2/28/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S13-E08

Duration: 56 minutes

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

In This Episode

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

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

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

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:

[TableForums] For developers: easily use IDs instead of names – Show and Tell – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[BuiltOnAir Community] airtable-tricks – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[Reddit] Stranded without Sales : Airtable

Meet the Experts – 00:26:46 –

Meet Cherry Yang from AirOps Consulting.

As a certified Zapier expert and Airtable Consultant Partner, I’ve been building databases and workflows using Airtable and Zapier for over four years now, helping clients untangle complex processes and streamline operations.

Visit them online

Automate Create – 00:39:09 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Understanding how Updated Field Trigger works with Linked Record Fields

Automate Create – 00:48:06 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Airtable recently released the ability to loop through multiple records and perform tasks on a per record basis

Learn more about the automation

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:

[TableForums] For developers: easily use IDs instead of names – Show and Tell – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[BuiltOnAir Community] airtable-tricks – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[Reddit] Stranded without Sales : Airtable

Segment: Meet the Experts

Start Time: 00:26:46

Cherry Yang –

Meet Cherry Yang from AirOps Consulting.

As a certified Zapier expert and Airtable Consultant Partner, I’ve been building databases and workflows using Airtable and Zapier for over four years now, helping clients untangle complex processes and streamline operations.

Visit them online

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:39:09

Airtable Automations – Updated Fields Trigger

Watch as we review and work through automations. Understanding how Updated Field Trigger works with Linked Record Fields

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:48:06

Airtable Automations – Looping in Automations

Watch as we review and work through automations. Airtable recently released the ability to loop through multiple records and perform tasks on a per record basis

Learn more about the automation

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:44] Season 13, episode eight.
[00:01:46] This is the final episode of this season
[00:01:49] if you recall we we mentioned at the
[00:01:52] beginning of the season that we're
[00:01:54] moving to an eight episode
[00:01:56] per season show
[00:01:58] and so we'll take the month
[00:01:59] of March off and then
[00:02:01] we will be back in April.
[00:02:02] So we're excited to wrap things up.
[00:02:05] We've got Alli and myself Dan
[00:02:08] and we've got regular guest Cherry
[00:02:10] back with us. Welcome Cherry.
[00:02:12] Thank you.
[00:02:14] Very good. And we may have Kamille
[00:02:17] joining us mid show
[00:02:19] if she can make it likely
[00:02:20] stuck in L. A. Traffic.
[00:02:22] So let's get started
[00:02:24] as always the BuiltOnAir
[00:02:26] podcast is an hour long show
[00:02:28] where we go through four different
[00:02:30] segments to keep
[00:02:30] you up to date with everything Airtable
[00:02:33] we'll start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:35] of highlighting what people
[00:02:37] are talking about
[00:02:38] in the communities of Airtable.
[00:02:41] Then we'll do a quick spotlight on
[00:02:43] On2Air our primary sponsor and then
[00:02:46] Cherry will get an update on
[00:02:47] what's going on with
[00:02:48] Cherry and I think she's got
[00:02:50] some exciting news for us.
[00:02:53] And then I will talk through
[00:02:55] some automations.
[00:02:56] We're gonna we're gonna be
[00:02:57] automation heavy today.
[00:02:59] I'm gonna talk through
[00:03:01] some triggers in automations
[00:03:03] and then a quick shout out to
[00:03:05] how to join our community
[00:03:06] and then finally Alli's
[00:03:07] gonna go through the new features
[00:03:10] and automation of looping
[00:03:12] so should be a fun
[00:03:13] show for us.
[00:03:15] With that, we heard from Kamille.
[00:03:20] She's having one of those mornings
[00:03:23] may not join us today. It's alright
[00:03:25] Kamille.
[00:03:27] Yeah so with around the bases
[00:03:31] wasn't a whole lot of
[00:03:33] activity going on this
[00:03:36] week. A couple of things
[00:03:38] we'll highlight this one
[00:03:41] comes from our BuiltOnAir
[00:03:43] slack community. Russell says this one,
[00:03:46] I thought I thought this was
[00:03:49] interesting worth bringing up.
[00:03:51] He mentions that
[00:03:52] he's noticing that
[00:03:54] if you have a sync table,
[00:03:56] all of the fields,
[00:03:58] the raw field in the synced side
[00:04:01] is showing up as a long text
[00:04:03] field and wondering
[00:04:04] if that's new or
[00:04:06] if it's always been like that.
[00:04:07] It feels like it was new to
[00:04:09] Russell. Do either of you know,
[00:04:12] have you been paying attention?
[00:04:15] I've noticed that happens quite often
[00:04:18] on the first like right when you start the
[00:04:21] synced table, a fair amount formulas,
[00:04:25] even things that were like long text
[00:04:28] fields or excuse me,
[00:04:30] short text fields before
[00:04:32] get converted to long text fields,
[00:04:34] you can change it in the sync base,
[00:04:37] you can change the field type.
[00:04:39] Actually speaking of,
[00:04:40] that's one of my favorite
[00:04:41] little tricks is you can if you
[00:04:42] change what was a formula field
[00:04:45] in the source base
[00:04:46] to a single select in the
[00:04:48] synced base, it's really cool
[00:04:50] because then you can pick
[00:04:51] your colors you wanna use
[00:04:52] for charts and stuff.
[00:04:54] But but yeah, I actually have
[00:04:57] noticed recently that one
[00:04:59] of my fields that was
[00:05:02] a percent field in the source
[00:05:05] was also a percent field
[00:05:07] in the sync base
[00:05:08] and then one day it changed.
[00:05:10] And I don't know when or how or why
[00:05:13] but I flipped it back
[00:05:15] and it fixed all the stuff.
[00:05:16] But yes, I have noticed some
[00:05:17] weird behavior around this.
[00:05:20] Yeah. I feel like I've noticed
[00:05:22] a change as well.
[00:05:23] But yeah, you kind of have that
[00:05:25] thing. Wait, has it always been
[00:05:27] like this or is this new?
[00:05:29] So if you are seeing
[00:05:31] that, yeah, I think,
[00:05:32] I don't know why
[00:05:34] that doesn't seem to make sense.
[00:05:36] But
[00:05:37] maybe there is some technical
[00:05:41] reason for that.
[00:05:42] For me, sometimes they show up
[00:05:45] as a single line text fields
[00:05:48] or long text fields.
[00:05:50] It's not entirely consistent
[00:05:52] and I'm just looking at one of my bases.
[00:05:54] The email and phone number fields still
[00:05:56] got pulled in as email
[00:05:57] and phone number fields
[00:05:59] but there are certainly some
[00:06:00] things that are wonky.
[00:06:04] Yeah, which is tricky.
[00:06:06] If you're doing any a p I work,
[00:06:09] I've noticed this we
[00:06:11] do we use the api quite a bit
[00:06:13] and so if you're pulling the field meta
[00:06:16] information about the sync table,
[00:06:19] one thing that I don't like is
[00:06:21] that you can't tell
[00:06:23] the difference between a
[00:06:24] synced field and a native, you know,
[00:06:26] field to the table so you don't know which
[00:06:29] ones you can actually edit.
[00:06:32] Just tricky
[00:06:33] but it's frustrating that it doesn't
[00:06:35] give you the actual field type
[00:06:37] if it comes over as a long text field
[00:06:40] agreed.
[00:06:41] So room for improvement there.
[00:06:44] Hopefully there's a,
[00:06:48] yeah Jeremy says yeah
[00:06:50] for formula fields
[00:06:51] that's right for some fields I think
[00:06:53] they've always come
[00:06:56] because you can't modify
[00:06:58] the formula on the on the destination.
[00:07:01] So that makes sense that those
[00:07:04] come over as text. The other field types.
[00:07:07] I don't think we're like that.
[00:07:09] Yeah this actually caused an issue for me.
[00:07:12] This is a bit of a tangent
[00:07:14] but in stacker something
[00:07:16] really cool you can do in
[00:07:17] stackers add automatic links
[00:07:20] between tables.
[00:07:21] And those link fields live in
[00:07:23] stacker itself so they
[00:07:24] don't actually touch Airtable.
[00:07:26] But this caused a problem for me
[00:07:28] one day when I was trying to set one up.
[00:07:29] So you basically can say
[00:07:30] I want these tables
[00:07:31] to be linked together when this
[00:07:33] record I. D. Matches this record I. D.
[00:07:35] Over here. And because the record idea on
[00:07:38] the synced table was a long text,
[00:07:41] nothing actually matched up.
[00:07:43] So it worked only once I changed
[00:07:46] it to a single line text in this
[00:07:48] case
[00:07:49] it worked
[00:07:50] it might have had a slash
[00:07:52] or something. Something
[00:07:54] interesting.
[00:07:56] Good to know. Yeah lots of little
[00:07:59] tidbits with with synced
[00:08:00] tables that you gotta
[00:08:01] be aware of.
[00:08:04] Alright moving on.
[00:08:06] Another one from the BuiltOnAir
[00:08:08] community Chris Talley
[00:08:10] posted a tutorial I thought was
[00:08:14] worth sharing on an easy way to create a
[00:08:18] delete record action in Airtable
[00:08:21] automations,
[00:08:22] so there's a video walkthrough
[00:08:24] which I won't click through
[00:08:26] but there's a google doc
[00:08:27] and it's very cool.
[00:08:28] He shares a script
[00:08:30] that you basically install
[00:08:32] inside of an automation.
[00:08:34] And the cool thing about this
[00:08:37] is this this can work in any table.
[00:08:40] So that is cool.
[00:08:41] Just kind of showcase
[00:08:43] seeing how that works.
[00:08:44] What you do is when you set this up
[00:08:48] you pass through the record URL
[00:08:51] and in that URL,
[00:08:52] it contains the base I. D.
[00:08:55] And the table I.D.
[00:08:57] And so he uses rejects
[00:09:00] here to extract the table I. D.
[00:09:04] And you don't need the base id
[00:09:06] because you're already
[00:09:07] inside the base but you
[00:09:08] could extract the base id
[00:09:10] if you wanted.
[00:09:11] And then he also extracts the record
[00:09:14] I. D. from the URL
[00:09:15] so you only have to pass in one variable.
[00:09:19] And then from there then it basically
[00:09:22] then just deletes that that table.
[00:09:24] So it's kind of like a
[00:09:25] universal delete automation.
[00:09:27] So you basically set up a
[00:09:28] trigger that whenever you decide
[00:09:31] that that record should be deleted
[00:09:34] and then pass it in.
[00:09:36] And so this could work from
[00:09:38] from any any table
[00:09:39] although you would have to
[00:09:42] set up an automation for each
[00:09:43] table but the code would be the same.
[00:09:46] So easy to maintain.
[00:09:48] Yeah I like that
[00:09:49] that's a really good option for
[00:09:51] people who don't know how to
[00:09:53] use scripting and just to paste
[00:09:55] in the URL, hopefully Airtable doesn't
[00:09:57] change the URL one day. Who knows what?
[00:10:02] Yeah I do like I do like how
[00:10:04] Airtable does their IDs
[00:10:06] They can tell like this table IDs
[00:10:09] I always start with tbl records,
[00:10:11] start with rec
[00:10:12] bases start with app.
[00:10:14] That's one thing that's a little bit
[00:10:16] different. But I like that
[00:10:18] because yeah you can
[00:10:19] determine just off of the I.D.
[00:10:22] What it's connected to.
[00:10:25] And the new link a field
[00:10:27] feature is pretty nice. The field URL
[00:10:32] using that a lot.
[00:10:35] So that's a nice trick.
[00:10:37] Thank you for sharing that Chris with us.
[00:10:42] Next one. Another trick.
[00:10:43] This one comes from the TableForums.
[00:10:46] If you haven't signed up for TableForums,
[00:10:49] they have reached their limit of
[00:10:51] founding contributors.
[00:10:53] So I saw Scott posted that
[00:10:55] that they reached their limit
[00:10:57] of 49. So no more founding
[00:10:59] contributor badges but
[00:11:02] we'll see what they come
[00:11:04] up with next.
[00:11:05] But but anyways Justin shares a cool
[00:11:09] trick. And also similar some
[00:11:11] some code that you can just
[00:11:13] simply copy and paste.
[00:11:14] This is basically what it does
[00:11:18] is the comment is to use ideas instead of
[00:11:22] names if you're ever
[00:11:23] trying to update fields and things
[00:11:26] like that because it's
[00:11:28] very common that you change your names.
[00:11:30] But the id will always stay the same
[00:11:32] for that field.
[00:11:33] And so this is a nice script
[00:11:36] to extract all the IDs
[00:11:38] And generate a JSON
[00:11:39] that you can then easily
[00:11:42] reference those.
[00:11:43] And so then if you don't if you
[00:11:46] don't if you change the field names
[00:11:49] then it won't break these scripts.
[00:11:53] So it's cool.
[00:11:55] So gives you the code. Let's see.
[00:11:58] Yeah so he has a link to to
[00:12:01] the code that you can use
[00:12:03] and it will generate all this
[00:12:06] for you and then you
[00:12:07] can just reference it in your script.
[00:12:10] Now one thing though sometimes
[00:12:13] you clone your field
[00:12:15] and then you want because
[00:12:16] you want to use like a new
[00:12:17] formula or something
[00:12:19] but you don't want to delete
[00:12:20] your old one so sometimes you
[00:12:22] want to keep the same name
[00:12:24] but a different I. D.
[00:12:26] And then your script is
[00:12:27] referencing the old field
[00:12:29] that you might still keep
[00:12:31] around because you
[00:12:32] haven't deleted.
[00:12:33] So sometimes you gotta
[00:12:34] you know I think the other way of like
[00:12:35] okay if you're cloning a field
[00:12:37] and that's the new field you want
[00:12:39] you have to update your script
[00:12:41] to use the new id of the new field.
[00:12:45] So I've run into that before.
[00:12:48] Me too. I really wish I mean
[00:12:50] it's probably asking a lot
[00:12:52] but I wish the show
[00:12:52] dependencies thing
[00:12:54] like when you're trying to
[00:12:56] inspect what a field touches,
[00:12:58] if it could tell you if it was
[00:13:00] in a script that would be amazing.
[00:13:01] But
[00:13:02] yeah I doubt that's gonna happen.
[00:13:06] Very cool.
[00:13:07] Alright, so those are some nice tricks
[00:13:10] that are being shared in the different
[00:13:13] communities. I don't think
[00:13:14] I didn't see any new feature
[00:13:16] releases this week.
[00:13:17] I think we talked last week about
[00:13:20] the latest changes.
[00:13:22] So I think it was relatively
[00:13:25] quiet on new features.
[00:13:28] So the next topic
[00:13:30] of the next two things,
[00:13:32] this is where we get
[00:13:35] you know, I think it's worth sharing.
[00:13:37] There's been a lot of talk on two
[00:13:39] different areas that I think
[00:13:41] we're talking about.
[00:13:42] I think everybody here is a
[00:13:43] huge fan of Airtable,
[00:13:45] but when there's room for improvement,
[00:13:48] I think we could have an honest
[00:13:50] dialogue and with the intent
[00:13:52] to hopefully try to
[00:13:53] see if there's ways that that we
[00:13:55] as a community
[00:13:55] can can help Airtable because
[00:13:57] when Airtable improves,
[00:13:59] it helps all of us involved. And so
[00:14:02] so there's two main things
[00:14:04] that have been brought up
[00:14:06] and I feel like these
[00:14:07] are recurring themes.
[00:14:09] So I felt like it was worth mentioning.
[00:14:11] One is the response time
[00:14:14] for customer support from Airtable.
[00:14:18] Lots and lots of people
[00:14:19] I'm just seeing across
[00:14:20] the board of just being very
[00:14:22] slow response times from
[00:14:24] Airtable support.
[00:14:26] The other one a new thread on reddit,
[00:14:29] talking about the sales response time
[00:14:32] for even for enterprise sales and just
[00:14:35] being very slow to get back
[00:14:37] to people who are saying, you know,
[00:14:39] give me take my money,
[00:14:41] I'm ready to sign up for enterprise,
[00:14:44] still not getting a
[00:14:45] response time. And so
[00:14:47] I don't know thoughts
[00:14:49] on if you're seeing this,
[00:14:51] what how can what can we do to
[00:14:53] help Airtable or
[00:14:54] help them get the message
[00:14:56] that the community is,
[00:14:57] is seeing, you know kinks in the armor?
[00:15:02] Yeah, jeez, it's crazy.
[00:15:04] I've I've had a similar experience
[00:15:07] as Russell did and it
[00:15:09] looks like Scott as well.
[00:15:10] I had reached out to
[00:15:11] enterprise support about an issue,
[00:15:13] got an automated response
[00:15:14] saying that they were taking
[00:15:16] longer than expected to
[00:15:17] respond to support tickets.
[00:15:18] Then I got a couple of days
[00:15:20] later an email that was
[00:15:21] like, did we solve your problem?
[00:15:23] We hope we helped. And I was like,
[00:15:25] no, you didn't.
[00:15:26] You never even reached out again.
[00:15:27] But as soon as I responded to
[00:15:29] that and was like, you didn't actually
[00:15:31] address my issue at all.
[00:15:33] They were like, oh yeah, of course here.
[00:15:35] And they helped me
[00:15:36] and they were very helpful.
[00:15:37] But
[00:15:39] yeah,
[00:15:39] it's it's disappointing.
[00:15:41] Hopefully they can
[00:15:43] get their cadence picked back up.
[00:15:46] Yeah,
[00:15:48] yeah. I mean, clearly, obviously
[00:15:50] we know that there was
[00:15:52] rounds of layoffs that
[00:15:53] that likely, you know,
[00:15:55] had an impact here.
[00:15:58] You know, hopefully there's
[00:16:00] a game plan in place
[00:16:01] if you work at Airtable and
[00:16:02] you're listening to this,
[00:16:04] we'd love to have you on
[00:16:06] to see how we can brainstorm
[00:16:07] to help or get insights,
[00:16:09] anything that you can share
[00:16:11] to help reduce some of the
[00:16:12] concerns and fears
[00:16:14] even in this thread there's
[00:16:16] you know, suggestions of of
[00:16:17] looking elsewhere and alternative. So
[00:16:21] hopefully Airtable this is
[00:16:23] high on their priority list
[00:16:25] cause because you know I
[00:16:27] hope that they're tracking
[00:16:29] this type of data
[00:16:31] and and seeing lack of response
[00:16:34] time and frustration with their
[00:16:36] customer base because
[00:16:38] it definitely is there.
[00:16:39] I know I have it on the
[00:16:41] consulting side with clients
[00:16:43] having to help you know
[00:16:44] push through on the sales side
[00:16:46] and things like that.
[00:16:47] So it is real. Yeah.
[00:16:50] Usually I find with support,
[00:16:53] the regular Airtable support
[00:16:55] isn't as helpful.
[00:16:56] Like I got a lot of did you
[00:16:58] read our documentation and the
[00:17:00] link back and usually
[00:17:02] like yes I've read the documentation
[00:17:04] and I know generally
[00:17:06] how this is supposed to work.
[00:17:08] But enterprise support, I found
[00:17:10] I do get the we're slower than
[00:17:12] usual emails but generally
[00:17:15] someone responds to me
[00:17:16] after two or three days so that
[00:17:22] I think just by nature
[00:17:23] of having an enterprise,
[00:17:25] it's a little bit different.
[00:17:27] First up to have access
[00:17:29] and then on the sales
[00:17:31] end, I think that has always been
[00:17:33] an issue. I've definitely had
[00:17:36] clients like long before 2022
[00:17:38] wanting to buy
[00:17:39] enterprise and it was a really long
[00:17:41] time before they could
[00:17:43] reach out to anyone.
[00:17:44] Often I had to reach out
[00:17:46] on their behalf to someone
[00:17:49] Airtable and then they
[00:17:50] connected me with someone
[00:17:53] from the sales team.
[00:17:56] Yeah. So anyways, hopefully,
[00:17:57] hopefully this is being
[00:17:59] addressed and there's a
[00:18:00] game plan in place on Airtable
[00:18:03] maybe at the dare table conference
[00:18:06] with people invading
[00:18:07] Airtable's headquarters,
[00:18:09] Maybe that's something that
[00:18:11] that can be addressed.
[00:18:12] So if you're listening
[00:18:13] folks at Airtable,
[00:18:15] we want more communication on that front.
[00:18:18] I think the community deserves that.
[00:18:23] And also if folks want to get
[00:18:25] their questions, I think TableForums,
[00:18:27] which, you know, Scott
[00:18:29] was on the show last week.
[00:18:30] That's a good place to go.
[00:18:32] I've also found the Airtable community
[00:18:34] to be a little bit quieter these days,
[00:18:37] so that's a, that's a
[00:18:40] TableForums is a good place
[00:18:42] to go to get your questions answered.
[00:18:43] We're also trying to answer questions
[00:18:46] there, but Scott is very fast.
[00:18:47] So last week when we were
[00:18:49] looking for questions to answer,
[00:18:51] he had responded to
[00:18:52] all of them.
[00:18:53] Yeah. Yeah, if you have a question,
[00:18:56] yeah, Scott is just sitting
[00:18:57] 24/7 waiting to answer questions.
[00:19:01] We love it.
[00:19:02] Yeah, definitely go to tableforums.com
[00:19:06] or the slack community
[00:19:08] or facebook community
[00:19:09] or Reddit. There's definitely
[00:19:11] places of active participants,
[00:19:14] you know,
[00:19:15] those are probably the top four ones
[00:19:17] that that I'm aware of.
[00:19:20] but yeah, so there is people
[00:19:22] out there willing to help. So yeah,
[00:19:24] if you see on the Airtable Forums
[00:19:27] of lack of response, look elsewhere,
[00:19:30] there's there's definitely
[00:19:32] people out there.
[00:19:34] Alright,
[00:19:36] that kind of concludes any
[00:19:38] any other highlights worth mentioning?
[00:19:41] Quiet week I think
[00:19:44] so that's always good.
[00:19:46] That means maybe something
[00:19:48] big is in the works.
[00:19:49] We'll see what what comes,
[00:19:51] we're still digesting the color palette
[00:19:54] changes and everything
[00:19:56] and the list view.
[00:19:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah,
[00:19:59] hopefully there's there's tweaks and
[00:20:01] improvements come into that.
[00:20:03] Can't wait. I've got a list
[00:20:06] of things I don't like.
[00:20:08] Yeah, but also a list I do
[00:20:11] I do.
[00:20:12] Oh you know what?
[00:20:14] There is one more
[00:20:15] worth mentioning, I'll bring up,
[00:20:19] there was one there was one a post
[00:20:21] I think it's worth mentioning
[00:20:23] because I know
[00:20:23] they want more dialogue
[00:20:25] on the on the Airtable community.
[00:20:28] So we'll ask the
[00:20:29] same question that they asked.
[00:20:30] They didn't sadly they did
[00:20:33] not get any responses, which is very sad.
[00:20:36] Where is it?
[00:20:39] Okay. Question of the week.
[00:20:41] Oh they did get a response
[00:20:42] since last time I looked
[00:20:43] Okay question of the week.
[00:20:45] What is the one thing
[00:20:46] you wish you knew when you
[00:20:48] started using Airtable?
[00:20:52] What do you think?
[00:20:58] How the Alright, so Ben says
[00:21:01] how to think about
[00:21:03] and approach data design,
[00:21:05] data structure.
[00:21:07] That's good if you're new
[00:21:09] to database
[00:21:10] and how linked records work and things
[00:21:12] like that.
[00:21:13] Yeah,
[00:21:14] that's definitely
[00:21:16] that's I think that's the
[00:21:17] biggest thing for anybody.
[00:21:21] Also understanding views
[00:21:23] and that kind of helps
[00:21:25] towards database design
[00:21:26] because a lot of people don't understand
[00:21:29] a lot of something I'll notice a lot
[00:21:31] when people are working with a table or
[00:21:33] views and I go into a view
[00:21:34] and they're like oh
[00:21:35] but you have to go to that view
[00:21:36] because the fields not there,
[00:21:38] I'm like no the fields
[00:21:40] are on all the views
[00:21:42] so it's they don't understand
[00:21:44] the difference between
[00:21:45] a view and another table.
[00:21:49] Right,
[00:21:51] wow, this is actually a really
[00:21:53] good response by Ben, lots of details.
[00:21:56] Holy cow, this is a good tutorial
[00:22:00] love that.
[00:22:02] Well done, Good response Ben.
[00:22:06] For me
[00:22:09] something on about Airtable
[00:22:14] answer changes I think if when I
[00:22:17] was starting to learn Airtable versus now
[00:22:22] I think if I were to answer that question
[00:22:25] now
[00:22:27] it's getting an understanding of how
[00:22:31] Airtable is built because I think
[00:22:34] right now it's so easy to get started but
[00:22:38] without knowing the context
[00:22:40] very similar to what Ben is talking about.
[00:22:42] Like a
[00:22:43] people might not know what a view
[00:22:45] is. Alli, like you were saying
[00:22:46] and they don't know
[00:22:47] what interfaces are used for.
[00:22:49] It's just understanding
[00:22:50] all the features within
[00:22:52] Airtable and what's good for what,
[00:22:54] so you don't end up building
[00:22:56] the same field
[00:22:57] on every single table
[00:22:58] because you didn't know how to use
[00:23:00] a look up or roll up
[00:23:01] field to summarize data
[00:23:03] and we see that a lot
[00:23:06] and I think from a foundation level
[00:23:09] when I was learning
[00:23:10] how to use Airtable,
[00:23:11] I wish I had
[00:23:13] gotten a better understanding
[00:23:14] of what databases were.
[00:23:16] I don't come from a
[00:23:17] technical background
[00:23:18] so Airtable was so easy
[00:23:19] to get started with because it
[00:23:21] was very similar to spreadsheets
[00:23:23] but I really didn't understand
[00:23:26] the relational
[00:23:26] aspect and what that meant until
[00:23:30] someone explained it to me basically.
[00:23:33] Yeah. Yeah definitely.
[00:23:35] Yeah, for me, I'd probably say
[00:23:37] this is maybe outside
[00:23:39] of Airtable the product,
[00:23:40] but I wish I knew what
[00:23:42] Airtable's roadmap was.
[00:23:43] That would have saved me many
[00:23:45] hours of building apps that
[00:23:47] then we're obsolete
[00:23:48] because Airtable then came out
[00:23:50] with something similar.
[00:23:52] That would have that would
[00:23:54] have been nice.
[00:23:56] Even now I wish I had a better
[00:23:58] glimpse into what is on the roadmap
[00:24:01] for Airtable. I do have a little bit more
[00:24:03] insight than I did when
[00:24:05] I started but it's still a gray box.
[00:24:08] Yeah, yep.
[00:24:11] All right. That's good for
[00:24:13] our Round the Bases,
[00:24:15] let's move on to On2Air.
[00:24:17] Speaking of which many apps
[00:24:19] that that we built on On2Air
[00:24:21] are as less critical as they once
[00:24:23] were in one time because of Airtable
[00:24:26] features that came out.
[00:24:27] But we still have some very
[00:24:29] useful applications that can
[00:24:30] be used in your business.
[00:24:32] So if you run your
[00:24:33] business on Airtable you
[00:24:35] definitely need to check out On2Air
[00:24:37] and I know Cherry's a big fan of On2Air
[00:24:40] uses it with her clients.
[00:24:42] We always appreciate that.
[00:24:44] For today we're gonna showcase
[00:24:48] so we did push a few updates.
[00:24:51] We actually are moving forward with
[00:24:54] our forms, we are still in a private beta.
[00:24:57] There's two more things
[00:24:59] that we need to get right
[00:25:00] before we release it public,
[00:25:01] but we've gone one step closer
[00:25:04] where if you want to sign up
[00:25:07] you actually can
[00:25:08] get instant access,
[00:25:09] you do have to fill out a form
[00:25:11] to give us a little bit of context
[00:25:13] of how you're using it.
[00:25:15] But then you will
[00:25:16] be able to get direct access in
[00:25:18] before we were only letting
[00:25:19] people in batches at
[00:25:20] a time. So we've kind of opened up
[00:25:23] the floodgates a little bit more.
[00:25:25] So we're getting closer to
[00:25:27] a public release
[00:25:28] once we get a couple of couple of
[00:25:30] features ironed out,
[00:25:32] but we're moving moving forward.
[00:25:35] And then one thing that
[00:25:37] we added,
[00:25:39] let's see, we updated our,
[00:25:42] we updated our our icons,
[00:25:45] so we are using the same
[00:25:47] icons now as Airtable.
[00:25:49] So now we're in sync
[00:25:51] with the changes of of Airtable.
[00:25:54] So that got pushed over the weekend
[00:25:56] along with a couple other enhancements.
[00:25:59] So the other thing is we're actually
[00:26:03] worth mentioning is our
[00:26:05] conditional logic is
[00:26:06] now live for everybody.
[00:26:08] So this was a beta invite only
[00:26:11] or access upon request.
[00:26:13] Now this is available to
[00:26:16] everybody. So conditional logic
[00:26:18] being able to show, hide,
[00:26:20] or update field values
[00:26:22] based off of conditions
[00:26:24] of other fields,
[00:26:25] it's a mini Zapier inside of your
[00:26:26] form. So it's pretty cool,
[00:26:29] pretty powerful.
[00:26:30] So you can check that out if you've
[00:26:32] been using our forms
[00:26:34] now, you can find the conditional logic
[00:26:36] available to you.
[00:26:39] Alright,
[00:26:42] with that, Cherry,
[00:26:45] why don't you give us an update,
[00:26:47] what's going on? What's new in your world
[00:26:49] before I get started Dan, the
[00:26:51] conditional logic on the forms
[00:26:53] is awesome. Thank
[00:26:54] you.
[00:26:55] Let's
[00:26:56] check it out. That's so good.
[00:26:58] Our clients are very happy
[00:27:00] and our team was very
[00:27:01] happy. Yeah, so thanks for having me
[00:27:06] on the show again. I'm going to share
[00:27:10] my screen
[00:27:11] in just a moment
[00:27:13] but are very exciting news
[00:27:16] is that we launched our Airtable
[00:27:20] mastery course.
[00:27:22] We're still in our soft launch
[00:27:24] phase but really,
[00:27:26] really excited to share it with folks.
[00:27:29] Maybe maybe before we jump into that.
[00:27:32] Give us some context.
[00:27:33] So you run a consulting group
[00:27:35] and tell us a little bit
[00:27:36] about what you guys are doing.
[00:27:38] Yeah, so for those who don't know,
[00:27:41] I'm Cherry, I'm the founder of AirOps
[00:27:43] Consulting. And we basically do
[00:27:46] full service Airtable
[00:27:48] consulting anything from
[00:27:50] database design on patient maintenance,
[00:27:54] third party tools,
[00:27:56] custom scripting.
[00:27:58] We work with clients
[00:28:01] from all around the world and
[00:28:05] from every single industry,
[00:28:06] pretty much like I know way too much about
[00:28:09] construction and entertainment industries
[00:28:12] I've never worked in before.
[00:28:15] But yeah it's a really exciting journey.
[00:28:19] We've had this company for three
[00:28:23] years and probably have been using
[00:28:25] Airtable for about six years now.
[00:28:28] And over our
[00:28:33] last five years
[00:28:35] doing consulting work,
[00:28:37] it's become very apparent
[00:28:39] that people don't know
[00:28:41] the context of Airtable and
[00:28:43] they want to learn
[00:28:45] and it's really hard to get help
[00:28:47] from Airtable support or
[00:28:49] they spend hours researching
[00:28:52] on forums and Facebook groups
[00:28:55] only to build
[00:28:56] something that they're
[00:28:57] not super happy with.
[00:28:58] And that's usually when people reach
[00:29:00] out to consultants like
[00:29:02] Dan, and Alli, and I
[00:29:04] so the purpose of this course
[00:29:08] is really to help people
[00:29:10] with the context,
[00:29:12] show them what they don't know
[00:29:14] about Airtable yet and what
[00:29:15] exists so that they feel confident
[00:29:18] building Airtable in a strategic and
[00:29:22] scalable way. And I think I'm not alone
[00:29:25] in saying that when a lot of our clients
[00:29:27] come to us, they have a database
[00:29:30] that's not built correctly
[00:29:32] from the start so we
[00:29:33] end up having to spend a lot
[00:29:35] of time and energy fixing
[00:29:37] what they've built.
[00:29:38] So
[00:29:40] the course is intended to be
[00:29:43] very comprehensive.
[00:29:44] Like it's what I wish I had
[00:29:47] learned when I was if I had to
[00:29:49] like start learning Airtable again.
[00:29:52] So that's really how we set up this course
[00:29:59] And yeah that's
[00:30:01] also you want to share it with us?
[00:30:06] Yeah, sounds good. So
[00:30:10] let me present,
[00:30:22] let me see.
[00:30:28] Hopefully it does it
[00:30:31] alright. So there's our landing page
[00:30:35] for the course. It's our website slash
[00:30:39] airtable dash mastery
[00:30:41] and the course itself
[00:30:44] I was sharing has three modules.
[00:30:47] It's split up into exactly how
[00:30:50] we would do a consulting project,
[00:30:52] so we would do the design up front,
[00:30:55] do the implementation and then
[00:30:58] after that build any interfaces
[00:31:01] or reporting in any third party tools,
[00:31:04] so it's very aligned with
[00:31:06] how we would approach
[00:31:08] any of our client projects.
[00:31:09] Anticipating more than 70 video lessons
[00:31:14] at a very high production quality. I
[00:31:17] filmed in this room for
[00:31:20] I think close to 200 hours of filming.
[00:31:25] Yeah, yeah, so it's really
[00:31:29] been a labor of love and just
[00:31:33] we're really excited
[00:31:35] about sharing our knowledge
[00:31:38] with other people and
[00:31:40] help other people build
[00:31:43] and grow their teams and companies.
[00:31:47] It's myself and
[00:31:48] my employee Chantelle
[00:31:50] who teach this course
[00:31:52] and we're both really passionate
[00:31:54] about teaching and sharing
[00:31:57] our knowledge with folks and
[00:32:01] yeah, just all around very excited.
[00:32:04] When when did you,
[00:32:06] when did you start working on this?
[00:32:09] Last summer.
[00:32:10] So when the color scheme changed,
[00:32:13] I was not very happy about that.
[00:32:17] But I mean all the material is there
[00:32:22] and if a few colors change,
[00:32:26] it doesn't really
[00:32:28] impact the content.
[00:32:30] So yeah, we go through a
[00:32:32] very extensive kind of how to
[00:32:34] design your database
[00:32:35] because I think this really
[00:32:37] is the most important part to
[00:32:39] you know making sure
[00:32:41] that the automations work
[00:32:43] and your interfaces are laid
[00:32:44] out properly.
[00:32:45] So it's really important to design
[00:32:48] that base appropriately and
[00:32:49] we go through conversations
[00:32:51] that you need to be having
[00:32:52] with your team designing
[00:32:53] this database and
[00:32:56] what sorts of topics to cover,
[00:32:59] what kinds of questions to ask.
[00:33:02] So it is really intended for that
[00:33:05] internal Airtable champion who wants to
[00:33:08] like set their team up for success.
[00:33:11] And then the second piece
[00:33:13] is the implementation.
[00:33:15] So we'll talk through
[00:33:17] formulas, views, automations
[00:33:19] and reporting as well
[00:33:21] reporting as a bit when I think
[00:33:24] there's so many different ways
[00:33:25] to approach reporting
[00:33:26] inside of Airtable,
[00:33:27] so we kind of cover
[00:33:29] all the different ways and
[00:33:32] when and why should you use
[00:33:34] this method for reporting
[00:33:37] versus another between
[00:33:38] tables and interfaces.
[00:33:42] And then
[00:33:44] last but not least we talked about
[00:33:47] interfaces and the
[00:33:49] different way to kind of
[00:33:51] disseminate information inside
[00:33:52] of Airtable was that's through third party
[00:33:55] tools like pory or stacker.
[00:33:59] We also do a section
[00:34:02] on On2Air and talk about
[00:34:05] why we use On2Air
[00:34:07] and why we love it.
[00:34:09] So I think that was really
[00:34:12] important. We included that
[00:34:14] because we create so many
[00:34:16] documents and use forms
[00:34:17] inside of On2Air.
[00:34:18] I hope that's a nice surprise for you Dan.
[00:34:20] I don't think I let you know
[00:34:23] what we're including
[00:34:25] and of course and lots of
[00:34:27] information on interfaces as well.
[00:34:32] Yeah, so it's
[00:34:33] meant to be very comprehensive,
[00:34:36] like we really
[00:34:37] understand that like not everyone
[00:34:40] has a huge budget for doing projects or
[00:34:44] some people might want to just
[00:34:45] go and learn at their own pace.
[00:34:47] So this is our way of sharing knowledge
[00:34:51] but also making Airtable like good
[00:34:54] strategic Airtable design build up,
[00:34:58] it's more accessible.
[00:35:00] Yeah and I mean our team
[00:35:02] has I'm so grateful for
[00:35:04] a team for filming with me and
[00:35:06] editing and it's just amazing.
[00:35:09] Yeah, I just seen all that.
[00:35:11] Like there is a lot of work
[00:35:13] behind all this,
[00:35:14] that's a lot of material.
[00:35:16] Yeah, for getting through all that.
[00:35:20] Oh yeah, it's great because
[00:35:22] we also can now use
[00:35:24] this material for internal
[00:35:26] training and onboarding,
[00:35:29] so it's both for our team
[00:35:31] internally and for our
[00:35:33] clients. So
[00:35:35] we wanted to create something
[00:35:37] that we would also use ourselves.
[00:35:42] Awesome.
[00:35:43] So they can find you
[00:35:45] airopsconsulting.org
[00:35:47] yeah. And then slash
[00:35:50] Airtable mastery. And I think just to
[00:35:55] wrap up
[00:35:56] with two things
[00:35:58] throughout the course
[00:36:01] we teach the course with a
[00:36:03] database of project management
[00:36:05] database.
[00:36:06] So every single thing that's covered
[00:36:08] in those topics,
[00:36:09] like for example automations we have
[00:36:12] a series of automations built
[00:36:14] that was meant to showcase, for example,
[00:36:18] how to send out a daily digest
[00:36:21] at the end of the day,
[00:36:23] send calendar invites
[00:36:25] and we also show a lot of
[00:36:28] different interface options
[00:36:31] so that people can learn
[00:36:33] as they're watching
[00:36:35] and last but not least, I think with
[00:36:39] any course and with learning Airtable,
[00:36:43] it's really important for whoever is
[00:36:46] thinking about taking of course
[00:36:48] to decide, you know, how they want to be
[00:36:50] spending their time,
[00:36:52] whether it's Googling different
[00:36:55] answers for a lot of hours
[00:36:57] on end or just knowing
[00:37:00] that they have a resource
[00:37:02] or a library where they can
[00:37:04] watch
[00:37:06] videos that are going
[00:37:07] to answer their questions
[00:37:08] faster and sooner in a more targeted way.
[00:37:13] Oh and I'll show our stories.
[00:37:15] So the other reason
[00:37:16] why we wanted to create the
[00:37:18] course is I have a lot of
[00:37:20] these coaching calls where,
[00:37:22] you know, for example,
[00:37:24] like hedge fund hedge fund
[00:37:26] manager was super shocked
[00:37:28] that I fixed this issue that he's been
[00:37:31] researching for multiple days in five
[00:37:33] minutes because
[00:37:35] it just takes someone to explain
[00:37:38] linked fields and roll up fields in a way
[00:37:41] that's understandable
[00:37:44] and he'll just under
[00:37:45] like get it immediately.
[00:37:47] And
[00:37:49] I think both chantal and I have a
[00:37:51] knack for explaining things
[00:37:53] and making them
[00:37:53] digestible. So those moments
[00:37:56] where like the person is telling me,
[00:37:58] oh wow Cherry just saved me so
[00:38:00] much time. That's like a
[00:38:02] really magical moment
[00:38:03] that we also wanted to
[00:38:05] give as part of this course.
[00:38:09] So people will get access to the base
[00:38:12] itself where they can look at?
[00:38:15] Does that come with the
[00:38:18] Yeah. You know what?
[00:38:19] They probably, we'll share it.
[00:38:21] Yeah. If any of our students
[00:38:22] ask, well share it. Like so far
[00:38:24] it's just the videos that we provide.
[00:38:27] But I don't see why not.
[00:38:29] I would just think that would be
[00:38:31] useful to see the video
[00:38:33] and then tinker with it
[00:38:34] afterwards.
[00:38:38] Awesome. Congratulations.
[00:38:40] Thank you.
[00:38:44] Alright. Very cool. Thank you
[00:38:47] Cherry for showing. And hopefully
[00:38:50] get people coming your way
[00:38:52] and checking you out and your program.
[00:38:54] So that's very useful for
[00:38:57] people
[00:38:59] wanting to ramp up their
[00:39:01] skill set in Airtable.
[00:39:04] All right, let's move on.
[00:39:06] Let's play with some automations.
[00:39:09] So this one this one I'm gonna
[00:39:12] I'm gonna take this one.
[00:39:14] And I actually don't know the
[00:39:16] answer to this one.
[00:39:17] So we're gonna learn on the
[00:39:18] fly of how this works.
[00:39:19] So, a question came up,
[00:39:21] I think I know the answer but I
[00:39:22] haven't proven it. So we're gonna
[00:39:24] we're gonna experiment
[00:39:26] and see see what what
[00:39:27] the answer is. And I bet both
[00:39:28] of you know the answer to this.
[00:39:30] So we'll see. But so an issue
[00:39:33] came up where with a client
[00:39:36] and they wanted to set up an automation
[00:39:40] that triggered when a specific field
[00:39:43] updated. But that field was a linked
[00:39:46] record field. And so we started to ask the
[00:39:50] question of what's considered
[00:39:52] an update of a linked record field?
[00:39:54] Is it only if you change
[00:39:57] what records are linked
[00:40:00] in that field? Or does it
[00:40:02] change if anything inside
[00:40:04] of that linked record is updated?
[00:40:07] And because they wanted it to trigger
[00:40:09] whenever anything inside of the linked
[00:40:11] record records was actually updated.
[00:40:14] They wanted this trigger that was
[00:40:16] triggered at the at the parent level
[00:40:19] to trigger. And so I was like you know
[00:40:22] what I think I know how it behaves,
[00:40:24] but I actually haven't tested that.
[00:40:25] So let's test it live
[00:40:27] and see what happens.
[00:40:30] So I've got just a sample base here
[00:40:32] and we've got our campaigns and campaigns
[00:40:35] are linked to content so campaign
[00:40:39] so marketing campaign has has content
[00:40:42] associated with it.
[00:40:44] And so I'm I'm setting up an automation
[00:40:48] testing link record updates.
[00:40:51] And so in this one
[00:40:53] so we're at the parent level
[00:40:55] the campaign level and we want
[00:40:58] this record to trigger whenever
[00:41:02] information inside of the related
[00:41:05] content from from the
[00:41:07] linked record is updated.
[00:41:09] And we're just gonna do just
[00:41:11] an update just to show
[00:41:13] that it was actually updated.
[00:41:15] And we'll see what happens.
[00:41:17] So I'm gonna turn this guy on
[00:41:20] and let's look back at the data.
[00:41:22] So we've got a record here,
[00:41:25] best vacation ever
[00:41:26] and this has related content.
[00:41:29] It's got four different things.
[00:41:32] And so clearly
[00:41:33] I'm pretty sure if I added a new item
[00:41:36] here, that should trigger
[00:41:39] and then update this
[00:41:41] because this is this is clearly updated,
[00:41:44] so there we go, that's been updated.
[00:41:47] So that did work.
[00:41:49] Next I want to test to
[00:41:51] see what happens
[00:41:52] if you reorder does that trigger?
[00:41:56] So let's see
[00:41:59] what's your guess?
[00:42:00] Does that re trigger it?
[00:42:02] Yes it does.
[00:42:05] Alright okay so if you reorder
[00:42:08] the links then that does trigger it then
[00:42:12] clearly if you deleted something
[00:42:14] that that that's likely gonna trigger it.
[00:42:16] So adding reordering
[00:42:18] deleting those are those
[00:42:20] are the obvious ones that are
[00:42:23] gonna trigger that.
[00:42:25] Now let's look at changing something.
[00:42:28] So let's go in here and
[00:42:34] change the actual content
[00:42:36] inside of the linked record
[00:42:39] what's gonna happen?
[00:42:41] Nothing. Nothing.
[00:42:42] That was that was my guess.
[00:42:44] That's that's what I figured
[00:42:48] happened and it looks to be correct.
[00:42:53] And what if you change the
[00:42:55] coffee packaging? Right. There you go.
[00:42:57] If you change the name.
[00:43:02] Let's see.
[00:43:08] Oh so the name does
[00:43:12] and there's Justin,
[00:43:14] just a second after you mentioned
[00:43:16] in the same use before.
[00:43:17] Okay so if you change the name
[00:43:20] then it does do that.
[00:43:22] So the primary field or
[00:43:24] whatever is your primary field.
[00:43:26] So sometimes
[00:43:28] I wonder if if it was a formula,
[00:43:31] would it update
[00:43:34] if the formula changed?
[00:43:37] Let's change this to a formula.
[00:43:39] I'm gonna duplicate this real quick
[00:43:43] and then
[00:43:45] James this guy to a formula
[00:43:48] that just references the name, copy.
[00:43:53] Okay
[00:43:55] that might break other stuff
[00:43:57] I've got going on but we're gonna test it.
[00:44:02] So now
[00:44:08] change that guy. So now
[00:44:11] the formula reference change.
[00:44:14] Okay so formula for
[00:44:16] formula updates
[00:44:17] then it will still trigger it.
[00:44:20] So that is good insight.
[00:44:23] So yeah so if you need
[00:44:26] it to trigger off of data
[00:44:29] inside of your linked record
[00:44:31] then you may be set up
[00:44:33] the automation on the other
[00:44:35] table on the child table or you could
[00:44:38] do a roll up or a look up of the values
[00:44:40] that you want.
[00:44:42] Or if you could you could set
[00:44:45] the primary key as a formula that that is
[00:44:48] referencing those fields
[00:44:49] that that you want updated.
[00:44:52] You could also roll up a last modified
[00:44:55] time field from the child table that's
[00:44:57] looking at just the field you want.
[00:45:00] That's that's probably a better approach,
[00:45:02] yep.
[00:45:03] Yeah so then yeah so just bring up
[00:45:05] that date and then whenever
[00:45:07] that date changes
[00:45:08] then that could trigger at this level.
[00:45:11] One thing I've noticed about
[00:45:13] updating about the when
[00:45:16] record updated trigger is
[00:45:17] say you have data coming in
[00:45:20] from a form
[00:45:21] and you're setting that primary field or
[00:45:24] forget about the parent child
[00:45:27] relationship right? It doesn't
[00:45:29] it does not trigger the automation
[00:45:31] if a record is created with that value
[00:45:33] already in the field
[00:45:36] so if a record comes in and
[00:45:37] you've got a value
[00:45:38] in a field that you're waiting
[00:45:39] for that to update
[00:45:41] or the triggers watching that field,
[00:45:43] it will not trigger
[00:45:44] until you've made a
[00:45:46] second update to that field.
[00:45:49] So in those cases would you create
[00:45:52] the record with the form and then have an
[00:45:56] automation to update a field
[00:45:59] right when that it's created?
[00:46:02] You could yeah. Unfortunately
[00:46:04] it's I haven't really found
[00:46:06] a good solution to get
[00:46:07] around that but rarely am I
[00:46:08] using the one record updated
[00:46:10] trigger just because I
[00:46:11] don't trust it. But
[00:46:13] that's the other thing is yeah
[00:46:15] you could there's other ways
[00:46:16] you could do it.
[00:46:17] You could use a view and
[00:46:19] and and just use the view filters
[00:46:22] or groups.
[00:46:23] I know some people discourage that
[00:46:25] because it's easier to change
[00:46:28] the filters and
[00:46:28] the view versus in an automation.
[00:46:31] But yeah there's other ways you could go
[00:46:34] about doing it. You can just set up
[00:46:37] meet certain conditions as well.
[00:46:39] Like your. Yeah.
[00:46:41] Yeah. Yeah that's that's the other one.
[00:46:44] Yeah that's when it met conditions.
[00:46:46] Cool. But worth worth experimenting
[00:46:49] just so you know the the underlying
[00:46:51] sometimes we think it's obvious
[00:46:53] like oh this field change why isn't it
[00:46:56] triggering but you gotta understand
[00:46:59] what it's actually listening to and
[00:47:02] things like that so
[00:47:04] that's a helpful experiment.
[00:47:06] Thank you Dan.
[00:47:07] Yeah. Yeah that's exactly what Scott
[00:47:09] said is what I was talking about
[00:47:11] right
[00:47:12] there
[00:47:12] doesn't consider brand new records
[00:47:15] from a form as updated records.
[00:47:17] Yeah that that can be frustrating.
[00:47:20] Alright.
[00:47:23] Let's move on,
[00:47:25] quick shout out before we get
[00:47:27] to the final segment BuiltOnAir community,
[00:47:29] we'd love to have you in if
[00:47:31] you're not already in,
[00:47:32] join us at builtonair.com/join
[00:47:33] that gets you into the slack community,
[00:47:36] it's free to join
[00:47:38] as well as the newsletter and
[00:47:40] we'd love to have you
[00:47:41] subscribe to our Youtube
[00:47:43] channel. We're trying to get that up to
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[00:47:47] a few more subscribers
[00:47:48] to get us to that to that
[00:47:50] point. So find us on Youtube
[00:47:52] BuiltOnAir and
[00:47:53] youtube.com/@builtonair
[00:47:56] there, we'll get get you to our channel.
[00:47:59] That Alli is gonna walk us through
[00:48:02] some more fun new features
[00:48:04] and automations.
[00:48:06] Yeah.
[00:48:07] Oh right. So this is a super exciting
[00:48:11] new feature. One that is allowing me to
[00:48:14] reduce the number of automations
[00:48:17] that I have
[00:48:18] in a lot of different use cases.
[00:48:20] The one I'm gonna go over today
[00:48:23] is sending an emailed report
[00:48:25] to several different people
[00:48:28] or records in a base.
[00:48:30] So we've we've gone over
[00:48:33] several examples on how to do
[00:48:35] this on this show.
[00:48:36] I know we had Ben and Scott
[00:48:37] Scott came on and demoed a couple
[00:48:40] different methods a while back.
[00:48:41] But this is a way that Airtable now
[00:48:44] has built in to be able to do all of
[00:48:46] this within one automation
[00:48:48] which is super cool.
[00:48:49] So I've got this base here,
[00:48:51] I have a list of vehicles
[00:48:53] here and they are each
[00:48:54] linked to an audit representative.
[00:48:56] So if I go to my audit groups table,
[00:48:59] these are the records that I want
[00:49:01] to generate a report,
[00:49:03] say every week that is
[00:49:04] gonna send send to my email address
[00:49:07] for all of them. But it'll send that
[00:49:10] person that's in charge of these vehicles,
[00:49:12] a list of all the vehicles and their
[00:49:14] status and etcetera.
[00:49:16] So previously I would use
[00:49:18] I used to have two automations
[00:49:21] set up to do this one
[00:49:22] would be at a scheduled time
[00:49:24] and I have a field in here
[00:49:26] called like trigger
[00:49:27] weekly digest where at a scheduled time
[00:49:30] I would run a script that would go
[00:49:32] through and mark all of these to
[00:49:35] send and then that would trigger a second
[00:49:38] automation to go and
[00:49:39] actually get the report sent out.
[00:49:42] But now we can do that all within
[00:49:44] one automation which is super,
[00:49:46] super cool.
[00:49:47] So I'm gonna jump into
[00:49:49] the automation panel
[00:49:52] and I'm gonna create a new automation
[00:49:54] and we'll call it send report
[00:49:57] and my trigger is gonna
[00:49:59] be at a scheduled time.
[00:50:02] So let's say we want
[00:50:03] to do this once a week
[00:50:06] on
[00:50:07] about Monday mornings at 11.
[00:50:09] That sounds good to me.
[00:50:12] And I'm gonna grab from here
[00:50:15] our new language here,
[00:50:18] we could use advanced
[00:50:19] logic or action and I'm gonna use
[00:50:22] the advanced logic
[00:50:24] of a repeating group which
[00:50:26] is the new feature
[00:50:28] essentially it's gonna allow
[00:50:30] me to loop through
[00:50:31] a certain amount of things.
[00:50:33] And actually I just
[00:50:34] I went too far ahead of myself
[00:50:36] believe this first,
[00:50:38] I need to find the records
[00:50:39] that I want to loop through. Right?
[00:50:42] So I want to be able to say,
[00:50:44] all right, I have these
[00:50:47] nine records that are linked
[00:50:50] to the company vehicles
[00:50:51] and I want to send nine
[00:50:53] different emails. So the first thing
[00:50:55] I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find the records
[00:50:58] that I want to send my emails to.
[00:51:01] So I'm gonna pick the table audit groups
[00:51:05] and in this case I'm just
[00:51:08] gonna use a view. But
[00:51:10] typically I use conditions
[00:51:12] where I'd say you know
[00:51:14] I have an email to send to and
[00:51:16] somebody has actually
[00:51:17] vehicles linked to them.
[00:51:19] But let's just go with audit groups
[00:51:22] for weekly digest. I think that's the one
[00:51:25] I was on. No it wasn't but that's fine.
[00:51:29] This will work just as well.
[00:51:32] So when I test this action
[00:51:34] I should find nine records.
[00:51:37] We've got 1,2
[00:51:38] Blah Blah Blah all the way down.
[00:51:42] And now that I've found those records.
[00:51:45] Now I'm gonna add my repeating group.
[00:51:48] Right? So this because this is
[00:51:50] outside of this repeating group set,
[00:51:52] this is only gonna happen one time.
[00:51:55] And after that we're
[00:51:56] gonna go into our loop
[00:51:58] from the list of records that we found.
[00:52:01] So when I go to select my input list,
[00:52:04] I'm gonna go to my find records step and
[00:52:06] then I'm just gonna say use as list
[00:52:10] and what that's gonna do is
[00:52:11] let me loop through each one
[00:52:13] of those one at a time.
[00:52:15] So the first step
[00:52:17] now that I'm in my loop
[00:52:19] is I want to find records
[00:52:22] on the company vehicles table
[00:52:26] based on a condition.
[00:52:29] And just for posterity's sake
[00:52:32] I have this record I. D.
[00:52:35] As a formula for my audit
[00:52:37] group.
[00:52:38] And I also have that record I. D.
[00:52:41] Looked up or I have it
[00:52:43] rolled up so that it
[00:52:44] comes in as a string
[00:52:46] on the company vehicles table.
[00:52:48] So that way I can compare
[00:52:50] the audit group that I'm on to
[00:52:52] the vehicles that are linked to them.
[00:52:56] So how that looks is I'm gonna say
[00:52:59] where audit group or audit rep record I.D.
[00:53:04] Contains a dynamic value
[00:53:09] of a current item.
[00:53:11] So this is cool. So now
[00:53:13] that current item repeated
[00:53:14] group sources right at the
[00:53:15] top. So this Airtable record I. D.
[00:53:18] Is actually gonna be the
[00:53:20] first record I.D. Of
[00:53:22] the audit rep that we're looping through.
[00:53:27] And so that's all I really need to do
[00:53:30] for that I could add other conditions
[00:53:32] like maybe I don't want
[00:53:35] you know where something is lost
[00:53:38] or disposed or not in service
[00:53:41] Now when I run the test
[00:53:47] so we can see here.
[00:53:52] I don't know which one I must be on.
[00:53:54] Kabir audit set
[00:53:56] is what I've
[00:53:57] picked up for my first group here
[00:54:00] and then I'm gonna add one more action
[00:54:03] just to send an email
[00:54:09] and if I look for the email address
[00:54:12] it's tied to that audit rep.
[00:54:14] We'll say vehicle
[00:54:17] report
[00:54:22] and then let's just go with the name
[00:54:25] and then I can put in here,
[00:54:30] I want to
[00:54:36] find
[00:54:37] my
[00:54:41] grid.
[00:54:44] You can say I want my stuck,
[00:54:47] year, make, model, color.
[00:54:49] Let's just go with that for now.
[00:54:52] And if I look at my preview
[00:54:59] it's just gonna send a
[00:55:01] very quick email just showing
[00:55:04] all of the vehicles that
[00:55:06] are tied to that audit rep.
[00:55:09] So now if I turn this actually
[00:55:12] let's just
[00:55:13] oh you can't test with a repeating
[00:55:16] group. That's interesting actually.
[00:55:18] That's super interesting.
[00:55:22] So apparently we can't really see
[00:55:25] it run unless I decide to change this to
[00:55:29] 12:00.
[00:55:32] That's kind of a bummer.
[00:55:34] I didn't, I didn't realize that.
[00:55:37] Yeah right.
[00:55:39] But that's okay.
[00:55:42] I know it will work.
[00:55:45] But yeah so basically this would
[00:55:49] send nine different emails at 11 a.m. on
[00:55:52] Monday. So just to recap
[00:55:54] I'm finding the records
[00:55:56] that I want to send the emails
[00:55:59] to and then for each one of those records
[00:56:01] within the repeating group,
[00:56:03] I'm finding the records that are linked
[00:56:05] to the person I want to send the email
[00:56:07] to and sending that email.
[00:56:11] Justin says you can test
[00:56:13] the individual pieces,
[00:56:14] just not the whole automation.
[00:56:17] Exactly.
[00:56:20] So yeah, that's cool,
[00:56:23] it's a different because
[00:56:25] most people probably think,
[00:56:28] oh I want to loop through
[00:56:30] my linked record
[00:56:31] records and but you can't quite do
[00:56:34] that yet. You can't loop through
[00:56:36] individual, you know, array field types,
[00:56:40] but this is basically how you
[00:56:42] do that by doing the matching.
[00:56:46] Yeah,
[00:56:48] I think you can
[00:56:50] you can loop through
[00:56:53] a look up or linked record field.
[00:56:58] but you would probably need
[00:57:00] to go find the record as your first step,
[00:57:03] right? Like if you're looping through
[00:57:06] a list of linked records,
[00:57:08] that's an array,
[00:57:10] you need to find that record first
[00:57:12] to go get any information about it.
[00:57:15] But, interesting.
[00:57:20] That's super cool.
[00:57:21] I like the find step at the beginning.
[00:57:24] So Scott says you can
[00:57:25] so that's kind of what you were saying.
[00:57:27] You can so you can feed a linked
[00:57:29] record into the repeating action.
[00:57:30] Okay. So couldn't you so you
[00:57:32] could have done that by
[00:57:34] just looping because aren't
[00:57:35] all those records that you were
[00:57:37] finding those were in the linked record?
[00:57:39] Right. Yeah, I could if I wanted to
[00:57:43] like here, let me I can present really
[00:57:46] quickly again.
[00:57:49] oops. And I'm sharing my
[00:57:51] whole thing, nope, I'm not
[00:57:58] so say that instead my trigger was
[00:58:04] this is not gonna be the same kind
[00:58:07] of thing, but
[00:58:08] when record matches conditions
[00:58:10] where report,
[00:58:13] it's called trigger,
[00:58:16] it's sound
[00:58:19] and then I can start a loop
[00:58:23] based off of the company vehicles,
[00:58:26] linked record field.
[00:58:29] And so then what I was talking
[00:58:31] about here is if
[00:58:32] I wanted to get any information
[00:58:33] about that company vehicle
[00:58:36] I would need to go actually
[00:58:38] find the company vehicle
[00:58:40] so it doesn't pull in the
[00:58:42] linked record fields, right it
[00:58:45] in the list of IDs
[00:58:49] So
[00:58:50] still need to
[00:58:52] look up the data. Exactly
[00:58:55] but that only works
[00:58:56] if you're triggered on a.
[00:58:58] Whereas your your trigger
[00:59:00] was a scheduled so that's
[00:59:01] why you needed to do the initial look up.
[00:59:05] That makes sense.
[00:59:07] Gotcha. Very cool. Alright.
[00:59:09] That's great insight.
[00:59:10] Thank you Alli for sharing and
[00:59:12] Cherry thank you for joining.
[00:59:14] Best of luck with the new course.
[00:59:16] Thanks for having me.
[00:59:18] And we will see everybody in a month,
[00:59:20] enjoy your month off and we'll be back at
[00:59:23] the beginning of April
[00:59:24] with the new season. Take care everyone.
[00:59:26] Take care. Thank you.