1/9/2024 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S17-E01

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

In This Episode

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

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

Todays Hosts

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

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

Scott Rose – Scott Rose is an expert Airtable consultant, a Certified FileMaker Developer, and a Registered Integromat Partner with 30 years of database development experience. Scott is the Chief Geek Officer of ScottWorld.com, where he has built a career developing world-class database systems for businesses. Scott is also a member of MENSA International (the high IQ society) and is an accomplished public speaker. In the early 2000’s, Scott traveled around the country for 6 years with Steve Jobs & the Apple Executive Team as one of Apple’s top professional speakers. Scott spoke at all of Apple’s major events & retail store openings, where he introduced many of Apple’s new products to the public for the very first time. In his free time, Scott gives motivational & inspirational talks at conferences around the globe.

Show Segments

Audience Questions – 00:01:43 –

Scott Rose answers the Airtable question: “Unable to open linked records in a synced database”

View the question in the community

Answer: Scott walks through this approach on how to convert field types on synced fields.

Base Showcase – –

We dive into a full working base that will Sean will be sharing internal apps built in Airtable for both his Short Term Rental Business

Meet the Creators – 00:01:41 –

Meet Sean McGregor from Stay Work and Play.

Sean McGregor has learned how to use NoCode Tools to free himself from the tedious tasks in his business (Stay Work And Play aka SWAP CoHosting). Now, he wants to help educate Entrepreneurs and NoCoders on how to Automate the Annoying things in their lives and businesses so they can focus on working on the things they love and spending time with the people they love.

Visit them online

Round The Bases – 00:01:40 –

Full Segment Details

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:01:43

Airtable Question – Unable to open linked records in a synced database

Scott Rose answers the Airtable question: “Unable to open linked records in a synced database”

View the question in the community

Answer: Scott walks through this approach on how to convert field types on synced fields.

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time:

Short Term Rental Business Base

We dive into a full working base that will Sean will be sharing internal apps built in Airtable for both his Short Term Rental Business

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:01:41

Sean McGregor –

Meet Sean McGregor from Stay Work and Play.

Sean McGregor has learned how to use NoCode Tools to free himself from the tedious tasks in his business (Stay Work And Play aka SWAP CoHosting). Now, he wants to help educate Entrepreneurs and NoCoders on how to Automate the Annoying things in their lives and businesses so they can focus on working on the things they love and spending time with the people they love.

Visit them online

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:01:40

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

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Built On Air Podcast, the 

[00:00:11] variety show for all things Airtable. In each episode, we cover four different segments. It's always fresh and different, and lots of fun. While you get the insider info on all things Airtable, our hosts and guests are some of the most senior experts in the Airtable community.

[00:00:25] Join us live each week on our YouTube channel every Tuesday at 11:00 AM Eastern and join our active [email protected]. Before we begin, a word from our sponsor on.

[00:00:37] On2Air Backups provides automated Airtable backups to your cloud storage for secure and reliable data protection. Prevent data loss and set up a secure Airtable backup system with On2Air Backups at on2air. com. 

[00:00:50] As one customer, Sarah, said, Having automated Airtable backups has freed up hours of my time every other week. And the fear of losing anything. Long time customer [00:01:00] David states, On2Wear backups might be the most critical piece of the puzzle to guard against unforeseeable disaster. It's easy to set up, and it just works. Join Sarah, David, and hundreds more Airtable users like you to protect your Airtable data with On2Air backups. Sign up today with promo code built on air for a 10 percent discount. Check them out at onto air. com. And now let's check out today's episode and see what we built on air.

[00:01:36] Dan Fellars: Welcome to the built on air podcast. Welcome back after a month off. Hope everybody had a great holiday season and ready to get back into the new year. We're starting off season 17. That's crazy. Good to be with everybody here in episode one of season 17. We've got myself, Dan Feller, Scott Rose, Kamille Parks with us and special guests, [00:02:00] Scott Sean McGregor.

[00:02:01] Welcome, Sean. 

[00:02:04] Sean McGregor: How's it going? Everybody 

[00:02:05] Dan Fellars: Sean's connection holds up. Sean's in, Sean's in Mexico. We're supposed to be home, but due to some travel delays is, is in Mexico. So we'll see if the connection holds up for us. So we're good to have. Good to have Sean with us. We'll learn more about Sean and his story later in the show.

[00:02:25] So I'll walk us through what we're going to be talking about in the, excuse me in the, in the show today. So we always start with our around the bases to get you up to date with what's going on. We've got a month's worth of updates that we're going to share with you. And then a spotlight on our sponsor onto air and its backup solution.

[00:02:46] Then we'll learn more about Sean and his backstory and what he's up to. And then Sean's going to share his base of how he runs two businesses. Actually, we can get to those and [00:03:00] then how to join our community. And then Scott Rose is going to answer an Airtable question for us from the audience. So that will be today's show for us.

[00:03:10] ROUND THE BASES: 00:03:11

[00:03:11] So with our around the bases. First off was a pretty big announcement a week or two ago of an acquisition Airtable made. I believe the second acquisition that it's made, maybe more. So it acquired Airplane, which was a development platform, kind of a UI builder. Similar to like interfaces, but more geared towards developers.

[00:03:37] So kind of a low code platform and my understanding based off of reading the announcement, I did not see, did anybody see an announcement from Airtable? I think only airplane announced it. 

[00:03:50] Kamille Parks: I haven't seen anything from Airtable. 

[00:03:52] Dan Fellars: Yeah, so I didn't see anything in Airtable's blog, but it appears that it's more of an acquihire.

[00:03:58] So it looks like they're [00:04:00] shutting down the product and the team's going to come over to Airtable. So we'll see how that shakes out. I know a lot of airplane users were not happy to see their product moving away and just like a few. Months, I think March is the, yeah, March 1st is the shutdown date. So that's unfortunate if you were dependent on airplane, but we'll see what kind of, what they do with that talent that they bring into Airtable.

[00:04:28] Any thoughts on the acquisition? 

[00:04:31] Kamille Parks: Now there are several similar products to airplane. And I'm unsure, like, what about airplanes specifically made Airtable want to acquire them, you know, obviously, I'm sure they have wonderful talent and they'll be happy to have them on the Airtable team. But if there was anything specific about the product, other than they both start with air, I'll work on my conspiracy theory.[00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] Scott Rose: That's right. I wonder if now for people that are affected by airplanes shutting down in just two months is. Is, was there a product, something that can be replaced by no loco or glide or jet admin or any of the portal tools, you know, which give you some interface capability, but not a tremendous amount.

[00:05:20] S17-E01-video-full: My 

[00:05:22] Dan Fellars: understanding is the airplane did not sit on top of Airtable. So there wasn't like an integration with Airtable as far as I understand. So it, it was more geared towards developers building like, you know, from the ground up applications, but had like, it had kind of its own. Structure for for building apps, I 

[00:05:49] Kamille Parks: think it was more akin to something like retool than it was to something like no loco.

[00:05:56] Yeah, like Dan said, I think it was more of a [00:06:00] general purpose with no one particular data provider in mind. I think they were heavy on SQL though, various SQL database types like Postgres and MySQL and et cetera. 

[00:06:13] Scott Rose: Oh, very cool. Well, yeah, it'll be very interesting to see what their team can do with Airtable.

[00:06:21] Yeah, I'm excited about that. 

[00:06:23] Dan Fellars: Yeah, it looked like there's probably, it's tough to say on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn said like 60 employees, but I don't, I don't think it's that, that high. So maybe 30 to 40 

[00:06:33] Scott Rose: employees. Interesting. 

[00:06:37] Sean McGregor: So 

[00:06:38] Dan Fellars: we shall see, we shall see what, what comes from that of anything. All right, moving on.

[00:06:48] Let's see what's new. This is the this is the what's new section from Airtable. In December, there was four releases for feature announcements that they made. We'll talk about [00:07:00] some that they didn't make announcements on. Yeah, 

[00:07:02] Kamille Parks: wait a minute. I see several that I don't remember. 

[00:07:05] Dan Fellars: Yeah, I know there was one when I looked at this.

[00:07:07] I was like, Oh, nobody's talked about the last one here. All right, let's see. So refresh link record picker and interfaces. So what is this? 

[00:07:17] Kamille Parks: So I think scott, you had some criticisms of this change. I think I had seen previously when you opened up a Oh linked record field. It looked different from this screenshot.

[00:07:33] It looks more like the sort of UI direction that interface designer is going with. But I actually haven't seen it yet in any of my interfaces. I don't know if it was fully deployed last time I took a look. 

[00:07:49] Scott Rose: Is there was one that they deployed and then they rolled it back a week or so later because of complaints from people that might be this one.

[00:07:59] Which is [00:08:00] that that add person button that you see there in the screenshot, Dan, that was, oh, maybe, oh, I'm sorry. Maybe it's down in the search area. Oh, yeah, yeah. This might be the redesign thing. If you were searching for a linked record that didn't exist, there were, they removed the little button that said create new record.

[00:08:21] You actually had to type out the entire name of the new record you wanted to create. And then you had to hit the return key and then Airtable would create that linked record for you in the linked table. But there were several problems to that. One problem was if your linked record field, the primary field and the other table was a formula field, you couldn't do it.

[00:08:43] It would actually give you an error message. So that was one of the major, major problems. And then the other problem is without the ability to click on the button first that says add new linked record, you actually don't have the ability to See all of the [00:09:00] fields on your screen, you know, you know, type in the man in whatever order you want.

[00:09:05] You basically have to create. You have to do the all the typing of the primary field 1st, then it return. Then you can click on it. Then you can open it up. Then you can edit. So it actually, it actually turns something that used to be maybe 1 or 2 steps into something that was 4 or 5 steps. So it actually.

[00:09:24] So a lot of people were complaining on the forums, so they said they were rolling it back, temporarily. 

[00:09:31] Dan Fellars: Yeah, that was crazy. I remember that. So, yeah. I don't know if you turn a streamline you yeah, so this might be the initial without the rollback. 

[00:09:43] Scott Rose: Well, that word, whenever you see from Airtable, a streamlined UI, that's when you know, it's actually more steps.

[00:09:50] Yeah, they use that term a 

[00:09:52] Kamille Parks: lot. It's a more compact UI. True. It takes up less space. But yeah, if you take away [00:10:00] buttons that will streamline your UI, but it will also take away a feature such as creating a new record. And 

[00:10:10] Scott Rose: at least, you know, at least even though there was more steps, at least you could do it.

[00:10:13] If your primary field wasn't a formula field. The real problem was it completely broke people's solutions completely. If the primary field in the other table was a, was a formula field.

[00:10:28] Dan Fellars: So, yeah, so this one maybe, maybe isn't live anymore. They might've pulled this one back. So let's look at the next one. Interface forms builders can now specify a URL to redirect to after submission and users have a new button to clear saved input.

[00:10:48] Kamille Parks: Well, okay. The first one, straightforward. Form views had this feature and it was missing from interface forms and the other [00:11:00] type of interface form as well. Difficult to explain the nuance between them. They are different. So glad to see that. That is added. It was 1 of my complaints with the newer form capabilities.

[00:11:14] Glad it's there. I don't understand the clear saved input. All right. button. There's, I can, I can see having a clear form, just get rid of whatever's currently on the page. But saved input to me suggests a record that is saved to your database. And I don't think that's what they mean, because that would be a major revelation.

[00:11:37] If you could use a form on an existing record, that'd be a major new feature. And I feel like they would have talked about that. Not clear saved input. I think it's just worded oddly. I need to test what This actually is 

[00:11:51] Scott Rose: my guess is that you're right. My guess is that they just chose poor words. 

[00:11:56] Dan Fellars: Yeah, I think it just means, yeah, the input in the [00:12:00] boxes.

[00:12:00] Scott Rose: Well, 

[00:12:02] Kamille Parks: that's useful. 

[00:12:05] Dan Fellars: Yeah, they don't have an image of that. So we'll have to test 

[00:12:10] Scott Rose: that out. But that is cool that they finally gave the redirect that people wanted. Yeah. Is 

[00:12:15] Dan Fellars: it now feature complete or is 

[00:12:19] Kamille Parks: it? I think, well, see, that's a difficult question, Dan, because again, there are four different types of interface of forms.

[00:12:27] So the newest type of form. I think has every feature that the other various types of forms had. I think it is the, the, you know, coalesced version of all the other ones. Now, I think this was one of the holdouts. There might be, if there's no ability to change the thank you for submitting a form message that shows up, that's a missing feature.

[00:12:58] Otherwise, I think it does [00:13:00] now have all of the, Various types of features that were available in the other 3 types of forms. 

[00:13:07] Scott Rose: Does it does it have the submit another response button? Can you enable that? 

[00:13:11] Kamille Parks: Maybe so I think really from my review of it when it. First got launched most of the things that we're missing had to do with what happens when you click submit, does it redirect you?

[00:13:25] That's now here. Can you change the the text? I don't know. And then to Scott's point can you submit another response? I also don't know. I think those are the the pieces that got left behind for whatever reason. 

[00:13:41] Dan Fellars: Yeah, because it did have conditional logic, right? To view how that 

[00:13:46] Kamille Parks: was area. It has a conditional logic.

[00:13:48] And then from interface forms, the first iteration of interface forms, it has the ability to filter by the current user. So those are there. [00:14:00] And, you know, the submission options are. What we're lacking and are more comparable than they were before. 

[00:14:08] Dan Fellars: All right, we'll move on this one. I don't know if, I've seen much talk of it.

[00:14:13] Copy layout from another page. 

[00:14:16] Scott Rose: Oh yeah. This is a big one for one of my clients. My client showed this to me. I was like, when did this come into the system? So yeah, you can, you can basically move record detail pages from one. Interface to another interface, basically. 

[00:14:37] Sean McGregor: Is 

[00:14:37] Dan Fellars: this for, but this is any page, not just the record sidebar pages, right?

[00:14:45] Scott Rose: Oh, I think the thing is, is that you could, in the past you could copy full pages, but it was called duplicate duplicate. Right, okay. I mean, so when you would duplicate it, it would ask you which interface you want to duplicate it into. So that was [00:15:00] sort of their version. Yeah, so 

[00:15:01] Dan Fellars: this is just record detail pages.

[00:15:04] Yeah, but it 

[00:15:05] Kamille Parks: also seems like with the duplication feature, it was like it was, A timestamp in that, like, once you duplicate it, if you make changes to one, you can reapply it to your, your second copy. You would have to create a new, a new page duplicated from the 1 that you edited and then get rid of the 1st duplicate that you made the phrasing of this again.

[00:15:29] I'm, I'm playing semantics lawyer here, but a copy layout from another page reminds me of in, the data layer. When you're looking at views, copy view configuration from another view, which you can do at any time and you could do repeatedly. So if that's the way it's implemented, that's great. That means you can continuously update 1, 1 layout and then have the 2nd layout.

[00:15:57] Just copy whatever edits without having to. [00:16:00] Create multiple, you know, duplicates over time because you, as far as I'm aware, you still can't delete detail pages, they count against your limit and you can't delete them, but it makes the whole interface if you want to get rid of them. So, right. I mean, my goodness, I don't understand that there's, there's certain limitations where I'm like, yeah, I'm sure that's hard to do.

[00:16:26] I don't know. I don't know about that one. That's 

[00:16:28] Scott Rose: weird. I know, I know. But this, yeah, you bring up a really good point there. I don't know whether. When you copy the layout, whether it overwrites your existing one or it creates a new one, but it sounds like it'll just overwrite the existing one. 

[00:16:44] Kamille Parks: I'll, I'll do some testing in the background.

[00:16:47] Scott Rose: Yeah, that, that would be the more preferred method, right? Yeah. For 

[00:16:57] Dan Fellars: good and bad. Yeah. [00:17:00] All right, we'll move on. Let's see. Let us know, Kamille, if you've got something. Yeah, here is one I just, just learned about. I didn't see any discuss of this. So eDiscovery APIs. So if you're a developer and this is only on the enterprise tier, but they now have the ability, they now have endpoints on the API to generate a full data dump and basically what it does is you basically send an API request to say, generate a data URL and then you then have to keep pinging another end point to get the status of it and then once it's ready, it will then provide a URL that you can then use to it's a zip file that will have CSV file of every data table.

[00:17:54] As well as comments, which was interesting because this might be the easiest way to [00:18:00] get comments out of the system. So it'll give you two and you can do CSV or Jason as your export modes. And so if you're in CSV mode, it'll give you two files for every table, one for the data and one for the, comments.

[00:18:18] It does not give you. The actual, any attachment data, it would just give you the URLs that you then have to extract. But yeah, that was pretty interesting. 

[00:18:30] Sean McGregor: Wow. 

[00:18:31] Scott Rose: That sounds like it competes against On2Air backups a little bit. 

[00:18:35] Dan Fellars: It doesn't compete, but it's definitely something we're going to leverage.

[00:18:38] It'll actually make it easier for us to, to do, some things. Yeah. Nice. So we'll be incorporating it. So it is still in beta, so it'll say beta on there. So, yeah, not fully fleshed out. So that's kind of what's new. There [00:19:00] is a few more that haven't been talked about. One, let's see. Yeah, one from, so this actually.

[00:19:11] Yeah, this is what, what Scott you were talking about. So it's impossible to add new record, although the option is activated. This is what they're talking about. This is I think where they rolled it back. 

[00:19:24] Scott Rose: Oh, are you bringing up their little hidden egg Easter egg that they dropped, right? Yeah.

[00:19:30] Explain what that is. Oh, I'm sorry. What was that, Dan? I didn't mean to cut you. Yeah. Explain 

[00:19:34] Dan Fellars: what 

[00:19:34] Scott Rose: what's going on. Oh, yeah. If you look at her post right there and you look at number two. She says these changes will help unlock additional exciting features coming, such as dynamic filtering of linked records.

[00:19:49] This has been the key feature that people have wanted since the beginning of time, even, you know, even spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have this feature. Basically, what it means [00:20:00] is if you have 2 different columns right next to each other, they don't have to be right next to each other, but just hypothetically.

[00:20:06] And based on what you choose in the first column, that will filter what options you see in the second column. So, for example, if you're picking a car, let's say, make and model, the first column is make. So you would choose like Toyota. When you get to the model column, it would only show you models that are Toyota models.

[00:20:29] Or if you have customers. And, or you have employees and the customers that they service. So if you choose the employee name in the first column, in the second column, it would only filter to show you their customers that they have been assigned to. So this is something that smart suite added really early on to compete against Airtable.

[00:20:52] Spreadsheets have had this for a while. Most other database apps have this. And so it's really interesting that you dropped this little hint [00:21:00] here, that this is coming soon. 

[00:21:03] Dan Fellars: And this is in response to, so, and they did say, this is where they said that they're rolling back that update. And so they'll continue to iterate and maybe we'll see, we'll see what that looks like.

[00:21:16] Little Easter egg there. Kamille, looks like you've got. Something to share. 

[00:21:21] Kamille Parks: Yes. So I went to an interface. Let me back up. Very simple. There's like a detail page. If I go to the settings for this, you'll see that I have three detail pages. This one is full full screen. This is the side sheet. And this is a duplicate of the full screen one because I initially chose the side sheet 1 and then tried to copy another detail page layout and couldn't see it.

[00:21:56] And I thought, okay, maybe it's only available [00:22:00] if they're both the same size. So this 1 is a full screen duplicate of the other full screen 1 with several items removed. And if I go to copy another record detail layout, I still don't have anything to select from. So I don't know what I did wrong. I 

[00:22:19] Scott Rose: think you need to create a brand new interface.

[00:22:22] I think it's only for copying between interfaces, maybe? 

[00:22:28] Kamille Parks: Well, that's not cool. But, That might be the case if I create a brand new subsection perhaps, but I do like the wording of this, this will overwrite the layout of the current detail page which again suggests to me that I can have two different detail pages, redesign one, and then overwrite the other without having to create endless duplicates.

[00:22:56] So as soon as I get it to work, I'll be happy. [00:23:00] Oh, 

[00:23:00] Scott Rose: wait, maybe do they need to be identical? Well, 

[00:23:03] Kamille Parks: that's, well, that defeats the purpose. 

[00:23:06] Scott Rose: I mean, what I meant is they need to be identical, like layouts ahead of time. Yeah, 

[00:23:09] Kamille Parks: this was a duplicate of the first one. So I expect to see it, available, you know, they're the same size.

[00:23:18] They're obviously coming from the same source, et cetera. And I just removed the first few sections so we could see it populate with the other layout. But it's not here. So, 

[00:23:30] Scott Rose: you know, Oh, I guess we don't have time. But if you create a new interface, I wonder if it'll let you do it. I'll do that 

[00:23:37] Kamille Parks: in the background.

[00:23:37] I'll just tell you if it works. 

[00:23:41] Dan Fellars: Very good. 

[00:23:42] Now, I want to make sure we've got time for our segment. So I'm just going to do 1 more. This was from Max yesterday. This is where I first saw it on the Facebook community. I, I, I assume this is new that now [00:24:00] the, if you have a list view in an interface, the, the headers are now frozen.

[00:24:07] I think they used to not be frozen. So they used to scroll. I did verify I'm seeing that on my interfaces. That's nice. So that's a new feature that just rolled out that they didn't announce 

[00:24:20] Kamille Parks: really quickly. Scott, you are correct. It has to be copying from another interface group. So not as useful as I would want, but still pretty useful if you have several interfaces for the same base.

[00:24:33] So 

[00:24:35] Scott Rose: they should clarify that in. Like text on the screen or something, 

[00:24:40] Kamille Parks: I would agree, but it works the way you would expect it in once you go to a different interface. All right. 

[00:24:46] Scott Rose: I'm done. That's awesome. And it overwrites your existing detail layout with the other. That's awesome. 

[00:24:53] Kamille Parks: And if you, if you, I'm sorry, really quickly, if you have on that detail page, a list or a grid or whatever [00:25:00] of the linked records of it, you can copy That list or grids detail page that it opens to the new one as well.

[00:25:08] So it's 

[00:25:10] Scott Rose: recursive. Very cool. 

[00:25:13] Dan Fellars: Awesome. All right, let's move on. We'll save a couple of these other. I think that was all the features and big news, but there's other discussions that we can talk about in another week. So let's move on. 

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[00:27:37] And it's actually, if you, if you install this inside of the, inside of Airtable itself as an extension. It makes it easy. We actually provide a script that you can run to extract your meta information. If you if you aren't actually even using the backup solution, you can still inspect your meta information.

[00:27:59] With, with a [00:28:00] free script. So useful to, to play with. So check that out. That's now available for all backup customers. The backup of the meta information is not available on the starter plan, but any of the other plans it is available. So check it out at onto air. 

[00:28:18] Scott Rose: That is very cool. I love that you made it so easy for people to navigate through that.

[00:28:24] JSON data right from your website, right? Yeah, that's amazing. 

[00:28:27] Dan Fellars: Yeah, that is cool. 

[00:28:29] MEET THE CREATORS: SEAN MCGREGOR - 00:28:32

[00:28:32] All right, Sean. Let's hope that we've got a good internet connection. You're on mute still. So if you want to unmute, we'll see how this goes. We'll learn more about 

[00:28:42] Sean McGregor: Sean. Yeah, fingers crossed for sure, everybody. Yeah, like I was telling you guys beforehand, we were supposed to be on a Boeing 737 max flight and they canceled our flight.

[00:28:52] So got some extra bonus days in Mexico which comes with all the Airbnb is the wifi good or not, [00:29:00] but I moved to my third room now. So. 

[00:29:05] Kamille Parks: Well, thank you for joining us and I'm sorry. Well, I'm glad you got the extra days.

[00:29:15] So, happy new year 

[00:29:19] Sean McGregor: to y'all as well. 2024 time to get that wrong for the next. 15 days 

[00:29:25] Kamille Parks: so far, so good for me. I think I've been, I haven't called it 2023 yet. I know eventually I'll start saying 2022 and that. So Sean welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. How long would you say you've been in the world of Airtable and low 

[00:29:47] Sean McGregor: code man?

[00:29:49] So for me a little bit about my background. Graduated my, you know, undergrad and MBA from Texas tech in, you know, 2007 and immediately started kind [00:30:00] of the entrepreneurial journey. Did a discount card business in different college towns where I signed up like one pizza place, one golf course, one tanning salon, yada, yada.

[00:30:10] So dealt with a bunch of small businesses and went through the whole entrepreneurial struggle of, okay, I'm going to hire someone to do the website. Oh, that costs that much. I'm going to learn how to do it myself. Oh, I need to do the graphic design. Oh, it's going to cost this much. I'm gonna learn how to do it myself.

[00:30:25] And that's just kind of been my mantra the whole way. And, you know, been the do everything kind of entrepreneur. Met my better half in 2015. She just gotten off around the world trip where she went for 15 months working remotely and you know, one of our, like our seventh day was in Austin, Texas. And she's like, Hey, can you meet me at this location downtown?

[00:30:45] I'm like, okay, sure. No problem. And I get there and a one person studio. All these partitions set up Ikea boxes everywhere and she had made essentially a hostel for digital nomads and [00:31:00] solo travelers that slept seven people again in a place that was supposed to fit probably two. But like really quickly, I was just like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

[00:31:10] And I started, you know, helping out with that business. And, you know, we had all these people from around the world coming and staying with us, working remotely. We had a coworking up in front and I just really loved like connecting people and getting to know them. And so very quickly as we got more serious.

[00:31:25] I took over that whole business and then accidentally ended up, you know, being an Airbnb guy for a while. And so because of that, you know, after we'd gone to two locations and we had 15 guests and we were getting ready to go to Europe with her family, I've, that was the first time I started doing kind of automation as far as like the messaging with the guests.

[00:31:48] And that just all of a sudden, like blew my mind that this is possible. Somebody, you know, book something automatically message goes out to them. And it's just continually leveled up from there. I found out about Zapier, [00:32:00] started doing a bunch of automation there to where, like we're in Europe, we go to bed at six o'clock, which is, you know, I mean, we go to bed at like midnight, let's say, and it's 6 PM back in Austin.

[00:32:10] Eventually we have 34 guests checking in. So I had to then figure out like, if the booking comes in and it's for today. Automatically message this guest. It's long term. Tell them the information about the guests, their phone number, yada, yada. So they can send the check in message and it just kept on stacking like that.

[00:32:30] We now have a six year old, but as soon as he came around, like, you know, I had to be even more hands off and more remote. And because, you know, want to be there for Lindsay, want to be there for Jackson. And then just more and more figured out how to do things remotely, how to automate things. You know, during COVID we had, so we had three locations of that hostel at some point, but during COVID sharing rooms with solo travelers is a really bad idea.

[00:32:58] So had to shut down those [00:33:00] businesses. I pivoted to hosting homes around the country that I'd never seen before or never been to before. And I did that through all of my systems, all my processes, all my automations. And at first, you know, when a booking happened, I had like an 18 step zap that would go to the owner to like, let them know their commission.

[00:33:22] Cause it was like, Oh, well, this owner gets 20%, this one gets 25%. And I'd have all that math done in Zapier. And it was amazing. But as I brought a person on and tried to teach them how to do that, when we got a new property. It was a mess, you know, and so someone had told me about Airtable before and I looked at it and I'm like, okay, cool, fancy spreadsheet, but then another person told me and I finally like just took a Udemy course dove in and I figured out that you could do, you know, trigger based on views and it completely blew my mind because now instead of doing an 18 steps app, I'm doing a two [00:34:00] steps app, but it's based on, you know, guest checks in in three days.

[00:34:04] Send a message, you know, today is check in send a message, you know, and I was able to all of a sudden build this. You know, for me, superior system over anything else I could buy because it was done exactly the way I wanted it to be done. And so that's when like the Airtable, like aha moment went on. I quickly took more, more courses, started watching YouTube videos that became kind of my, like, you know, instead of listening to short term rental podcast, I was listening to no code podcast and I was like, you know, I was like watching all the YouTube stuff I get my hands on.

[00:34:38] And yeah, dreaming an Airtable, even like it's been a little ridiculous. I've definitely been the person like annoying my friends that have businesses like, Oh, dude, what you need is Airtable, all these things. And so, yeah, man, like, you know, it's been an amazing ride so far. And for me, the main thing that like Airtable and these [00:35:00] tools give is just confidence that, you know, things are going to be done correctly on time every single time.

[00:35:07] And then I've brought on three people now to help with that business. And I've made it so simple for them to do the right thing as necessary every single time and then any like annoying, tedious tasks, I always try to automate that and then level them up to they're working on more important things. And now I'm like, you know, pivoting even from the short term rental stuff where I'm going to start trying to teach no code concepts and tools to other people.

[00:35:35] And that's kind of the automate the annoying thing. It's like, I was going to ask 

[00:35:40] Kamille Parks: about your shirt, which is amazing. And if you make 

[00:35:43] Sean McGregor: them, I would like one. All right. Got you. I'll take care of you. But yeah, it's basically like I automate the annoying blank and I want to try to get people to think like when they're doing an annoying task, like, Oh, could this be automated?

[00:35:56] Could this be systematized? You know, how can this [00:36:00] be taken off my plate? Because, you know, we all have limited time. We all have limited energy and focus. And, you know, if you're spending all your time doing stuff that takes away your energy. Then, you know, your business is going to suffer. You're going to have burnout, you know, you're spending less time with your family and friends.

[00:36:16] So yeah, my, my kind of mission is to start putting out content and helping people to learn how to automate those annoying things. That way they can get their time back, work on the things that they do care about, and then just, you know, give them the systems that the big companies have always had. Cause now they are more and more accessible to people that, you know.

[00:36:36] With a little bit of effort and time, you can put them in your own business. And once you, you know, it takes a little longer the first time, but then it works for you, you know, they're going forward and that's like the true power is like you figured out one time and you're like, boom, never have to do that again.

[00:36:51] That's amazing. So there's my 20 minute short answer. Sorry about 

[00:36:55] Kamille Parks: that. No, but you gave like a perfect explanation [00:37:00] of the benefits of automation and also when to do automation. Some pitfalls that you sometimes see people have is when they start out something, everything is automatic automated.

[00:37:12] And you really, I think in my opinion, you really have to understand what if it's a business, what your business is doing, what service are you Actually offering people deal with being annoyed for just a minute. So you really understand what it is that you're doing and then you automate it. So it's not taking away your energy as you say, but you gotta, you have to understand what you're doing.

[00:37:37] If you have a bunch of wires in your hands. Connecting them, it's going to do something, but it might not do the thing that you want. So I really like that you, you kind of laid out the whole, you know, we started a process and then we just made it more efficient over time and also making it easier for the newer [00:38:00] people on your team to understand what's going on.

[00:38:02] Because the concept is the same, right? What is the automation doing is the same as if it were a person doing it. But now it's happening faster, and there's likely a neat little button that says run task or something 

[00:38:16] Sean McGregor: exactly. Yeah. I mean, in the dashboard for, you know, my teammates, like, if an email is needed in certain step.

[00:38:24] It'll, a little thing will pop up saying email needed and so they know, okay, I need to add that. And it's based on the stage of the stay. I also have I use a website called open phone. Do y'all know that app at all? No. Okay. So that is like a, also another part of my no code toolkit that I absolutely love.

[00:38:45] And you know, you talked about it a little bit, but it's important to automate. But one of my kind of core values in my company is like automate, but still personally connect. And before I had any VAs, I would, you know, personally text message the guests, all their [00:39:00] information for the Airbnbs because, you know, not everyone's going to have the app downloaded.

[00:39:04] Not everyone's going to know how to, you know, look through the full email. They might get like a truncated text or whatever, but everyone knows how to use their cell phone. And so we've, you know, we travel quite a bit we work remotely, like I said. And so, you know, if you can text somebody the information, they're going to have it on their phone.

[00:39:22] They know how to use it. We just try to make it as simple as possible, include photos of, you know, the front of the house give them the information in the timely fashion. But as you bring on people, you know, it doesn't help if it's all located in your phone. Right? So what open phone does is you can have, you know, you have as many phone lines as you want.

[00:39:43] You can use it on a desktop. You can use it on a mobile. Do you want me to show you real quick? Sure. Okay. Again, fingers crossed on the whole, you know, the whole internet thing. But 

[00:39:58] Kamille Parks: so far so good. [00:40:00] And then right after we can jump into your demo. Okay, 

[00:40:03] Sean McGregor: cool. So yeah, open phone. So these are all different phone lines.

[00:40:08] Yep. And what's amazing about this is on this, like for guests, you know, this would be all air Airtable data. Like there's the first name. Here is the property address pulled in based on the property. All this information, the door code that my teammates enter goes in there. The wifi gets pulled in correctly.

[00:40:34] You know, all this information is property specific and it feels like a personalized text, but really all my team does is they put in, you know, make sure the name is in there and make sure the check in time is set. So it's like if they put 11 a. m. this second half of the sentence gets changed to say, but you can actually head over after 11 today, door code, yada, yada.

[00:40:57] So anyway, this is all a text message, but [00:41:00] why open phone is really, really great. Is you can click internal comment and I can message my teammates in this thread. I can say, Hey, reply, yada, yada. They copy paste, put it in there. And then in addition to that, I have these notifications set up saying like, Hey, we got a new review, download it and put it in the Google sheet.

[00:41:26] Make sure like if, if they, if the automation didn't trigger to send the check in instructions. Like if they didn't do it the normal way, they get, then they get a notification saying, Hey, make sure to send this, you know, use open phone to send a review follow up. And that's another thing this can do where I mean, that this little thing.

[00:41:47] You can do all these canned messages that have these things automatically. So anyway, all of it, this is like the actual open phone link and this is [00:42:00] all just pulled in from Airtable to Zapier, you know, and then like Zapier is what pushes this message through open phone. And that's another like huge part of it is, you know, based on a view.

[00:42:15] Open phone will send this message to my teammates on these different lines. And there's a lot more it can do, but yeah, that's like a really important part of the business for me. That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'll have to check that out. 

[00:42:35] Dan Fellars: Cool. That's an awesome introduction into your world. So you basically started, if I understand your business, if somebody wants to, you know, turn their home into an Airbnb, you partner with them and kind of manage the whole process for 

[00:42:49] Sean McGregor: them.

[00:42:50] Exactly. And, you know, because I'm fully remote, you know, in a way to, in an effort to set myself apart and because I do believe in our system so much, You know, [00:43:00] like the second day of their stay, they get a checkup message automatically at 10 Oh two every single time without me thinking about it with my team thinking about it.

[00:43:09] Because I believe so strongly in it. We guarantee a five star review or we don't take a commission. And, you know, to be honest, we traveled five or six months a year. We were in, like Japan this last couple months ago. And, you know, that's a totally different time zone, but that's how confident, you know, I am because of the systems because of how easy it is for my teammates and just, you know, how much I trust them.

[00:43:34] But again, I trust these systems also. To tell them what to do, when to do it, and yeah, again, I tried to do it before before Airtable, but the trigger by view thing just completely opened it. And then I honestly had no idea about the whole relational database thing before, and that just absolutely leveled it up as well.

[00:43:56] Dan Fellars: Why don't we, why don't we dive into that? If you want to [00:44:00] share, you want to get your base ready, we can go 

[00:44:02] Sean McGregor: through that. Hello. Because my wifi was messing up, I actually am going to pivot a little bit on my demo. So I told you about the Airbnb side of things. One thing I want to show y'all though is this is something I've made an arrow page and actually made it for, you know, a better half of Lindsay.

[00:44:23] She runs a dance camp business, American dance training camps. And you know, I was going to switch from my base to this base and show both, but just, For sake of like not stressing the internet and decided to just do this one. Can you see this right now? Yes. Dance. Yes. Okay. Perfect. So this is all Aero table data and this is Aero page.

[00:44:48] I'm on preview mode right now. What's amazing is you can search by, you know, Beyonce, it'll pull up just Beyonce videos. [00:45:00] Come

[00:45:03] on, Wi Fi, don't fail me now. 

[00:45:08] Kamille Parks: We believe you. 

[00:45:11] Dan Fellars: Aero page, demos in the past, but just curious your selection process. Cause there's a couple of solutions here. 

[00:45:21] Sean McGregor: For me, I mean, I've tried. You know, I mainly tried softer and I tried stacker and with arrow page, you just, you're able to do, I mean, for me, it's been so customizable, you know, let me refresh this real quick.

[00:45:35] Sorry about that. But yeah, I mean, I've loved it. You know, with software, let's say you can only build kind of their version of a website. Like with this, I feel like you can make it as pretty as you can with like the best WordPress, WordPress builder, the best web flow builder. Like you can make it look exactly how you want.

[00:45:57] Plus, you know, it has all the bells and whistles. [00:46:00] Like, so you go to the preview mode again, you know, I can hit location info and this pulls in for the Maryland location. And that's like, this link goes to the proper place that videos for Maryland. You know, obviously you have all this information for the, each video is different.

[00:46:20] You can add to favorites. You can go, I want to just see hip hop again. If the filters don't work, I'd blame more of the internet than anything else. But yeah, like, so now these are all hip hop songs. Which I think is pretty amazing. This is all embed codes that are put in here. This add to favorites is, you know, this is actually floating above the embed.

[00:46:47] And when I click it, it switches to added. And that's a condition that I was able to set, which is like nothing you're gonna be able to do out of the box, but with aero page, you're able to customize it exactly how you want it. [00:47:00] You know, you can go to choreographer here. It pulls up a modal. Now, all of a sudden, all of these videos are ones that she choreographed.

[00:47:13] So kind of like what you were talking about with the Toyota, et cetera, you know, you can make these selections. And it's going to pull up just Kim McClay, her information, all of her, you know, all of her videos will load now and, you know, you can also search just in this, which is pretty awesome. You know, you can go to choreographers, just to pull up all the different choreographers.

[00:47:42] Let's see.

[00:47:51] Okay. So now this is all Ellen stuff. Same thing, just her videos. More tricks that it has, [00:48:00] you know, this is like me logged in so I can allow certain things to be edited. So here, Sean has that wifi save. And then up here, Sean has bad wifi McGregor, like automatically updates on the front end and you can do that with any of these like artist titles, song titles.

[00:48:32] So that means I can give anybody access to edit something. It'll automatically update my Airtable base and then it'll update on the front end, which I don't know if there's another tool that does it quite like that in this kind of a user friendly thing. I'll show you a few other parts of this if I have time.

[00:48:52] Yeah, let's do this real quick. So this is kind of a magic trick that AeroPage has that I'm, you know, pretty blown away by. [00:49:00] So you can set the design for one page, see if it loads up.

[00:49:11] Okay. So most of this is static, right? But then you have. Bills, bills, bills performed our Friday night show at our Wisconsin location, all the information again, this pulls up the choreographer info. This pulls up the Wisconsin info. This has all the information, including, you know, all this SEO information automatically.

[00:49:36] Plus, you know, a log in to and like what's cool also about our page that I love is you can do custom HTML emails and, you know, if I did a sign up right now, I'd get an email and whenever I open that email, it would essentially send a pixel to my Airtable and check a box saying. They've opted in to be a member and then on the front end here, they would automatically [00:50:00] boom, have access and be able to use something.

[00:50:03] Which again, I think is incredible, but what's amazing to me and again, like all the no code stuff I just can't imagine is that out of, let's say she has like 2500, you know, videos. I designed one page and all of a sudden she has 2, 500 pages with rich SEO terms automatically showing up on our website, long tail keywords, et cetera.

[00:50:32] And then if I can click this, Oh, let me get out of here.

[00:50:42] So this is what like the meta description, the meta title looks like where I automatically, you know, Google is seeing free dance videos. TLC, waterfalls, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then here's the little short [00:51:00] description. You can also have images created automatically in AeroPage that will correspond exactly and say waterfalls, jazz dance, American dance training camps, et cetera.

[00:51:12] And all of this, you know, 2, 500 pages. Boom. Instantly on Google. Last thing I'll show you. I'm sure I'm like way over time. So apologies for that. Actually, I think I went to the wrong button. 

[00:51:28] Scott Rose: Sean, when people click that favorite button you showed us at the beginning, does that do their favorites get stored in your Airtable base or is it arrow page?

[00:51:35] Sean McGregor: Yeah. Yeah. So so that's another thing I like about it versus some of the, you know, like take your data solutions. Everything goes back to. Airtable to where you know, essentially when I'm clicking those add to favorites, it's doing an array where it automatically is adding linked records into a columns called favorite videos.

[00:51:58] And then that [00:52:00] is. You know, that is stored there. So when they load it again, all their favorite videos are there and it's a toggle to where if they click it again, it'll be taken off of that LinkedIn, you know, out of that part. 

[00:52:16] Scott Rose: Does the arrow page manage the adding and subtracting from the array for you?

[00:52:20] Or do you have a script to do that? Or I'll, I'll show 

[00:52:23] Sean McGregor: you what it looks like. Honestly, you can make your own variables. Which is really cool. So I just named a variable, you know, you just type in, like favorite dance videos and then it's, you know, these are cards and they each have their ID, which is the record ID.

[00:52:42] And so you just say, you know, use it as a toggle when you click this, add it and then return everything that's been clicked before with that new ID. And then it's clicked again, remove it. And so that way, like it keeps on stacking over and over again, [00:53:00] this, so this is kind of something like one of my teammates would use, like, here's what, like the builder part of it looks like, but just to show you, so this is what they would actually like my teammates that are also helping Lindsay, they're making these thumbnails for the different videos.

[00:53:23] And they can all this information automatically pulled in for them to where they can just copy and paste these descriptions, right? And then they upload the video screenshot, the finished thumbnail, and then because it's going into Airtable and AeroPage is using Airtable, all that information is automatically on the front end.

[00:53:47] So they're updating, you know, YouTube with this information, but this stuff is already correct, you know, because it's all pulled in. This is all formula stuff from Airtable, but [00:54:00] you know, anything they change here again, if they change the song or whatever, it's automatically going to, you know, update throughout the entire site anywhere that is.

[00:54:12] So if we said, I want to change black eyed peas to. Black guide sneeze, then, you know, it would automatically be that everywhere, which again is just like beyond magical. I honestly don't know how to code. I told you I learned how to do graphic design and learned how to do websites, learn how to do all that.

[00:54:31] But this is something that was never like the actual coding part is I never got there. But because of Zapier, Airtable, arrow page. Now I feel like I can do all that stuff. That's awesome. I would, I would click this and it opens up a side drawer, but I'm a little nervous to show passwords and such. But yeah, anyway, that's kind of the main thing I wanted to show.

[00:54:57] Just like this is a new tool. It's still [00:55:00] in beta. Like I've been using Aero page about a year in beta and like kind of going back and forth with the founder, Mike, a lot. And you know, adding in my like two cents about how things work and what would be cool to have and. You know, it's been amazing how much he's been able to help with all that.

[00:55:21] Yeah. I think I have this stuff. Yeah. And so you can have different layouts for different tablets, you know, different things, obviously click here. It's not what I would have, but. Yeah, very cool. 

[00:55:37] Dan Fellars: That's awesome. That's very cool. How you can run a business with such limited resources and make it this intense.

[00:55:45] So very cool. Thank you, Sean, for, for sharing that. And we'd love to see how people use Airtable to, to run their businesses. Thank you for opening it up. And sharing that. Let's [00:56:00] quickly move on. We'll, we'll finish up. We got time for Scott. 

[00:56:04] BUILTONAIR COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT: 00:56:06

[00:56:06] Just real quickly join our community at built on air. com.

[00:56:09] Amazing thousands of Airtable users doing amazing things like Sean. And so join us at built on air. com slash join. 

[00:56:18] AUDIENCE QUESTIONS: 00:56:19

[00:56:19] Okay, Scott, walk us through this question and how you answered it. Hey, 

[00:56:23] Scott Rose: very quick. Quickly, I will show you there was a question, excuse me, that came up in the community. Let's see. There was a question that came up in the community about somebody who had synced tables.

[00:56:42] To, to another base from one base to another base. And then they were surprised that because it is a limitation of the syncing that their records that were linked were no longer linked anymore. Once they were in the destination base. And [00:57:00] there is a trick that you can do to get them to relink in the destination base.

[00:57:06] There are some caveats to it, but I wanted to show you how it works. So. Here we have a flower order database and I'll show you a simple, version of this first, and then we'll do a more advanced version if we have time. So we have some customers here. And we have products here and each customer, similar to what Sean was just talking about, they can favorite their favorite products from the product base or from the product table.

[00:57:34] I mean, and so here you can see the products and who, which customers favorited those products. Then here you can see it from the customer's point of view. So if we were to sink these two tables, customers and products over to another base, Oh, and by the way, you sink views, not tables. So that was a misnomer when I just said there.

[00:57:57] So if you sink this view and [00:58:00] this view over to another base, this is what it would look like. Here's our sink customers and here's our synced products. Give this a second to load here, and you'll notice that the linked record field, which was right here, has turned into a single line text field, excuse me, and in the sync products table, the exact same thing, single line text field.

[00:58:28] So there's actually a little known trick that you can do in these sync tables, which is that you can actually convert the field. So they come in. As text, but you can actually convert these to another type of field. So you can actually take this text field. And what you can do is you can change it to link to another record.

[00:58:51] And you could say, I want to link this to the same products table. And now we'll say, confirm here. You've got your links [00:59:00] back again. Now there is a little bit of a caveat here, which is that if you go here to the same products table, it's actually not using the previous field. It actually creates a brand new linked record field, for your new link.

[00:59:17] However, you have successfully recreated the links between your two tables in your destination. Now, one of the things that you do need to be aware of with this is that this will only work successfully if In the table that you're linking to has unique values for every single record in your primary field here.

[00:59:45] Technically, in general, you know, the rule of thumb, the best use case is that you should be having your primary field. Typically, it should be unique, but Airtable doesn't enforce that. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons where you [01:00:00] actually wouldn't even want it to be unique. So if you're in one of those situations where your primary field values are not unique, then you're going to have that, that trick actually won't work and I'll show you real quick, quickly where that doesn't work and how you can work around that.

[01:00:16] So let's say we go to a more advanced sync here. So this is. A list of orders and each order has a bunch of line items and these are linked to this table, order line items. You could see that Dan ordered the exact same things on his order that Kamille ordered on her order. They each have a 90 order here and they each have the exact same to line items.

[01:00:43] However, because this was, done in. In the original base, you could see that we've got these separated out by orders. So, you know, because when we created a new line item for Dan or for [01:01:00] Kamille, let's say, instead of choosing one of the existing line items that was already chosen for the other customer.

[01:01:06] We just created a new record, but you won't, you don't have that capability in the destination base. So you'll see here that these order line items here, these have the exact same values because it's a formula field. So when we go into our destination base here, if we were to convert this into a linked record field.

[01:01:30] And we're going to link this to the order line items. At first glance, it looks like, Oh, this really works. This worked again. But the problem is. These values are not unique because the primary field value wasn't unique So if we come in here and we group this by the synced orders, you'll see That everything was lumped together down here under these two line items And then these up here these are empty.

[01:01:57] These were not linked to any [01:02:00] orders You could see that each one of these line items Was linked to two orders instead of them being split apart separately, like we have over here back in our original days. So really the solution for this is, I mean, there's a couple of solutions. One is you can create your own automations.

[01:02:20] You know, to try to relink and stuff, or you could come back into your base, your original base and do something that makes each one of the primary fields unique. So for example, you can make this, you know, actually have. The order number as a 

[01:02:40] part of the 

[01:02:44] primary field value, and then it would look something like this.

[01:02:53] So now what we have here, once it, [01:03:00] once it takes its final. What's that? I'm sorry. 

[01:03:04] Dan Fellars: It's gotta sync it over. 

[01:03:07] Scott Rose: Yeah, you'd think it would go quicker with only four records. Yeah. 

[01:03:11] Kamille Parks: Are you also trapped in a vacation spot? 

[01:03:15] Scott Rose: Actually, me and, me and Sean, we are actually next door. 

[01:03:23] Kamille Parks: No. So while this is kind of working.

[01:03:26] I will say 1 of the things that I do if you don't want to rename your, your primary field, you can also, like, pick between in this case, orders and order line items. Pick one of those two fields that syncs over the linked record field is going to come in as text as, as Scott has demonstrated, I would pick order line items and sink in its order number linked record field.

[01:03:55] It comes in as text convert that to a link to [01:04:00] the linked record field instead of the other way around, because order number was already unique. So you don't have to. You know, make that a change, right? 

[01:04:09] Scott Rose: Adjustment. That is a great, great, great tip. What, what, what Kamille was saying is another solution, which is easier and quicker is convert this field right here into a linked record field.

[01:04:23] Then link this back to sync to orders because the order numbers are already unique. And now this is linked. In this direction. And then of course the new field is created right here and now you've got your sinking. So that's sort of like doing it from the, the line items table instead of the orders table.

[01:04:44] And you can also see that did this automatically correct? No. So basically what, because that's the old field. This is the old field that I created. So I'm just going to delete this. 

[01:04:55] Kamille Parks: It might correct itself if you force a sink. I don't know if it finished 

[01:04:59] Scott Rose: [01:05:00] yet. Oh, yeah. Let's take a look at that. Let's sink now.

[01:05:03] We'll see what happens. And sync 

[01:05:05] Kamille Parks: the, 

[01:05:08] Scott Rose: Oh, there we go. Thank you. 

[01:05:10] Kamille Parks: Thank you. It will fix itself because when you convert the, the text. Into back into a link record field, it knows the value it's looking for, and if it doesn't find it, it's going to come in as blank. So that's another caveat. Make sure both of your sink views have all of the information, all of the line items and all of the orders that match up to each other.

[01:05:33] Otherwise, some of them are going to always be blank. But because it is a formula and because the formula was also updated in the synced record table, it will fix itself eventually. Love it. Whatever 

[01:05:47] Dan Fellars: it resyncs. The other caveat I'll say 

[01:05:50] is 

[01:05:52] also be careful with commas in your primary field. God, 

[01:05:56] Kamille Parks: yes, dear God.

[01:05:58] This is a very [01:06:00] useful trick, and I use it all the time. But yes, Dan, what Dan pointed out is the one thing that will throw you through a little use commas because sometimes if you have commas, what I do is I'll sink in the original tables, link the record ID of the original record and use an automation to Link them back and forth rather than converting the field, because it's the only way to guarantee that the only commas in that field are the ones actually separating records.

[01:06:30] A lot of times you're not going to have that issue, but if you have commas in your primary primary field, then yeah, my goodness. 

[01:06:37] Scott Rose: Right. And that's the whole problem to begin with, is that Airtable changes record IDs. In the sync table. 

[01:06:45] Kamille Parks: Yes, it's a new base, it's a new table, and therefore it has a new unique identifier.

[01:06:52] So I, I typically sync in what the original record ID was, and then have the synced table ID [01:07:00] also there, just in case I wanted to. For whatever 

[01:07:03] Scott Rose: reason, that's a great way of doing it also is use the record IDs. Yeah, I was actually going to show the record ID trick also. But we don't have enough time to show that.

[01:07:13] We'll do it next time. Do it next time. 

[01:07:15] Dan Fellars: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that Scott and Sean. Thanks again for coming on. Really excited to see how you grow your business and we'll have you on in the future and see check out some updates when you're back in the States. So thank you for coming on. 

[01:07:31] Sean McGregor: I'd love to more stable Internet next time.

[01:07:33] I promise. Well, 

[01:07:34] Kamille Parks: it's working fine now. Yeah, 

[01:07:37] Sean McGregor: it was good. It's cool all stars are Lindsey and Jackson in the bedroom way over there. So. 

[01:07:43] Dan Fellars: And that's today's show. We'll be back next week. So join us then take care of everyone. 

[01:07:48] Thanks guys. Thanks y'all. Bye bye. .

[01:07:51] OUTRO: 01:07:52

[01:07:52] Thank you for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out our sponsor On2Air backups, automated backups for [01:08:00] Airtable. We'll see you next time on the built on air podcast.