5/30/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S14-E08

Duration: 54 minutes

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

In This Episode

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

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

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

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

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:54 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] Formula Output Text Limit

[Airtable Community] New: Improvements to Timeline View – Airtable Community

[TableForums] Max length in URL for pre-filled form is 16000 characters for Airtable Form – but may depend on browser – Airtable Questions – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[TableForums] Jobs/roles related to creating with Airtable – General Discussion – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[TableForums] AI-First Attitude Adjustment – Airtable Developers / Scripting – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

Industry View – 00:23:31 –

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the Non-Profits/NGOs Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your Non-Profits/NGOs organization established in Airtable.

Jen Rudd will walk through how Airtable can be used within the NGO/Non-profit world.

Base Showcase – 00:37:42 –

We dive into a full working base that will Kamille will showcase a demo of a prototype for the character listing of a Table Top Role Playing Game.

Audience Questions – 00:50:38 –

Jason G answers the Airtable question: “How does the scripting handle record ids if not in the view”

View the question in the community

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:54

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

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] general – BuiltOnAir – Slack

[BuiltOnAir Community] Formula Output Text Limit

[Airtable Community] New: Improvements to Timeline View – Airtable Community

[TableForums] Max length in URL for pre-filled form is 16000 characters for Airtable Form – but may depend on browser – Airtable Questions – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[TableForums] Jobs/roles related to creating with Airtable – General Discussion – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

[TableForums] AI-First Attitude Adjustment – Airtable Developers / Scripting – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

Segment: Industry View

Start Time: 00:23:31

Airtable for the Non-Profits/NGOs Industry

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the Non-Profits/NGOs Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your Non-Profits/NGOs organization established in Airtable.

Jen Rudd will walk through how Airtable can be used within the NGO/Non-profit world.

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:37:42

Character Sheet for TTRPG

We dive into a full working base that will Kamille will showcase a demo of a prototype for the character listing of a Table Top Role Playing Game.

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:50:38

Airtable Question – How does the scripting handle record ids if not in the view

Jason G answers the Airtable question: “How does the scripting handle record ids if not in the view”

View the question in the community

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:40] I'm not ready. I'm not ready.
[00:01:43] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:46] I need to share my screen.
[00:01:47] It's like I've never done this before.
[00:01:50] We are live
[00:01:52] and we are in our final episode
[00:01:56] of the season.
[00:01:58] Just one second here.
[00:02:01] Let me get my screen up.
[00:02:06] We are
[00:02:08] the movies.
[00:02:09] There we go.
[00:02:10] Welcome to the
[00:02:11] BuiltOnAir podcast
[00:02:13] season 14 episode eight,
[00:02:14] final episode of the season.
[00:02:16] We'll be off for a month
[00:02:18] and then we'll be back in July.
[00:02:20] So good to be with you
[00:02:22] one final time
[00:02:23] before we take a little break.
[00:02:24] We have with us,
[00:02:26] our regular Jen Rudd. Welcome back, Jen.
[00:02:29] Thanks for having me again, Dan.
[00:02:31] Yeah, good to have you
[00:02:33] and we've got Kamille again
[00:02:35] as always. I believe Alli
[00:02:36] is out with COVID unfortunately,
[00:02:39] this week. So she's recovering
[00:02:41] from that and so hopefully she is back
[00:02:45] healthy soon
[00:02:46] here shortly. So
[00:02:49] let's get started.
[00:02:50] So we always
[00:02:51] do an hour long episode talking about all
[00:02:53] things Airtable.
[00:02:55] I'll run you through
[00:02:56] what we're gonna be doing today.
[00:02:57] We'll start as always with
[00:02:58] our Round the Bases.
[00:03:00] Keep you up to date on
[00:03:01] the World of Airtable.
[00:03:03] And then a
[00:03:04] quick shout out to On2Air,
[00:03:06] our primary sponsor.
[00:03:08] Then Jen Rudd is going to
[00:03:10] walk through how Airtable is used in the
[00:03:13] nonprofit world.
[00:03:15] And then Kamille is gonna
[00:03:17] walk through a base that she is working on
[00:03:20] for a tabletop role playing game.
[00:03:23] I had to Google what TT R P G meant.
[00:03:26] So now I know
[00:03:29] and we know a little bit more
[00:03:31] about Kamille
[00:03:31] what she does on the weekends.
[00:03:33] Yeah,
[00:03:34] I'm so cool.
[00:03:36] That's right.
[00:03:37] That's right. That'll be fun.
[00:03:39] And then a quick shout out to
[00:03:41] join our community
[00:03:42] and then finally I'll walk
[00:03:43] through a question on dealing
[00:03:45] with scripting
[00:03:46] and views that came from the
[00:03:48] BuiltOnAir community.
[00:03:49] So let's start off
[00:03:51] with our Round the Bases.
[00:03:53] There was
[00:03:55] one announcement that came out last week
[00:03:58] improvement to timeline views.
[00:04:02] So Alex walks us through
[00:04:05] some enhancements.
[00:04:07] I have not had a chance to
[00:04:09] play with these.
[00:04:10] Any, anybody play with these yet?
[00:04:12] No, I thought the overlap
[00:04:13] of the things were pretty cool though.
[00:04:15] The overlap of the Light Balls.
[00:04:17] Yeah, I've, I've seen them in
[00:04:19] action and they are pretty useful.
[00:04:21] I was working on a, a
[00:04:22] timeline that had
[00:04:24] episode releases and depending
[00:04:27] on like if it's a movie, there's only one
[00:04:29] episode, but if it's,
[00:04:32] you know, a show,
[00:04:33] it might have 10 episodes.
[00:04:34] And so it would like,
[00:04:35] you could fit the whole label
[00:04:37] on a show
[00:04:37] but you couldn't for a movie and you
[00:04:38] never know what the name
[00:04:40] of the movie is. Well, now you can,
[00:04:41] because it just goes
[00:04:43] past where that block ends.
[00:04:46] So I, I think it's pretty useful. There's
[00:04:50] you know, it seems pretty
[00:04:52] consistent in what I've seen also
[00:04:53] if you continue to scroll,
[00:04:55] you can kind of see it in this,
[00:04:56] screenshot but like,
[00:04:58] if you have a really long
[00:04:59] bar and you like scroll
[00:05:01] along it. Yeah, it will stick with you.
[00:05:04] So you always know what it's called even
[00:05:06] if like the beginning
[00:05:07] isn't on screen anymore.
[00:05:10] Yeah, so it'll show it
[00:05:11] like that right there. Yeah,
[00:05:14] cool. So nice little
[00:05:16] enhancements to the timeline.
[00:05:18] That's good to know they're
[00:05:20] still working on those, those widgets
[00:05:25] and yeah, nice, nice enhancement there.
[00:05:30] That was the only,
[00:05:31] I think that was the only
[00:05:33] like kind of product
[00:05:34] announcement that I saw this last week.
[00:05:37] So that's the only thing that,
[00:05:39] that came out.
[00:05:40] Well, I actually I take that
[00:05:41] back, there was one more
[00:05:43] that came from Russell
[00:05:44] in the BuiltOnAir community
[00:05:46] seeing the data library feature
[00:05:49] starting to be rolled out.
[00:05:51] So we talked about this
[00:05:53] the last two weeks or so of
[00:05:55] they've announced the,
[00:05:57] the data library, the verified data
[00:05:59] and it looks like that's
[00:06:01] starting to roll out more and more.
[00:06:04] And so that's cool to see,
[00:06:05] I have not yet played with it. I need to,
[00:06:07] I need to start playing with this
[00:06:10] so I could be wrong,
[00:06:11] but I in Russell's post,
[00:06:13] he says he wishes he had a way to
[00:06:16] replace old syncs with the new masters,
[00:06:18] I think
[00:06:19] because it's the same source.
[00:06:22] You don't do anything.
[00:06:23] Unless it's like syncing,
[00:06:26] like his old sync is synced
[00:06:28] from a similar dataset
[00:06:30] that wasn't the one that was
[00:06:31] published.
[00:06:34] I think if your old syncs
[00:06:37] are using the same view
[00:06:38] that was added to the data library,
[00:06:41] there's nothing different that you need to
[00:06:43] do because it really is just a
[00:06:45] shared link. It's just like a shortcut
[00:06:47] to get there faster.
[00:06:49] I could be wrong but that was
[00:06:52] my understanding of what it is.
[00:06:54] So explain that more.
[00:06:56] I'm not quite getting that.
[00:06:57] So we have regular shared
[00:07:00] views that you can sync
[00:07:02] into other bases and it sounds
[00:07:04] like Russell has
[00:07:05] multiple synced tables set up somewhere.
[00:07:09] But then now he's published
[00:07:11] to his data library
[00:07:13] one source that says current
[00:07:14] team and partners
[00:07:15] and one that says clients,
[00:07:17] if he has any existing syncs
[00:07:20] that are syncing from the same source as
[00:07:23] the client's data library
[00:07:25] or the current team
[00:07:26] and partners data library,
[00:07:28] I think
[00:07:29] it's technically already connected
[00:07:31] because it's coming from the same source.
[00:07:33] I don't think there's any distinction.
[00:07:34] It doesn't like take your data and put it
[00:07:36] somewhere special. It just sort of
[00:07:39] surfaces, those shared links,
[00:07:41] you know, up top.
[00:07:42] So you don't have to like find the,
[00:07:44] the link or search by base
[00:07:46] and then by table and then by view,
[00:07:48] I could be wrong. But that is,
[00:07:51] that's how I've been
[00:07:53] understanding that your
[00:07:55] old syncs are just the same.
[00:07:57] So basically,
[00:07:59] in order to get something
[00:08:00] into the data library,
[00:08:02] you're essentially sharing it
[00:08:03] the same way that you would
[00:08:05] to sync a table?
[00:08:07] Yes, got you.
[00:08:09] OK.
[00:08:10] So yeah, so, so the data library
[00:08:12] is really kind of more
[00:08:14] just a a view of what's
[00:08:15] been shared.
[00:08:17] Yeah, it's a, it's a
[00:08:19] condensed view of like
[00:08:21] of your shared links and it's supposed
[00:08:24] to be just the stuff that like you're
[00:08:25] gonna add to all of your bases
[00:08:27] or most of your bases
[00:08:29] such as a list of clients.
[00:08:30] That's
[00:08:30] gonna be
[00:08:31] one list that you're probably
[00:08:33] gonna use all over the place. So
[00:08:35] rather than finding,
[00:08:37] you know, a list of clients
[00:08:39] every single time you create a new base,
[00:08:41] it's just an option under like
[00:08:43] add new table. OK,
[00:08:45] clients. And you already know
[00:08:46] it's pulling from the
[00:08:49] correct base and view.
[00:08:51] That's the idea.
[00:08:53] So is this different
[00:08:54] than the verified data feature?
[00:08:57] It, it,
[00:08:57] it's the same. So
[00:09:00] you have your data library
[00:09:01] which can contain
[00:09:02] any number of, there's probably
[00:09:04] some limit any number of
[00:09:06] shared views and some of those
[00:09:08] can be verified
[00:09:10] if they're verified they'll
[00:09:11] get a little check mark
[00:09:12] and the purpose of verifying them is like,
[00:09:15] I guess this makes more sense
[00:09:17] on enterprise plans. If you have like
[00:09:23] of the, your over overall
[00:09:25] company might have a list of clients,
[00:09:28] but an individual department
[00:09:30] might only have their list of clients,
[00:09:32] which is a subset.
[00:09:34] Your overall company is gonna verify
[00:09:36] like the one, the overall one and that's
[00:09:39] the one that gets the check marks
[00:09:41] versus clients,
[00:09:42] dash marketing or clients dash
[00:09:43] accounting or something like that.
[00:09:45] So you can tell the difference
[00:09:47] on departments.
[00:09:47] Alternatively,
[00:09:49] you could do it the other way around
[00:09:51] where it's the general
[00:09:52] all clients and then
[00:09:53] your department,
[00:09:54] you can have a different
[00:09:56] set of verify data than
[00:09:57] the accounting department.
[00:09:59] So my list of clients
[00:10:01] gets the check mark and then
[00:10:03] accounting departments doesn't.
[00:10:05] So I, you know,
[00:10:06] I know, oh I want this one.
[00:10:07] I'm in the marketing team.
[00:10:09] I want the marketing team's
[00:10:10] verify data set.
[00:10:12] So just controlling
[00:10:13] downstream versions of the data
[00:10:15] upstream depending
[00:10:16] on how you're viewing the data.
[00:10:18] Yeah, it's trying to limit
[00:10:20] Daisy chaining of
[00:10:21] sync from A to B to C to D.
[00:10:23] It's like D is synced from A now,
[00:10:26] that's the hope.
[00:10:28] Got it.
[00:10:30] Very good. OK. So there isn't
[00:10:32] in order to get data
[00:10:34] into the verified data,
[00:10:35] it still resides in kind of a
[00:10:37] normal base and table
[00:10:38] and then you share it and
[00:10:40] then click a check box
[00:10:41] saying it's verified?
[00:10:42] Yes.
[00:10:44] Ideally, I haven't seen this.
[00:10:46] I, I would love it
[00:10:47] if once you share a link just
[00:10:48] in general, it gets like an icon
[00:10:50] next to it in the,
[00:10:51] the base when you're viewing
[00:10:52] it. We sort of add a lightning bolt
[00:10:55] to the name of the view to remind
[00:10:56] ourselves, but it'd be helpful
[00:10:58] if there was an icon
[00:10:59] that appeared automatically
[00:11:00] and then if it's a verified
[00:11:02] or sync data that gets its own, you know,
[00:11:05] icon that, that shows the difference,
[00:11:07] it'd be really helpful if you could see
[00:11:09] that at the base level,
[00:11:10] otherwise you have to go
[00:11:11] to your admin panel or
[00:11:12] something like that.
[00:11:13] Interesting, interesting
[00:11:15] for some reason,
[00:11:16] the vision I thought when they were
[00:11:17] talking about this verified
[00:11:19] data feature, I was thinking
[00:11:21] you would go to some different U I
[00:11:23] outside of like a base
[00:11:25] to kind of create your
[00:11:26] verified global data.
[00:11:29] But it sounds like it just works
[00:11:31] like all the other bases.
[00:11:32] Yeah, you can view it in like
[00:11:34] you have in your settings panel,
[00:11:36] your account settings or your admin panel,
[00:11:39] there's a different place to look at
[00:11:40] them all but to create them,
[00:11:42] just start like any other shared view.
[00:11:45] OK. Very good.
[00:11:47] That's helpful. We need to dig into that.
[00:11:50] All right. But yeah,
[00:11:51] it looks like that's
[00:11:52] starting to get rolled out
[00:11:54] to enterprise
[00:11:56] for now
[00:11:57] and good stuff there.
[00:12:00] OK
[00:12:00] a couple other from the BuiltOnAir
[00:12:02] slack.
[00:12:05] Let's see.
[00:12:07] This question was, does anyone know
[00:12:10] if there's a way to sync an updated field
[00:12:12] in Airtable to update a cell in Excel?
[00:12:15] Not natively.
[00:12:19] I'm trying to remember why I picked this.
[00:12:23] I don't think this is the one
[00:12:24] that I was planning to pick because
[00:12:27] this is kind of a,
[00:12:28] just a straightforward.
[00:12:29] Nothing too exciting about this
[00:12:31] one.
[00:12:32] So anyways, if you're trying to,
[00:12:35] to link Airtable to Excel,
[00:12:37] I think there was a different one.
[00:12:39] I was trying to link to.
[00:12:41] Oh, this is it,
[00:12:43] it was this one
[00:12:44] I picked. I had the
[00:12:46] wrong thread in my link.
[00:12:48] This was the one
[00:12:49] are Airtable web hooks
[00:12:50] counted against your automation
[00:12:52] runs?
[00:12:53] Can't seem to find documentation
[00:12:55] on this except to do that.
[00:12:57] So
[00:12:59] so just kind of explaining how,
[00:13:01] how automations. So basically,
[00:13:03] if an automation,
[00:13:04] if you're using automations to start
[00:13:07] a or excuse me, if you're using web hooks
[00:13:09] to start an automation,
[00:13:11] then that that counts as an automation
[00:13:14] run. So however many times you,
[00:13:17] you hit that webhook will count as
[00:13:20] one automation run per execution,
[00:13:24] right?
[00:13:25] It's processing that data for them. So,
[00:13:28] yeah,
[00:13:28] but if you have a web hook
[00:13:30] that triggers a make scenario
[00:13:32] that's not an automation for them,
[00:13:35] right? Yeah.
[00:13:36] Yeah. So if you're hitting
[00:13:38] out somewhere else, so
[00:13:40] and then Scott clarifies that if you use,
[00:13:43] there's a automation trigger for
[00:13:46] web hook received that obviously
[00:13:48] is an automation run
[00:13:49] because that is triggering
[00:13:50] that automation
[00:13:52] and then separate from that,
[00:13:53] there's different web hooks
[00:13:55] that you can set up
[00:13:55] that are like,
[00:13:57] you know,
[00:13:58] related to the base
[00:13:59] and those aren't automation.
[00:14:02] Yeah.
[00:14:03] And this was actually the one
[00:14:05] I that I wanted, sorry,
[00:14:07] it took me three times,
[00:14:08] but this is the one I want.
[00:14:09] What are we talking about?
[00:14:11] All right. All right.
[00:14:12] OK. So Karlsten asks,
[00:14:14] the largest output that
[00:14:16] you can have in a calculated
[00:14:17] formula.
[00:14:19] So I was thinking about this,
[00:14:21] I've never pushed the limits on this.
[00:14:23] It looks like others have.
[00:14:24] Josh says he's gotten the 9000
[00:14:26] Bill has hit in 100,000.
[00:14:29] So if you have a formula
[00:14:31] that's generating like a lot of output,
[00:14:35] I know the long text field
[00:14:38] has a limit of 100,000 characters.
[00:14:41] But I've never pushed the limit
[00:14:44] on the formula output.
[00:14:46] So it looks like 100,000
[00:14:48] somewhere in there.
[00:14:51] Have you ever tested that?
[00:14:53] No, but I have a couple of different
[00:14:56] implementations that sort of log a
[00:14:58] history of record changes in a,
[00:15:01] a long text field in the form of Json.
[00:15:04] And I sure hope it never gets to
[00:15:07] this level because I've,
[00:15:08] I've tried to do it as
[00:15:10] compactly as possible,
[00:15:11] but I, I was under
[00:15:12] the impression that it's
[00:15:13] some 1000
[00:15:15] amount of,
[00:15:17] characters and
[00:15:18] if it ever gets to that level
[00:15:20] then we should be tracking
[00:15:21] it that way anyway,
[00:15:22] I don't think.
[00:15:23] Yeah, I've had some roll ups
[00:15:24] of roll ups of roll ups
[00:15:26] and it gets pretty gnarly,
[00:15:26] but I haven't hit 100 K yet, but
[00:15:29] I have maxed out the Google Doc
[00:15:31] automation multiple times. So
[00:15:32] that was fun
[00:15:35] of how much,
[00:15:36] how much data you can push
[00:15:37] in or like how many,
[00:15:38] how many fields you can push in
[00:15:40] or how much text you can
[00:15:41] put in. So finally
[00:15:43] we had to do something crazy.
[00:15:44] I can't remember what we did,
[00:15:45] but it was like,
[00:15:46] definitely
[00:15:46] there's like a limit to what
[00:15:47] you can push into a Google doc.
[00:15:49] Basically.
[00:15:50] Interesting.
[00:15:52] Yeah, I don't know what, yeah,
[00:15:55] I don't know
[00:15:56] what our limit is with On2Air.
[00:15:58] If we've hit that limit with
[00:16:00] pushing data and I, I'm not sure
[00:16:02] we'll have to test that.
[00:16:04] Cool. Yeah.
[00:16:05] So there are definitely limits.
[00:16:08] Somebody if you want to,
[00:16:10] if you wanna let us know what, what
[00:16:12] the max is, if you can get over 100 K
[00:16:15] and beat the Bill's output,
[00:16:18] that would be great.
[00:16:21] We're gonna keep on the theme of limits.
[00:16:23] So here's another one.
[00:16:24] There's lots of people talking
[00:16:27] about limits, limits that like
[00:16:29] probably if you're hitting these limits,
[00:16:31] there might be other ways to,
[00:16:32] to do things.
[00:16:33] Here's another one. So with URL prefills
[00:16:39] of
[00:16:40] how much you can put in
[00:16:43] the URL to like prefill a form field.
[00:16:46] So browsers do have some limits sometimes.
[00:16:49] Like it's, it's a lot.
[00:16:51] So depending on your browser,
[00:16:53] there might be limits
[00:16:54] but it looks like the form
[00:16:56] Airtable form itself has a,
[00:16:59] has a 16,000 character limit.
[00:17:02] And that's what, that's what Scott says
[00:17:05] is mentioned in the support docs.
[00:17:07] That's
[00:17:07] the,
[00:17:08] it's pretty,
[00:17:09] that's a lot. It's not a small,
[00:17:12] it's a URL.
[00:17:14] Yeah,
[00:17:15] I think the problem is
[00:17:16] I have problems even with
[00:17:17] form where people will drop part
[00:17:19] of the URL just like when they click on
[00:17:20] something, even though it's a hidden
[00:17:22] URL. So having prefilled
[00:17:24] forms is probably not
[00:17:25] like good long term just because I
[00:17:28] I run into issues inconsistently where the
[00:17:30] prefills just drop off and just have
[00:17:32] raw form and now
[00:17:33] you've exposed all your data.
[00:17:34] So, you know, using a third party form
[00:17:37] like On2Air sometimes that prefills
[00:17:39] with just a random string into these
[00:17:42] 1600 or 16,000 characters
[00:17:45] might be a better solution
[00:17:46] if you're trying to push the limits
[00:17:48] because something
[00:17:48] inevitably dropped off and you're
[00:17:51] just not feeling the data
[00:17:53] the right way. So
[00:17:55] yeah.
[00:17:55] Yeah.
[00:17:57] Yeah, for sure. So that's
[00:17:59] yeah. And then you gotta
[00:18:01] worry about like encoding that,
[00:18:03] that long text,
[00:18:04] make sure you don't have
[00:18:05] any funky characters in there that could,
[00:18:07] that could cause some damage
[00:18:09] So
[00:18:10] yeah, I typically try to avoid.
[00:18:12] That's one of the cool things about On2Air
[00:18:14] docs or forms is
[00:18:17] if your data is already in Airtable,
[00:18:19] you don't have to prefill it into the URL.
[00:18:21] You can, you can actually
[00:18:23] one of the cool features is
[00:18:25] you can actually use a record ID as your,
[00:18:27] as your template
[00:18:29] for your default values. So,
[00:18:31] so if you just put that long text
[00:18:34] into a random record and then just use the
[00:18:36] record ID as your, as your placeholder,
[00:18:39] it will then pull all the values from
[00:18:41] that record and, and use those as your,
[00:18:43] as your default values.
[00:18:45] So that's kind of a cool feature
[00:18:47] and make it so they can't edit anything.
[00:18:50] Yeah. Yeah. And then you
[00:18:52] can make them read only.
[00:18:54] Yeah. So
[00:18:55] anyways, more limits.
[00:18:57] Somebody should collect,
[00:18:58] maybe we should do that at
[00:19:00] like just every limit possible
[00:19:02] of Airtable.
[00:19:02] That would be a nice resource to
[00:19:04] have.
[00:19:07] Maybe Scott will do that.
[00:19:09] So we're continuing
[00:19:11] with the Airtable Forums.
[00:19:13] This was a really good article
[00:19:16] by friend of the show, Kuovonne.
[00:19:18] Just talking about the different roles
[00:19:22] and jobs um related to Airtable.
[00:19:25] And so if you're thinking about,
[00:19:27] I like Airtable,
[00:19:28] what are some things that I
[00:19:30] could do for a career in Airtable?
[00:19:32] This is a really good, just kind of
[00:19:35] just,
[00:19:36] just breaking out all the different things
[00:19:38] that you could do and different roles
[00:19:40] and, and people have some
[00:19:42] questions about that and
[00:19:44] how people got into it.
[00:19:47] So worth checking out if,
[00:19:48] if that's of interest to you.
[00:19:53] And yeah, we've got a couple
[00:19:56] representative in this group
[00:19:58] as well amongst here.
[00:20:00] All right, last one,
[00:20:02] continuing last week
[00:20:03] if you didn't catch last week's
[00:20:05] show, it was all about A I and
[00:20:08] we had Bill French
[00:20:09] along with Lorenzo Lee talking about
[00:20:13] Airtable and A I in the future.
[00:20:15] So Bill
[00:20:17] continued with that theme and,
[00:20:20] and wrote a good article on the
[00:20:22] Airtable forums talking about
[00:20:25] an A I first mind mindset and mindfulness
[00:20:30] and how that can help you in,
[00:20:33] in your career.
[00:20:34] And so
[00:20:37] uses Airtable as an example of,
[00:20:39] you know, kind of using A I
[00:20:41] instead of maybe
[00:20:42] Rejex and the differences between
[00:20:44] those two approaches and where A I can,
[00:20:47] can take things up a notch
[00:20:49] from there. So
[00:20:52] good
[00:20:53] good, good article.
[00:20:54] If you want to dive,
[00:20:56] dive deeper into that,
[00:20:57] that world of A I.
[00:21:00] All right,
[00:21:02] I believe
[00:21:04] has
[00:21:04] had any other news
[00:21:05] that you guys can think of?
[00:21:08] Not that I can recall.
[00:21:12] It's a long weekend coming back from.
[00:21:14] So I know I know it was a long weekend.
[00:21:16] Yeah. So Airtable probably didn't
[00:21:18] push anything.
[00:21:19] Maybe this week there will
[00:21:20] be some, some pushes,
[00:21:22] definitely over the next four weeks
[00:21:24] while we're, while we're out,
[00:21:26] there hopefully will be some
[00:21:28] announcements made
[00:21:30] that we'll review when we get back.
[00:21:32] Ok. Check out on2air.com
[00:21:34] if you are running
[00:21:35] your business on Airtable.
[00:21:37] It's a suite of tools
[00:21:38] and apps that help you
[00:21:40] do more with your Airtable.
[00:21:42] If you rely on your business
[00:21:44] within Airtable, then you
[00:21:46] definitely need to check out the,
[00:21:47] the suite of apps that Airtable provides.
[00:21:50] For today, we're gonna highlight a
[00:21:53] case study that we just put out.
[00:21:56] Hannah finished this
[00:21:58] Walking through with one of our
[00:22:00] customers that uses On2Air forms for a
[00:22:03] grassroots grocery. Pretty cool use case.
[00:22:07] So
[00:22:09] it's called
[00:22:12] well I guess Grassroots Grocery is,
[00:22:15] is what is called. Dan
[00:22:17] Zad
[00:22:18] is the executive director
[00:22:20] and this case study walks through how
[00:22:23] they use On2Air forms and Airtable
[00:22:26] to set up
[00:22:28] groceries that can, that can help families
[00:22:31] every Saturday. They kind of have a
[00:22:32] an event and the people fill out
[00:22:35] what they need
[00:22:36] through the forms and they track
[00:22:38] everything in Airtable.
[00:22:40] So they have 3000 volunteers
[00:22:43] fresh produce that
[00:22:45] gets distributed to families in need.
[00:22:48] So pretty cool stuff.
[00:22:50] And he used a partner
[00:22:52] give a shout out to Mecca Parker at
[00:22:55] Parkwest Digital that,
[00:22:57] that helped him set this all up
[00:23:00] and has been using On2Air forms
[00:23:02] as has Jen Rudd as well.
[00:23:04] I know we've done a case study with Jen.
[00:23:06] So this is a new one. So
[00:23:08] check out On2Air forms if you have
[00:23:10] a need for collecting data and getting it
[00:23:12] into Airtable and also
[00:23:14] updating that data as well.
[00:23:16] And check out this case study
[00:23:18] to see how they've done that.
[00:23:20] So that's a good theme for today.
[00:23:22] More, more nonprofits
[00:23:26] using Airtable.
[00:23:27] All right, with that, Jen.
[00:23:29] Why don't you,
[00:23:30] share what you've got for us today?
[00:23:33] Absolutely. Let me see.
[00:23:41] Ok. You can see my screen?
[00:23:44] Yes.
[00:23:44] Ok. I
[00:23:45] have this over here.
[00:23:46] So I work with a lot of nonprofits
[00:23:49] and one of the biggest,
[00:23:51] things that nonprofits have to do
[00:23:53] is share their impact.
[00:23:54] Meaning they have to say
[00:23:55] what's the activities
[00:23:56] that they're doing and how it's impacting
[00:23:58] those they have set out to work with,
[00:24:00] whether they're working with,
[00:24:02] underprivileged Children or,
[00:24:04] you know, different,
[00:24:05] parts of the country of
[00:24:06] the world that need assistance.
[00:24:08] Sometimes we have to make sure that we're
[00:24:10] tracking
[00:24:11] the activities that they're doing
[00:24:13] and then also the impact
[00:24:14] that they're doing.
[00:24:15] So, a lot of what
[00:24:16] nonprofits do is reporting,
[00:24:18] it's nice to get money from funders
[00:24:19] but then you have to tell them what
[00:24:21] you're doing with that money,
[00:24:23] in addition to what you're
[00:24:25] actually trying to
[00:24:27] do as your activities.
[00:24:28] So, what I did today
[00:24:30] was just kind of demo,
[00:24:31] what it would look like
[00:24:33] to create a report
[00:24:34] from the activities that you're doing
[00:24:36] within an organization.
[00:24:37] So basically,
[00:24:38] I created this simple base which has a
[00:24:40] table of activities
[00:24:42] and then attendees
[00:24:43] which are people
[00:24:44] that would be coming to if it was like
[00:24:46] a
[00:24:48] I can't think of the word
[00:24:49] if they're like coming to
[00:24:51] a symposium to talk about
[00:24:52] what the the the nonprofit is doing,
[00:24:54] you can have different
[00:24:56] attendees that you would keep track of.
[00:24:58] You also want to figure out
[00:25:00] usually a nonprofits
[00:25:01] have a couple different
[00:25:02] focus areas
[00:25:03] or attendance of things
[00:25:04] that they're doing.
[00:25:05] So being able to track both
[00:25:06] the activities of what they're
[00:25:08] doing to those focus
[00:25:09] areas so they can tie them back
[00:25:10] to the reporting is really helpful.
[00:25:12] And then also, especially if you have
[00:25:14] people interacting with the organization,
[00:25:16] sometimes you want to have an
[00:25:18] evaluation of these activities.
[00:25:20] So basically, what I did here
[00:25:22] is I created an activity table
[00:25:24] which keeps track of the activity,
[00:25:26] name, any notes on it,
[00:25:27] the attendees,
[00:25:28] the activity date, the location,
[00:25:31] what the focus area is
[00:25:32] and then also a place
[00:25:34] to keep track of all these
[00:25:35] evaluations.
[00:25:36] And also there's some other
[00:25:38] information that they might need to have,
[00:25:40] maybe who the actual
[00:25:41] attendees are,
[00:25:42] but also maybe the number of
[00:25:43] attendees that are coming
[00:25:45] to this activity or events.
[00:25:46] And so basically, we're doing this
[00:25:49] because we want to be able to generate a
[00:25:51] report by tracking who's
[00:25:53] coming to the event
[00:25:54] and their evaluations for this
[00:25:56] event.
[00:25:57] So we have an event here
[00:25:58] which is like this global partner meeting
[00:26:01] and we can add different people
[00:26:03] and I just use a random person
[00:26:06] generator to
[00:26:06] add a bunch of attendees.
[00:26:08] And you can see that I'm using a account
[00:26:12] field here which just tells me
[00:26:14] the number of attendees that are attached
[00:26:17] to this this particular activity.
[00:26:20] If you wanted to also keep track of
[00:26:22] attendance, you can also roll this up and
[00:26:24] say only
[00:26:25] count the number of attendees
[00:26:27] who actually attended the events,
[00:26:28] you might have invited 150
[00:26:30] and only eight showed up.
[00:26:31] So it's good to have
[00:26:32] those differentials
[00:26:33] of both who was invited
[00:26:35] and possibly also who actually attended
[00:26:38] just for your reporting metrics
[00:26:40] and so forth.
[00:26:41] So then we have these attendees
[00:26:43] and we have this evaluation
[00:26:45] and we try to make the evaluation
[00:26:47] very generic
[00:26:48] because you wanted to use it for
[00:26:49] multiple activities.
[00:26:50] You might have different evaluation
[00:26:52] forms based on what
[00:26:53] type of activity they're doing.
[00:26:54] Whether it's a meeting,
[00:26:55] a symposium, a small group session
[00:26:58] or if someone's coming to an event that
[00:27:00] you put on
[00:27:01] as the foundation. So basically,
[00:27:03] I just did a very general evaluation
[00:27:05] form that we can use
[00:27:06] over and over again for
[00:27:07] any activity
[00:27:09] that someone attends.
[00:27:11] And here we're just linking the activity,
[00:27:13] the attendee
[00:27:14] their overall experience,
[00:27:16] key takeaways, maybe some
[00:27:18] suggestions for the next event.
[00:27:20] And would you recommend to others?
[00:27:23] Then for the attendees, I just
[00:27:25] just we talked about pre fills
[00:27:27] of the attendee name
[00:27:28] into the form.
[00:27:29] So that when somebody gets this link.
[00:27:32] So for example, this is for
[00:27:34] Moana,
[00:27:38] you'll see that the attendee
[00:27:39] has disappeared because we prefilled their
[00:27:42] name.
[00:27:43] I think we're, we're only seeing
[00:27:45] your Airtable. OK. Share this tab
[00:27:49] better?
[00:27:50] Yeah.
[00:27:51] All right.
[00:27:51] So basically here,
[00:27:52] if you look at the URL,
[00:27:54] I prefilled the attendee's name
[00:27:55] with the record ID,
[00:27:57] which also is helpful.
[00:27:58] We can't, we can't see the URL.
[00:28:01] OK?
[00:28:02] Try
[00:28:02] to
[00:28:03] share the window.
[00:28:06] I
[00:28:06] share a screen,
[00:28:09] click on the window.
[00:28:12] I'm smart.
[00:28:15] Only had one coffee this morning.
[00:28:18] OK. Can you see my?
[00:28:19] OK. So if you look at the URL,
[00:28:21] I prefilled the record ID.
[00:28:23] And that's because
[00:28:24] sometimes people change
[00:28:25] their names or you have placeholder.
[00:28:27] So it's always good to use
[00:28:29] you can use a person's name
[00:28:30] but just because the Dan's point
[00:28:33] about encoding U L S and so forth,
[00:28:35] an ID, a record ID string is
[00:28:38] actual string. So it's much easier
[00:28:40] to add to A URL. You don't have to worry
[00:28:42] about encoding or weird characters
[00:28:44] and it's also just shorter theoretically.
[00:28:46] So it also lets them know like
[00:28:48] it also, if someone's looking at the URL,
[00:28:50] they're not saying, oh,
[00:28:51] that's my name. Maybe if I delete this,
[00:28:52] if they're nosy,
[00:28:53] then they can expose all of the
[00:28:55] attendee information. So you're exposing
[00:28:57] your entire base. So if I was to
[00:29:01] just take out this prefill
[00:29:06] and
[00:29:08] oh
[00:29:10] here
[00:29:11] you'll see that you can now
[00:29:13] pick from an attendee list
[00:29:14] which you may not want to
[00:29:15] expose to people in general.
[00:29:16] So that's why we use prefills a lot
[00:29:18] is to hide the data from people
[00:29:21] without exposing the information.
[00:29:23] So we're just going to do more on it here
[00:29:26] and then we're gonna pick the activity
[00:29:29] in the activity
[00:29:30] what I did was I created a view
[00:29:32] which says, OK, only show me
[00:29:34] the events that happen
[00:29:35] in the next 10 days.
[00:29:37] So they don't have a huge list
[00:29:38] to pick from so they
[00:29:39] can't pick the wrong one.
[00:29:39] So
[00:29:40] whenever you have prefills
[00:29:41] or just forms
[00:29:42] that you want people to fill out the
[00:29:43] more that you fill it out for them
[00:29:45] or restrict what they can pick the less
[00:29:47] chances they have variables
[00:29:49] to make changes.
[00:29:50] So here we have the global partner,
[00:29:51] meaning
[00:29:53] they do the overall experience,
[00:29:54] their key takeaways,
[00:29:56] suggestions for next events.
[00:29:57] And then would you recommend to others?
[00:30:00] So when somebody submits that form
[00:30:04] in the evaluations tab,
[00:30:07] it gets linked to that attendee.
[00:30:10] And then basically what I did was
[00:30:12] I use this a lot for
[00:30:14] nonprofits is to roll up the information
[00:30:17] that is coming from different fields.
[00:30:19] And I'm also adding this new line,
[00:30:21] new line. So basically it breaks up
[00:30:23] the information. So it'll say,
[00:30:25] you know, overall experience
[00:30:27] call in overall experience
[00:30:29] and the number of stars and so forth.
[00:30:31] So when it creates this output,
[00:30:34] when it's just a single line text,
[00:30:35] you see it as a long string,
[00:30:37] but here you could see it,
[00:30:38] it's broken up like like
[00:30:40] a normal person would type
[00:30:41] it out you would say their
[00:30:42] overall experience is five stars.
[00:30:43] Yours are key takeaways.
[00:30:45] So you have these variables
[00:30:46] from different people,
[00:30:47] but it's formatted in a way
[00:30:49] that you can add it to your report.
[00:30:52] So then what I then did
[00:30:55] is I have
[00:30:57] a roll up about that formula field
[00:30:59] from the evaluation. So I'm able to array
[00:31:01] join
[00:31:02] the values, which just
[00:31:03] means take everything
[00:31:04] and then separate each,
[00:31:06] each report output with two lines.
[00:31:09] So it then again, looks like
[00:31:14] this
[00:31:16] as opposed to, you know,
[00:31:17] really ugly and so forth.
[00:31:19] So it allows you to kind of
[00:31:20] break up the information
[00:31:21] in a way that would
[00:31:22] make sense for a report.
[00:31:24] And the reason I did it this way
[00:31:26] is that because instead
[00:31:27] of somebody typing out
[00:31:28] all those responses,
[00:31:30] I can now go into Google Docs
[00:31:36] and create a document with the
[00:31:38] activity name,
[00:31:39] the date formatted,
[00:31:40] I just did it because
[00:31:41] when you put a date in Airtable,
[00:31:43] um it shows up with that really
[00:31:45] long string.
[00:31:45] So this is just more human readable.
[00:31:48] And then I have the, you know,
[00:31:49] the written information, focus area
[00:31:51] and it gives me the focus area fields,
[00:31:53] number of attendees and then the feedback,
[00:31:55] which is that report output,
[00:31:57] fun automation is turned on.
[00:32:00] We're gonna a live demo,
[00:32:02] we're gonna wait for it to
[00:32:04] update. And so whenever I do
[00:32:05] automations where I have like
[00:32:07] reports generated and
[00:32:08] so forth, I just clear out this check box
[00:32:11] and especially if you want to make
[00:32:13] sure that all the information
[00:32:14] is filled in before
[00:32:15] you generate the report.
[00:32:15] It's always good to have
[00:32:16] a check box as opposed to just
[00:32:18] all the criteria is met because
[00:32:19] it's just a user saying, OK,
[00:32:21] go ahead and generate that report.
[00:32:24] I generated the report
[00:32:26] and see it has the title of the event,
[00:32:28] the date
[00:32:29] and then it also gives
[00:32:30] some of that information.
[00:32:32] And so this is really basic,
[00:32:34] but what you can do is do
[00:32:36] some of the formatting in Google Docs,
[00:32:40] you can make this bold,
[00:32:41] you can change this to header one
[00:32:45] and it's always good to kind of
[00:32:51] and its
[00:32:52] paragraph
[00:32:54] and so forth.
[00:32:55] So when you do a new output,
[00:33:02] it's not going to run
[00:33:04] because I'm done moving live.
[00:33:06] Yeah.
[00:33:07] Airtable has been
[00:33:08] a little slow this morning.
[00:33:10] It's OK. It's working.
[00:33:12] All right.
[00:33:12] So then if I go back and see the data now,
[00:33:18] so now you can add a little bit
[00:33:19] of formatting when you're using roll ups,
[00:33:21] you can't roll,
[00:33:22] you can't format roll ups,
[00:33:23] which is the only downside,
[00:33:24] which is
[00:33:25] one of the things I'm running into
[00:33:26] as I'm generating like this really,
[00:33:27] really long report for
[00:33:30] a professional organization,
[00:33:32] they have all of this report language
[00:33:34] that they already have written.
[00:33:35] So basically, we just take that
[00:33:37] they select which report language
[00:33:39] they want to use
[00:33:39] and then we output it into
[00:33:40] a Google Doc and they can further
[00:33:43] format and add to it in a word doc
[00:33:45] afterwards. But we're taking all
[00:33:47] does the,
[00:33:49] it takes markdown, right? The
[00:33:53] the window for
[00:33:55] in inserting content into the Google Docs,
[00:33:59] it does, but it's, it's,
[00:34:01] it doesn't really take
[00:34:02] markdown necessarily.
[00:34:03] I try different markdown outputs
[00:34:05] and it just doesn't really,
[00:34:06] it basically whatever the formatting here,
[00:34:10] I'm happy to try a mark down.
[00:34:12] So like, because I was
[00:34:13] running into this when I
[00:34:14] was trying to do a link. So like
[00:34:17] like here
[00:34:24] also whenever you have a Google Doc
[00:34:26] or some of those docs where they have
[00:34:27] the weird formatting in a place
[00:34:29] where you can have marked down.
[00:34:31] So if there's like an underscore
[00:34:33] or things like that,
[00:34:33] it totally breaks
[00:34:35] Airtable fields and so forth,
[00:34:37] it's really annoying.
[00:34:40] So sometimes I have
[00:34:41] to shorten the links again.
[00:34:48] Okay.
[00:34:53] Not see.
[00:34:58] No,
[00:34:59] no,
[00:35:00] we tried,
[00:35:01] we tried.
[00:35:03] Yeah, it's, it's, it's helpful
[00:35:04] for like the first cut. Like,
[00:35:06] so a lot of this, like if you just
[00:35:08] need an output, it's kind of fine.
[00:35:09] But you can always do third parties
[00:35:11] to make it prettier like documents.
[00:35:12] I've done a lot of reporting
[00:35:14] with document for some nonprofits.
[00:35:15] So that's really helpful
[00:35:17] to use third parties. But I think
[00:35:19] the more that you can at least structure
[00:35:21] how you want responses or you
[00:35:23] have structure
[00:35:24] how you want the format of all
[00:35:25] these reports to come in
[00:35:26] and then request information
[00:35:28] or set up information
[00:35:29] and Airtable in such a way
[00:35:30] that lends itself to that output.
[00:35:32] The less time the team members
[00:35:34] can be like typing reports and doing
[00:35:36] the administrative stuff that's really
[00:35:38] helpful that actually helps to,
[00:35:39] to generate more funding,
[00:35:41] but it also helps them focus
[00:35:43] more on driving impacts
[00:35:44] and reporting on that impact.
[00:35:48] So,
[00:35:49] but then
[00:35:50] I've shown like six or seven
[00:35:52] people how to do the
[00:35:54] just the basic reporting output.
[00:35:56] And there's like
[00:35:57] that is the most amazing thing
[00:35:59] ever and it really is just
[00:36:01] formatting it in a
[00:36:02] formula and then using
[00:36:03] that roll up functionality
[00:36:05] to drive how it's written out. So
[00:36:08] definitely helpful to just again
[00:36:10] formalize how you want the inputs to
[00:36:13] maximize the outputs.
[00:36:17] Very cool.
[00:36:19] Maybe what's your experience
[00:36:20] been just working
[00:36:21] with nonprofits in general,
[00:36:23] how has Airtable
[00:36:25] helped or impacted those?
[00:36:27] It's helped a lot,
[00:36:28] especially as like, like
[00:36:30] these are these organizations
[00:36:31] that are doing great things
[00:36:32] and it's either a lot of
[00:36:34] distributed teams working
[00:36:34] in different locations
[00:36:36] at different times or
[00:36:37] they're very small grassroots
[00:36:39] and they're doing a lot of things.
[00:36:41] I've worked with
[00:36:43] hood huggers in there in North Carolina
[00:36:46] and they do some great things with
[00:36:47] community gardens and helping under,
[00:36:49] you know, underprivileged youth
[00:36:51] and things like that.
[00:36:52] So they're doing so much
[00:36:53] with a very small team
[00:36:55] and using forms like we use
[00:36:57] On2Air forms
[00:36:58] just so that you can check in for
[00:37:00] their
[00:37:01] their work times and so forth.
[00:37:02] So it's really helpful
[00:37:03] because now we don't have
[00:37:04] to go in a job form and like
[00:37:06] recreate the form each time
[00:37:07] they can just change the fields
[00:37:09] in Airtable and now it's,
[00:37:10] you know, updated on the form
[00:37:11] and things like that.
[00:37:12] So it's really helpful
[00:37:13] to be able to get information
[00:37:15] so that they can run
[00:37:16] their organizations in a more
[00:37:17] effective manner.
[00:37:18] But also like be able to spend
[00:37:21] more time working
[00:37:22] with people because they have
[00:37:23] the structure behind it to make sure
[00:37:25] that they have everything that they need
[00:37:27] to do what they have to do.
[00:37:29] Awesome.
[00:37:31] Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
[00:37:33] That's good stuff. Very applicable to all,
[00:37:35] to all use cases so not just nonprofits.
[00:37:39] All right, Kamille,
[00:37:41] let's get Nerdy
[00:37:44] yay
[00:37:46] character sheets for TT R P G.
[00:37:50] Am I sharing my screen?
[00:37:53] Ok. So there is a new tabletop
[00:37:56] role playing game
[00:37:57] called Candela Obscura that
[00:38:00] just got released recently
[00:38:01] and I was looking through
[00:38:03] the rule set and it seemed
[00:38:05] simple enough that
[00:38:07] I wondered, can I build this into an app?
[00:38:10] Just because I wanted a,
[00:38:13] a side project to work on.
[00:38:15] So here is an example of
[00:38:17] a character sheet. So
[00:38:19] every character is gonna have
[00:38:21] a name and here are all
[00:38:23] of their skills and you
[00:38:24] fill in these dots for how good
[00:38:27] you are at moving or things like that.
[00:38:31] And then you have
[00:38:32] essentially your health are these
[00:38:36] three batches of three stripes
[00:38:39] over here and
[00:38:40] there's a bunch of stuff
[00:38:42] on this sheet that
[00:38:42] the idea is when you play,
[00:38:44] you print it out
[00:38:45] and then fill in these different
[00:38:47] marks with a pencil and then erase them
[00:38:50] as you take a point of damage or fill it
[00:38:52] back in as you heal.
[00:38:55] But
[00:38:56] you know what if this were an
[00:38:57] app? Why not?
[00:38:59] So I started by creating a
[00:39:02] quick prototype in Airtable,
[00:39:05] of course, and I was able to get it
[00:39:08] pretty quickly.
[00:39:11] There's, you could see I have a
[00:39:14] handful of tables up top.
[00:39:15] The most interesting
[00:39:17] piece of it I think is probably
[00:39:21] this field here.
[00:39:23] There is a concept in the game
[00:39:26] that you as a group,
[00:39:27] you have 24 points. And
[00:39:30] once you get to point 7,
[00:39:33] you get some kind of reward.
[00:39:35] And if you get to point14,
[00:39:37] you get some other reward,
[00:39:38] point 21 some other reward and then
[00:39:41] there's three more points. After that,
[00:39:43] I wanted
[00:39:46] some like visual indicator
[00:39:48] of that progress as you go.
[00:39:51] And so this is a somewhat
[00:39:53] complicated formula.
[00:39:54] You could see all the substitutes
[00:39:56] that are happening
[00:39:57] where I'm taking all of that.
[00:40:00] I
[00:40:00] thought
[00:40:00] it would be worse
[00:40:02] actually.
[00:40:03] Well, you know what,
[00:40:05] I it took some time to get this
[00:40:07] to work exactly how I wanted it.
[00:40:09] And
[00:40:11] you know, we, we've shown
[00:40:13] on the podcast before, things like,
[00:40:16] you know, this is basically the same
[00:40:18] thing but simpler, it's basically just a
[00:40:19] rating.
[00:40:20] Where if I took a point off
[00:40:23] it this one would be gray
[00:40:25] versus all yellow,
[00:40:28] but this one because it was so complex,
[00:40:31] the, the output we've reached to the
[00:40:33] seventh thing and now it's a goal
[00:40:36] and then if I were to
[00:40:39] really quickly,
[00:40:46] I were really, really quickly
[00:40:48] and I say quickly,
[00:40:49] it's not gonna be quick because
[00:40:51] there's gonna be
[00:40:55] some, some problems,
[00:40:57] there's gonna be an automation
[00:40:59] that's supposed to run
[00:41:00] that like creates
[00:41:02] a bunch of keys in order to
[00:41:05] generate
[00:41:06] all of the possible
[00:41:08] points that you can get.
[00:41:09] It sounds more complex
[00:41:11] than it actually is to play the game.
[00:41:13] It's more complex when
[00:41:14] you're building it into an app.
[00:41:15] But looking at this formula again,
[00:41:18] I'm saying, how many points do we have?
[00:41:21] All right,
[00:41:22] repeat
[00:41:23] the character f however
[00:41:26] many times I have that
[00:41:28] I have those points.
[00:41:31] And then I wanna create some
[00:41:34] empty circles for the ones that
[00:41:36] I haven't achieved yet. Repeat that
[00:41:39] in intervals of six and then
[00:41:41] repeat one
[00:41:45] special point like this square here.
[00:41:48] This is a milestone that I haven't reached
[00:41:51] yet.
[00:41:52] So I'm grouping
[00:41:54] points of seven where the seventh
[00:41:57] point is special three times.
[00:42:00] And then at the end of the, the formula,
[00:42:03] I'm only taking
[00:42:06] the portion of unused points.
[00:42:12] I'm taking away like the placeholders
[00:42:15] for the ones that I've actually achieved.
[00:42:18] I don't think that made any sense.
[00:42:20] Does that make sense to you guys?
[00:42:24] It does. But my brain hurts
[00:42:25] thinking about building that.
[00:42:27] It's,
[00:42:29] it's,
[00:42:30] it's a long and complicated thing.
[00:42:32] And the, the reason why I made,
[00:42:33] made this project is for
[00:42:35] things like this where like
[00:42:37] you go back to the character sheet
[00:42:38] that isn't actually on this one.
[00:42:40] It's on a different one,
[00:42:41] but it in real life. This is so simple,
[00:42:44] right? You just fill in a dot on,
[00:42:46] on a page and then you erase it
[00:42:48] when it goes away. That's really,
[00:42:50] really simple. But I wanted to try
[00:42:53] and do it
[00:42:53] programmatically and then this is
[00:42:55] what
[00:42:55] you get eventually, once you
[00:42:58] deal with all the formulas
[00:43:00] and then I put it into,
[00:43:02] you know, a character sheet,
[00:43:03] you have it laid out a particular way.
[00:43:05] Here's that same thing again.
[00:43:07] But now we're on an interface
[00:43:08] and then each character
[00:43:10] has their own sheet.
[00:43:12] And here's where I started
[00:43:13] to run into problems.
[00:43:14] You'll see, move, strike control
[00:43:17] are the same things as move,
[00:43:18] strike control over here.
[00:43:20] You can see that the maximum
[00:43:22] number of circles I have is three.
[00:43:25] But
[00:43:27] this one, I don't know if
[00:43:28] you guys can see is kind of
[00:43:30] like
[00:43:31] it has a thicker outline.
[00:43:34] That means when you start
[00:43:36] as this character, you only have one move,
[00:43:38] you have one strike,
[00:43:40] you have to hide because
[00:43:42] these two are are darker.
[00:43:43] The problem I was running into
[00:43:45] is I wanted it to look like
[00:43:47] the character sheet,
[00:43:49] including this sort of diamond
[00:43:51] symbol which sometimes
[00:43:52] is filled in and sometimes isn't,
[00:43:55] I can't really do that well
[00:43:57] in Airtable or Airtable interfaces,
[00:43:59] I have a rating field that I can
[00:44:02] control this formula output,
[00:44:04] but I had no real good way of
[00:44:06] controlling this sort of
[00:44:08] diamonds thing off to the
[00:44:09] side.
[00:44:10] And that's where I started to think.
[00:44:13] Can I build this again
[00:44:14] somewhere else? And so I did
[00:44:17] this is now glide where the data source is
[00:44:21] that same Airtable base.
[00:44:23] So we look,
[00:44:25] I think better. I think this is a
[00:44:27] a cleaner layout than what I'm capable of
[00:44:30] doing in
[00:44:33] Airtable,
[00:44:35] but I can like
[00:44:37] control some of these other dots.
[00:44:41] But the problem with glide is
[00:44:43] I don't have the particular plan
[00:44:45] that makes
[00:44:46] record updates immediate.
[00:44:47] So I just clicked this minus
[00:44:49] button and it's gonna
[00:44:50] take forever for this to go
[00:44:52] from two dots to one dot
[00:44:54] Then I thought, can I build
[00:44:57] it again somewhere else?
[00:44:59] And then I did. So
[00:45:02] I've been saying that I wanted to try out
[00:45:04] Xano for, for some time
[00:45:06] now, this was the project.
[00:45:08] I decided to give it a go
[00:45:10] with Xano
[00:45:11] is
[00:45:12] an API builder and a database
[00:45:16] that
[00:45:17] I was able to create an instance
[00:45:20] of in order to design it
[00:45:23] again in we web, which is like
[00:45:26] web flow, but more like programmatic.
[00:45:30] And so all of that to say
[00:45:33] I now can go
[00:45:37] and look at this version of
[00:45:40] effectively the same data
[00:45:43] except now this looks
[00:45:46] even closer. The layout is instead
[00:45:48] of vertical, I made it horizontal,
[00:45:50] but that was a,
[00:45:51] you know, a design choice.
[00:45:53] But the reason why I like this one
[00:45:56] the best is because all of these now are
[00:45:58] buttons I can click directly on
[00:46:01] this diamond shape
[00:46:03] and it controls that value
[00:46:07] and then the same thing
[00:46:08] with all of these dots up here.
[00:46:10] Whereas
[00:46:11] back in the Airtable version,
[00:46:14] I had no way of making this clickable.
[00:46:17] This would have to be like
[00:46:18] a separate check box.
[00:46:20] But there's nine of these,
[00:46:21] there's these three, these three
[00:46:23] and these three and I didn't want
[00:46:26] nine check boxes
[00:46:27] in addition to nine rating
[00:46:28] fields.
[00:46:29] In addition to all the other fields,
[00:46:31] it seemed really complex.
[00:46:32] So this is probably going to be
[00:46:35] how I spend my spare time for some time.
[00:46:39] Just trying to figure out
[00:46:41] what is the best way
[00:46:43] to recreate
[00:46:45] this thing
[00:46:47] digitally.
[00:46:49] And so far
[00:46:51] it's been hard.
[00:46:54] It's cool though.
[00:46:56] Yeah, I
[00:46:59] Xano it's, I'll show really quickly
[00:47:03] what
[00:47:04] I like most about
[00:47:06] how I figured it out in Xano.
[00:47:09] If I go look at my base and look at my
[00:47:13] character sheet,
[00:47:15] I have a whole lot of fields
[00:47:18] and
[00:47:19] you have multiple things called drives.
[00:47:22] Each each character has a different
[00:47:25] maximum number of drives
[00:47:27] per drive and then how
[00:47:29] many they have available.
[00:47:31] That sounds really confusing.
[00:47:35] And it's hard to keep track
[00:47:36] of in Airtable
[00:47:37] because each of those has to be a
[00:47:38] separate field. But in Xano
[00:47:40] they have a field type
[00:47:42] for a structured object.
[00:47:44] So if I look at drives,
[00:47:45] I have the three buckets
[00:47:47] that they're under
[00:47:48] and each bucket can have
[00:47:50] a maximum and available and resistance.
[00:47:52] And this is different per character.
[00:47:55] It's structured in like a
[00:47:57] JSON format so that I can have
[00:47:59] one field for drives and then just iterate
[00:48:02] through those versus having,
[00:48:05] you know,
[00:48:06] I think I have
[00:48:07] like five
[00:48:09] no, I have four fields per drive
[00:48:13] and that's
[00:48:14] annoying.
[00:48:15] And one of them is a formula that
[00:48:17] just outputs it prettily
[00:48:24] excellent. Very cool.
[00:48:26] And we web,
[00:48:27] so we web talks to Xano just like a post
[00:48:30] database.
[00:48:31] Yes, it also can
[00:48:33] it a native data source is Airtable.
[00:48:36] So at the end of the
[00:48:37] day, I could build this exact thing
[00:48:40] using Airtable
[00:48:41] as the data source still in we web.
[00:48:44] But I wanted to try out Xano
[00:48:46] and I do really like the
[00:48:48] option of having a
[00:48:49] structured
[00:48:50] JSON
[00:48:51] field type in Xano.
[00:48:54] I wish Airtable kind of had
[00:48:57] either a structured data type
[00:49:00] field type or like plain JSON
[00:49:02] as a field type because I use it all the
[00:49:05] time.
[00:49:06] Yeah.
[00:49:06] Yeah.
[00:49:07] Awesome.
[00:49:09] Thank you for sharing that.
[00:49:11] We'll see how it ends up.
[00:49:13] You'll need to
[00:49:15] show the company behind
[00:49:16] that game, what you're working on.
[00:49:19] I mean, I don't think I'll ever
[00:49:21] get it into a point where it's like,
[00:49:23] hey,
[00:49:24] people, you should use this
[00:49:26] in your actual games.
[00:49:28] I wanna get it to a point
[00:49:29] where it's fully functional
[00:49:31] and it is at this point,
[00:49:32] anything everything
[00:49:34] you see on this page works.
[00:49:35] But like,
[00:49:38] you know, with any game,
[00:49:39] there's so many like,
[00:49:40] I don't wanna have to put
[00:49:42] in all of the rules
[00:49:43] as like automations like,
[00:49:43] oh when you reach this milestone,
[00:49:45] this thing happens.
[00:49:46] I don't want to program
[00:49:47] that I just wanna make
[00:49:49] like any circle you can fill in,
[00:49:52] I want to fill in a bowl
[00:49:53] and that's it. That's where I wanna stop.
[00:49:57] Got you.
[00:49:59] Awesome. Thank you
[00:50:00] Kamille for sharing that.
[00:50:02] Let's move on
[00:50:03] quick shout out to join our community
[00:50:06] at builtonair.com/join
[00:50:07] that will get you into our
[00:50:09] slack community of thousands
[00:50:11] of Airtable users and
[00:50:12] fans
[00:50:13] and people just like you.
[00:50:14] So join us.
[00:50:15] We'd love to have you participate
[00:50:17] and also subscribe to our podcast
[00:50:20] on youtube. We're trying to get that
[00:50:22] subscription count up
[00:50:24] or on your podcast listener as well.
[00:50:27] You can listen to us on your favorite
[00:50:29] podcast.
[00:50:31] Let's move on.
[00:50:33] We're gonna finish up with
[00:50:35] an audience question.
[00:50:36] This question came from Jason G
[00:50:39] in the BuiltOnAir community
[00:50:42] and it involves scripting
[00:50:44] and Jason G says in scripting,
[00:50:46] if I call view dot Select record
[00:50:48] as sync, but one of the record I Ds
[00:50:51] is not in that view, will the entire call
[00:50:54] fail or will it still return
[00:50:56] the rest of the records?
[00:50:59] If you don't know the answer to this,
[00:51:01] what is your guess?
[00:51:02] If you know the answer,
[00:51:04] don't, don't, don't say.
[00:51:06] I don't know the answer.
[00:51:09] I feel like if one is missing,
[00:51:13] I don't know if I would want that
[00:51:15] to be an error. I think I would.
[00:51:16] Well,
[00:51:17] do I want to know
[00:51:19] that it wasn't I don't know.
[00:51:22] I don't, I would throw an
[00:51:24] error handler just in case.
[00:51:25] Yeah.
[00:51:27] Put it
[00:51:28] in
[00:51:28] a patch.
[00:51:29] All right. Let's find out.
[00:51:31] I wasn't sure either.
[00:51:32] My guess initially was that it
[00:51:34] would air out. That was my guess
[00:51:36] that it would throw an error
[00:51:38] saying invalid record, I guess.
[00:51:41] So, let's take a look.
[00:51:43] So I've just got a simple, table.
[00:51:45] This is just called documents.
[00:51:47] That's what it was called.
[00:51:49] And I've got four items here,
[00:51:52] this one I don't need.
[00:51:54] And so in this view,
[00:51:56] I'm showing all of them
[00:51:58] and I've got all my record I Ds
[00:52:00] here exposed. And then in this view,
[00:52:04] I'm hiding two of them.
[00:52:05] So, so A and C are showing.
[00:52:08] So
[00:52:09] what we're gonna do
[00:52:12] over here. So I've got my, my,
[00:52:15] my variables for this is the table ID,
[00:52:18] here's the view ID for the view
[00:52:21] that lists all of them.
[00:52:22] And then here's the view
[00:52:24] ID for the one that
[00:52:25] just lists two of them.
[00:52:26] And then right here,
[00:52:28] here's the list of all of the record I Ds.
[00:52:30] So I get my table from the base.
[00:52:34] So here's, here's a reference
[00:52:36] to the table and then
[00:52:38] here's the reference to the
[00:52:39] view that we're gonna use.
[00:52:41] And then here's the command for
[00:52:44] for selecting the records as
[00:52:47] sync.
[00:52:48] And when I was writing this,
[00:52:50] I could have sworn, it did this change?
[00:52:52] Maybe Kamille, you knew
[00:52:53] I thought that there was one
[00:52:56] parameter for the record I Ds and then,
[00:52:58] and then a second parameter
[00:53:00] for your options.
[00:53:02] And maybe, maybe I'm just making that up.
[00:53:04] But now it's changed to where you pass
[00:53:06] the record I Ds
[00:53:07] in as part of the,
[00:53:09] the object.
[00:53:11] I don't recall that being the case.
[00:53:15] Any time I've used record I Ds,
[00:53:17] which I didn't use for quite some time.
[00:53:19] But I've been using it
[00:53:20] more and more recently.
[00:53:22] It's been a parameter
[00:53:23] of the options object.
[00:53:26] Yeah,
[00:53:26] maybe, yeah, maybe I was
[00:53:29] just hallucinating.
[00:53:31] But
[00:53:32] but anyway, so this is how
[00:53:34] you get the record I Ds.
[00:53:35] And then this is a quick shortcut
[00:53:37] to get all the fields
[00:53:39] so it doesn't complain
[00:53:40] about not specifying the
[00:53:42] the field parameters,
[00:53:43] you just get them all from the
[00:53:45] table.
[00:53:47] And so, and then I'm just just
[00:53:49] out putting them to see what it is.
[00:53:51] So
[00:53:52] this one, I'm gonna run it first
[00:53:54] with all with the view
[00:53:55] that has all of them.
[00:53:56] So this one as you expect should
[00:53:59] return all of them because
[00:54:01] all of those fields are in there.
[00:54:03] So we see we get all four
[00:54:05] back with all four records.
[00:54:08] So now if we change this view
[00:54:10] to be the view sum,
[00:54:13] we'll find out
[00:54:14] if it's gonna throw an error
[00:54:15] gonna return them all or maybe it
[00:54:17] just ignores it. Maybe it says
[00:54:20] if you're asking for all the record I Ds,
[00:54:22] then I'm gonna give you all of them
[00:54:23] regardless of what the view has filtered.
[00:54:26] So those are probably the,
[00:54:27] the three options that it could do
[00:54:31] and
[00:54:32] it returns no error and it just gives
[00:54:34] you the two that are in that view.
[00:54:36] So it actually ignores the other
[00:54:39] two that you're asking for.
[00:54:41] So the filter is what, what
[00:54:43] besides not the record ID
[00:54:45] as being specified.
[00:54:47] Yeah.
[00:54:48] So it basically,
[00:54:49] so this record ID, it says
[00:54:51] return us all record I Ds
[00:54:54] that exist in this view,
[00:54:57] what about if you only
[00:54:59] wanted to see one of the record
[00:55:00] I Ds in that view?
[00:55:02] Then you would need to specify that
[00:55:05] in your list here.
[00:55:07] And
[00:55:08] so I don't only return one?
[00:55:11] Yeah.
[00:55:12] Yeah. If you did this,
[00:55:14] then it would just return
[00:55:15] that one.
[00:55:16] Yeah.
[00:55:17] Now the question is
[00:55:20] question is if the record ID was invalid,
[00:55:24] then it just returns empty.
[00:55:26] So basically treats
[00:55:28] those unknown record I Ds as invalid.
[00:55:32] So if he pats in an invalid record ID,
[00:55:35] it's not gonna throw an error.
[00:55:37] It's gonna just
[00:55:38] assume that, that
[00:55:40] it, it's a search effectively.
[00:55:43] It's like how many results
[00:55:45] match your query.
[00:55:46] In this case, it's
[00:55:47] record ID equals this or
[00:55:50] is one of these and
[00:55:51] if none of them match it,
[00:55:53] then to Airtable, I guess
[00:55:55] that's not an error. It's just none match.
[00:55:59] Yeah. So you do that if you're
[00:56:00] trying to see of all these records,
[00:56:02] which one of them fits this criteria,
[00:56:04] which is the, the filtered view.
[00:56:06] Yeah.
[00:56:07] yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:08] Yeah. So, I wonder if, yeah,
[00:56:10] under the hood it might be
[00:56:12] converting this to a
[00:56:15] a
[00:56:15] filter,
[00:56:18] or a select filter formula
[00:56:21] and it might be saying if record ID
[00:56:25] equals this or if it equals the others,
[00:56:28] that's what we do a lot with,
[00:56:30] when you use the API,
[00:56:31] it doesn't have this where
[00:56:32] you can pass in record I Ds
[00:56:35] to the API,
[00:56:36] you can do a single one where you
[00:56:38] just pass in the single
[00:56:39] record
[00:56:39] to get that.
[00:56:41] But if you are saying return multiple
[00:56:43] like specific record I Ds,
[00:56:46] then you have to use like the
[00:56:49] or, and you say record ID equals
[00:56:52] A or record ID equals B
[00:56:54] and so in that scenario,
[00:56:56] it would work the same.
[00:56:57] So I wonder if it's,
[00:56:58] that's what it's doing under the
[00:56:59] hood.
[00:57:02] So
[00:57:03] that is good to know
[00:57:04] we've solved that mystery.
[00:57:06] So I'll reply back to Jason G
[00:57:07] and let him know that
[00:57:09] mystery is solved.
[00:57:13] Yay.
[00:57:15] We did it
[00:57:18] all right.
[00:57:19] And that concludes
[00:57:22] the season. So we will be back
[00:57:25] in 4 to 5 weeks at the beginning of
[00:57:28] July. So probably
[00:57:30] after the fourth of July.
[00:57:32] Maybe we'll start a week later,
[00:57:35] but excited to see what
[00:57:37] comes out in the next
[00:57:38] couple weeks while we're off
[00:57:40] and thank you all for joining
[00:57:42] and we will see you next time.