
[00:33:39] they're generating an array,
[00:33:41] you see right here we have our array,
[00:33:42] start in our array end
[00:33:44] and then it's just got two items in it,
[00:33:47] the value from our first field
[00:33:49] and the value from our second field.
[00:33:51] And then it's using JSON.stringify
[00:33:54] which basically will convert
[00:33:57] this object into a string
[00:33:59] value called JSON
[00:34:01] representation of an object.
[00:34:04] And so now that string value
[00:34:07] can be used for comparison purposes.
[00:34:09] So here we're basically doing
[00:34:11] a check to say,
[00:34:13] have we already found a key that
[00:34:15] has the same value in the 1st and 2nd id.
[00:34:18] If we have, and it's already in our
[00:34:20] existing array, then we need to
[00:34:24] that means that we found
[00:34:26] a duplicate because
[00:34:27] the values are the same,
[00:34:29] the first id and the
[00:34:30] second id are the same.
[00:34:32] So that means we've already
[00:34:34] seen this match before
[00:34:37] and now we need to choose
[00:34:39] which one we're going to keep
[00:34:41] and which one we're going to discard.
[00:34:44] So this choose function now
[00:34:46] uses that third field,
[00:34:48] this comparison field to
[00:34:50] determine
[00:34:51] Which one we're going to keep.
[00:34:54] And so it basically says
[00:34:56] if whichever one has the greater value.
[00:34:59] So that's so this comparison field
[00:35:01] is looking for the higher value,
[00:35:03] the higher value you're going to keep
[00:35:05] the lower value, you're going to discard.
[00:35:08] So that may not be what you're what
[00:35:10] you're looking for.
[00:35:11] Maybe you want the smaller value to keep,
[00:35:13] so you might need to
[00:35:14] change this to less than
[00:35:16] I think the idea probably behind
[00:35:18] that was like the comparison
[00:35:19] field being the date created field
[00:35:22] or something like that. And saying
[00:35:25] let me keep the most recent value
[00:35:27] because it's using the
[00:35:29] greater symbol but
[00:35:30] if you're doing like you're
[00:35:32] suggesting maybe want the lower
[00:35:34] the lesser value
[00:35:35] between the two, that would be
[00:35:37] the first record that had that same value
[00:35:39] created. So you keep the oldest
[00:35:41] and not the newest. So there's different
[00:35:43] sort of approaches and I guess
[00:35:45] that's where you would want to
[00:35:46] compare. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:48] So if this was really robust,
[00:35:50] you'd maybe have like
[00:35:51] another option of
[00:35:53] how you compare which one
[00:35:55] to keep and what not.
[00:35:56] So this one returns the higher
[00:35:58] and then it gives you so this right here
[00:36:02] if you notice we're returning this
[00:36:05] object right here that has keep
[00:36:08] value key and a discard key
[00:36:10] with the different
[00:36:12] records.
[00:36:13] And then what we're doing here
[00:36:15] is we're extracting that,
[00:36:18] I'm blanking on the name for what
[00:36:20] this is
[00:36:21] destructuring, destructuring, thank you.
[00:36:24] So we're destructuring it
[00:36:26] to basically extract it,
[00:36:28] it's kind of a shortcut.
[00:36:29] There's other ways where you
[00:36:31] can just return the variable
[00:36:33] and then extract the
[00:36:34] keep in the discard out of the object.
[00:36:37] But this is a shortcut way to do it all
[00:36:39] in one line
[00:36:40] and so now we have a variable
[00:36:42] for keep and discard
[00:36:44] and so we're basically
[00:36:45] our discard we're adding to
[00:36:47] an array to delete
[00:36:48] and then our keep one
[00:36:50] we're keeping that key value
[00:36:52] so that it's in our existing
[00:36:54] and next time we come around
[00:36:57] it will see that we've already
[00:37:00] got one in there.
[00:37:02] So if there's not a match
[00:37:03] then we're just going to
[00:37:05] automatically add it to our
[00:37:06] existing
[00:37:09] objects so that,
[00:37:10] or array so that we know
[00:37:13] that it
[00:37:15] will be in there
[00:37:17] and
[00:37:21] Now and then the other cool thing is
[00:37:24] this will now this will print out
[00:37:27] a line so I'll put that mark down,
[00:37:30] this will print a line saying we've
[00:37:32] identified 50 records
[00:37:33] that need to be deleted.
[00:37:35] And then right here you can
[00:37:37] proceed. So this is kind of a pause
[00:37:40] and it will basically
[00:37:42] it won't move past this line
[00:37:45] Until you click on one
[00:37:47] of the Buttons Yes or no.
[00:37:49] And so your code,
[00:37:50] your script will just sit here
[00:37:52] and wait until you click on the
[00:37:54] button that will show once
[00:37:56] I get through this
[00:37:57] and then it will store which
[00:37:59] button you clicked on yes or no
[00:38:02] inside of this decision. If you say no,
[00:38:04] then it will just print
[00:38:06] this out and you're done.
[00:38:07] If otherwise that means you said yes
[00:38:10] and now it's going to print this out,
[00:38:12] saying. And then now we're gonna do this
[00:38:16] wild loop that basically does
[00:38:19] will basically delete in batches
[00:38:23] all of the items that were added to our
[00:38:26] delete array and then we'll say it's done
[00:38:29] now I've been
[00:38:32] Now this is pretty common
[00:38:34] because this max record per call
[00:38:37] if we look up that's
[00:38:38] defined at the top right here to 50.
[00:38:41] So that is because there is a limitation
[00:38:44] within Airtable that you can
[00:38:47] only delete or update
[00:38:49] or create batches of 50.
[00:38:51] So what you have to do is you have to do
[00:38:54] Basically multiple loops in 50
[00:38:57] at a time until you get to 50.
[00:39:00] What I typically do is
[00:39:03] I can get this down to one line.
[00:39:08] and I said like this
[00:39:16] I use the splice command
[00:39:22] which is similar to a slice.
[00:39:27] So that one line right there
[00:39:29] is the same as this loop right here.
[00:39:32] So I'm gonna delete that
[00:39:34] and basically this basically
[00:39:37] keeps going until
[00:39:39] Until there's none left
[00:39:41] within this delete.
[00:39:42] And the good thing about a splice,
[00:39:44] so not a slice, but a splice
[00:39:46] is it will actually modify
[00:39:48] this array and it will
[00:39:50] keep, it will return the item 0-50
[00:39:55] and then it will modify the to
[00:39:58] delete array with everything
[00:40:00] After that, so it returns 50 to
[00:40:03] get deleted
[00:40:04] and then the to delete will be
[00:40:07] everything else.
[00:40:08] And so then it will check again
[00:40:10] and say okay if there's still
[00:40:12] any remaining
[00:40:13] will do it again
[00:40:14] and then this gets reduced
[00:40:16] by 50 the next time
[00:40:17] and so on.
[00:40:21] this right here, this single line is
[00:40:24] is how I do most of my bulk updates.
[00:40:27] Cool. So you would think that-
[00:40:31] What was that?
[00:40:32] I was going to say, I never can remember
[00:40:34] the difference between slice
[00:40:35] and splice
[00:40:36] because they sound so
[00:40:38] similar and you know in
[00:40:40] javascript remembering
[00:40:42] which function
[00:40:43] modifies the original input versus
[00:40:46] which one returns a new array
[00:40:48] or new object
[00:40:48] or what have you. It's difficult for me.
[00:40:52] Yeah it took me multiple times
[00:40:54] to be okay. Which one is it?
[00:40:56] And especially you
[00:40:57] gotta be careful if you're doing deletes,
[00:40:59] you gotta make sure you get the right
[00:41:00] one.
[00:41:01] Yes you wouldn't
[00:41:05] yeah it's more disastrous
[00:41:07] with delete than update
[00:41:08] because you could update with
[00:41:10] the same record a few times
[00:41:12] without you know any sort of
[00:41:13] actual problem.
[00:41:14] But if you try to delete a record
[00:41:16] that's already been deleted,
[00:41:17] it's going to throw an error.
[00:41:19] Yeah
[00:41:20] we have a comp yeah
[00:41:21] I was going to say we have a
[00:41:23] comment from Jen, It would be
[00:41:24] cool if you could then
[00:41:26] update the one you kept
[00:41:28] to say that there was a new
[00:41:29] or old instance of that
[00:41:30] record deleted.
[00:41:31] That I think you can do
[00:41:33] fairly easily with a, you know,
[00:41:36] you'd have to adjust
[00:41:37] the script to do it but
[00:41:39] way up at the top when you're including
[00:41:42] you're filling out
[00:41:44] the sort of settings form
[00:41:46] if you were to add a new option for
[00:41:48] you know notes field
[00:41:50] or something like that,
[00:41:52] you would, you could
[00:41:53] then add additional pieces
[00:41:55] to your code that
[00:41:57] rounds up how many duplicates
[00:41:59] of that one record that it found,
[00:42:01] and then output some
[00:42:04] number to that field.
[00:42:06] It's something that you could do,
[00:42:08] it would just require some
[00:42:09] tweaks to how this
[00:42:10] script is made.
[00:42:11] Or you could also you could select a
[00:42:16] a linked record field
[00:42:19] that linked to the
[00:42:23] the right one.
[00:42:23] So if you want to keep
[00:42:25] the one that you know,
[00:42:26] you essentially would delete
[00:42:28] but instead say,
[00:42:29] hey, this one is outdated and
[00:42:31] linked to the correct one
[00:42:33] is kind of like a way
[00:42:34] to keep it but still linked to
[00:42:36] the original.
[00:42:37] Yeah,
[00:42:39] so yeah, there's a lot you can do.
[00:42:40] There are other scripts,
[00:42:42] I think I've got a
[00:42:42] script somewhere out there
[00:42:44] on BuiltOnAir that
[00:42:46] that does that where it can link
[00:42:47] like parent child,
[00:42:48] you could kind of take that
[00:42:49] same concept with mapping
[00:42:51] matching ones as well.
[00:42:54] So yeah, there's a lot you could
[00:42:57] do to enhance that for your specific
[00:42:59] needs, which is why it's good
[00:43:01] to learn scripting
[00:43:02] and tailor it towards your
[00:43:04] specific needs because everybody,
[00:43:06] you know, even just something like this,
[00:43:08] you know, is something that somebody's
[00:43:10] gonna be like, oh that's not what I
[00:43:12] needed to do.
[00:43:13] And so it's good to
[00:43:15] roll up your sleeves a little bit
[00:43:18] and get in here and make some changes but
[00:43:20] these are always great starting points for
[00:43:22] for
[00:43:26] how you can learn how to modify things.
[00:43:30] So let's run it real quick.
[00:43:32] Let me side by this and
[00:43:36] See what happens when we run it.
[00:43:38] So I created three.
[00:43:40] So these right here so I'm
[00:43:41] using I go back to my settings.
[00:43:45] I think I have to finish, oh never mind.
[00:43:47] There we go. Yeah. So I'm using the
[00:43:50] campaign stable. So my first identifying
[00:43:53] his name and status.
[00:43:54] One thing I realized you don't need
[00:43:56] like a second if you just want to use one
[00:43:58] field that would be okay. But
[00:44:01] one thing that's kind of annoying
[00:44:03] about their configuration
[00:44:04] is once you select a
[00:44:05] field
[00:44:06] you cannot un select it.
[00:44:08] So it has to be something
[00:44:10] I can't clear it out and say
[00:44:12] oh I don't want a second field.
[00:44:16] Yeah it's kind of annoying
[00:44:20] So Airtable, try to fix that. Just
[00:44:23] put an X. Right there where you
[00:44:26] can clear out your selection.
[00:44:28] So anyway so these
[00:44:29] all three of these have the
[00:44:31] same name and the same
[00:44:32] status. So these should all come back
[00:44:34] as duplicates and then I'm using the
[00:44:36] budget value as the one to keep.
[00:44:39] So if this runs correctly
[00:44:41] it should keep the
[00:44:42] 8000 one because that's the higher
[00:44:44] because it's you looking
[00:44:46] for the higher value.
[00:44:47] So these two should get deleted.
[00:44:49] So let's give it a go
[00:44:50] and we'll see where it gives
[00:44:52] us the confirmation.
[00:44:53] So identify two records
[00:44:55] in need of deletion.
[00:44:56] So that means it found three
[00:44:58] because it's going to keep one
[00:45:00] and delete two
[00:45:01] which is what we're expecting.
[00:45:03] So I'm going to proceed and say
[00:45:05] let me just do no first
[00:45:07] and so there you see it
[00:45:08] just canceled and then we're
[00:45:10] out of the run.
[00:45:11] So if I run it again
[00:45:12] and then this time I'm gonna
[00:45:15] say yes and now it deleted
[00:45:16] those two and kick the 8000 one.
[00:45:19] So it worked.
[00:45:20] We deleted are duplicates based off
[00:45:23] of two fields and learned
[00:45:24] a little bit about scripting
[00:45:26] in the process.
[00:45:27] Very good.
[00:45:28] It's always good when things work.
[00:45:31] I was worried because I did
[00:45:33] make a couple of code changes but
[00:45:36] alright that concludes the
[00:45:38] Scripting Time segment.
[00:45:39] We will now move on.
[00:45:40] Kamille
[00:45:42] gonna share your screen
[00:45:43] and we're going to talk
[00:45:44] about the button field.
[00:45:45] Okay I have a base that I use
[00:45:48] all the time for demonstration
[00:45:51] purposes because
[00:45:53] it has a lot sort of going on in it.
[00:45:55] There's a lot of links and whatnot and
[00:45:58] I was going to demonstrate some
[00:46:01] of the features of the
[00:46:03] button field. And one
[00:46:04] of the sort of hidden use cases
[00:46:07] of having a button field is if you have a
[00:46:10] sync table you'd be able to go back
[00:46:13] to the original source of wherever that
[00:46:16] record came from. So
[00:46:18] imagine if you will you have a table
[00:46:21] full of things associated with
[00:46:24] individual customers
[00:46:25] and you wanted to give a particular
[00:46:28] customer their own base.
[00:46:30] One way you would do that was
[00:46:32] to make a filtered view,
[00:46:34] only show me customer two.
[00:46:35] And you'll notice that this view
[00:46:37] is shared
[00:46:38] and has the lightning bolt on it,
[00:46:40] meaning that it's currently being
[00:46:42] seen to somewhere else
[00:46:43] that somewhere else is here.
[00:46:45] And you can see,
[00:46:46] I've filtered down only the fields
[00:46:48] that I would need showing
[00:46:49] only the things that
[00:46:50] apply to customer two.
[00:46:54] But if I wanted to see more information
[00:46:57] about this record and you know find out
[00:47:00] where you know what table
[00:47:02] and base this is even coming from.
[00:47:04] It's kind of difficult to get
[00:47:09] to get there just by like intuition
[00:47:11] you could go up to your table options and
[00:47:14] sort of click
[00:47:16] click the sync source button
[00:47:18] to get back to the table.
[00:47:20] But the way you would get
[00:47:21] to the record itself
[00:47:23] would be to create a button field.
[00:47:29] And then you have a
[00:47:30] couple of different things.
[00:47:32] The default is an open URL.
[00:47:33] So it functions just like a URL
[00:47:36] field by default where you would insert a
[00:47:39] formula and that formula could just be
[00:47:42] you know,
[00:47:43] google.com in quotes.
[00:47:45] But for this particular use case
[00:47:48] you want to change
[00:47:49] the option to open source record.
[00:47:52] We'll see a bunch of other options
[00:47:54] in here as well.
[00:47:55] but doing open source record
[00:47:57] will allow you
[00:48:00] to then do this
[00:48:04] If I click that button,
[00:48:06] it will open in another tab
[00:48:08] the original table and base
[00:48:10] that is being synced to this one
[00:48:12] and it will expand the record
[00:48:15] of the original as
[00:48:16] well. So it's super useful to get
[00:48:20] back to where a record originated
[00:48:25] from and I believe
[00:48:28] if you make a button field in a table
[00:48:31] that is not synced,
[00:48:33] that option isn't there,
[00:48:35] yeah, it's not there,
[00:48:37] so that's what I mean by its
[00:48:39] sort of hidden and I
[00:48:41] understand why it's not there
[00:48:42] by default
[00:48:43] because it's not something that's
[00:48:45] useful for a
[00:48:46] table that isn't synced,
[00:48:48] there's no source record to go to. So
[00:48:50] you know, the option isn't visible
[00:48:52] but because it's not visible most of the
[00:48:54] time, sometimes people aren't
[00:48:56] aware that it is an option whenever it is
[00:48:59] relevant.
[00:49:00] So hidden sort of use case
[00:49:03] of the button field and some of the other
[00:49:07] options that you have in here,
[00:49:09] aside from open URL, these are all more or
[00:49:11] less variations of the same effect.
[00:49:14] So all of these buttons
[00:49:16] here will allow you
[00:49:17] to open up a new
[00:49:20] or open up your apps window
[00:49:22] off to the right
[00:49:23] and open a particular app.
[00:49:27] So some of these have been
[00:49:29] kind of custom coded to do
[00:49:30] particular things within the app itself,
[00:49:32] but most of these will just sort of
[00:49:34] open an app that you've assigned to it.
[00:49:37] I think the most common one
[00:49:40] is probably run script,
[00:49:42] so if you wanted to do the
[00:49:44] de duplication script
[00:49:46] that Dan just showed in the
[00:49:48] previous segment,
[00:49:49] you could just have a button
[00:49:50] that lets you click once and
[00:49:52] it'll start running for you.
[00:49:53] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:49:56] yeah, and it's interesting,
[00:49:57] you can kind of see they're doing,
[00:49:59] you know, they've got the
[00:50:01] Twilio integration,
[00:50:03] it's like where do they cut off,
[00:50:05] you know, like having a list of
[00:50:07] a million things
[00:50:08] that you could do off of a
[00:50:09] button versus I wonder if this
[00:50:12] will ever be extendable where you could
[00:50:14] dynamically,
[00:50:16] you know, build things into that list
[00:50:19] or something. I don't know because I feel
[00:50:21] like it started off with like a couple
[00:50:23] of them and then they added a few more
[00:50:25] and then they added the open custom
[00:50:29] app thing, which is
[00:50:31] not necessarily a literal custom app,
[00:50:34] so this is a bad example because I only
[00:50:36] have
[00:50:37] my app in here,
[00:50:38] that happens to be a custom app,
[00:50:40] but you could choose,
[00:50:41] I think any app from the app store,
[00:50:43] that is not
[00:50:45] like a Matrix or something,
[00:50:47] you know, that's not a custom
[00:50:49] app and it doesn't
[00:50:49] have its own little option
[00:50:51] or Page Designer,
[00:50:53] like Jen mentioned. Yeah.
[00:50:56] Yeah, very true, so yeah,
[00:50:58] so there's a lot you can do
[00:51:01] there, one of the things
[00:51:02] that I do not like and Kamille,
[00:51:04] you'll appreciate this
[00:51:05] is in the custom app
[00:51:06] development,
[00:51:07] those buttons aren't supported
[00:51:10] so you can't like display a button field
[00:51:14] inside of your custom app
[00:51:16] that then opens up like
[00:51:17] another app or something.
[00:51:18] Yeah it is, there's a thing in custom app
[00:51:25] sort of development where you can
[00:51:28] display a field in an app window
[00:51:32] exactly how it appears in a view.
[00:51:35] So like this styling for a linked record
[00:51:39] for instance or this styling for single
[00:51:42] selects, you can do the same with buttons,
[00:51:44] it'll look exactly like a button
[00:51:46] would look over here
[00:51:47] except it's not clickable.
[00:51:49] It's just for a display. So it's,
[00:51:52] I think if it's open that URL,
[00:51:54] I think it will still open the URL
[00:51:57] that's useful.
[00:51:58] Not any of the other ones. Yeah, it's
[00:52:02] it sort of gets to an underlying sort
[00:52:04] of thing that none of these apps really
[00:52:05] talk to each other. Apps talk
[00:52:08] to your tables in records,
[00:52:11] they don't talk to
[00:52:13] other apps within the environment.
[00:52:14] That's something that you
[00:52:16] would have to get
[00:52:16] really into the
[00:52:18] sort of nitty gritty of
[00:52:19] and I think you would have
[00:52:21] to make some adjustments to
[00:52:22] the apps environment
[00:52:24] to make that possible.
[00:52:27] So very cool
[00:52:28] buttons is great.
[00:52:29] What's the biggest flaw
[00:52:31] that button needs still?
[00:52:33] Jeez, for me
[00:52:37] it's a custom apps thing
[00:52:39] where if I have a button
[00:52:42] that launches an app,
[00:52:43] just a single button
[00:52:45] then I know what that button is
[00:52:47] supposed to do but if I had
[00:52:49] two buttons, one for approved,
[00:52:51] one for deny
[00:52:52] or something that are both supposed
[00:52:54] to launch an app or a script,
[00:52:58] I can't really easily say
[00:53:00] which button launched
[00:53:02] the app. So there's no
[00:53:05] there's not really a way to
[00:53:07] say okay make this button do this thing,
[00:53:10] this button do another thing.
[00:53:12] They both would
[00:53:13] lead to the same place
[00:53:15] which is a little frustrating.
[00:53:17] I thought you were going
[00:53:19] to say dynamic labels. Well that too,
[00:53:21] you know what? Never mind. So
[00:53:23] that's much more applicable
[00:53:26] to people. So if I go
[00:53:28] to
[00:53:30] here this label would
[00:53:33] be the same label for
[00:53:37] all records,
[00:53:40] open your open where
[00:53:41] you can't say like customer two
[00:53:43] commas website,
[00:53:44] customer three's comma website.
[00:53:46] It wouldn't be
[00:53:48] dynamic to the record itself
[00:53:51] which is kind of frustrating
[00:53:53] that you can do
[00:53:55] like
[00:53:56] you can have it build the URL
[00:53:58] based on the other fields
[00:54:00] of that particular
[00:54:01] record because it's a formula.
[00:54:04] But the label itself is not dynamic.
[00:54:07] Yeah that would be my
[00:54:09] number one complaint. But
[00:54:10] so Jen had a question for you,
[00:54:13] do you need two apps and two buttons?
[00:54:15] You could, that is one method of doing it.
[00:54:18] But I don't I really don't like
[00:54:21] having multiple instances of the same app
[00:54:24] if I can avoid it in like dashboard
[00:54:27] design because it's
[00:54:30] kind of gets confusing
[00:54:31] if you have too many
[00:54:32] going on at once,
[00:54:35] but I mean that is one way to do it.
[00:54:37] You can have one the approved button
[00:54:39] specifically tied to the one
[00:54:41] that's on the approved dashboard
[00:54:43] and then you can
[00:54:44] have the deny button specifically
[00:54:46] tied to the app instance on the deny
[00:54:48] dashboard that is a work around,
[00:54:50] you can do.
[00:54:51] Yeah,
[00:54:54] very good. Thank you. Kamille
[00:54:56] sharing those insights
[00:54:57] into the button field and
[00:54:58] how people can use
[00:55:00] buttons to enhance their Airtable.
[00:55:03] Very powerful and especially the syncing
[00:55:05] between or linking back
[00:55:07] to the source record.
[00:55:09] Let's move on.
[00:55:11] One final plug
[00:55:12] for the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:55:14] We love if you're not already part
[00:55:16] of our community,
[00:55:17] sign up at builtonair.com/join.
[00:55:20] We're about 850 members inside
[00:55:23] of our slack community and we
[00:55:26] have a goal to get to
[00:55:27] 1000 by the end of the year.
[00:55:29] So we need about 150 more people.
[00:55:32] So invite your friends, get them to join
[00:55:34] and participate in the discussion.
[00:55:36] There's great people in there
[00:55:38] that
[00:55:40] are always there, Jen is one of them,
[00:55:42] glad Jen could be with us today.
[00:55:44] She's also in there
[00:55:46] and also been a great person
[00:55:48] we've had on before. We have to get
[00:55:51] her back on. So
[00:55:52] with that our final segment
[00:55:54] that will do is an industry view.
[00:55:56] And we're going to talk a little bit
[00:55:59] about no code. And that's a big buzz word
[00:56:02] going around the internet right now
[00:56:04] and how Airtable fits into that.
[00:56:07] So this is a little bit
[00:56:10] for my use purpose as
[00:56:12] well, I'm going to speak at a
[00:56:13] conference next week
[00:56:14] and they asked me to talk
[00:56:15] about Airtable and no code
[00:56:17] and how what's changing
[00:56:19] within the no code
[00:56:21] industry.
[00:56:22] So I thought we'd have
[00:56:23] kind of a little dialogue
[00:56:25] talking about what no code
[00:56:27] means
[00:56:27] and what does that mean
[00:56:29] for people that are
[00:56:30] just getting into this.
[00:56:32] So in general,
[00:56:33] so I kind of struggle with this,
[00:56:36] so I look at this as kind of
[00:56:38] a marketing buzzword
[00:56:40] of no code.
[00:56:42] I'm old enough to remember Geo cities and
[00:56:47] basically building websites,
[00:56:49] you know,
[00:56:50] through like a Geo city type site.
[00:56:52] And so I've been writing code for
[00:56:55] 25 plus years and so
[00:56:58] the term no code seems
[00:57:00] interesting to me. I kind of like what,
[00:57:03] what what isn't no code?
[00:57:05] What Saas product
[00:57:07] or what software product isn't
[00:57:09] no code? That is a really good question.
[00:57:14] it's I think the most accessible
[00:57:17] answer for a lot of people is like what is
[00:57:20] an example of something
[00:57:22] that is quote unquote no code
[00:57:23] is probably word press
[00:57:24] because something like a quarter
[00:57:26] of the internet
[00:57:27] is built out of WordPress and
[00:57:28] most people,
[00:57:29] if you've ever had to throw together
[00:57:31] a quick website for something
[00:57:32] you probably at least
[00:57:33] vaguely familiar with WordPress. And they
[00:57:36] have this whole
[00:57:37] two minutes set up thing
[00:57:39] where they ask you a few
[00:57:41] simple questions and then you
[00:57:43] click the run button and it will
[00:57:46] set up your database
[00:57:47] for you and it will, you know,
[00:57:49] it has pre designed themes
[00:57:51] that it will you don't have
[00:57:53] to design the website
[00:57:54] from scratch necessarily.
[00:57:56] And from there it's
[00:57:59] it gives you a sort of
[00:58:01] a CMS content management
[00:58:02] system environment
[00:58:04] where you you're just filling out
[00:58:06] fields essentially
[00:58:07] for most people who use WordPress,
[00:58:09] there's no coding involved.
[00:58:10] But it's
[00:58:12] if you want to step beyond,
[00:58:15] you know, the world of templates
[00:58:17] or you want to customize
[00:58:18] things a little bit or
[00:58:19] if you just want to add
[00:58:21] a touch more functionality,
[00:58:23] most people often use
[00:58:25] plug ins, and plug ins are
[00:58:27] coded by somebody. So
[00:58:30] it's
[00:58:31] no code is a strange
[00:58:34] sort of world to me
[00:58:35] because that it seems to be a
[00:58:38] fairly common conceit
[00:58:40] of no code.
[00:58:42] Is that the sort of platforms
[00:58:45] that are no code
[00:58:46] based will give you
[00:58:49] the tools to build most
[00:58:51] of what you want by yourself without,
[00:58:54] you know javascript or PHP
[00:58:57] or java or whatever it is
[00:58:59] until you get to a point
[00:59:01] and you hit a road block and then
[00:59:04] there's something else you need.
[00:59:06] And in order to get that
[00:59:07] thing that you need
[00:59:08] because there hasn't been an
[00:59:10] interface built for it yet,
[00:59:12] someone has to code it,
[00:59:13] it might not be you,
[00:59:14] but somebody has to make it. So you know,
[00:59:17] no code is
[00:59:20] almost a misnomer.
[00:59:23] Yeah. So I think you know
[00:59:25] the comparison I was thinking
[00:59:28] about is heard this on a
[00:59:29] podcast not too long ago,
[00:59:32] talking about like 2-3 years ago,
[00:59:35] the big buzzword
[00:59:36] that every company was using was big data.
[00:59:40] Right? Every every company was big data.
[00:59:42] Although Airtable is not big data,
[00:59:44] you can't say your big data
[00:59:46] if you only have 50,000 records.
[00:59:48] But that was the big buzzword.
[00:59:50] Everybody said,
[00:59:51] Oh we're big data, we're big data.
[00:59:53] And it got to the point where
[00:59:55] it's like once everybody
[00:59:56] is saying they're big
[00:59:56] data, then
[00:59:58] what's not big data?
[01:00:01] And so I think no code
[01:00:03] is approaching that status
[01:00:05] where everybody is saying
[01:00:07] there no code.
[01:00:08] So who's not no code?
[01:00:10] I don't know. I think it comes back to,
[01:00:13] I like to describe it as an
[01:00:16] interface for things.
[01:00:18] No code is providing a user
[01:00:20] within an interface to do
[01:00:22] something
[01:00:24] complicated.
[01:00:25] And Integromat is probably
[01:00:27] my favorite example just because it's
[01:00:30] the most intuitive sort of visual
[01:00:33] Yeah, I think they even
[01:00:35] call themselves visual
[01:00:36] coding or visual something or other,
[01:00:39] but it's your connecting dots essentially
[01:00:42] and you're filling out
[01:00:43] fields with just text in your
[01:00:46] it tries to ask you
[01:00:49] questions that you could answer
[01:00:52] easily.
[01:00:53] Like what is the name of the
[01:00:54] table you're looking at, You know,
[01:00:56] what is the name of the field
[01:00:57] that you want
[01:00:58] and where do you want it to go
[01:00:59] connect the dots
[01:01:00] and it'll do the coding for you.
[01:01:03] And that's sort of the
[01:01:04] advantage of no code
[01:01:06] is that if you're completely foreign
[01:01:08] to some of these
[01:01:09] things,
[01:01:09] or even if you're not completely foreign,
[01:01:11] if you have to set up some of
[01:01:12] these systems from scratch
[01:01:13] every single time through coding,
[01:01:15] it would take you 30,000 years,
[01:01:17] you don't want to do that.
[01:01:20] Yeah,
[01:01:21] So yeah, so it's a couple of
[01:01:23] comments from Jen talking about,
[01:01:24] you know, it's basically gooey
[01:01:27] dragon drop,
[01:01:28] visual ui for for programming.
[01:01:31] So if you've only used Airtable
[01:01:33] within their automations, the steps,
[01:01:36] you know, that's essentially,
[01:01:38] you know, a program
[01:01:39] that you're visualizing a trigger
[01:01:42] and then the steps that happen after it,
[01:01:44] that's essentially what Integromat does,
[01:01:47] but more advanced.
[01:01:47] So you see that within Airtable,
[01:01:49] Airtable is kind of interesting.
[01:01:51] There's another concept
[01:01:53] that Jen also mentions.
[01:01:54] There is actually a distinction
[01:01:56] between no code and low code.
[01:01:58] Airtables kind of both. Right?
[01:01:59] Because it's got no code
[01:02:01] where you're setting up
[01:02:03] these automations, and
[01:02:05] these processes and
[01:02:07] workflows in the database
[01:02:09] or through animations.
[01:02:10] But the scripting app
[01:02:12] is such a core item,
[01:02:14] you know, element that that's
[01:02:16] kind of the low code aspect of Airtable
[01:02:20] where it lowers the barrier to write
[01:02:22] code, which I think is one
[01:02:24] of the huge advantages
[01:02:26] of Airtable is it definitely
[01:02:28] makes it very easy to get into
[01:02:30] scripting and even
[01:02:32] even formula writing is
[01:02:34] kind of a form of code
[01:02:36] and so that's one of
[01:02:37] the huge pluses for Airtable.
[01:02:41] Yeah, it's
[01:02:43] I had this kind of discussion with
[01:02:46] Ben Green and
[01:02:47] Chris Dancy I think last week
[01:02:48] and it was
[01:02:51] some of the frustrations I have
[01:02:54] with tools like web flow and a bubble,
[01:02:56] which are both no code
[01:02:58] sort of interface builder type things
[01:03:01] is that they get you
[01:03:05] the, to me, to me they focused too much on
[01:03:10] building a button for everything
[01:03:12] where if I wanted to do something
[01:03:14] that they haven't built an interface for,
[01:03:17] it's incredibly difficult.
[01:03:19] So the example with web flow
[01:03:21] is pseudo classes for
[01:03:22] people who know it a little bit
[01:03:25] about CSS
[01:03:26] it is way too hard to work with pseudo
[01:03:28] classes and web flow
[01:03:30] because they haven't
[01:03:31] anticipated that need,
[01:03:32] there's not a section of their,
[01:03:35] you know, visual website builder to do it.
[01:03:37] And that frustrates me as a designer
[01:03:39] because I want that sort of control and
[01:03:42] Airtables position in a low code
[01:03:45] slash no code environment,
[01:03:46] they have to sort of straddle this line of
[01:03:50] we want to make a button for
[01:03:52] as much as we need to
[01:03:53] like they most recently added
[01:03:55] nested and grouped filters
[01:03:57] so they've added buttons
[01:04:00] to let you do a certain
[01:04:02] amount of non coding.
[01:04:04] Otherwise you would have had
[01:04:06] to build a complicated script
[01:04:07] to filter records
[01:04:08] yourself
[01:04:09] and then providing you
[01:04:11] a scripting environment
[01:04:12] or recording environment where
[01:04:13] you can do the custom stuff
[01:04:15] that you want to do
[01:04:16] that they haven't built a button
[01:04:17] for. But when you
[01:04:20] there's a path will diverge
[01:04:22] in the wood where they can go in either
[01:04:25] direction where they become
[01:04:27] this ultra efficient,
[01:04:29] super great user interface or
[01:04:31] they can be this perfect
[01:04:33] database platform.
[01:04:35] And then you start the one thing that I
[01:04:40] I am wary of is
[01:04:43] either side of the platform to suffer
[01:04:45] if you focus too much on the visual
[01:04:48] interface and not on its
[01:04:49] performance is a database,
[01:04:51] like not increasing the
[01:04:52] number of records you could
[01:04:54] have or if you focus on
[01:04:55] the number of records that
[01:04:56] you can have and less
[01:04:58] on the user interface,
[01:04:59] things are going to fall by
[01:05:01] the wayside in either time
[01:05:03] and any low code slash
[01:05:04] no code platform is gonna
[01:05:06] have that same problem eventually.
[01:05:10] Yeah, for sure. That's great.
[01:05:12] That's great incite. I do think like,
[01:05:15] you know, as Airtable
[01:05:16] and I've mentioned before,
[01:05:18] hearing Howie, the CEO, talk
[01:05:20] about the vision for Airtable
[01:05:22] when it was created
[01:05:24] and even now and you know,
[01:05:25] this concept of democratizing
[01:05:28] coding for everyone,
[01:05:29] like that's the coolest thing
[01:05:31] that I love seeing.
[01:05:32] I think you you're like a perfect example
[01:05:35] of, you know, you weren't trained as a
[01:05:37] developer or coder, but
[01:05:40] by using tools like Airtable
[01:05:41] and others that you've used,
[01:05:43] like you've really
[01:05:43] increased your skills and it made
[01:05:46] it easier to get into that world.
[01:05:49] The world that I got into coding,
[01:05:52] you know, I had to go through
[01:05:54] schooling and
[01:05:55] getting a server setup
[01:05:56] and everything that you have to do
[01:05:58] versus what you have
[01:05:59] to do with Airtable.
[01:06:01] It's just night and day
[01:06:02] and so lowering that bar,
[01:06:04] making it easier for everybody
[01:06:06] to jump into this world.
[01:06:08] That's what I love
[01:06:09] seeing. And you see that people
[01:06:11] who have no experience writing code,
[01:06:13] you know, they'll ask questions
[01:06:15] in the forums
[01:06:16] and you see that they're getting
[01:06:17] better and their understanding it through
[01:06:20] through Airtable just makes
[01:06:21] it so much easier to get up and running.
[01:06:23] Yeah, one of my favorite things
[01:06:26] to see on the forums
[01:06:27] is someone will have like a
[01:06:29] script that they've seen
[01:06:30] somewhere and they're customizing it
[01:06:32] for themselves and
[01:06:33] they're so close
[01:06:35] to a script that runs properly
[01:06:38] and the problem that they're having isn't
[01:06:40] necessarily Airtable,
[01:06:42] it's just javascript.
[01:06:44] It's like they're missing a colon
[01:06:47] somewhere and I'm like,
[01:06:48] that's what I want to see.
[01:06:50] Someone, someone who's
[01:06:51] who's gone through the process of,
[01:06:54] oh I know what pieces of the script don't
[01:06:57] really apply to my use case.
[01:06:58] I know this piece of that
[01:07:00] script does let me try
[01:07:01] and combine them. And
[01:07:02] for the most part, I think
[01:07:05] the
[01:07:06] position Airtable is in right now is
[01:07:09] friendly enough that people are not,
[01:07:13] you know, oh, that window is not for me,
[01:07:16] I'm not a coder, it's not,
[01:07:18] you know,
[01:07:19] you know, not having to run to
[01:07:21] hire a developer every time you need some
[01:07:24] button to do something.
[01:07:26] It's really nice to see and you know,
[01:07:28] if I have to suffer through
[01:07:31] javascript, everyone should.
[01:07:33] Yeah, that's the biggest thing.
[01:07:35] So, my takeaway is even though I'm
[01:07:37] kind of pessimistic on the term
[01:07:40] no code and kind of the buzz word
[01:07:42] marketing aspect to it
[01:07:45] like I don't think that it will,
[01:07:48] I think it will go away
[01:07:49] because it will kind of
[01:07:50] lose its its power once
[01:07:51] everybody is using it,
[01:07:53] which is pretty close to,
[01:07:55] but if you think of it from a
[01:07:57] philosophical way and not necessarily
[01:08:00] a these are the tools that are
[01:08:02] no code by thinking like no code
[01:08:04] philosophically,
[01:08:05] I think that's powerful in the
[01:08:07] sense that
[01:08:08] you don't need to pay
[01:08:09] thousands of, you know,
[01:08:11] tens of thousands of dollars
[01:08:13] and high end developers to
[01:08:14] build your idea,
[01:08:16] you can get up and going
[01:08:18] as quickly as tomorrow with,
[01:08:20] you know, without, without those,
[01:08:22] those skill sets. So that's what I think
[01:08:25] the philosophy of no code means is
[01:08:28] making it easier for anybody
[01:08:29] to get up and going.
[01:08:30] And then the other thing is the ability
[01:08:34] to have different platforms talk to each
[01:08:37] other so that I think is very new
[01:08:40] like before the Zapiers
[01:08:42] and the Integromats
[01:08:43] of the world, you know,
[01:08:45] some systems talk to each other directly,
[01:08:47] they have direct integrations, but
[01:08:49] there wasn't like an easy way
[01:08:52] to really be able to
[01:08:54] connect the dots like Lagos
[01:08:55] between different systems.
[01:08:57] So a lot of silos
[01:08:58] yeah lots of silos and so
[01:09:01] you couldn't build a full product.
[01:09:04] you know, they did everything
[01:09:06] and you know,
[01:09:07] and that would be super expensive.
[01:09:10] So the no code philosophy of
[01:09:13] this system does this,
[01:09:15] we can get it hooked up
[01:09:16] into this other system that does
[01:09:17] this. Now you have a full business
[01:09:20] running on these systems that can talk to
[01:09:22] each other and not have code
[01:09:25] involved, that's the biggest,
[01:09:27] I love Priscilla's
[01:09:30] first comment, I was first introduced
[01:09:32] to coding my sophomore year in college
[01:09:34] in an honor computer science
[01:09:36] class and engineering department.
[01:09:38] He used to say I was way over my
[01:09:40] head and I was very intimidated
[01:09:41] I very famously in my family,
[01:09:45] I was admitted to college in the computer,
[01:09:48] I think engineering.
[01:09:51] It was either computer science
[01:09:53] or computer engineering
[01:09:55] as my degree and in the
[01:09:56] orientation week before school
[01:09:59] starts they're like, you know,
[01:10:01] come to campus and
[01:10:03] you know see your facilities
[01:10:05] and whatnot.
[01:10:06] And I remember being so like looking
[01:10:08] around and being like I don't
[01:10:10] want to be here, ew.
[01:10:12] I don't want to do computer
[01:10:13] science. And so I changed my major
[01:10:15] before school even started
[01:10:17] and I remember the,
[01:10:19] I think she was like the dean
[01:10:21] or the program director
[01:10:22] but she was just like no
[01:10:23] please stay.
[01:10:25] I don't remember the exact makeup
[01:10:28] priscilla says there was only one
[01:10:31] other woman in her class of 20.
[01:10:33] I couldn't tell you how
[01:10:34] many women there were in
[01:10:35] my class. There weren't a lot.
[01:10:38] But you know here I am six years later.
[01:10:41] Yeah well longer than
[01:10:42] six years that would have been,
[01:10:44] how old am I?
[01:10:45] Oh no. That was 2013 2012
[01:10:48] or 2013 and here I am six years later
[01:10:53] and I make apps
[01:10:55] for a living somehow.
[01:10:57] So you know to whoever
[01:10:59] that dean lady was.
[01:11:01] I don't know I came around. Sorry,
[01:11:04] I think. Yeah, I mean you know
[01:11:06] I did a masters in
[01:11:08] computer science 20 plus
[01:11:10] years ago and yeah,
[01:11:12] I'm sure it was the same numbers.
[01:11:14] It was mostly nerdy guys
[01:11:16] like me and that is one thing
[01:11:18] that's really cool about Airtable is the
[01:11:20] amount of women
[01:11:21] that are in this environment
[01:11:24] and doing coding and scripting.
[01:11:26] Like
[01:11:27] the number the representation
[01:11:29] is much higher than industry average.
[01:11:31] I think again I go back to
[01:11:33] the amount of people
[01:11:35] who just feel comfortable coding
[01:11:39] in the environment like of Airtable,
[01:11:42] it's just so nice to see they put it
[01:11:45] is perfectly nestled in this
[01:11:48] fairly easy to use platform. And
[01:11:51] you know, Airtable's built off of
[01:11:54] javascript and so the scripting app uses
[01:11:57] javascript. It is such a widely used
[01:12:01] coding language that it's not
[01:12:04] hard to find tutorials from
[01:12:07] many, many different skills tutorial writers.
[01:12:11] And then you get people like Kuovonne
[01:12:13] friend of the show
[01:12:15] and you get people like me who
[01:12:17] kind of coded a little bit.
[01:12:19] I mean we're loosely associated with code,
[01:12:21] me who dropped out of the computer
[01:12:24] science major before
[01:12:25] I even started and we've
[01:12:27] since been able to learn
[01:12:30] within this very incredibly
[01:12:33] niche little market in
[01:12:35] roughly the span of a year. It's a
[01:12:38] it's a it's a it's a nice sort of
[01:12:42] place that we've gotten to
[01:12:44] no code at this point is a
[01:12:46] is the gateway drug into into coding.
[01:12:49] There we go. No code is the Gateway,
[01:12:51] there's my punchline for my presentation.
[01:12:54] There you go, I'm going to charge you
[01:12:57] royalties. That's awesome.
[01:13:00] Yeah, I mean even just looking at,
[01:13:02] you know, our community
[01:13:03] here who's responding
[01:13:04] is all women.
[01:13:06] That's awesome. So that
[01:13:10] it's cool.
[01:13:11] I'm the minority in in this group.
[01:13:14] So that's good.
[01:13:16] So that's, I think it's powerful.
[01:13:19] I think that will change,
[01:13:21] I mean I've used I used Airtable,
[01:13:23] so all of my kids,
[01:13:24] I've got two daughters and
[01:13:26] two sons and all of them
[01:13:28] for their science for projects,
[01:13:30] I make them do coding
[01:13:31] projects.
[01:13:32] And the first one my oldest daughter
[01:13:36] she did hers before I was using Airtable
[01:13:39] but the rest since they've
[01:13:41] all done their science
[01:13:43] projects in Airtable
[01:13:45] and it's a great way for
[01:13:47] kids to get into coding. Yeah
[01:13:52] so a couple more comments
[01:13:54] before we end here
[01:13:55] appreciate all the feedback
[01:13:57] Priscilla and Jen
[01:13:59] and
[01:14:01] yeah so there we go.
[01:14:02] That's the hierarchy.
[01:14:04] Low code is the gateway to coding.
[01:14:06] Great discussion I think
[01:14:08] you know it's it's cool
[01:14:10] to see it and that's where Airtable
[01:14:12] like if they're smart I've actually
[01:14:14] told them like they need to be like
[01:14:16] Apple where Apple got into
[01:14:18] all the schools early,
[01:14:19] you know and got people using
[01:14:21] Apple products like Airtable needs to
[01:14:24] get into schools and be how they learn
[01:14:27] database design and coding.
[01:14:30] They kind of made a half step in terms of
[01:14:34] during covid they had that I think it
[01:14:36] was even slightly before covid where they
[01:14:38] just made Airtable free
[01:14:40] for education users and
[01:14:41] had this sort of like push and
[01:14:43] all that kind of things.
[01:14:45] I think if they continue on that path and
[01:14:48] you know trying to get it.
[01:14:50] So I think the first thing
[01:14:51] I used Airtable for was
[01:14:52] like a
[01:14:53] a school based project anyway. It's such a
[01:14:57] you know no one wants to build an SQL
[01:15:00] query to to deal with a college assignment
[01:15:03] or a high school assignment
[01:15:05] or you know even less so
[01:15:06] a middle school assignment
[01:15:08] so get in early.
[01:15:09] Yeah. Yeah for sure.
[01:15:13] All right well that concludes
[01:15:15] this episode we went
[01:15:16] a little long but I think
[01:15:17] that's a very that's a good discussion
[01:15:20] that maybe we'll pick up another time.
[01:15:23] I think there's a lot that
[01:15:25] we can learn from that
[01:15:26] so I appreciate your input.
[01:15:28] Kamille, good to see you again.
[01:15:30] Thank you Jan and Priscilla
[01:15:32] and all those that listen in live
[01:15:34] and until next time we want to
[01:15:36] see what you've built OnAir
[01:15:38] please share with
[01:15:39] us, join our community
[01:15:41] and come join us on the show.
[01:15:43] We love to see what
[01:15:44] you've built OnAir.
[01:15:46] Talk to you next time.
[01:15:48] Bye, guys.