10/3/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S16-E01

Duration: 60 minutes

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In This Episode

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

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

Todays Hosts

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

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

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

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:04:15 –

Meet the Creators – 00:33:30 –

Meet Garrett Loughran.

Base Showcase – 00:39:51 –

We dive into a full working base that will Garrett will share how he uses Airtable to manage public works contracts that are extremely competitive.

Automate Create – 00:52:27 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille will share part 1 of a 2 part series on using n8n with Airtable to manage webhooks and refreshing them.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:04:15

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:33:30

Garrett Loughran – Grew up in a family construction business just like my dad and his dad (grandpa). Now working elsewhere where I guess my official job title would be chief estimator/project manager for a general civil engineering contractor. We focus on public works contracts (stuff for cities and counties and government agencies. Not Joe Developers) where projects are competitively bid (meaning 2:00 p.m. on a Thursday you submit a bid and our bid is $1 more than the lowest bid and we are a 'better' company, They have to take the lowest bid because it's public funding)

Meet Garrett Loughran.

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:39:51

Project Bids for Public Works Projects

We dive into a full working base that will Garrett will share how he uses Airtable to manage public works contracts that are extremely competitive.

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:52:27

Airtable Automations – Airtable Webhook Refreshes using n8n

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille will share part 1 of a 2 part series on using n8n with Airtable to manage webhooks and refreshing them.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:44] It's good to be back with you after a
[00:01:46] month off. We are now starting
[00:01:49] season 16, episode one
[00:01:51] of the BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:53] Dan Fellars here with
[00:01:55] regular host Kamille Parks
[00:01:57] and
[00:01:57] Alli Alosa. Good to see both of you back.
[00:02:01] Hello,
[00:02:03] had eventful last September, I assume.
[00:02:07] Oh, yeah.
[00:02:08] Yeah.
[00:02:11] Yes, I have
[00:02:14] and
[00:02:15] Alli will have an eventful October
[00:02:18] with us.
[00:02:19] I will, I'll be here as
[00:02:21] long as I can be here.
[00:02:23] But I am due on Halloween
[00:02:25] with my first baby. So
[00:02:27] exciting stuff.
[00:02:29] So we may get a few
[00:02:31] more episodes, with Alli
[00:02:34] assume you'll take some time off.
[00:02:35] I don't know,
[00:02:36] maybe you'll be back the week
[00:02:37] after.
[00:02:39] We'll see. I might not
[00:02:40] be able to stay away.
[00:02:42] Yeah, we'll see how that goes.
[00:02:43] But good to have you
[00:02:45] both back and we have a
[00:02:46] special guest with us, Garrett.
[00:02:48] Good to have you, Garrett.
[00:02:49] Thank you.
[00:02:51] Good. Good to have you on the show.
[00:02:53] We'll, we'll learn more about Garrett and
[00:02:55] his story later in the show.
[00:02:56] But, I'll walk you through
[00:02:58] what we're gonna be
[00:02:59] talking about today.
[00:03:00] As always, we will continue our,
[00:03:02] our normal format.
[00:03:03] We'll start with our Round
[00:03:05] the Bases
[00:03:05] of what's going on in Airtable.
[00:03:08] This month has been, very active.
[00:03:10] Lots of stuff going on
[00:03:11] that we've got to talk about
[00:03:13] and then we'll do a spotlight on
[00:03:15] On2Air backups. On2Air is now focused
[00:03:18] entirely on backups.
[00:03:20] We have a new screen for this season
[00:03:23] and we'll talk about backups
[00:03:24] and then we'll learn
[00:03:26] more about the Garrett
[00:03:27] Loughran
[00:03:28] is that how you say your last name?
[00:03:31] It's close enough. Loughran
[00:03:33] is how
[00:03:35] to pronounce it, but I'm not
[00:03:36] quite sure where that came from.
[00:03:38] All right, we'll visit with Garrett,
[00:03:40] learn his story and how he found Airtable.
[00:03:42] Then Garret's gonna be walking us
[00:03:45] through a live example of how he
[00:03:47] uses Airtable in his
[00:03:49] day to day business and work
[00:03:51] and then a shout out to
[00:03:53] join our community.
[00:03:54] And then finally Kamille is gonna
[00:03:55] walk through
[00:03:56] using Airtable with n8n.
[00:03:59] If you've heard of that tool,
[00:04:01] n8n.io I believe is the website
[00:04:04] and we'll do that. So
[00:04:07] let's kick off
[00:04:09] with our Round the Bases
[00:04:12] all right.
[00:04:14] There was a
[00:04:15] somewhat
[00:04:19] interesting
[00:04:21] incident that happened.
[00:04:24] Middle of September,
[00:04:26] we got a message from the CEO of Airtable.
[00:04:29] I think it, this first hit Forbes,
[00:04:31] I think was where it first hit
[00:04:33] massive layoffs at Airtable
[00:04:37] 237 people out of what, close to 1000.
[00:04:43] So I think it was
[00:04:45] 27% or something like that. Something
[00:04:48] percent.
[00:04:50] Yeah. So massive massive layoffs,
[00:04:53] mostly impacting
[00:04:55] in implementation specialists,
[00:04:58] sales people
[00:04:59] and really just doubling down focusing
[00:05:02] on Airtable. Howie makes it very
[00:05:04] clear of what their focus is
[00:05:07] going forward and focusing on enterprise
[00:05:11] customers.
[00:05:13] So,
[00:05:15] yeah, very, very unfortunate,
[00:05:17] sad to hear for those that,
[00:05:19] that were let go.
[00:05:21] And there is lots of reaction,
[00:05:23] I'll just quickly go through.
[00:05:25] We won't talk about all of them,
[00:05:27] but lots of reaction
[00:05:29] about that. Lots of discussion
[00:05:31] on the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:05:33] There was
[00:05:35] oh, that's not live anymore.
[00:05:38] Ben and Chris did a live show
[00:05:41] talking about it on
[00:05:42] the Facebook community.
[00:05:46] It was discussed on the Airtable forums.
[00:05:48] We'll talk a little bit about this
[00:05:50] later. But anyways, lots of
[00:05:52] discussion obviously everywhere.
[00:05:54] Thoughts, reaction
[00:05:56] when you heard this news?
[00:05:58] Since the links not live anymore,
[00:06:01] I can, I watched it and I might be able to
[00:06:03] paraphrase a little bit of what the
[00:06:05] Ben and Chris live stream was.
[00:06:07] I don't want to put words in their mouth,
[00:06:09] but what I recall from their sort of
[00:06:11] analysis is that
[00:06:13] one, this isn't the first time Airtable
[00:06:15] has said we're gonna focus on
[00:06:16] enterprise. They said it last year
[00:06:18] and I think it was also coupled with some
[00:06:19] layoffs and this
[00:06:20] was coupled with even more layoffs
[00:06:22] and we're gonna even more focus on
[00:06:25] enterprise. And so Chris was saying,
[00:06:27] he wasn't really surprised and that,
[00:06:29] you know, he's been saying it
[00:06:31] for a while now they're gonna gung
[00:06:32] ho on enterprise. And Ben was saying
[00:06:35] this might end up being a blessing
[00:06:37] in disguise
[00:06:38] for the people on the consulting
[00:06:39] side and Airtable, meaning that,
[00:06:42] you know,
[00:06:43] you can't get support from Airtable
[00:06:45] now, if you're on the team's plan,
[00:06:46] formerly known as the pro plan,
[00:06:48] so who are you gonna come to?
[00:06:50] The Airtable consultants. And so
[00:06:52] it's gonna shift a lot of people
[00:06:54] to be more focused on that.
[00:06:56] They also sort of
[00:06:57] quelled some fears about the
[00:06:59] api limitations that were put on it.
[00:07:01] It was really kind of
[00:07:04] no, it's their opinion
[00:07:06] and opinion of many people that
[00:07:08] there's certain types of businesses
[00:07:10] that are going to be hit by the API limit.
[00:07:12] And
[00:07:13] the a good majority of Airtable users
[00:07:16] your day to day kind of folks and the
[00:07:18] smaller sort of businesses
[00:07:20] that don't have a lot of third party
[00:07:22] integrations are
[00:07:23] probably going to be fine
[00:07:25] with regard to the new api limitations.
[00:07:27] And so those were some of the
[00:07:29] sentiments thrown around and of course,
[00:07:31] you know, from a more negative side,
[00:07:33] it sucks when people lose their job.
[00:07:35] It, you know, it's just not great that
[00:07:38] it was a considerable amount of people.
[00:07:40] There was,
[00:07:42] you know, talk on linkedin every,
[00:07:44] you know, all of the people
[00:07:46] who were recently
[00:07:46] laid off, but there's some good
[00:07:49] camaraderie in like the
[00:07:51] Post Airtable Alumni
[00:07:53] program. I'm just gonna call it
[00:07:55] because they all sort of are grouping
[00:07:57] together and trying to help each other
[00:07:59] refocus. So.
[00:08:05] Any other feedback?
[00:08:08] Super sad.
[00:08:11] I know a lot of clients that this,
[00:08:13] this made them pretty nervous to see,
[00:08:15] especially on top of the layoffs,
[00:08:17] layoffs that happened in December.
[00:08:20] I can only hope that
[00:08:23] we had to see some positives
[00:08:25] out of it somehow.
[00:08:27] But
[00:08:28] yeah, I feel for everybody
[00:08:30] that was laid off,
[00:08:32] it feels like the positives are going
[00:08:34] to be on the side of, you know,
[00:08:36] the, the enterprise level customers
[00:08:38] because that's,
[00:08:38] that's where they're saying
[00:08:39] they're gonna put a lot of focus
[00:08:41] and effort into.
[00:08:42] There's gotta be a lot of,
[00:08:44] in my opinion, improvements for
[00:08:46] Airtable as an enterprise product
[00:08:48] for me to take this with,
[00:08:50] you know,
[00:08:51] the seriousness it might
[00:08:53] deserve in that
[00:08:55] they've made improvements this year
[00:08:57] with enterprise hub and things like that
[00:08:59] for bulk user management.
[00:09:01] But as an enterprise product,
[00:09:03] there are several
[00:09:04] elements that are still lacking
[00:09:06] and I feel like this move,
[00:09:08] feels immature had
[00:09:09] been made
[00:09:10] more not immature.
[00:09:12] What is it premature,
[00:09:14] sorry, premature.
[00:09:18] Had they made some of those more
[00:09:20] improvements,
[00:09:21] improving it as a product for
[00:09:22] enterprise. This would have it made
[00:09:24] more sense to me now. It just feels like,
[00:09:27] oh, we're gonna focus
[00:09:28] on enterprise eventually. Well,
[00:09:31] it's, there's some of the language in,
[00:09:34] there was a Forbes article where they
[00:09:36] had some quotes from Howie where
[00:09:38] it was a little like, ok, like,
[00:09:40] they basically were like,
[00:09:42] we're not interested
[00:09:42] in the tens of thousands a year clients,
[00:09:44] we're interested in the million dollar
[00:09:46] a year clients.
[00:09:47] It's like, ok, well,
[00:09:49] I can understand that to a point, but
[00:09:51] to Kamille's point,
[00:09:53] they're, they're not quite,
[00:09:55] there's a lot missing for them
[00:09:57] to be a true
[00:09:58] million dollar a year enterprise
[00:10:00] product, like a lot of security
[00:10:02] compliance and record limits.
[00:10:04] That's like huge.
[00:10:07] But hopefully we see those
[00:10:09] things start to change.
[00:10:11] Yeah.
[00:10:12] What,
[00:10:13] what would you say to SNB
[00:10:16] business owners that are
[00:10:19] considering Airtable or on Airtable?
[00:10:22] How do, how, what, what advice would
[00:10:24] you have to people in that kind of bucket
[00:10:26] as far as like using Airtable? And
[00:10:28] Garrett maybe this is a question for you
[00:10:31] as a, somebody in that space?
[00:10:32] How does this make you
[00:10:34] feel long term stability wise?
[00:10:37] Comfort level,
[00:10:40] I think with any software,
[00:10:43] any, you know,
[00:10:45] service as a software, if you will.
[00:10:49] I get kind of nervous
[00:10:51] like I just assume it's not gonna last,
[00:10:53] like my entire career. So
[00:10:58] I
[00:10:58] expect it
[00:10:59] Yeah,
[00:11:00] it, it, it's,
[00:11:02] it's in a weird place for me
[00:11:04] because it's not like Airtable
[00:11:06] is a poor product.
[00:11:07] It does a lot of things very well
[00:11:10] and I think it's better suited for small
[00:11:12] business, even if that's not
[00:11:14] who their target customer is anymore.
[00:11:17] I think it is still a good product for,
[00:11:20] launching and prototyping
[00:11:22] businesses and, and
[00:11:24] different workflows
[00:11:25] and things using Airtable.
[00:11:27] But it is unwise to put all your eggs
[00:11:30] in one basket. Because,
[00:11:32] you know, in the world of tech,
[00:11:35] sometimes companies just disappear.
[00:11:36] I see we have some tabs lined up
[00:11:39] for the artist, formerly
[00:11:40] known as Twitter and
[00:11:41] sometimes companies
[00:11:43] make odd decisions. And so,
[00:11:45] you know,
[00:11:46] if you're starting, you know,
[00:11:48] if you don't already use
[00:11:49] Airtable and you're
[00:11:50] starting,
[00:11:51] I wouldn't discourage you
[00:11:53] from learning, but I would,
[00:11:54] you know, advice from Bill French
[00:11:56] who's a friend of the show
[00:11:58] is to really think
[00:11:59] critically about what your
[00:12:01] business requirements are.
[00:12:02] What do you need for your business
[00:12:04] and try to find the
[00:12:06] best tool or tools that
[00:12:07] get you to that point.
[00:12:08] A lot of the time is gonna be Airtable.
[00:12:11] Sometimes it's not gonna be Airtable
[00:12:14] and whatever you decide upon,
[00:12:15] make sure you got some contingencies
[00:12:18] in place in case they start
[00:12:20] saying things like this,
[00:12:21] we're not your target customer anymore.
[00:12:24] You know,
[00:12:25] you wanna be mobile agile
[00:12:28] and other quotes from
[00:12:30] I believe
[00:12:31] I'm thinking of.
[00:12:33] Remember the Titans.
[00:12:37] Very good.
[00:12:38] Scott mentioned Steve Job knew the way
[00:12:41] to take over an industry was to focus
[00:12:43] on small businesses and individuals
[00:12:44] iphone took over enterprise
[00:12:46] from the bottom
[00:12:46] up.
[00:12:49] So, yeah, so anyways,
[00:12:52] lots of, lots of reaction.
[00:12:54] I know, I know Chris, I also listened to,
[00:12:57] to the episode and Chris had,
[00:12:59] Chris kind of like settled down fears.
[00:13:02] He was like,
[00:13:03] you know, I, I wouldn't worry
[00:13:05] too much. I think there will be clarity
[00:13:09] going forward hopefully.
[00:13:11] So the next thing I first saw this on,
[00:13:15] shout out to Table Forums,
[00:13:17] a great online source
[00:13:19] to see conversations about Airtable.
[00:13:22] And Bill French,
[00:13:24] who you talked about Kamille,
[00:13:26] he likes to pontificate often
[00:13:29] and shout out to his,
[00:13:31] his blog and newsletter. If you want to
[00:13:36] get the latest from, from his brain,
[00:13:38] you should, you should subscribe to that.
[00:13:40] But
[00:13:41] this, this kind of was an interesting take
[00:13:43] and it led me down kind of a rabbit
[00:13:45] hole and we'll talk a little bit
[00:13:47] about this.
[00:13:47] So he wrote,
[00:13:49] he wrote a blog post talking about
[00:13:51] the financials
[00:13:52] of what's publicly available
[00:13:54] and what we know and what it might
[00:13:56] mean for Airtable.
[00:13:58] And so he references first the all in
[00:14:01] podcast, which is a very popular tech
[00:14:03] podcast of some venture
[00:14:06] capitalists and entrepreneurs
[00:14:09] in the Silicon Valley world.
[00:14:11] Talking about Airtable specifically and
[00:14:13] referencing a Twitter
[00:14:15] thread or a, an X thread
[00:14:18] from Anand
[00:14:19] who runs CB insights,
[00:14:22] so very, very influential financial
[00:14:26] person that
[00:14:29] that
[00:14:31] is talking about this.
[00:14:32] And he ran an analysis based off
[00:14:35] of a number that he got from somewhere
[00:14:38] that Airtable's ARR was 100 and 50 million
[00:14:43] and based off of that number
[00:14:44] did some analysis
[00:14:46] that basically showed that it may
[00:14:47] not even be worth,
[00:14:49] you know, 1/10 of what it was
[00:14:51] last valued at its last round.
[00:14:53] Last investment round where
[00:14:55] it is valued almost at $12 billion.
[00:14:58] So there is some interesting back
[00:15:00] and forth here.
[00:15:01] If you go through this thread,
[00:15:02] lots of responses. This is somebody that,
[00:15:04] you know, is influential in the world
[00:15:06] of investing. And so he got
[00:15:09] feedback from people.
[00:15:12] One of them was Max who
[00:15:14] is actually on the board of Airtable
[00:15:17] and basically said this
[00:15:18] is wildly inaccurate data
[00:15:20] and sent him a DM to talk about it.
[00:15:24] So then
[00:15:25] Anand responded and based off of
[00:15:28] that gave some more updated information.
[00:15:32] Actually, this is,
[00:15:35] let's see, where's
[00:15:42] shoot. This is not the one.
[00:15:49] Yeah, he gives an updated analysis
[00:15:52] here.
[00:15:54] No, shoot. He did give an update
[00:15:56] analysis using a number
[00:15:58] more around 300 million.
[00:16:00] So, but he doesn't say if he got
[00:16:02] that directly from Max, he says,
[00:16:03] Max couldn't share specifics.
[00:16:05] So
[00:16:06] based off of the feedback that he got,
[00:16:09] I also saw comments in there from
[00:16:11] current Airtable
[00:16:14] employees saying that the
[00:16:16] numbers were wildly wrong.
[00:16:18] And so somewhere there's
[00:16:21] you know, numbers floating out there of,
[00:16:23] of what their numbers might be.
[00:16:24] But
[00:16:25] assuming based off it is updated
[00:16:27] that it might be closer to 300 million
[00:16:29] that still gives a pretty high valuation,
[00:16:32] but not nearly as bad as,
[00:16:33] as the original analysis. So
[00:16:35] anyways, lots of discussion,
[00:16:37] there was another thread
[00:16:38] of somebody else who kind
[00:16:39] of
[00:16:40] gives a counter example based off
[00:16:43] of his understanding of secondary markets
[00:16:46] and
[00:16:46] where things are at. So anyways,
[00:16:48] lots of discussion in the Twitter verse
[00:16:51] verse of
[00:16:53] where things are at, how bad it is.
[00:16:56] You know what the layoffs might be
[00:16:58] indicating as far as the stability of
[00:17:01] Airtable.
[00:17:01] So and, and what their plans are, but
[00:17:04] you know, nobody knows the truth,
[00:17:06] nobody's come out
[00:17:07] definitively of where things
[00:17:08] are at. But
[00:17:09] quite a lot of discussion.
[00:17:14] If you, if you like that stuff,
[00:17:16] you know, feel free to,
[00:17:17] to follow all this on
[00:17:18] Twitter, we'll have the links.
[00:17:21] But also Bill French has a good write up
[00:17:25] if you want to follow his,
[00:17:27] his discussions as well.
[00:17:29] And there's also some
[00:17:31] discussion on TableForums.
[00:17:34] All right.
[00:17:35] Any comments on that, any thoughts there?
[00:17:40] Interested to see what happens next.
[00:17:43] If they're overvalued
[00:17:45] and wanna match that valuation,
[00:17:47] you would probably want to go after
[00:17:50] very large contracts to sort of
[00:17:52] get the revenue and that would
[00:17:54] be enterprise customers. So,
[00:17:56] you know,
[00:17:57] from an outside perspective,
[00:17:59] I can see that logic in terms of,
[00:18:02] I would probably wanna make more money.
[00:18:04] Let's go after enterprise clients,
[00:18:06] which they could have arrived at,
[00:18:07] even if they were valued at what they are,
[00:18:10] you know,
[00:18:11] how much they should be valued at
[00:18:13] or whatever that is, should,
[00:18:15] feels weird in a financial sense.
[00:18:17] But like,
[00:18:18] you know, they probably would have
[00:18:20] went that way eventually anyway,
[00:18:21] but they might have gone
[00:18:23] that way now because,
[00:18:24] you know, maybe they wanna hit
[00:18:26] certain numbers and in order to do that,
[00:18:28] you need larger contracts,
[00:18:31] I think it's also an indicator of just,
[00:18:34] you know,
[00:18:35] when they raised their funding,
[00:18:37] the markets were just crazy hot
[00:18:40] with just tons of cash flow
[00:18:42] being thrown at
[00:18:42] these companies. Notion,
[00:18:44] I know also raised at a crazy valuation
[00:18:47] and it was almost like
[00:18:49] free money to them. But,
[00:18:50] you know, there's no such thing
[00:18:52] as a free lunch.
[00:18:53] Like now it's coming back to
[00:18:54] where now they've got to live up
[00:18:56] to that target
[00:18:57] valuation that they raised that.
[00:18:59] And so they're trying to figure out
[00:19:01] how to, how to live up to that number.
[00:19:03] And
[00:19:04] so that's just the reality of,
[00:19:06] of raising at that, at that high of a,
[00:19:09] you know, price and,
[00:19:11] and the money isn't flowing
[00:19:12] nearly as, as freely now and,
[00:19:14] and
[00:19:14] so the revenue isn't coming,
[00:19:16] I'm sure as easily as it was before.
[00:19:18] And, and so that's what led to
[00:19:21] all the changes.
[00:19:23] And I think we're gonna see more
[00:19:25] of this in venture capital
[00:19:26] world in, in Silicon Valley.
[00:19:31] So,
[00:19:32] all right, let's move on.
[00:19:37] This was actually kind of a follow up.
[00:19:39] There is actually some product,
[00:19:41] updates and this is, this is just kind of
[00:19:44] one follow up to the pricing.
[00:19:46] You kind of alluded to a Kamille that,
[00:19:49] the limits on, on API S
[00:19:52] one question is, is when are they
[00:19:54] gonna start implementing this?
[00:19:55] And this has been asked a lot as far as,
[00:19:59] you know, how do we even track it?
[00:20:01] And basically the consensus is their
[00:20:03] Airtable
[00:20:04] doesn't disclose, doesn't show you
[00:20:06] how many API calls you're actually
[00:20:09] using
[00:20:10] and until they do they're not gonna
[00:20:12] really enforce it.
[00:20:13] So I think these are kind
[00:20:15] of considered soft limits
[00:20:16] unless it's being abused.
[00:20:18] That's kind of the language I've seen
[00:20:20] is if somebody's really abusing it,
[00:20:22] then they might,
[00:20:23] you know, shut it off
[00:20:24] and because they have that clause now,
[00:20:26] but for the most part,
[00:20:28] I think people are safe
[00:20:30] in how they've been using it for,
[00:20:32] for now.
[00:20:34] I wish they would just tell us though,
[00:20:37] even, even if just now for before the
[00:20:39] limit is put in place,
[00:20:41] it's nice to track where your
[00:20:43] API calls are coming from
[00:20:45] too because you might have hooked up
[00:20:47] several different services.
[00:20:48] And I was in a thread with again,
[00:20:51] Bill French and others
[00:20:53] that were speculating if you had
[00:20:56] a, a website powered by Airtable
[00:20:58] using a portal software
[00:21:00] such as like Softr
[00:21:02] or glide or stacker, et cetera.
[00:21:05] That's calling the API.
[00:21:07] How are they calling the API?
[00:21:09] Are they cache
[00:21:10] things? So it's calling less often
[00:21:12] when are they cache?
[00:21:14] Is it on every page load
[00:21:15] or is it just on updates?
[00:21:17] Is there a standard refresh
[00:21:19] time? Some of that is probably
[00:21:21] buried somewhere in their text.
[00:21:22] But it's
[00:21:23] good to just log in and see
[00:21:26] for my Airtable instance, I've done
[00:21:29] 200 calls today and 100 are from stacker
[00:21:32] and 10 are from the different make
[00:21:34] scenarios I have and blah,
[00:21:36] blah, blah, blah. So,
[00:21:38] you know, I would like that sort of
[00:21:41] visibility in the software now.
[00:21:45] Yeah, hopefully,
[00:21:46] hopefully they're thinking
[00:21:48] along those lines.
[00:21:51] Yeah.
[00:21:52] All right.
[00:21:54] OK. A couple feature. This one,
[00:21:57] I don't know if this is a bug or what not,
[00:21:59] but I've never seen this that,
[00:22:01] so this is the
[00:22:02] attachment viewer
[00:22:04] was giving a view limit exceeded.
[00:22:07] I'd never seen a view limit
[00:22:10] on the viewer itself
[00:22:12] and this file was only 18 K.
[00:22:14] So something's weird here that this
[00:22:16] might have been a bug. I don't know,
[00:22:17] Marcus, if you're watching,
[00:22:19] let us know if you're still seeing this.
[00:22:22] I hope that's a bug.
[00:22:24] I've never seen it before.
[00:22:26] I don't know what limit
[00:22:27] it could possibly be
[00:22:28] referencing.
[00:22:30] I, I, I'm baffled at this one.
[00:22:35] Yeah. Maybe this was like a,
[00:22:37] an add on or something like an
[00:22:39] extension because that icon is not
[00:22:41] a Airtable icon. It's weird.
[00:22:46] I like Bill's comment there
[00:22:48] after,
[00:22:49] Marcus said since when
[00:22:51] does this exist and
[00:22:53] since right now, apparently, yeah,
[00:22:57] there's a new limit.
[00:22:58] You'll have to start tracking Kamille
[00:23:01] in your, in your database.
[00:23:03] Well, no, I don't wanna.
[00:23:06] Yeah, nobody else
[00:23:08] has seen it. So it's possible
[00:23:10] maybe it's coming from a
[00:23:12] chrome extension or
[00:23:13] something. I don't know.
[00:23:15] That's interesting.
[00:23:16] Yeah.
[00:23:17] So
[00:23:18] we'll see if that keeps coming.
[00:23:20] All right, some new functionality.
[00:23:22] So this came out
[00:23:23] the ability to change the primary need.
[00:23:27] So this is kind of cool.
[00:23:29] So if you right click
[00:23:31] on the primary field,
[00:23:32] there's now a change primary field option
[00:23:35] and you can switch it
[00:23:36] and it basically just swaps them
[00:23:38] and that sets the new field
[00:23:41] as your first primary one on the left.
[00:23:45] Yes. I think the previous workaround
[00:23:47] would have been to like duplicate the
[00:23:49] column, including the cell values.
[00:23:52] The column being your primary field and
[00:23:55] then change your primary field
[00:23:57] to whatever you wanted it to be.
[00:23:59] And now you can do that,
[00:24:01] it doesn't change the field I DS.
[00:24:03] So
[00:24:04] you're working with the same column,
[00:24:06] they're just visually
[00:24:07] in a different order.
[00:24:09] And in
[00:24:11] Airtable fashion, small seemingly
[00:24:14] random updates are sort of,
[00:24:17] come in conjunction with other
[00:24:19] updates that kind of like rely on
[00:24:21] each other in something that I noticed
[00:24:23] somewhat recently.
[00:24:24] And I don't know if it's been
[00:24:25] pointed out yet,
[00:24:26] you can change an existing table,
[00:24:29] a regular table into a synced table,
[00:24:32] so long as the primary field
[00:24:34] is not a formula
[00:24:35] and it's not already being synced
[00:24:37] somewhere else. So
[00:24:40] in conjunction to this feature,
[00:24:41] if you have a primary field,
[00:24:42] that's a formula,
[00:24:43] you can swap it out with something else
[00:24:46] and then change the whole table into a
[00:24:47] synced table. So
[00:24:49] two of those things somewhat recently
[00:24:51] added that can work together.
[00:24:53] It's pretty, this is a like a
[00:24:54] quality of life improvement.
[00:24:58] Interesting.
[00:25:01] Yeah. So that's definitely helpful though.
[00:25:03] Not quite, Mal, you might be watching.
[00:25:06] Wanted more, wanted it to go deeper as
[00:25:08] far as how you, how it's used
[00:25:11] in link fields and whatnot.
[00:25:14] All right, I think we have one more
[00:25:16] or we have a couple more array slice
[00:25:18] apparently is a new function
[00:25:20] that's now added. And there's, it's,
[00:25:21] there's documentation for it.
[00:25:24] Anybody use that yet?
[00:25:26] I have
[00:25:27] they previously added for look up fields
[00:25:32] include only the first or last
[00:25:35] and then a variable number oftentimes one.
[00:25:38] So you can of all the look up or roll
[00:25:40] up values that you're going to receive,
[00:25:43] you can sort of shorten it down to
[00:25:45] some
[00:25:45] fixed number.
[00:25:48] very useful if you are supposed
[00:25:50] to only see one value.
[00:25:52] But for whatever reason, you're,
[00:25:54] you're seeing multiple,
[00:25:55] you can now say just
[00:25:56] give me the first one or give me
[00:25:58] the last one
[00:25:59] or alternatively give me the first
[00:26:01] six
[00:26:02] if, if six was a valuable number to you,
[00:26:05] so very useful. But to Bill's point
[00:26:07] still, no split function which would
[00:26:09] take a string and turn it into an array.
[00:26:12] We can only turn arrays
[00:26:13] into strings, which is
[00:26:15] unfortunate.
[00:26:17] Yeah,
[00:26:18] and no sorting either
[00:26:19] sorting would make this
[00:26:20] powerful. I, I want there to
[00:26:22] be sorting but there isn't.
[00:26:26] Yeah, I and I wish on top of the,
[00:26:28] I like how you can grab the
[00:26:30] most, you know,
[00:26:31] the last or the first option
[00:26:33] in a look up field.
[00:26:34] But I would love if you could
[00:26:36] like unique-ify
[00:26:37] them and say just give me
[00:26:40] only the unique ones
[00:26:43] because
[00:26:44] you can do array unique
[00:26:46] certainly. But with a look up field,
[00:26:48] I mean, because then you can
[00:26:50] keep the look and feel of the
[00:26:51] like single select
[00:26:53] if you're looking that up.
[00:26:54] For example,
[00:26:55] I feel as though that lookups
[00:26:57] and roll ups should be the same.
[00:26:59] They're really,
[00:27:01] there's not much use to having
[00:27:03] two separate fields. Just you,
[00:27:05] you're just conditionally
[00:27:06] applying a formula.
[00:27:08] So I just,
[00:27:09] I don't know
[00:27:11] But yes, I, I would like to have
[00:27:13] unique lookups
[00:27:14] and for both lookups and roll
[00:27:16] ups, I would like to be able to sort.
[00:27:18] Yeah.
[00:27:19] Yeah.
[00:27:21] All right.
[00:27:22] What else we got? Russell brings up
[00:27:26] preview added to timeline settings.
[00:27:30] So now you can customize,
[00:27:33] is this one that you talked about?
[00:27:35] Kamille? Was this in your updates last
[00:27:38] season?
[00:27:39] Yes. So there were updates to the
[00:27:42] timeline view that they've been slowly
[00:27:45] but surely adding just more and more
[00:27:48] to the timeline view. This was somewhat
[00:27:51] related.
[00:27:53] Previously in an interface,
[00:27:56] you could click on a timeline block
[00:28:01] and if you had
[00:28:02] the timeline set to editable,
[00:28:05] it would show
[00:28:06] a little preview box of certain
[00:28:08] fields
[00:28:10] that were kind of like
[00:28:13] it was, it was difficult to determine
[00:28:15] which fields it showed you
[00:28:18] in that little preview box.
[00:28:19] And if you clicked expand,
[00:28:20] it would open up a side
[00:28:21] sheet if you had that enabled.
[00:28:23] If you turned timeline edit ability off
[00:28:26] the pop-up wouldn't show up and it
[00:28:29] would only open the site sheet,
[00:28:31] which is my preferred method.
[00:28:32] And then this came along that makes it
[00:28:35] easier to select which fields show up
[00:28:37] in the pop up. My question underneath
[00:28:40] Russell's announcement is,
[00:28:41] can you turn it off entirely?
[00:28:43] You can if you set all
[00:28:45] of the fields to hidden.
[00:28:46] So
[00:28:48] it's, it's useful, it just kind of
[00:28:50] happened out of nowhere. And so it kind of
[00:28:52] broke some of my work flows
[00:28:53] until I saw how to turn it off
[00:28:55] because it's not
[00:28:56] really,
[00:28:56] it doesn't tell you that you
[00:28:57] just have to hide them all and,
[00:28:58] and trust the system.
[00:29:01] There you go.
[00:29:03] Good insights learned first here,
[00:29:05] I think we might have one more.
[00:29:12] So this one, Scott brings up searching
[00:29:15] in automations
[00:29:17] and other people brought up
[00:29:18] other things that you could search for.
[00:29:20] Basically Tasha talking about,
[00:29:22] if you're in automation looking for
[00:29:24] data, you can search by the field type.
[00:29:27] So you can type in
[00:29:29] check box or single select
[00:29:32] and it will return all fields
[00:29:35] of that type.
[00:29:37] So I think it's been there
[00:29:38] a while but good refresher.
[00:29:42] Very nice.
[00:29:44] Yep. Yep.
[00:29:46] All right.
[00:29:48] Let's see. Okay, meta API.
[00:29:51] This is one for developers.
[00:29:55] If you, if you use the meta API,
[00:29:58] they now have access to the formula
[00:30:02] information.
[00:30:06] And let's see, this was right
[00:30:08] at the end of August. So the, the
[00:30:14] there we go formula column type.
[00:30:16] So now you can actually
[00:30:18] get the entire formula
[00:30:19] value
[00:30:20] in the met
[00:30:21] API. So that's new
[00:30:24] and it looks like there's
[00:30:25] even a new one. I didn't
[00:30:28] didn't see
[00:30:30] now returns the id
[00:30:31] of the containing workspace. Actually,
[00:30:34] this is very useful.
[00:30:37] So if you're hitting the base,
[00:30:39] it will give you the, the workspace ID.
[00:30:41] That's actually I was looking for that a
[00:30:43] few weeks ago. So that is good to know
[00:30:47] some more meta information.
[00:30:53] All right, I think that ends it.
[00:30:56] Real quick. Are you, this was a survey
[00:30:59] Hannah put together color coded
[00:31:01] options or standard gray?
[00:31:03] So when you're creating like multi
[00:31:05] select, do you just use all the gray
[00:31:08] colors or do you create different colors
[00:31:10] for each option?
[00:31:13] Color
[00:31:14] for sure.
[00:31:15] It depends on how many options.
[00:31:18] If it's like
[00:31:19] seven or more,
[00:31:21] just gray because I, you know,
[00:31:23] because then I want the colors to mean
[00:31:25] something. But if I have two
[00:31:26] very similar reds, what does that mean?
[00:31:29] Gray,
[00:31:30] if it's less or fewer, rather,
[00:31:33] you know, I'll put some color,
[00:31:34] I'll, I'll try to make the colors
[00:31:36] relevant as
[00:31:36] well.
[00:31:38] Yeah.
[00:31:38] Yeah.
[00:31:38] Yeah, I'm with Kamille. If the
[00:31:40] colors indicate what, you know,
[00:31:43] the option is, then colors like
[00:31:45] you to do or done.
[00:31:48] But if it's just random colors, no.
[00:31:52] Yeah,
[00:31:53] very good. Yeah,
[00:31:54] I'm probably the same. It depends.
[00:31:57] All right, let's move on.
[00:31:58] We've got a busy show today,
[00:32:00] so we'll move on but
[00:32:00] definitely lots of updates
[00:32:03] of what's new in the Airtable world.
[00:32:05] That's the latest on Round the Bases.
[00:32:09] We'll move on to On2Air
[00:32:10] Backups.
[00:32:11] It's the premium solution to make sure
[00:32:14] that your data is backed up outside of
[00:32:16] Airtable,
[00:32:17] which is following best practices
[00:32:19] in the backup world.
[00:32:21] So for today, we're gonna highlight
[00:32:23] actually, for the next couple of weeks,
[00:32:24] we'll highlight a new article
[00:32:26] put together by Hannah
[00:32:28] who
[00:32:28] runs our marketing on Airtable
[00:32:30] snapshots and everything you need to know
[00:32:32] about how Airtable uses snapshots.
[00:32:36] And so this is useful if you've never
[00:32:39] had to use snapshots,
[00:32:41] that's probably a good thing.
[00:32:42] Means you didn't
[00:32:44] you know, have bad data enter your,
[00:32:46] your workspace that you need to clean up.
[00:32:48] But this is all the tools and how you can
[00:32:51] use backups and then also how you
[00:32:53] can use On2Air if you want to
[00:32:56] restore from your data
[00:32:58] stored outside of Airtable
[00:33:00] the ways that you can do that as well.
[00:33:02] But typically
[00:33:04] using the snapshots is probably
[00:33:06] the easiest Airtable
[00:33:07] has access to all your
[00:33:08] data.
[00:33:09] And so we actually recommend
[00:33:11] using that as your first
[00:33:13] starting point if you,
[00:33:15] if you need to go back to historical data.
[00:33:19] But yeah, so check out
[00:33:21] On2Air on2air.com
[00:33:22] and make sure you're backing up
[00:33:24] your data using On2Air.
[00:33:28] OK. Now we're gonna learn about Garrett
[00:33:31] and how he came into this world of
[00:33:33] Airtable.
[00:33:36] Awesome. Welcome Garrett.
[00:33:38] Thank you for having me.
[00:33:41] Of course, of course.
[00:33:44] I've seen your name in a couple
[00:33:45] of the communities. I think that you're in
[00:33:47] the BuiltOnAir Slack. Is that correct?
[00:33:50] I, I
[00:33:52] think I'm a member but I don't go on
[00:33:55] there often but I do comment on,
[00:33:57] on the live stream
[00:33:59] quite often.
[00:34:00] All right. That's where
[00:34:01] I've seen your name for sure.
[00:34:03] Awesome. How long have
[00:34:04] you been using Airtable?
[00:34:08] Honestly, I don't even know.
[00:34:11] I think kind of when I 1st 1st started,
[00:34:14] you know, I was using Google Sheets and,
[00:34:18] always kind of love
[00:34:20] software and
[00:34:22] I think I found it on
[00:34:23] product hunt one day and,
[00:34:25] didn't really have a use case for it.
[00:34:28] Just kind of was messing around and
[00:34:30] slowly started
[00:34:32] migrating some of the uses that I was
[00:34:36] you know, using Google Sheets for and
[00:34:39] kind of
[00:34:40] fell in love with it.
[00:34:41] A previous employer,
[00:34:43] I would pay for my own
[00:34:46] pro plan because I like using it
[00:34:48] so much even if it was just for me.
[00:34:50] So
[00:34:52] awesome.
[00:34:53] And what industry is that,
[00:34:54] that you're using it in?
[00:34:56] So we,
[00:34:58] we're a public works general,
[00:35:01] civil engineering contractor.
[00:35:03] So what that means
[00:35:04] is like
[00:35:05] just
[00:35:06] when you see guys out on the road working,
[00:35:09] that's kind of what we do.
[00:35:12] And the public works sector is like,
[00:35:14] you know, your counties,
[00:35:15] your cities,
[00:35:17] government agencies.
[00:35:19] So
[00:35:21] what I mainly use it for
[00:35:23] is to track projects for bidding,
[00:35:25] because we do like competitive bidding. So
[00:35:29] the city or government will advertise
[00:35:32] a project on their website or
[00:35:35] in the newspaper back in the day.
[00:35:37] And
[00:35:39] pretty much if you have a
[00:35:41] contractor's license, you can bid on it.
[00:35:45] And so
[00:35:46] there's really no
[00:35:48] set like place to kind of aggregate.
[00:35:53] there's a couple like plan,
[00:35:55] they're called plan rooms
[00:35:56] where they try to
[00:35:57] aggregate. But
[00:35:58] oftentimes I'm having to,
[00:36:00] you know, supplement that
[00:36:02] by going to the city's
[00:36:03] website and trying to find,
[00:36:06] yeah,
[00:36:08] I used to be an urban planner
[00:36:10] and I distinctly remember
[00:36:12] going after project bids
[00:36:13] and, yeah, some, some of them are
[00:36:16] directly on the city's websites and
[00:36:18] you're based out of California.
[00:36:20] And so am I,
[00:36:20] we have a lot of different cities
[00:36:22] in California. So
[00:36:23] imagine having to check all
[00:36:25] of these different cities.
[00:36:26] And then there are
[00:36:27] certain websites
[00:36:28] that do aggregate, but it's like
[00:36:30] when not in the, the industry,
[00:36:32] it's like if you were to apply to a job,
[00:36:34] some of them are on linkedin
[00:36:35] and some of them are just not
[00:36:37] somewhere.
[00:36:38] And yeah, Airtable
[00:36:39] seems like a good place to
[00:36:41] put them all in.
[00:36:42] Is that something that you
[00:36:44] organized yourself? Or
[00:36:46] was it like you guys kind of had something
[00:36:48] in Google sheets and then,
[00:36:50] you know, you just kind of slowly
[00:36:52] but surely transitioned it to Airtable?
[00:36:54] Yeah, I mean,
[00:36:56] like previous employers,
[00:36:58] some would just have a big whiteboard with
[00:37:01] job bidding. Some,
[00:37:03] you know, there would be a
[00:37:05] person if let's say I found a job,
[00:37:07] just kind of email
[00:37:08] where like the information
[00:37:09] is found and then one person would
[00:37:12] kind of put it in a Google sheet and,
[00:37:14] or, you know, an Excel document,
[00:37:16] print it out daily
[00:37:18] and give it to, you know,
[00:37:20] all the estimators. But
[00:37:23] yeah, just there's kind of some general
[00:37:25] information that's needed
[00:37:27] and just kind of,
[00:37:29] I use those as the fields and
[00:37:31] slowly kind of
[00:37:33] mess around with it to my liking
[00:37:36] and kind of my use case.
[00:37:39] Awesome. And are you sharing that
[00:37:41] like amongst your team?
[00:37:42] So everybody can look
[00:37:43] at it every day or?
[00:37:44] Yeah, I have it synced to
[00:37:47] a calendar. So it's
[00:37:49] in all our
[00:37:50] calendars because some
[00:37:52] of these jobs also require
[00:37:54] like what's called a walk.
[00:37:56] So,
[00:37:57] you know,
[00:37:58] a week or so before the bids due,
[00:38:00] they'll meet at the
[00:38:02] the site and kind of go
[00:38:03] over some specifics and
[00:38:05] some of those are required
[00:38:07] like mandatory
[00:38:08] if you don't have someone attend that
[00:38:10] they can't bid.
[00:38:12] So
[00:38:13] I have both the,
[00:38:14] both the bid date and time and then the
[00:38:18] kind of job
[00:38:19] walk if you will
[00:38:20] and calendars. And then yeah, I have a
[00:38:23] kind of a shared URL that I put in
[00:38:26] a folder at
[00:38:28] our office and
[00:38:31] that's
[00:38:31] super
[00:38:32] cool.
[00:38:33] Yeah, the the sync calendar
[00:38:35] makes it super easy.
[00:38:36] So it just shows right up
[00:38:37] where you
[00:38:38] see
[00:38:38] it.
[00:38:39] Absolutely.
[00:38:41] Super cool. Are there any
[00:38:43] like limitations you ran into that
[00:38:45] you wish Airtable could solve
[00:38:47] or has it checked all the boxes so far?
[00:38:50] So, I mean,
[00:38:52] I'm sure there's some
[00:38:53] things here and there, but
[00:38:55] for the most part,
[00:38:57] it's limited by my time to,
[00:39:00] you know,
[00:39:01] mess around with it and get it to
[00:39:03] its full capability because,
[00:39:06] you know, for a while I had it
[00:39:07] emailing me, you know,
[00:39:10] jobs within the next week
[00:39:12] that are bidding and
[00:39:14] stuff like that
[00:39:15] and,
[00:39:16] you know,
[00:39:17] just got kind of
[00:39:19] hectic and my inbox got,
[00:39:22] you know,
[00:39:24] pretty full, pretty quick.
[00:39:26] So,
[00:39:27] yeah,
[00:39:30] awesome.
[00:39:31] You ready to
[00:39:32] share with us what you've got?
[00:39:34] Yeah. So first I'm gonna share,
[00:39:37] yeah, hold on just one second.
[00:39:40] I'll get us back there.
[00:39:42] So Garrett's gonna walk us through
[00:39:45] his live base on using Airtable to bid on
[00:39:48] public works projects.
[00:39:49] So I think you still need
[00:39:51] to share your screen again.
[00:39:53] So first, I'm gonna share kind of a
[00:39:56] typical cities website of jobs.
[00:40:00] This is city of San Loss
[00:40:03] and they post,
[00:40:05] you know, jobs out of bid here.
[00:40:08] So we'll have to come check and
[00:40:10] you know, this Water Line
[00:40:12] replacement project.
[00:40:16] So it'll take us
[00:40:18] kind of the information,
[00:40:20] job name, how much time is left,
[00:40:22] you know, date and time, just
[00:40:25] all this information. And
[00:40:29] you know,
[00:40:29] I think you might be sharing just the one
[00:40:32] the screen so we might not be seeing
[00:40:34] it opened in a
[00:40:35] new tab. Hold on,
[00:40:41] there we go.
[00:40:42] There we go.
[00:40:43] So yeah, job name
[00:40:45] time left all this where you
[00:40:47] can download the plans
[00:40:49] and the specifications.
[00:40:53] So I'll have to take this
[00:40:57] and I'm gonna present my other.
[00:41:03] So here's the base.
[00:41:06] Now we also we do bid sometimes
[00:41:09] as a sub or to, you know, like developers.
[00:41:14] My previous company was like
[00:41:16] all public works and,
[00:41:18] you know, we never bid
[00:41:20] to developers, but the company
[00:41:22] I'm at now,
[00:41:23] so I've been kind of migrating some
[00:41:24] things and
[00:41:25] adding things. But
[00:41:28] so we got,
[00:41:30] you know, these kind of tabs,
[00:41:33] I call them, stuff we're behind on.
[00:41:35] Usually
[00:41:37] this is
[00:41:38] as a sub because you can call them
[00:41:41] and say, hey,
[00:41:42] I can't get it this Friday can
[00:41:43] I have till Monday?
[00:41:45] But
[00:41:48] as far as public works jobs goes,
[00:41:51] so
[00:41:51] let's see that a typical one would be
[00:41:55] say this job,
[00:41:56] this measure K 14 street rehab.
[00:42:01] So to start,
[00:42:03] I,
[00:42:03] I have a form
[00:42:06] to add bid.
[00:42:11] I'm not gonna open it because it
[00:42:13] will open in a new tab. But
[00:42:17] put in the project,
[00:42:18] the date and time the type,
[00:42:22] who bids to like the agency
[00:42:25] location,
[00:42:27] just any remarks, you know, like,
[00:42:31] I don't know
[00:42:32] the engineer's phone number
[00:42:34] if we have questions,
[00:42:35] ee stands for engineers estimate. So they
[00:42:41] will have internally estimate
[00:42:43] how big the job is.
[00:42:48] And then
[00:42:49] this is if one of those pre bid walks,
[00:42:52] if it's required or not,
[00:42:55] sometimes they have optional ones,
[00:42:58] mandatory
[00:42:59] or none. And then that's conditional
[00:43:03] if there is one, date and time location
[00:43:06] and then the URL I feel like
[00:43:08] this is the most important field.
[00:43:10] So
[00:43:11] back on that one, I was showing you
[00:43:14] put the URL here,
[00:43:15] attachments. If there's, you know,
[00:43:20] sometimes I'll put the plans and specs
[00:43:22] in there, but oftentimes I'll just save
[00:43:24] it to the
[00:43:25] computer
[00:43:26] and from there it goes to,
[00:43:29] it automatically gets scooped
[00:43:32] into this bidding stage.
[00:43:35] So like I was saying this job,
[00:43:37] I don't know is my,
[00:43:40] can you guys see that better?
[00:43:42] Yeah,
[00:43:42] thank you.
[00:43:43] So, date and time
[00:43:45] the city of Grover Beach
[00:43:48] public works job.
[00:43:51] So the engineer's estimate
[00:43:53] on that one is 1.85 million
[00:43:56] no pre bid.
[00:43:58] And then on that remarks,
[00:44:00] that kind of put just the
[00:44:03] what they had as kind of
[00:44:05] the project description.
[00:44:09] And then
[00:44:10] the attachments, the plans,
[00:44:12] the specifications
[00:44:14] and then
[00:44:15] the URL
[00:44:17] I clicked it and it took me
[00:44:23] here.
[00:44:26] So the reason
[00:44:28] it's important to have this
[00:44:30] if there's any addendum. So like
[00:44:32] changes to the project,
[00:44:33] you know, let's say someone
[00:44:35] asks a question like,
[00:44:37] oh,
[00:44:38] the plans are missing the page,
[00:44:41] they'll put an addendum.
[00:44:43] And when the job bids, if you don't,
[00:44:46] you know, acknowledge these
[00:44:48] addendums because
[00:44:49] their actual contract changes,
[00:44:51] then
[00:44:53] your bids thrown out.
[00:44:57] This is where they post those addendum. So
[00:45:00] check the, you know, a day before
[00:45:02] the bid or, you know,
[00:45:03] the day of the bid and
[00:45:04] make sure I got all the addendum and
[00:45:08] stuff like that.
[00:45:10] Man. I'm taken back
[00:45:13] 10 years
[00:45:15] going too fast.
[00:45:17] interestingly enough,
[00:45:19] so this bid date and time, if you're
[00:45:23] 10 seconds late,
[00:45:25] they'll throw your bid in the trash.
[00:45:29] If you're $1
[00:45:31] over
[00:45:32] the,
[00:45:33] you know, low big guy, let's say
[00:45:35] Kamille's bid is $10 and I'm $11. So,
[00:45:39] you know, as long as she's,
[00:45:42] you know, has her license
[00:45:43] and stuff checks out,
[00:45:45] they will award it to her even though
[00:45:48] I've been doing this forever and
[00:45:50] everybody in this town knows me.
[00:45:52] It doesn't matter because it's all public
[00:45:54] funding and
[00:45:56] it's price of right rules.
[00:45:58] Exactly. If they give you a number,
[00:46:00] hit that number or go below it.
[00:46:02] Yeah.
[00:46:04] So
[00:46:05] I, I wanted to go back to what
[00:46:08] you had said before. You talked about the
[00:46:11] difference between if it's an all
[00:46:13] public works job
[00:46:14] or if you're applying as a
[00:46:16] sub
[00:46:16] in the industry, that would mean
[00:46:19] there are for larger projects
[00:46:21] that include things other than
[00:46:24] in public works, you might assemble
[00:46:26] a team of companies. One that focuses on
[00:46:29] public works like yours.
[00:46:30] Another one that's urban planners
[00:46:32] like formerly me,
[00:46:33] one that might be architects,
[00:46:35] blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:46:36] Certain big companies
[00:46:36] might have all of those things in house.
[00:46:39] But if you don't have them in house,
[00:46:41] you might
[00:46:42] go in for a project as a lead
[00:46:44] or you might go in for a project as a sub
[00:46:47] consultant.
[00:46:48] So
[00:46:49] in the instances where you're going
[00:46:52] after a project as a sub consultant or a
[00:46:55] sub,
[00:46:56] is this something that you share
[00:46:58] with your external partners,
[00:47:00] the people who are not in your company,
[00:47:03] but in your co consultants,
[00:47:06] you know, because getting everybody
[00:47:07] an Airtable license would be,
[00:47:09] you know,
[00:47:09] expensive pretty quickly,
[00:47:11] especially if they're only
[00:47:12] going in on one of these
[00:47:14] several projects with you.
[00:47:16] Yeah, so kind of to relate to that.
[00:47:21] So I'm
[00:47:21] what's called the our lead estimator.
[00:47:25] And we have
[00:47:27] another gentleman in our office who
[00:47:30] he kind of gravitates towards,
[00:47:32] we do a lot of concrete,
[00:47:33] you know, sidewalk, curb and gutter.
[00:47:39] So I,
[00:47:41] so his name is Tito. So I
[00:47:44] literally have something that's
[00:47:46] just kind of
[00:47:48] geared towards jobs he needs
[00:47:51] to be on the lookout for.
[00:47:53] Ones, you know, I need his help on.
[00:47:55] So I guess
[00:47:57] he's kind of my
[00:47:59] co,
[00:48:00] you know, consultant.
[00:48:03] So I'll, I'll print this. He's not super
[00:48:07] tech and computer savvy. So,
[00:48:11] you know, twice,
[00:48:12] three times a week, I'll print this
[00:48:15] which it's, it's mostly
[00:48:17] the same in information, but
[00:48:20] little,
[00:48:22] little less I have this extra notes
[00:48:24] one for him if you know there's anything
[00:48:27] specific
[00:48:29] this plan Swift this is our
[00:48:31] kind of estimating takeoff software.
[00:48:34] So
[00:48:35] I'll put the job in plan swift
[00:48:38] for him to be able to do his takeoff.
[00:48:40] So,
[00:48:42] I have quite a few to throw
[00:48:44] in there as you can see.
[00:48:46] But,
[00:48:49] yeah, so that's kind of how
[00:48:51] I would share it, as far as
[00:48:53] other contractors
[00:48:56] no, because we're,
[00:48:58] you know, it'll be just one job
[00:49:00] that we might be working on together.
[00:49:02] There are certain companies
[00:49:04] we do a lot of work with but,
[00:49:07] you know, it's project by project
[00:49:10] basis.
[00:49:14] This is, this is awesome.
[00:49:16] We love seeing real world examples
[00:49:18] of how you're using
[00:49:19] it. Have you explored interfaces
[00:49:21] at all? Or are you still mostly working in
[00:49:23] the grid view? I do,
[00:49:25] I don't know if I wanna even click
[00:49:27] that because it's,
[00:49:28] I, I feel like every base
[00:49:30] I have is a work in progress.
[00:49:33] Um
[00:49:34] It never
[00:49:34] stops it.
[00:49:35] Yeah, I did want if you have another
[00:49:38] like two minutes maybe.
[00:49:40] Sure.
[00:49:41] Ok, real quick because
[00:49:43] this is what I'm working on now
[00:49:45] and it is.
[00:49:48] So
[00:49:49] there's estimating software that costs
[00:49:53] of
[00:49:53] a jillion dollars,
[00:49:56] the sun's kind of coming up.
[00:49:58] So I this is
[00:49:59] my estimating software
[00:50:01] I've been using for about six months now.
[00:50:04] So
[00:50:06] kind of the workflow go from the project
[00:50:09] bid schedules sometimes,
[00:50:11] you know, they'll have
[00:50:12] the base bid like everybody,
[00:50:14] this is what the job's gonna be
[00:50:16] and then they'll add alternatives like,
[00:50:18] you know,
[00:50:19] oh, we, if we have extra money,
[00:50:21] we'll go do this too.
[00:50:23] So if there's multiple bid schedules
[00:50:26] and it goes to bid items. So
[00:50:29] in the bid forms,
[00:50:30] there'll be items you bid against.
[00:50:34] you know,
[00:50:34] typically number one is the mobilization
[00:50:37] getting you there. And then,
[00:50:39] you know,
[00:50:40] this one
[00:50:41] is, for example, this wood fence,
[00:50:45] they'll quantify it.
[00:50:46] So the engineer came up
[00:50:48] with 45 lineal feet of fence to be
[00:50:50] replaced.
[00:50:52] So I'll get that in there.
[00:50:54] And then the bid cost,
[00:50:56] this is the main one.
[00:50:58] I got
[00:50:59] a group by bid items.
[00:51:01] So let's go to that wood fence
[00:51:04] and
[00:51:05] activities. So when you build a fence,
[00:51:08] you need to get the materials.
[00:51:09] So that'll be, you know, materials
[00:51:12] and then
[00:51:14] you know, we need wood,
[00:51:18] right?
[00:51:21] And did I not add that?
[00:51:26] There it goes
[00:51:28] and it's not updating.
[00:51:31] So you
[00:51:31] put
[00:51:31] your
[00:51:32] resources in and then you can apply
[00:51:35] costs and like your market values.
[00:51:37] And this is what I've been using to
[00:51:40] kind of estimate and
[00:51:42] kind of stole,
[00:51:44] you know,
[00:51:46] some ideas from some big
[00:51:49] estimating software
[00:51:53] replaced an expensive piece
[00:51:56] of software with Airtable.
[00:51:59] Nice.
[00:52:01] All right. Thank you,
[00:52:03] Garrett for showcasing that
[00:52:04] and seeing how you're using
[00:52:06] that in the real world.
[00:52:07] I always appreciate that.
[00:52:09] Let's move on.
[00:52:11] Quick, shout out to join our
[00:52:13] community builtonair.com/join
[00:52:15] gets you in.
[00:52:16] Also subscribe to our youtube channel.
[00:52:19] We'd love to see you join our Slack
[00:52:21] community as well. Lots of experts in
[00:52:23] there
[00:52:24] with that Kamille is going to walk us
[00:52:27] through some automation fun.
[00:52:31] Yes.
[00:52:33] I have a pretty long workflow.
[00:52:36] This is just sort of the first part of it.
[00:52:39] And a lot of it is built using n8n,
[00:52:44] which is
[00:52:46] a open source and
[00:52:49] self host-able
[00:52:50] automation builder.
[00:52:52] It's very similar to make or Integromat.
[00:52:55] If you're used to those,
[00:52:56] if you're not used to those,
[00:52:58] it's like a Zapier
[00:52:59] but more sort of visual.
[00:53:00] So on this screen,
[00:53:02] you can kind of see what it looks
[00:53:04] like. It's a sort of linear process.
[00:53:07] And I wanted to try it out.
[00:53:09] And so I built a somewhat complex
[00:53:12] workflow that being
[00:53:14] a concept I've thought of or
[00:53:17] a watch list. So
[00:53:20] Garrett talked about a little bit earlier,
[00:53:22] he had this workflow that he disabled,
[00:53:24] but at one point you
[00:53:26] had a running sort of digest
[00:53:29] of here are the different
[00:53:31] projects that are coming up in a week
[00:53:33] or something like that.
[00:53:34] And what I wanted was a way to create
[00:53:38] watch lists very easily and sort of
[00:53:42] programmatically.
[00:53:43] It's really easy in Airtable
[00:53:46] if I have a base that's
[00:53:49] you know,
[00:53:50] I have one date that I wanna keep track
[00:53:52] of email me any of those dates that's
[00:53:54] coming up in a week.
[00:53:56] It's more difficult if you have like
[00:53:59] 10 different fields
[00:54:00] that you're trying to track,
[00:54:02] it's even more difficult if you know,
[00:54:05] five people need these five fields and
[00:54:07] then these five people need these other
[00:54:10] five fields and some of those overlap
[00:54:12] that's difficult.
[00:54:13] It's even more difficult if each person
[00:54:17] wants one email per day rather than one
[00:54:20] email per project.
[00:54:21] And it's even even more difficult to say,
[00:54:25] here's what the values are now,
[00:54:27] here's what the values used to be
[00:54:29] in the case of
[00:54:30] a field being updated.
[00:54:32] So to solve all of those
[00:54:34] sort of complexities,
[00:54:35] I've created a workflow that is
[00:54:37] sort of based on having
[00:54:39] a meta table.
[00:54:41] This is a base that kind of exists
[00:54:43] by itself
[00:54:44] separate from the tables that
[00:54:46] I'm watching
[00:54:47] where I'm saying,
[00:54:49] I wanna track these
[00:54:50] three different things,
[00:54:51] all dates associated with the project,
[00:54:54] the recording date and the release stage.
[00:54:57] So
[00:54:58] I'm filling in the base I'm watching
[00:55:01] the table and in the fields you can see in
[00:55:04] this case,
[00:55:04] I'm tracking three different date fields.
[00:55:07] This one is just one field
[00:55:08] and this is one of
[00:55:11] this is just another field
[00:55:13] in that think table.
[00:55:14] I have a button that will take me
[00:55:17] to the relevant table based
[00:55:19] on whatever ID I
[00:55:20] put in here.
[00:55:22] You can see I'm using one of
[00:55:24] Airtable's templates for a
[00:55:26] podcast studio.
[00:55:27] And you know, here's all of our
[00:55:29] episodes, here's who's gonna
[00:55:32] be the hosts of that episode,
[00:55:34] the producer and the editor.
[00:55:36] So for a practical example,
[00:55:38] if one of my dates is the recording date,
[00:55:42] right? The hosts are gonna want
[00:55:43] to know when they're recording
[00:55:45] and the editor probably wants to know
[00:55:48] when their, their due date is which
[00:55:51] might be a cut due date, et cetera.
[00:55:53] The producer probably cares about
[00:55:55] all of those dates
[00:55:56] because they're producing
[00:55:57] the episode.
[00:55:59] And the producer and editor might
[00:56:02] care about the stage. It's in whether or
[00:56:04] not it's been released or made,
[00:56:07] just scheduled, the host probably doesn't
[00:56:10] care. They just want to know
[00:56:12] when they need to record
[00:56:14] by if they're not one of
[00:56:15] the editors or producers
[00:56:16] just as a practical example.
[00:56:19] So the first part of this
[00:56:21] sort of overview
[00:56:23] and I can post the very specific
[00:56:25] information about these
[00:56:27] different workflows
[00:56:28] is the part in Airtable that is
[00:56:31] creating a web hook.
[00:56:32] So in order to do this programmatically,
[00:56:34] Airtable has a API that lets you
[00:56:37] create web hooks
[00:56:39] that listen for particular
[00:56:40] events.
[00:56:41] In this case, I care when
[00:56:44] any of those fields have been updated,
[00:56:46] not necessarily when a record is created.
[00:56:49] And so this n8n scenario
[00:56:52] is waiting for a trigger to happen.
[00:56:56] In that case, a web hook being called
[00:56:59] and then it's going through a process of
[00:57:03] looking at this watch list record.
[00:57:06] Let's take the first one as an example
[00:57:09] and I've pointed out here's the base
[00:57:12] and table and the fields I'm watching.
[00:57:16] And it's all sort of triggered
[00:57:18] by one of these two buttons,
[00:57:21] test which will just sort of
[00:57:23] test the workflow
[00:57:24] in n8n and create slash edit,
[00:57:26] which will run the workflow entirely.
[00:57:32] So just sort of talking through
[00:57:35] what this workflow is doing,
[00:57:37] this is going to look somewhat
[00:57:39] similar to make if you're used to it.
[00:57:41] I know Scott is in the audience who's,
[00:57:43] you know, an expert in make.
[00:57:44] So this might look
[00:57:45] somewhat familiar to him.
[00:57:47] If I sort of zoom in
[00:57:50] the first thing it's doing
[00:57:52] is it's checking
[00:57:53] if the web hook ID is empty or not
[00:57:55] and that's stored here in my
[00:57:59] Airtable record. So
[00:58:02] if it's
[00:58:04] not empty,
[00:58:05] just sort of refresh the web hook.
[00:58:08] In Airtable web hooks, expire after seven
[00:58:11] days, you have to continuously,
[00:58:14] you know, refresh them
[00:58:16] in order for them to stay active.
[00:58:18] If it is empty,
[00:58:20] I wanted to search through the watched
[00:58:23] table and see, are there any web hooks
[00:58:26] associated with that table?
[00:58:28] Maybe I just forgot to put in the ID.
[00:58:30] And so I'm splitting apart whatever
[00:58:34] was found into an array
[00:58:36] and then I wanna filter down any
[00:58:39] web hooks associated with that table
[00:58:42] and see if any of them match
[00:58:44] the conditions I've set. So
[00:58:47] when you're setting up a web hook
[00:58:49] in Airtable
[00:58:49] you're telling it what fields do
[00:58:51] you care about. In this case,
[00:58:53] it's this list that I've provided.
[00:58:56] If there are no web hooks for that table
[00:58:59] that are watching just those three
[00:59:01] fields, then I need to
[00:59:03] create a web hook. If not,
[00:59:06] then I need to
[00:59:08] or if there is one already,
[00:59:10] then I need to take that Webhook ID
[00:59:14] and associate it with this Airtable
[00:59:17] record in my meta table
[00:59:18] so I can keep track of it.
[00:59:20] So in the event that it needs
[00:59:23] to create a web hook, what it's doing,
[00:59:26] and there might be, you know,
[00:59:28] a better way to do this.
[00:59:29] What I found works
[00:59:30] best in for this use case
[00:59:33] is just to delete
[00:59:34] existing web hooks that match the
[00:59:40] you know, the conditions I'm looking for.
[00:59:42] In the case of when I was testing all
[00:59:44] of this, I ended up making like 15
[00:59:46] of the same web hook.
[00:59:48] So this was sort of put
[00:59:49] in here to delete all of them
[00:59:51] because I only need one.
[00:59:53] And then
[00:59:54] when I'm done deleting,
[00:59:55] just create the one that I need
[00:59:57] and then
[00:59:58] attach the web hook ID
[01:00:00] to the Airtable record.
[01:00:02] So
[01:00:03] that's what that process is doing.
[01:00:06] This up here is just for testing purposes,
[01:00:10] which is why they're all disabled,
[01:00:12] which is something I like.
[01:00:14] In n8n I am able to sort of
[01:00:17] temporarily turn
[01:00:18] off different
[01:00:21] nodes in a workflow.
[01:00:23] So I don't need to do any
[01:00:25] of this replacing web hook
[01:00:28] business. That's really only for
[01:00:30] the purposes of me testing
[01:00:32] out this scenario.
[01:00:34] So, very quickly I'm going to
[01:00:40] do
[01:00:42] a demo
[01:00:43] and hope it works.
[01:00:46] So I'm gonna delete this webhook ID
[01:00:49] and then I'm gonna do
[01:00:50] create and slash edit.
[01:00:53] It's gonna open up a new tab
[01:00:55] which I don't necessarily need to look at.
[01:00:57] It's gonna return all of this Gobby
[01:01:00] book, which I don't really need
[01:01:03] much like in make or Integromat,
[01:01:07] you can control what that web hook
[01:01:09] response page looks like I didn't need to
[01:01:12] because I'm the only one
[01:01:13] who's gonna see it.
[01:01:14] So I just know to get rid of it.
[01:01:15] If I go to my executions tab,
[01:01:18] I will see that this, just fired
[01:01:22] and, I'll walk through what it did. So
[01:01:27] it was triggered
[01:01:28] when I clicked that button,
[01:01:29] it saw that the web hook ID
[01:01:32] was empty because I deleted it.
[01:01:35] Then it was searching through
[01:01:37] that watch table finding
[01:01:39] all of the different
[01:01:40] webhooks associated with that table.
[01:01:42] There were three items that were,
[01:01:44] hooked into that table.
[01:01:46] All three are those three.
[01:01:49] Then it filtered down which of those
[01:01:52] existing webhooks
[01:01:53] match the fields that I'm
[01:01:55] watching. There's only one
[01:01:57] as there should be
[01:01:58] and because there's only one fill
[01:02:00] in the web hook ID,
[01:02:02] with the one that exists.
[01:02:04] And so you could see it was repopulated
[01:02:06] if it didn't find any,
[01:02:07] it would have just created a new,
[01:02:10] web hook. If it found too many,
[01:02:13] two or more, it would have deleted
[01:02:15] both of those and created just one to
[01:02:18] replace it.
[01:02:19] So that's what this,
[01:02:21] alternate branch is. And the next time,
[01:02:24] I sort of go over this workflow,
[01:02:26] we'll talk about it actually
[01:02:28] logging field changes and sending
[01:02:31] those out via email to the associated
[01:02:34] persons.
[01:02:37] Very cool. This is awesome.
[01:02:39] I haven't.
[01:02:40] I think I tried this out when it
[01:02:41] first came out, but it's come a long ways.
[01:02:44] I it is much better than a lot
[01:02:46] of the promotional material
[01:02:48] shows a lot of the older,
[01:02:50] like a year plus demos
[01:02:52] had like a starch trigger that
[01:02:55] was just always there
[01:02:56] and then whatever trigger
[01:02:58] it should actually be.
[01:02:59] In this case, a web hook
[01:03:00] response as a separate node.
[01:03:02] They got rid of that. So,
[01:03:04] don't be discouraged, I would say
[01:03:06] by some of the things you might find in
[01:03:08] some of the tutorials
[01:03:09] that you might come across,
[01:03:11] I think it is a much better
[01:03:12] product than it used to be. And
[01:03:16] so far I really like it,
[01:03:18] it handles arrays differently than make.
[01:03:20] So there's a little bit of a
[01:03:22] learning curve
[01:03:23] if you're coming from that world,
[01:03:24] but I think it is
[01:03:25] super useful
[01:03:26] and I like a lot of the different
[01:03:29] prebuilt nodes that they have
[01:03:31] and I'll leave it there.
[01:03:34] Awesome. And we'll do
[01:03:35] part two in a future episode.
[01:03:38] So a little cliffhanger
[01:03:39] appetizer for you.
[01:03:42] Thank you, Kamille and Alli
[01:03:43] and Garrett. Thank you for joining.
[01:03:45] Grateful to have you on
[01:03:46] and learn more about yourself
[01:03:48] and your business and how
[01:03:49] you're using Airtable.
[01:03:50] Look forward. We'll get an update
[01:03:52] from you sometime in the future.
[01:03:54] We
[01:03:55] can
[01:03:55] take
[01:03:55] that
[01:03:55] and
[01:03:56] then,
[01:03:57] yeah,
[01:03:58] thanks
[01:03:58] Garrett
[01:03:59] and that's,
[01:04:01] that concludes today's show.
[01:04:02] We'll see you next week for episode two.
[01:04:04] Episode two. Take care everyone.
[01:04:07] Bye.