[00:00:02]
All right,
[00:00:03]
welcome back to the BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:00:05]
We are in season twenty three,
[00:00:07]
episode four.
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Good to be back with you.
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Myself,
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Ali and Kamille are here and we have
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a special guest with us, Martin.
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Welcome, Martin.
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Hi, everyone.
[00:00:19]
Nice to have you back.
[00:00:20]
We had you on a couple of seasons
[00:00:23]
ago, I believe.
[00:00:25]
Remind us where where are you located in
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the world?
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Yeah, I’m in Europe, in Czech Republic,
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right now in Prague,
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but I’m traveling a lot, but yeah,
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right now I’m in Prague at my hometown
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or city, let’s say.
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Very cool.
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That’s awesome.
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Cool.
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So every week we do a different segment.
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And this is our week for bringing on
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a guest and having them share some cool
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stuff with us.
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So I will give an update before we
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start.
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Last week,
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we broke some news on the show of
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a new superagents.com that Airtable
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launched.
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and kind of demoed that and um maybe
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we’ll show that in next week’s episode
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again but um anyways i’ve played with it
[00:01:12]
a little bit more my general impression is
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kind of cool kind of interesting i don’t
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know if i would use it for a
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whole lot i probably am not the the
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primary use case for it i’m not doing
[00:01:25]
a ton of reports and whatnot but um
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Kind of cool,
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but a little disappointing of like that
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they’re putting energy and effort into
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that product that seems a little bit
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outside of what we know Airtable to be.
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So I don’t know if any of you
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have opinions.
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Yeah.
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I saw a comment from someone who was
[00:01:48]
happy about the recent automation
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subscription.
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Yeah.
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feature release and they were like, wow,
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it’s great to see that while they’re doing
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AI stuff,
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they’re still releasing features for the
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main product.
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But I don’t know about everyone else.
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I think that feature is broken.
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So I wish they’d stop expanding so they
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could focus on one thing and then do
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it well.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, we’ll talk on that one next week.
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We’ll showcase that.
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Absolutely.
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There was one thing I saw someone post
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about Super Agent that I hadn’t really
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thought of.
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And I kind of liked the idea that
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they had,
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which was they kind of thought of it
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as a way to get a launching pad
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for how to approach solving a problem.
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which I thought was really interesting.
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Like she is somebody I can’t remember who
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it was on LinkedIn.
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They said they had been trying to solve
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this problem for a long time and had
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no idea how to approach it.
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And so they just type that into super
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agent and then got like a report on
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like basically how other people have
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solved this problem overtime and like what
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your things should be.
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I think that was a really interesting.
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Way to use that tool.
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Yeah.
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Well, well,
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maybe dive deeper next week on our
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highlights of new functionalities and
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features and whatnot.
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So awesome.
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Well with that, Martin,
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if you want to share your screen and
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give us a,
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before you dive in and give us some
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context, who you are, what you’re up to,
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and a little bit about yourself,
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and then you can jump into what you’ve
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got to share with us today.
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Yes.
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Is my screen showing well?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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Perfect.
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Yeah.
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So I am a Airtable freelancer.
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I provide Airtable solutions to clients.
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I’ve been doing that for the past two
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years, maybe more at this point.
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I jumped into the Airtable world after
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being a web developer for a long time.
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I have been kind of busy in the
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startup world and oftentimes we had the
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need of some, you know,
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efficient internal tooling.
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And back then I found Airtable as a,
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like,
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like a really convenient solution and and
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then when i wanted to transition to a
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different um different area maybe take a
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small break for just pure web development
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i thought um actually i could build
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solution of the fAirtable combine like my
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knowledge of javascript and uh you know
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web development together with like
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actually uh
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providing expertise with Airtable that
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I’ve learned over time when using it
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internally.
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And then I did a deep dive into
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the various kinds of aspects of Airtable
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over time and provided different kinds of
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solutions to clients.
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But as I did my Airtable freelancing,
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I also was a little bit
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missing the pure web development stuff.
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And then I decided to actually build my
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own products for Airtable.
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And the first one was actually PowerSafe.
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So that’s a Chrome extension for for
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Airtable, not just Airtable, actually,
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but
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You can connect various kinds of
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destinations.
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You can send to also Notion, Kodak,
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Webhooks.
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But Airtable was the first one.
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Also,
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Airtable has the best connection over
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there.
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And so PowerSafe is like a very universal
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advanced web clipper,
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which you can use anytime in your web
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browser and save to different places.
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And you can optionally also use AI
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to have better scraping.
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So that’s what I was mentioning before,
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or what I was showing here before.
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But over time,
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I found out I want to actually have
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also a different kind of product to offer.
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And that’s why I started building a
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PowerSync,
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which is not a Chrome extension.
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It is more of a…
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a backend service, a monitoring service,
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and it’s built on top of the Airtable
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webhooks.
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So the Airtable webhooks,
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it’s a feature of
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of that Airtable has as part of their
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web API.
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And it’s a little bit, I would say,
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advanced to use for most people,
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but they are powerful.
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And PowerSync is one of the ways how
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you can benefit from some of the unique
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features of Airtable Webhooks without
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doing a deep technical development
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yourself.
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So I think I have walked the hard
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path,
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and I have the platform to offer some
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unique features that would be hard to
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maybe implement,
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or maybe even impossible to implement
[00:06:49]
through maybe Zapier, NA-TAN,
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and other solutions.
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So the one solution that I can actually
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demo is the schema change log that allows
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us to collect schema changes in your
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Airtable base and send them to Airtable or
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elsewhere.
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And over time,
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as you connect your Airtable base
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and make changes in your Airtable schema,
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like you add tables, you rename tables,
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you change fields, delete fields,
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change formulas,
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add options to single select fields or
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multiple select fields.
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The change log will track that.
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And in real time, it will create,
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for example,
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Airtable records back in your Airtable
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that create a chronological
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set of changes that has happened.
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So let me show it off real quick.
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I will activate this service here.
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And so I can connect Airtable.
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And I can select the base.
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I think I have one demo base prepared.
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So I here select ACRM base.
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And
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Now I confirm the base that I want
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to collect, which is this one.
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And now I say that I want to
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send the schema changes back to Airtable.
[00:08:21]
I could also use a webhook or maybe
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send them to Slack,
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but Airtable is usually the best option
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here.
[00:08:29]
And I will say that for these schema
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changes,
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I want to actually create a new table
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because I don’t have an existing table
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that I would use for that.
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So I will create a schema changes table.
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And the mapping is sort of prepared here.
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So I will just confirm.
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And now,
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because all of this setup is done,
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I can activate the engine.
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And that’s pretty much it.
[00:09:02]
So then like PowerSync has set up a
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Airtable webhook on my behalf.
[00:09:09]
And I can open the base.
[00:09:13]
I can see that there is this new
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schema changes table.
[00:09:17]
Potentially in the future,
[00:09:19]
if it’s technical and this is something
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that would be maybe irrelevant to a lot
[00:09:24]
of users, I could maybe hide this table.
[00:09:26]
But for now I’m keeping it here.
[00:09:29]
And now I can test if it’s actually
[00:09:31]
working.
[00:09:32]
And maybe I will create some kind of
[00:09:34]
new field here.
[00:09:38]
Maybe in the clients, I can create
[00:09:42]
the important like checkbox vip client and
[00:09:49]
so i’ve created a new field and and
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i can see here field created and there
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is a description here which says like this
[00:09:58]
field vip is created so um that’s that’s
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that’s the basic wiring here if i now
[00:10:06]
would like delete this field
[00:10:09]
then I should get a different,
[00:10:12]
like a new description here that the field
[00:10:13]
VIP was deleted.
[00:10:16]
So this is in its simplicity,
[00:10:19]
how it works.
[00:10:20]
I can maybe,
[00:10:23]
because I don’t actually have like a
[00:10:24]
created now, created at field,
[00:10:26]
maybe I can actually create one here,
[00:10:29]
created time.
[00:10:33]
And so I get a new field.
[00:10:34]
Maybe I can sort by created.
[00:10:38]
So the latest changes are at the top.
[00:10:40]
And actually,
[00:10:40]
it even logged here that in the schema
[00:10:43]
changes table itself,
[00:10:44]
I’ve created a field created.
[00:10:47]
Another interesting changes that might be
[00:10:50]
interesting to track is that, for example,
[00:10:52]
there is a field called email.
[00:10:55]
Maybe I would want to have a formula,
[00:10:58]
which is email domain.
[00:11:04]
And so that gives us a maybe interesting
[00:11:15]
like website from the email itself.
[00:11:19]
And here in this,
[00:11:23]
I’m seeing actually the formula as it is
[00:11:25]
being created, right?
[00:11:26]
So it’s tracked in the description here.
[00:11:30]
And if I go back and maybe adjust
[00:11:32]
some detail,
[00:11:34]
actually there is nothing to adjust,
[00:11:35]
but for the purpose of the demo,
[00:11:37]
maybe for some reason I want to track
[00:11:39]
a different character,
[00:11:40]
it’s probably gonna break.
[00:11:42]
Well, actually it’s not breaking.
[00:11:43]
Oh, it’s partially break.
[00:11:44]
But in the schema changes,
[00:11:47]
we should be seeing some diff.
[00:11:51]
It’s not perfect.
[00:11:52]
There is maybe still something to improve
[00:11:55]
here because there is these internal
[00:11:56]
markers not translating.
[00:11:59]
So sometimes this kind of drops out a
[00:12:02]
little bit.
[00:12:02]
But I would say still this is better
[00:12:04]
than nothing.
[00:12:05]
So this still gives you some information
[00:12:07]
that something here has changed.
[00:12:12]
And there’s like other granular things,
[00:12:15]
like maybe I will try to add a
[00:12:17]
different type of status, maybe.
[00:12:22]
to remove and so i have added a
[00:12:26]
new new option here and i should be
[00:12:30]
seeing as well that field status is
[00:12:32]
updated and there is a new option to
[00:12:34]
remove so so that’s the uh functionality
[00:12:38]
in its entire like in its in its
[00:12:39]
core and maybe we can uh improve it
[00:12:42]
a little bit better if we use the
[00:12:45]
power of Airtable custom extensions and
[00:12:49]
um i will create a new extension
[00:12:53]
I can choose custom.
[00:12:56]
And I have this one.
[00:12:58]
It has at the moment wrong name because
[00:12:59]
it was some different extension that I was
[00:13:01]
playing with before,
[00:13:02]
but I have created this custom extension
[00:13:06]
for the schema change log.
[00:13:08]
It’s running locally still,
[00:13:10]
but I think I need to still fix
[00:13:13]
in this case.
[00:13:14]
It shouldn’t be,
[00:13:15]
the source shouldn’t be clients.
[00:13:17]
The source should be schema changes.
[00:13:20]
And I think I also need to
[00:13:24]
pass a little bit more information.
[00:13:26]
So not just event ID,
[00:13:27]
but also the collaborator and maybe the
[00:13:30]
table ID.
[00:13:32]
And now if I refresh, yes,
[00:13:35]
so this is the final result here.
[00:13:37]
So this is my custom interface extension
[00:13:41]
hooked up to the schema changes table.
[00:13:44]
And it shows the result in a little
[00:13:46]
bit nicer way.
[00:13:49]
So I can browse around chronologically
[00:13:51]
here and maybe collect.
[00:13:53]
It’s by default, it’s grouped by day,
[00:13:56]
and then by the person making the changes,
[00:13:58]
and then by the table.
[00:14:00]
And because it’s an Airtable extension,
[00:14:04]
then I can maybe search here,
[00:14:07]
maybe search for email,
[00:14:09]
and I can see that these are the
[00:14:10]
email changes, recent email changes.
[00:14:15]
So that’s it for the schema change log
[00:14:20]
itself.
[00:14:23]
Potentially I could demo more,
[00:14:24]
but this is the core functionality.
[00:14:28]
Cool.
[00:14:31]
Amazing.
[00:14:34]
It’s so useful.
[00:14:36]
I so often have tried to track down,
[00:14:39]
within the Manage Fields tool,
[00:14:41]
you can see the person who last modified
[00:14:44]
a field.
[00:14:45]
But if you’re trying to be like,
[00:14:47]
who changed this formula potentially three
[00:14:49]
months ago, that’s huge.
[00:14:53]
That’s a bravo.
[00:14:54]
I’m very impressed.
[00:14:55]
That’s awesome.
[00:14:56]
Thank you.
[00:14:56]
Yeah, thank you.
[00:14:58]
It has unfortunately happened more than
[00:15:00]
once that someone has deleted a whole
[00:15:03]
table.
[00:15:04]
And the trash in Airtable doesn’t last
[00:15:07]
forever.
[00:15:08]
I believe it’s seven days.
[00:15:09]
So record history, three years.
[00:15:12]
Trash, seven days.
[00:15:14]
Interesting decision.
[00:15:15]
So it was reported to my team,
[00:15:20]
I want to say, like,
[00:15:22]
ten days or so after it was deleted.
[00:15:26]
which means he couldn’t restore it from
[00:15:28]
trash, which means he had to rebuild it.
[00:15:30]
So not great,
[00:15:33]
but things like that would allow you to
[00:15:36]
do even more beyond that.
[00:15:38]
Now you have a record in your table
[00:15:41]
that says something was deleted.
[00:15:43]
Well,
[00:15:43]
you can set an email alert based on
[00:15:45]
that and said someone deleted a table and
[00:15:47]
you immediately know, hey,
[00:15:50]
don’t do that and pull it back from
[00:15:52]
the trash.
[00:15:53]
So even beyond what you’ve just shown,
[00:15:56]
there’s some flexibility there for
[00:15:58]
whomever uses the service to sort of
[00:16:01]
expand it using native Airtable
[00:16:04]
capabilities to give you even more
[00:16:05]
visibility.
[00:16:09]
Yeah,
[00:16:12]
I think the approach from my perspective,
[00:16:15]
like sending the data back to Airtable,
[00:16:17]
it just gives the most power for free.
[00:16:21]
I could have my own maybe UI somewhere,
[00:16:24]
but
[00:16:25]
the main issue is that i would have
[00:16:26]
to store more data on my own and
[00:16:28]
i don’t want to do that i don’t
[00:16:30]
want to store more data than i need
[00:16:31]
so i’m at the moment the service is
[00:16:33]
storing only technical metadata like
[00:16:35]
record ids and some base transaction
[00:16:38]
numbers Airtable webhook id and and
[00:16:41]
others technical ideas like this but then
[00:16:43]
once i can i i delete all the
[00:16:45]
data i can and
[00:16:47]
because I’m sending the data back to
[00:16:48]
Airtable.
[00:16:50]
I want to kind of return the data
[00:16:53]
as fast as possible.
[00:16:54]
And also once you have the data in
[00:16:56]
Airtable,
[00:16:57]
you can use them in automations and also
[00:17:00]
in, for example, in Airtable Omni.
[00:17:03]
So with PowerSync,
[00:17:05]
with this schema change log,
[00:17:07]
you can go to Airtable Omni and ask
[00:17:09]
who was the last person who changed this
[00:17:12]
field or who deleted this table and you
[00:17:14]
were gonna get an answer.
[00:17:17]
technically Airtable could do this
[00:17:19]
natively, right?
[00:17:21]
But because of some, I guess,
[00:17:23]
internal how the state is managed, well,
[00:17:27]
this is a trick how to surface the
[00:17:28]
right information to the table itself,
[00:17:32]
to the database itself.
[00:17:34]
Yeah.
[00:17:36]
So yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:37]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:38]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:39]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:40]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:43]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:44]
I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m,
[00:17:45]
I’m, I’m,
[00:17:45]
I’m
[00:17:46]
Let’s talk a little bit,
[00:17:47]
let’s maybe go deeper into webhooks.
[00:17:49]
I’m curious,
[00:17:50]
I’ve played with it a little bit.
[00:17:53]
I know there’s, I actually,
[00:17:55]
do you mind sharing your screen again and
[00:17:56]
let’s go to the webhook documentation.
[00:17:59]
And I’d be curious to know like lessons
[00:18:01]
learned, wishlist items.
[00:18:04]
I know it gives some information,
[00:18:06]
but it doesn’t give everything.
[00:18:10]
Talk us through what you’ve learned.
[00:18:13]
Put that up.
[00:18:14]
Yeah.
[00:18:14]
Dealing with webhooks.
[00:18:15]
What’s the good, bad,
[00:18:16]
and ugly of webhooks?
[00:18:18]
Right.
[00:18:18]
So webhooks, they are powerful.
[00:18:21]
And I think from Airtable’s perspective,
[00:18:24]
they are well-designed.
[00:18:30]
When you set up a new webhook,
[00:18:33]
you create it dynamically through the API
[00:18:35]
itself.
[00:18:38]
let me see, create a webhook, right?
[00:18:40]
So you send a request with some certain
[00:18:44]
parameters and you dynamically even say to
[00:18:53]
to which URL you want to receive back
[00:18:56]
the pings, right?
[00:19:00]
So once you set this up,
[00:19:03]
the important thing to mention here is
[00:19:05]
that you set up the notification URL,
[00:19:07]
but maybe as
[00:19:09]
it’s a little bit different to a lot
[00:19:11]
of other webhooks that you might have
[00:19:13]
tried in different services because here
[00:19:16]
you only receive a ping.
[00:19:18]
The Airtable will at first only notify you
[00:19:22]
something has changed.
[00:19:23]
You subscribe to some specific data types,
[00:19:27]
maybe the table data or the table schema,
[00:19:31]
and you define the scope and certain
[00:19:37]
certain details,
[00:19:38]
but then back you get only a thing
[00:19:40]
that like something has changed.
[00:19:41]
And so you have to do a step
[00:19:42]
number two,
[00:19:44]
which is to list Webhook payloads.
[00:19:47]
So as the step two,
[00:19:49]
you start fetching the payloads and then
[00:19:51]
you have to, as you do that,
[00:19:54]
there is something called a cursor and
[00:19:56]
Cursor tells you,
[00:19:59]
it’s a certain number that tells you how
[00:20:01]
many payloads there are.
[00:20:03]
And you track that.
[00:20:05]
You have to track that on your own
[00:20:06]
end, maybe somewhere in a database.
[00:20:09]
And you will store some kind of number
[00:20:10]
which tells you what is the amount of
[00:20:13]
payloads you have fetched so far.
[00:20:15]
And when a new ping comes from Airtable,
[00:20:19]
you then start fetching new payloads only
[00:20:21]
from the previous cursor.
[00:20:23]
So you have to manage this cursor.
[00:20:25]
And to make it even a little bit
[00:20:27]
more complicated,
[00:20:29]
sometimes Airtable can send multiple
[00:20:32]
different pings,
[00:20:33]
even for one change or as changes happen,
[00:20:36]
you can receive multiple simultaneous
[00:20:38]
pings, right?
[00:20:39]
So if you would have this set up
[00:20:41]
in some maybe NNN or maybe in Zapier,
[00:20:46]
you could very quickly find out that, oh,
[00:20:50]
Airtable notified me three times,
[00:20:52]
and why was it three times?
[00:20:55]
But this is considered to be your problem.
[00:20:58]
You need to have a solution so that
[00:21:02]
you don’t create duplicate records and so
[00:21:05]
that when a ping comes,
[00:21:06]
you start iterating over the payloads,
[00:21:09]
but you do that in a
[00:21:11]
indempotent way.
[00:21:13]
So the server should make sure that there
[00:21:18]
are no duplicate actions created.
[00:21:20]
And so you have to protect yourself
[00:21:22]
against that.
[00:21:25]
You iterate over these payloads.
[00:21:27]
Then you get there is a specific payload
[00:21:30]
object that you receive.
[00:21:33]
It’s not completely the same as the
[00:21:36]
webhook, sorry,
[00:21:38]
as the normal Airtable record, right?
[00:21:41]
you might opt in for some data to
[00:21:42]
be already included in the payload object,
[00:21:50]
but it depends what
[00:21:56]
what you have configured.
[00:21:58]
The unique thing about webhooks is that
[00:22:00]
you get the source metadata,
[00:22:02]
which is the user of who created the
[00:22:06]
record, who updated the record,
[00:22:07]
or who created the field,
[00:22:09]
deleted the table.
[00:22:10]
So in this case here,
[00:22:12]
you see the user,
[00:22:13]
which is a unique thing about webhooks.
[00:22:15]
You couldn’t get this another way,
[00:22:17]
like through the REST API.
[00:22:19]
Yeah.
[00:22:21]
Another unique thing about webhooks is for
[00:22:25]
linked records
[00:22:26]
you can also get the name,
[00:22:29]
the primary key name of the link record,
[00:22:32]
not just the ID.
[00:22:33]
Is that correct?
[00:22:35]
That’s my understanding.
[00:22:36]
Right.
[00:22:37]
It’s possible.
[00:22:37]
I cannot recall.
[00:22:38]
But I can attest that it has a
[00:22:44]
slightly, actually,
[00:22:47]
modern shape in some ways.
[00:22:49]
So yeah, I would believe this is true.
[00:22:56]
Yeah, I believe that’s linked records,
[00:22:58]
yeah.
[00:22:59]
I think one of the biggest frustrations I
[00:23:01]
had using webhooks was,
[00:23:05]
and these are things that you touched
[00:23:06]
upon,
[00:23:07]
but the idea of using a cursor to
[00:23:10]
determine where you are in the history of
[00:23:14]
anything being sent to that webhook.
[00:23:16]
There’s also a parameter once you get a
[00:23:18]
response back that says might have more.
[00:23:22]
So not it definitely does,
[00:23:25]
not how many parsers are remaining.
[00:23:27]
It might have more.
[00:23:29]
And if that’s true,
[00:23:30]
you got to query it again.
[00:23:32]
So that’s fun.
[00:23:33]
And then for a certain field,
[00:23:36]
we built something in-house for our
[00:23:39]
enterprise,
[00:23:39]
but it wasn’t focused on schema changes.
[00:23:41]
It was more data changes.
[00:23:43]
So someone’s email went from at Hotmail to
[00:23:47]
at Gmail, for example.
[00:23:50]
which you can do with web hooks.
[00:23:51]
It’s the exact same implementation of how
[00:23:54]
you create a web hook.
[00:23:55]
You just send different parameters,
[00:23:57]
but for certain field types,
[00:24:00]
a single select a user or collaborator
[00:24:03]
field,
[00:24:04]
updating it as sort of one click action.
[00:24:06]
So that’s one update.
[00:24:08]
If you’re typing in someone’s email
[00:24:09]
address,
[00:24:11]
each keystroke is an update according to
[00:24:13]
Airtable.
[00:24:14]
So that is eight.
[00:24:16]
If it’s eight characters long, that’s,
[00:24:18]
eight different pings you’re going to get
[00:24:22]
from the webhook, which means your cursor,
[00:24:26]
you know what I mean?
[00:24:27]
You don’t want to update it on that
[00:24:28]
first.
[00:24:29]
You want to wait till it’s done.
[00:24:30]
How do you know when someone’s done
[00:24:31]
typing?
[00:24:32]
You don’t.
[00:24:33]
Right.
[00:24:37]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:37]
That’s completely true.
[00:24:38]
And you can, like, again, like,
[00:24:42]
at the logic, right,
[00:24:43]
you can have in programming,
[00:24:47]
there is this concept of debouncing.
[00:24:50]
So you could potentially have this
[00:24:52]
debounce.
[00:24:52]
But again,
[00:24:53]
so this is you’re in programming land.
[00:24:55]
Like,
[00:24:56]
I’m not sure if I could be able
[00:24:58]
to handle something like debouncing in
[00:25:00]
Zapier or anything.
[00:25:02]
I think it’s safe to say that once
[00:25:05]
you’re dealing with webhooks,
[00:25:05]
it’s probably better to just send it to
[00:25:08]
a custom server.
[00:25:10]
Or maybe if someone is really advanced
[00:25:13]
with NATM,
[00:25:13]
maybe they can work around this.
[00:25:14]
But for me,
[00:25:16]
it’s just much easier to deal with stuff
[00:25:18]
like this in a plain web server.
[00:25:20]
And yeah, there’s…
[00:25:26]
The other thing is handling your token.
[00:25:31]
They expire after seven days.
[00:25:33]
Is that correct?
[00:25:34]
Yes.
[00:25:34]
Yeah.
[00:25:37]
Yeah.
[00:25:37]
So you’ve got to constantly be refreshing
[00:25:39]
it.
[00:25:39]
Mm-hmm.
[00:25:41]
It does refresh itself if something hits
[00:25:44]
that webhook.
[00:25:45]
So if someone deletes a table on like
[00:25:49]
day three of your expiring,
[00:25:50]
it’ll reset until the next seven days.
[00:25:53]
But if nothing happens to your base
[00:25:55]
schema,
[00:25:55]
you will have to have this running on
[00:25:58]
a cycle.
[00:26:00]
Right.
[00:26:01]
Right.
[00:26:01]
Yes.
[00:26:01]
So on my end,
[00:26:02]
I have it running as a fallback just
[00:26:04]
in case.
[00:26:05]
And so as you hit this refresh endpoint,
[00:26:10]
it gives you back the new expiration time.
[00:26:13]
again,
[00:26:14]
I have a job that runs every once
[00:26:18]
every few hours and,
[00:26:20]
and it checks the webhooks that are in
[00:26:22]
Dangerous territory and it refreshes them.
[00:26:24]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:29]
Yeah, that’s something just kind of silly,
[00:26:31]
but they require that but more that you
[00:26:34]
can ever
[00:26:35]
another actually interesting aspect is
[00:26:37]
that if for example for whatever reason
[00:26:40]
you don’t send back a proper response for
[00:26:43]
the webhook
[00:26:48]
it will disable itself.
[00:26:49]
So maybe your server crashes,
[00:26:55]
which can happen every once in a while.
[00:26:57]
A server can crash.
[00:26:58]
Maybe you are using a service like
[00:27:00]
Cloudflare or other,
[00:27:02]
and there is an outage,
[00:27:04]
worst case scenario.
[00:27:05]
And then Airtable tries to contact you and
[00:27:07]
tries to contact that notification URL
[00:27:09]
that you have set up.
[00:27:10]
And it’s getting back like a five or
[00:27:13]
three gateway timeout.
[00:27:16]
or other kind of error,
[00:27:17]
or maybe you have legitimate application
[00:27:20]
error on your end.
[00:27:22]
So Airtable will disable the webhook.
[00:27:25]
It will stop.
[00:27:26]
It will say that enable is false.
[00:27:28]
And then you have to enable it back.
[00:27:32]
And this is also a little bit tricky,
[00:27:34]
because then you have to be self-aware
[00:27:36]
about, oh, my server crashed.
[00:27:40]
Now it’s available again,
[00:27:41]
but what if the webhooks were disabled?
[00:27:43]
So you have to do also run some
[00:27:45]
checks and check the status of all
[00:27:48]
webhooks and maybe enable them again.
[00:27:50]
So that’s another thing that I have is
[00:27:53]
that on every server startup and every
[00:27:56]
once in a while,
[00:27:56]
I also like proactively check the status
[00:27:58]
of all webhooks and in case they are
[00:28:00]
actually disabled, I enable them again.
[00:28:04]
I can see the reasoning why this is
[00:28:07]
being done, but it can also,
[00:28:11]
if you don’t know it,
[00:28:12]
then it can be an unhappy surprise,
[00:28:15]
sort of.
[00:28:16]
Yeah.
[00:28:17]
Yeah, that’s a lot to maintain.
[00:28:19]
Yeah.
[00:28:20]
That’s why most people won’t come into
[00:28:24]
this world,
[00:28:24]
which is probably a good thing.
[00:28:29]
What information…
[00:28:32]
is still not available in the webhook.
[00:28:34]
There’s still some data that Airtable
[00:28:37]
doesn’t expose, right?
[00:28:38]
Yeah, I cannot.
[00:28:43]
So we, I don’t know this for sure.
[00:28:47]
If it does, then this would be awesome.
[00:28:49]
But my understanding is if you’ve ever
[00:28:52]
used the timeline feature where you have
[00:28:55]
records that are predecessors of each
[00:28:57]
other,
[00:28:57]
I’m running into this right now where
[00:28:59]
We want to be able to know what
[00:29:01]
it’s configured for as far as the buffer
[00:29:04]
in between records,
[00:29:05]
or if it’s the how the relationship is
[00:29:08]
like first to last and stuff.
[00:29:10]
My understanding is like that information
[00:29:12]
is not given either through the API or
[00:29:15]
the web hooks.
[00:29:18]
So I think there’s still configuration
[00:29:20]
data on fields.
[00:29:23]
From the web API,
[00:29:25]
you can query what the tables are in
[00:29:28]
a base,
[00:29:29]
and it will tell you the date dependency
[00:29:31]
settings overall.
[00:29:32]
That’s not per record.
[00:29:34]
That’s just this field is the duration
[00:29:37]
field, for example.
[00:29:38]
and what the list of holidays are.
[00:29:41]
But that’s it.
[00:29:43]
My thing that’s missing from the API,
[00:29:48]
both web API and webhooks,
[00:29:50]
there’s nothing about syncing.
[00:29:52]
So there’s no indication that a table is
[00:29:56]
synced from another source.
[00:29:58]
And when a view is marked as a
[00:30:04]
shared link or a sync source for a
[00:30:07]
different table, it’s not anywhere.
[00:30:10]
So one of the biggest things you can
[00:30:13]
do to cripple a base is to sever
[00:30:16]
a sync source.
[00:30:17]
And there’s no way to be alerted.
[00:30:19]
It just sort of happens silently.
[00:30:22]
Or even who the owner of that sync
[00:30:24]
is because it’s tied to the user who
[00:30:27]
set it up.
[00:30:28]
And if that user leaves the company.
[00:30:30]
Yes.
[00:30:32]
We’ve run into this several times.
[00:30:34]
It will disable your sync if whomever set
[00:30:37]
it up leaves the company,
[00:30:39]
even if every other creator in that
[00:30:41]
workspace is still there.
[00:30:43]
Yep.
[00:30:45]
That sounds good.
[00:30:45]
Yeah, we’ve reported back to Airtable.
[00:30:53]
I found in the admin panel the other
[00:30:54]
day where I could actually look at my
[00:30:57]
syncs.
[00:31:00]
I always saw where the shared links were,
[00:31:02]
but I found the actual list of this
[00:31:05]
view is being synced to these three bases.
[00:31:08]
Because you can do it on a field
[00:31:09]
level,
[00:31:11]
and you can see that it’s enabled for
[00:31:13]
a view, but within the base itself,
[00:31:15]
you can’t tell actually where it’s going
[00:31:17]
to unless you look at
[00:31:20]
like add a field to that view only,
[00:31:22]
for example.
[00:31:24]
But yeah, that was useful.
[00:31:27]
But for me, what I’ve struggled with,
[00:31:30]
is there anywhere that you can query
[00:31:32]
automations in a base?
[00:31:34]
No.
[00:31:37]
That would be amazing.
[00:31:39]
Yeah.
[00:31:39]
I want to get a list of my
[00:31:41]
automations.
[00:31:43]
For me, as a developer,
[00:31:46]
the ideal scenario is that there’s an API
[00:31:49]
for everything.
[00:31:52]
I get that oftentimes this is just not
[00:31:54]
feasible,
[00:31:55]
but I think one really good approach that
[00:31:58]
some products have is that
[00:32:00]
they have an API and their user interface
[00:32:03]
is using the same API as the others,
[00:32:07]
right?
[00:32:07]
As the clients.
[00:32:08]
And then they are sort of forced to
[00:32:11]
actually improve the API.
[00:32:13]
And in Airtable’s case,
[00:32:15]
as far as I know,
[00:32:15]
this is not the case, right?
[00:32:16]
So there is an internal API that the
[00:32:18]
interfaces are using and the bays are
[00:32:19]
using,
[00:32:20]
and then there is the web API that
[00:32:22]
is for the others.
[00:32:25]
i think especially also like now in the
[00:32:27]
age of ai um it also makes sense
[00:32:29]
to have as big ai api coverage as
[00:32:32]
possible um because then you can have
[00:32:35]
agents do stuff for you and um and
[00:32:37]
there is definitely pitfalls right if
[00:32:39]
there would be for example in api you
[00:32:42]
have an option to create a field but
[00:32:44]
not to delete the field and it makes
[00:32:45]
sense that there is no api for deleted
[00:32:47]
deleting the field because an accidental
[00:32:49]
deleting of the field leads to a disaster
[00:32:52]
but
[00:32:53]
So there has to be limits,
[00:32:55]
but creating automations with AI,
[00:32:58]
like right away you could use GGPT to
[00:33:01]
create an automation and you would get a
[00:33:04]
lot of it for free.
[00:33:07]
The cynical answer to that is Airtable
[00:33:10]
wants you to use Omni.
[00:33:12]
They don’t want you to use a third
[00:33:13]
party AI to do all of that.
[00:33:16]
I don’t know how far in advance they
[00:33:18]
made that decision because
[00:33:20]
None of this was ever available via the
[00:33:22]
API, even though it should have been.
[00:33:24]
But I think Toddle,
[00:33:27]
formerly known as Nordcraft,
[00:33:29]
which is like a website web app builder,
[00:33:33]
is built out of itself, which I love.
[00:33:35]
It’s a great example of what you just
[00:33:37]
described of
[00:33:38]
If you’re going to build a product that
[00:33:41]
makes things,
[00:33:42]
make your product out of that thing.
[00:33:44]
And then I’ve talked about Outsetta a
[00:33:47]
bunch.
[00:33:47]
It’s the platform I use to manage
[00:33:50]
subscriptions for my services.
[00:33:52]
And to subscribe to Outsetta,
[00:33:55]
I have an Outsetta account,
[00:33:57]
if that makes sense.
[00:33:58]
They use their own subscription management
[00:34:00]
thing to handle my subscription to sell
[00:34:04]
subscriptions to other people.
[00:34:05]
So they know the pain points of their
[00:34:09]
own product because they’re by the very
[00:34:11]
nature of their business model forced to
[00:34:14]
use their own product.
[00:34:15]
Yeah.
[00:34:15]
Yeah.
[00:34:18]
It’ll be interesting.
[00:34:20]
You know,
[00:34:20]
now these new wave of AI browsers are
[00:34:24]
coming on board where,
[00:34:27]
you know,
[00:34:27]
you have browsers that have agents built
[00:34:29]
into them and they can then, you know,
[00:34:34]
interact with the client through the
[00:34:36]
client interface.
[00:34:38]
And I wonder how that will change things
[00:34:41]
as far as like going through those,
[00:34:44]
those browser agents,
[00:34:47]
AI agents to interact with the client
[00:34:50]
facing API.
[00:34:54]
That will expose things.
[00:34:55]
Cause yeah, there’s,
[00:34:57]
At one point,
[00:34:57]
we did a count of how many different
[00:34:59]
versions of API or SDKs there are in
[00:35:03]
Airtable between…
[00:35:04]
There’s two for interfaces.
[00:35:07]
Two for interfaces?
[00:35:08]
Yes.
[00:35:09]
Is that the scripting?
[00:35:11]
Well, if you count scripting,
[00:35:12]
then there’s four.
[00:35:15]
There’s the scripting extension,
[00:35:17]
scripting for automations,
[00:35:19]
interfaces for the data layer,
[00:35:20]
and interfaces for… Interfaces.
[00:35:24]
Well…
[00:35:26]
extensions for interfaces and extensions
[00:35:28]
for the data layer.
[00:35:32]
Right, right, right.
[00:35:33]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:33]
Yeah, so we’ve got all those.
[00:35:35]
The REST API is different than the webhook
[00:35:38]
API.
[00:35:41]
Yeah, there’s a lot going on.
[00:35:42]
Then we haven’t even talked about,
[00:35:43]
there’s an audit log API that you could
[00:35:46]
tap into with other things.
[00:35:50]
And there’s a special carve out in the
[00:35:52]
web API for Skim.
[00:35:54]
It does a lot of the same things,
[00:35:57]
but very differently.
[00:35:58]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:00]
There’s some enterprise only stuff.
[00:36:02]
So yeah,
[00:36:04]
and then there’s the whole client thing.
[00:36:07]
Where, yeah, if you,
[00:36:08]
if you look under the hood of,
[00:36:10]
of Airtable,
[00:36:11]
you can see the network traffic.
[00:36:13]
And so there’s a whole, you know,
[00:36:14]
API that,
[00:36:16]
that the client communicates with,
[00:36:17]
with their tables backend.
[00:36:20]
Um, it’s pretty interesting as well.
[00:36:22]
So a lot of moving parts and they
[00:36:25]
don’t stay in sync.
[00:36:26]
You know,
[00:36:26]
like I was thinking about how you get
[00:36:28]
the name,
[00:36:29]
the primary key name in the web hook.
[00:36:31]
I doubt they’ve updated that for being
[00:36:33]
able to change what field is your primary
[00:36:37]
key that just came out a month or
[00:36:38]
so ago.
[00:36:39]
I doubt that’s reflected in the,
[00:36:43]
in the web hook.
[00:36:45]
I still think you can’t get,
[00:36:48]
you know how you can name records in
[00:36:50]
a table,
[00:36:51]
like instead of calling them records,
[00:36:52]
their clients or their meetings or
[00:36:55]
whatever.
[00:36:56]
I don’t think that’s queryable anywhere.
[00:36:58]
You can get the description,
[00:36:59]
but you can’t get the name of the
[00:37:01]
records.
[00:37:03]
Yeah.
[00:37:03]
Except you can’t get the base description.
[00:37:05]
The base description doesn’t come in the
[00:37:07]
API.
[00:37:07]
Okay.
[00:37:08]
Some of these are a little silly.
[00:37:15]
Yeah.
[00:37:15]
So much that could be improved.
[00:37:18]
And anyways, awesome.
[00:37:21]
Thank you, Martin.
[00:37:22]
How can people find you,
[00:37:23]
especially this new product?
[00:37:24]
Where’s it at?
[00:37:26]
Yep.
[00:37:28]
The website is at sync.powersave.pro.
[00:37:34]
So powersave.pro is the Chrome extension,
[00:37:38]
and the sync lives here at
[00:37:41]
sync.powersave.pro.
[00:37:42]
Let me log out to see the landing
[00:37:45]
page.
[00:37:46]
And this is it.
[00:37:50]
So far there is the schema change log.
[00:37:51]
There is also Slack engine,
[00:37:52]
which is another interesting topic,
[00:37:54]
but this is still in beta.
[00:37:56]
And I have some work on Stripe integration
[00:37:58]
as well, which is also still in beta,
[00:38:01]
but the schema change log is all well
[00:38:04]
and ready to be used.
[00:38:07]
Cool.
[00:38:08]
Awesome.
[00:38:09]
Thanks for coming on and good to see
[00:38:12]
everybody.
[00:38:12]
We will be back next week with our
[00:38:16]
updates on all the latest changes and
[00:38:18]
feature releases.
[00:38:19]
So we’ll see you next time.
[00:38:21]
Take care.
[00:38:22]
Thank you.