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Welcome back to the BuiltOnAir podcast.
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We are in season twenty three,
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episode seven,
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coming to the end of this season after
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next week.
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Got myself, Dan Fellars and Kamille Parks.
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Welcome back, Kamille.
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Hello.
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And Ale Losa is unavailable for today,
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should be back next week.
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So it’s going to be the two of
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us today.
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And we are post
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apocAllipse,
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we survived the great outage of February,
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the twenty-sixth.
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Outage for, do we know the full length?
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I was in like an all day meeting
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that morning and then about eleven Pacific
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Standard,
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I checked Airtable was not loading.
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I was like, I’ll go to early lunch.
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It’ll be fine.
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Twelve o’clock.
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Nope.
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One o’clock.
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Nope.
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It wasn’t back up for me until four
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thirty Pacific Standard.
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So that’s at least five,
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probably upwards of six hours for most.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That’s probably about the time frame.
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Yeah, I was it was crazy.
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Yeah, I was similar.
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I was I noticed it was
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down I was like okay I’ve got a
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lunch appointment I went out for lunch and
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I was like oh for sure it’ll be
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back when I come back no so as
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far as I can remember this is by
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far the longest outage we’ve had time wise
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can you remember when it was at this
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length
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I haven’t remembered a longer outage.
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I did see a post on Reddit where
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someone was, and rightfully so,
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a bit worried.
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They were like, hey, I’m new to Airtable.
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Is this a common thing?
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And a lot of people said, no,
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it never goes down.
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I don’t agree with that.
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Airtable has a substantial outage probably
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once every six months, I would say.
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But I think it’s rare for every base
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to be down.
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That was this past Friday.
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Oftentimes the outage is several bases are
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down or several bases are slow,
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which affects quite a few of the
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customers, perhaps not all.
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This one on Friday, tremendously bad.
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The homepage didn’t load.
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Airtable.com with the marketing like join
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Airtable.
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That page did not load,
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which means it was at the server level.
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Yeah.
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It was, it was down.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, for sure.
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So yeah, major outage.
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Um,
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I don’t know that they’ve publicly stated
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what went down.
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I don’t believe it was AWS,
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which I know they run on.
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I don’t think there was a major AWS
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outage or anything.
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I think it was Airtable specific.
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In the early days,
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it would go down quite a bit more
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across the board like this,
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but not enough duration.
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But they definitely stabilized it for a
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while.
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whereas more isolated issues.
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But yeah, this was a big one.
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I’m sure it was all hands on deck
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and maybe there was a correlation.
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Let’s talk about,
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let me bring this up from the company
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that brought you SuperAgent that we’ve
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talked about before.
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On that very same day,
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they announced HyperAgent.
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So Airtable now owns SuperAgent and
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HyperAgent.
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What is the difference you ask?
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I don’t know.
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There is a difference.
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The one difference is HyperAgent is not
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actually live.
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You have to join the wait list,
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so you can’t actually try it.
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But there is a video intro here.
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You want to explain the difference?
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Yeah.
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So to the best of my ability,
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I believe SuperAgent is one tool that
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allows you to auto-generate
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Um, content that could be a website.
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It could be a report.
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It could be, I think a presentation deck,
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et cetera.
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It is specifically designed to do that
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task with a couple of variations of what
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the final output might look like,
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but that is generally what super agent is
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for, um, in.
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creating that content package,
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it will do research specifically about
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whatever prompt you give it and then
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design a relatively nice looking report or
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slides or whatever you had it generate.
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HyperAgent is
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It’s like a place where you can set
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up multiple different agents that can do
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whatever you define them as being.
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So rather than being a pre-built solution
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specifically for research and I’ll just
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say report generation,
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HyperAgent is more like you create as many
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agents as you need or as many as
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your plan would allow.
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And each of those agents can have a
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predefined task that you give it in order
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to create a somewhat regular output in a
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format that’s pleasing to you.
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So it’s not necessarily create a website.
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It might be research this topic and give
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me a summarized output that you can take
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and make a report on your own,
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for example.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that’s good.
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And yeah, so you can watch the video.
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Turn the sound off.
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So yeah,
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you can go through this video and then
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there’s also Howie has his own Substack.
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This was the first I’d seen of Howie’s
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Hubstack.
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Howie is the CEO of Airtable and makes
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a pretty big, bold claim here.
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AGI is here, now Harnessit.
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That might be a little bit of a
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reach.
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I don’t think we’re quite there yet,
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but this is their attempt at that.
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So yeah, so here he kind of explains.
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And it sounds like Howie Liu is heavily
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involved with the development of this.
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So it definitely has his fingerprints in
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the building of this.
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So definitely something he’s going to be
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pushing.
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And yeah,
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so it’ll be interesting to see how this
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rolls out.
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So I signed up for the waiting list.
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I’ve not gotten access yet.
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We’ll see when that happens.
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You can show a sneak peek of it.
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Yeah, we’ll check it out.
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Let’s see if… Okay,
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that was his first post.
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So this is a new sub stack for
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Howie.
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so the another difference between super
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agent and hyper agent was when super agent
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launched and still today i think if you
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scroll through their website there’s no
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indication that its parent company is i
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want to say form a grid which is
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the same parent company that Airtable has
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and then if you look at the
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attribution in like the bottom right
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corner of each website.
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This one says Airtable and the other one
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says SuperAgent.
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So SuperAgent is truly a standalone
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business entity that happens to have the
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same CEO basically.
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HyperAgent has a direct connection to
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Airtable.
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It’s one of the data sources that you
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can add to it.
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And Airtable is mentioned by name on the
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website.
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And it’s copyrighted, apparently,
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by Airtable.
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So there’s much more of a connection
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between HyperAgent and Airtable than there
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is to SuperAgent and Airtable,
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which I thought was interesting.
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Yeah, that is an interesting point.
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Yeah, you wonder how.
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Yeah,
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because this is much more in line with
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the workflow of Airtable.
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The best way I could kind of describe
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it, it’s not the same,
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but it is similar to in Airtable,
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you can create an automation and that
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automation can follow a series of steps.
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This is similar to that,
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except it’s with AI.
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So the AI is following the steps that
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you tell it to do.
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Yeah.
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Very true.
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Okay, so we’ll be following this,
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see how it progresses,
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see how it changes Airtable,
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what the integrations look like.
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Very cool stuff.
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All right.
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On today’s show,
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we’re going to learn some tips and tricks
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from Kamille on how to improve our naming
[00:09:07]
conventions,
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stay clean and tight with our stuff.
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I’m going to share your screen.
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There you go.
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Yeah,
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so I had to deal with what I’m
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about to describe quite a bit in my
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sort of day to day working with Airtable.
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This is really about when you have one
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or more tables
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linked together,
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and you end up with fields that look
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like this.
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The first field,
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if you don’t name them as you go,
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is going to be named after the table
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that they’re connected to.
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And if you add a second link,
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it’s going to be that same name too,
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and then three.
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And then if you add lookups against them,
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they’re going to follow whatever the
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linked record field is named at the time
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and whatever field from the other table
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that you’re pulling in.
[00:10:02]
So in this case, email.
[00:10:05]
What is helpful, I feel,
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is going back and renaming these fields to
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be more specific.
[00:10:15]
So I don’t want context, context two,
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context three.
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I want these to say what they are.
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And one of the issues with that
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is it doesn’t take too much time to
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go back and rename these fields over here.
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But then going back to the context table,
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you’ll notice productions,
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productions two and productions three.
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So I have the same problem,
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but you know,
[00:10:41]
what if productions two doesn’t
[00:10:45]
necessarily link to context two?
[00:10:48]
What if I did these kind of a
[00:10:49]
little bit out of order?
[00:10:50]
Well, it’s,
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At least if you’re on, I think,
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business plan or higher,
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you have the dependency checker.
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So I could see, oh,
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this is context too.
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So I know what to rename it to.
[00:11:05]
Once I fix it on the productions table,
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I built a tool that makes managing this
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a little bit easier.
[00:11:14]
So the general idea is you pick one
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table to start with and you adjust the
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fields to what they should be.
[00:11:21]
So let’s say this is the director of
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the movie,
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and this is the writer of the movie,
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and this was the producer of the movie.
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I could go through to the context table
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and make that same adjustment,
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Or I could use one of the scripts
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that I wrote.
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And I notice Airtable is still saving,
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so I’m going to let it finish thinking
[00:11:46]
before I continue.
[00:11:49]
In the meantime,
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I’m going to open up my extensions panel.
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This script is available on my GitHub,
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so you’ll be able to find the link
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and you should be able to copy and
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paste as is.
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I built it as almost like a wizard
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where it’s going to ask you questions as
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you go.
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So there’s no settings that you need to
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configure with this script and you
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shouldn’t need to change anything in the
[00:12:14]
body of the script except for the naming
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conventions, which we’ll get to.
[00:12:18]
It’s finally done saving,
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so I’m just going to run this.
[00:12:23]
So first question,
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select a table that has fields you want
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to rename.
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The table should have at least one linked
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record field.
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So in this case,
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I want to rename these production link
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fields.
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So I’m going to select the context table
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because that’s where the fields are.
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Now,
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what the script has just done is it
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looked and saw that the contacts table is
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linked to both productions and companies.
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Obviously, the production one’s over here,
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but company.
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and CEO, both linked to companies.
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So the question is,
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what relationship do we want to tackle?
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And you’ll see after I finish with
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productions,
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I can go back and do companies without
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stopping the script and starting over.
[00:13:05]
So I’m going to do productions,
[00:13:07]
and then it’s going to ask me the
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naming convention for my linked record
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fields.
[00:13:11]
So in this case, I know that…
[00:13:18]
I want this field name to equal the
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field name that it is over here,
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because it’s the same sort of
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relationship.
[00:13:26]
So in this case,
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I could do link field name.
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And everything is wrapped in double curly
[00:13:32]
braces.
[00:13:33]
That is similar to a templating language
[00:13:36]
known as
[00:13:39]
There’s a couple others that do this as
[00:13:40]
well.
[00:13:42]
This just lets the script do kind of
[00:13:44]
a find and replace as these.
[00:13:47]
There are a couple of different.
[00:13:50]
inputs that you could do.
[00:13:52]
This one is the most straightforward,
[00:13:53]
just match the name on the other table.
[00:13:55]
The other one is if I wanted to
[00:13:58]
say productions dash,
[00:14:00]
and then the name on the other table,
[00:14:03]
that’s what this one is.
[00:14:04]
And maybe I’ll do that one.
[00:14:05]
So it’s a little bit more clear.
[00:14:07]
And then this one is pretty similar,
[00:14:09]
except instead of it being a dash,
[00:14:11]
it puts things in parentheses.
[00:14:13]
This is the same thing but reversed.
[00:14:14]
The link field comes first.
[00:14:16]
And this one allows you to put in
[00:14:18]
a custom suffix.
[00:14:19]
So if you don’t want it to say
[00:14:22]
dash table name or what have you,
[00:14:24]
you could have it say dash whatever or
[00:14:27]
slash whatever, whatever you want.
[00:14:30]
So I’m going to pick this one actually.
[00:14:33]
And now it’s asking,
[00:14:34]
what should I name my lookup fields?
[00:14:39]
I don’t have any lookup fields,
[00:14:40]
so I’m just going to skip this last
[00:14:42]
one is roll up fields.
[00:14:43]
I do have a roll up field so
[00:14:45]
this one I can do.
[00:14:47]
I’m not going to do that though.
[00:14:48]
I’ll come back to that later and then
[00:14:50]
it’s going to show me a summary of
[00:14:52]
based on the options I just clicked
[00:14:53]
through what the current name of the
[00:14:56]
fields are and what the new name of
[00:14:58]
the field will be.
[00:14:59]
So if I don’t actually like this,
[00:15:01]
I could say no and then start over
[00:15:03]
or rename them myself if my script doesn’t
[00:15:06]
save me any time.
[00:15:08]
But in this case, this looks about right.
[00:15:10]
Productions director, productions writer,
[00:15:12]
productions producer.
[00:15:13]
So I’m going to say yes.
[00:15:15]
And it’s gone through.
[00:15:17]
I’m going to have to make these actually
[00:15:18]
a little bit taller so you could see.
[00:15:20]
It’s gone through and renamed them.
[00:15:23]
It’s pretty fast,
[00:15:24]
depending on the number of fields it needs
[00:15:25]
to rename.
[00:15:26]
It took less than a second,
[00:15:27]
it looked like,
[00:15:28]
to go through and rename those.
[00:15:31]
And now it’s saying, okay, well,
[00:15:32]
we’ve finished your first linked
[00:15:34]
relationship with productions.
[00:15:36]
Do you want to rename any of the
[00:15:38]
fields from companies?
[00:15:39]
I’m not going to,
[00:15:40]
but I’ll click through and you’ll notice
[00:15:41]
it’s the exact same options.
[00:15:43]
These fields are already named the way
[00:15:45]
that they need to be.
[00:15:45]
So I could say skip.
[00:15:47]
I could say skip.
[00:15:48]
I could say skip.
[00:15:49]
It’s going to notice, hey,
[00:15:49]
there’s no changes.
[00:15:50]
So it’s going to say, well,
[00:15:52]
we’re done then.
[00:15:53]
And that is the basics of the script
[00:15:56]
itself.
[00:15:58]
I’m going to go back to my productions
[00:16:01]
table and show you an example of adjusting
[00:16:04]
lookup fields.
[00:16:04]
So these lookups were created before I
[00:16:09]
renamed the linked record field.
[00:16:11]
So they still say context, context two,
[00:16:13]
context three.
[00:16:14]
It’s the same sort of issue that I
[00:16:17]
want to correct.
[00:16:19]
I want…
[00:16:21]
these lookup fields to be more
[00:16:23]
descriptive.
[00:16:23]
Which contact is this coming from?
[00:16:25]
It’s coming from the director.
[00:16:27]
So I’ll just run this again and I’ll
[00:16:29]
say productions.
[00:16:31]
And I want to rename fields that have
[00:16:33]
to do with the contacts linkage.
[00:16:35]
I don’t want to rename any of my
[00:16:37]
linked record fields, so I’ll skip this.
[00:16:40]
And now for lookups,
[00:16:41]
I do want to rename them.
[00:16:42]
What I want them to be is this
[00:16:46]
one here is the sort of standard naming
[00:16:48]
convention that Airtable will give you for
[00:16:51]
lookup fields when you create them.
[00:16:53]
You could see the other field name,
[00:16:56]
parentheses, from,
[00:16:58]
and then what the name of the linked
[00:16:59]
record field is.
[00:17:01]
That’s the same naming convention.
[00:17:02]
And I’m going to keep that naming
[00:17:03]
convention.
[00:17:04]
I’m just going to have it update with
[00:17:05]
what the link field currently is.
[00:17:08]
I don’t have any roll up,
[00:17:09]
so I’m going to skip.
[00:17:12]
And now you can see instead of email
[00:17:13]
from contacts, it’s email from director,
[00:17:16]
writer, producer, which is great.
[00:17:18]
I’m going to hit yes,
[00:17:19]
and it’s going to be done.
[00:17:21]
So again,
[00:17:21]
it knows productions is only linked to
[00:17:23]
contacts.
[00:17:24]
It didn’t bother asking about companies
[00:17:26]
because productions aren’t linked to
[00:17:28]
companies in my base.
[00:17:30]
So if I scroll to the right,
[00:17:31]
email from writer, email from producer,
[00:17:34]
and then email from director is over here.
[00:17:37]
So that’s what the script does.
[00:17:40]
Any questions?
[00:17:42]
Very cool.
[00:17:43]
No, that is awesome.
[00:17:44]
So do you need to do it in
[00:17:47]
a two-step process?
[00:17:48]
So if you rename the field and then
[00:17:51]
you want to rename the lookups to match
[00:17:53]
that, will it do it?
[00:17:56]
It’ll pick up the new name and then
[00:17:59]
update the roll-ups and lookups?
[00:18:01]
Unfortunately, it is a two-step process.
[00:18:04]
So what Dan just suggested was I went
[00:18:07]
in and I renamed each of
[00:18:12]
uh or no let’s say that i was
[00:18:14]
back over here because this is the one
[00:18:16]
where i renamed the linked record field
[00:18:19]
and um you’ll notice that this uh roll
[00:18:24]
up is still saying from productions rather
[00:18:26]
than from productions director which is
[00:18:28]
the name i can go back and make
[00:18:32]
this
[00:18:33]
you know, wrong again.
[00:18:36]
And I can run this and I could
[00:18:37]
say,
[00:18:37]
I want to rename fields on the context
[00:18:40]
table.
[00:18:41]
And I want to rename them based on
[00:18:43]
their connection to the productions table.
[00:18:46]
I think I chose this one.
[00:18:49]
There’s no lookup, so I can skip it.
[00:18:51]
For rollups, if I want to correct them,
[00:18:54]
it’s not going to realize that this
[00:18:59]
productions field is going to be renamed
[00:19:02]
to this.
[00:19:04]
It did notice that there’s a difference
[00:19:06]
because roll ups add the word roll up
[00:19:08]
in the default naming convention.
[00:19:12]
So it’s removing the word roll up.
[00:19:13]
That’s why it’s coming through as a
[00:19:15]
potential change.
[00:19:16]
But it’s still saying productions instead
[00:19:18]
of productions dash director.
[00:19:20]
That is an improvement I could make to
[00:19:23]
the script because it is going in
[00:19:25]
sequence.
[00:19:25]
It starts with the linked record fields.
[00:19:28]
So by the time it gets to look
[00:19:30]
up in rollups, in theory,
[00:19:32]
it could know what the new name is.
[00:19:37]
But yeah, that’s something I can do.
[00:19:41]
That’s not something the script currently
[00:19:42]
does.
[00:19:43]
Fair enough.
[00:19:44]
No, this is super helpful.
[00:19:50]
So that is what the script does and
[00:19:53]
one potential improvement.
[00:19:55]
So I’ll just go through how the script
[00:19:57]
is sort of set up.
[00:19:59]
Again,
[00:19:59]
the only settings up at the top is
[00:20:01]
just, you know,
[00:20:02]
giving it a name and a description.
[00:20:04]
Everything else is fully sort of set in
[00:20:08]
the writing of the script itself.
[00:20:11]
These bits right here are the parts that
[00:20:13]
someone might want to customize to their
[00:20:16]
own liking.
[00:20:17]
I would say that you should keep the
[00:20:20]
option skip at the end because that allows
[00:20:22]
you to say,
[00:20:23]
I don’t want to rename this type of
[00:20:25]
field at all.
[00:20:28]
But all of the other ones are fair
[00:20:30]
game.
[00:20:31]
So what this is doing is it’s really
[00:20:33]
just all this is plain text.
[00:20:36]
But I thought of what are the variables
[00:20:38]
one might want to insert into a linked
[00:20:40]
record field or look up or roll up.
[00:20:45]
technically count fields could be you
[00:20:49]
could slide count fields in here actually
[00:20:52]
pretty easily and I’ll kind of talk
[00:20:53]
through how one might do that this
[00:20:55]
currently doesn’t do count fields but
[00:21:00]
I’ll talk through what each of the
[00:21:01]
variable names kind of mean.
[00:21:03]
So the link field name,
[00:21:07]
that means if I’m talking about renaming a
[00:21:12]
linked record field, which this is,
[00:21:16]
This variable name is saying pull from
[00:21:19]
whatever inverse link there is for it,
[00:21:25]
which in this case is director,
[00:21:27]
pull the name of this field
[00:21:32]
into the name of this field that’s the
[00:21:34]
first one table name in this case is
[00:21:37]
referring to the table name is productions
[00:21:41]
and then dash link field name which of
[00:21:44]
course would be director for this one this
[00:21:46]
is the same except it’s with a parentheses
[00:21:48]
instead of a dash and that’s really where
[00:21:51]
you could start to customize if you want
[00:21:54]
uh slashes if you want to use a
[00:21:56]
plus or a colon or a semicolon
[00:21:59]
or a pipe character.
[00:22:01]
The list goes on.
[00:22:02]
This is where you could customize to
[00:22:04]
whatever your team or company prefers to
[00:22:07]
name things as.
[00:22:09]
This should save you some time in that
[00:22:11]
regard.
[00:22:13]
This one is the same,
[00:22:14]
except it’s just the other way around.
[00:22:16]
Link field comes first,
[00:22:17]
and then comes the table name.
[00:22:19]
The last one is suffix,
[00:22:21]
which I didn’t show as an example,
[00:22:22]
but I can.
[00:22:23]
It just gives you an opportunity of take
[00:22:26]
the other link field and then a text
[00:22:30]
input would come up where you type in
[00:22:32]
your own suffix.
[00:22:33]
You do have to put a leading space
[00:22:36]
if you want a space to be there.
[00:22:38]
Otherwise,
[00:22:41]
it’s just going to have it run directly
[00:22:43]
into the name of the link record field.
[00:22:47]
The options for lookup fields are pretty
[00:22:50]
similar.
[00:22:51]
The main difference is instead of link
[00:22:54]
field name,
[00:22:55]
I’m saying reference field name.
[00:22:58]
So in this case,
[00:22:59]
this is a rollup of the field release
[00:23:01]
year on the productions table.
[00:23:04]
The reference field is release year.
[00:23:07]
What field are you bringing in to this
[00:23:09]
table?
[00:23:11]
And then suffix, we just talked about.
[00:23:13]
Link field name, in this case,
[00:23:15]
I’m pulling from this link field.
[00:23:18]
This is what it’s referring to in this
[00:23:23]
context.
[00:23:24]
And those are really the only two
[00:23:26]
variables for lookups or for rollups.
[00:23:30]
You could get the link field table name,
[00:23:35]
maybe.
[00:23:37]
You could,
[00:23:38]
which the way that this is written,
[00:23:42]
you might be able to just slide that
[00:23:45]
in, actually,
[00:23:46]
just add in a new option that includes
[00:23:50]
table name.
[00:23:50]
I think the way that the script as
[00:23:52]
a whole is written,
[00:23:53]
it’s always pulling from whatever this
[00:23:56]
table would be if you’re looking at this
[00:23:59]
field, this set of fields as an example.
[00:24:03]
Something we could check.
[00:24:04]
But just looking at the rest of the
[00:24:06]
script as a whole,
[00:24:08]
what we’re doing is up at the top,
[00:24:11]
you select a field or you select a
[00:24:13]
table, I should say,
[00:24:15]
and then that’s this part,
[00:24:18]
input table async.
[00:24:19]
And then this bit of code is saying,
[00:24:21]
all right,
[00:24:22]
get all of the fields on table A
[00:24:25]
that are a link to another record.
[00:24:28]
That way I can see what tables are
[00:24:31]
relevant to those link fields.
[00:24:33]
And that’s where you get this array of
[00:24:39]
what are the relevant tables that you
[00:24:41]
could sort of cycle through.
[00:24:45]
So now we’re
[00:24:48]
After you click one,
[00:24:49]
we’re looping through each of the tables
[00:24:54]
that you can possibly select on.
[00:24:57]
And from that point,
[00:24:59]
that’s where you can start to make those
[00:25:01]
changes.
[00:25:04]
where you could start to make those
[00:25:06]
selections.
[00:25:06]
So I’m going to stop this.
[00:25:10]
I think I’m going to run this again
[00:25:12]
from contacts because I do want to show
[00:25:14]
what the suffix option is.
[00:25:20]
So if I choose any option that contains
[00:25:23]
the variable suffix,
[00:25:25]
I can add something to the end of
[00:25:27]
it.
[00:25:27]
So I’m going to say
[00:25:32]
X really simple,
[00:25:33]
just to demonstrate what it does, skip,
[00:25:35]
skip.
[00:25:36]
And then you could see here,
[00:25:38]
it took the name of the opposing linked
[00:25:42]
record field,
[00:25:43]
added a space and then added an X.
[00:25:45]
Cause that’s what I told it to do.
[00:25:48]
And that works for lookups and rollups as
[00:25:50]
well.
[00:25:52]
And I love like.
[00:25:54]
You know, like Airtable,
[00:25:56]
their scripting extension does not support
[00:26:00]
like dropdown fields.
[00:26:01]
So I love like the use of buttons
[00:26:03]
to showcase how you would allow for like
[00:26:08]
selecting
[00:26:10]
Yeah, they have the pre-built dropdowns,
[00:26:13]
but only for tables and fields and views.
[00:26:18]
You can’t make your own custom dropdown,
[00:26:21]
which is unfortunate.
[00:26:23]
So yeah,
[00:26:24]
that’s why I’m using buttons for that.
[00:26:26]
I would probably prefer to use a dropdown
[00:26:29]
just because…
[00:26:31]
If you have a lot of tables or
[00:26:34]
you have a lot of like naming conventions,
[00:26:35]
for example, it kind of, to me,
[00:26:38]
if I go through this again,
[00:26:41]
this feels a little messy.
[00:26:42]
I wish they would at least be all
[00:26:44]
on their own line because to me,
[00:26:46]
this is a little hard to read.
[00:26:48]
If it was a dropdown,
[00:26:49]
I think it would be a better user
[00:26:51]
experience,
[00:26:52]
but there’s only so much I could do.
[00:26:54]
Yeah.
[00:26:56]
But there you see,
[00:26:57]
you can color the skip button to stand
[00:27:00]
out.
[00:27:05]
Yeah,
[00:27:05]
so that is helpful in that you could
[00:27:07]
say, well, obviously,
[00:27:09]
the buttons that are red are going to
[00:27:12]
abort the option, basically, just to stop.
[00:27:16]
You could always use the Stop button that
[00:27:18]
appears in the top right.
[00:27:19]
But the reason I added these here is
[00:27:21]
because if you had, let’s say,
[00:27:24]
one table linked to ten other tables,
[00:27:27]
and when you’re making that selection at
[00:27:29]
the top,
[00:27:30]
you accidentally select the wrong one,
[00:27:33]
having baked in sort of skip buttons
[00:27:35]
within the script lets you not start all
[00:27:38]
the way over.
[00:27:39]
You could just say, never mind.
[00:27:40]
I don’t care about context.
[00:27:41]
I really want to rename companies,
[00:27:43]
for example.
[00:27:44]
Yep.
[00:27:46]
Nice.
[00:27:46]
Yeah, that’s good.
[00:27:50]
And then, um,
[00:27:52]
I’ll just sort of walk through the design
[00:27:54]
of the script.
[00:27:55]
It’s using two functions.
[00:28:00]
Uh,
[00:28:02]
there’s one function that’s embedded
[00:28:04]
within this function.
[00:28:05]
And this function is called three times
[00:28:07]
once for link fields, once for lookups,
[00:28:10]
once for rollups.
[00:28:11]
If you wanted to add count fields,
[00:28:13]
you would basically duplicate this line,
[00:28:15]
rename it to say underscore count.
[00:28:18]
And then the one thing you’d have to
[00:28:20]
change is this right here.
[00:28:22]
So for each time this function is called,
[00:28:25]
it’s asking for what type of field are
[00:28:29]
we searching for?
[00:28:31]
And I believe the name for count is
[00:28:33]
count,
[00:28:34]
but you’ll notice that certain field types
[00:28:37]
are called something you might not expect.
[00:28:40]
So link to another record,
[00:28:42]
which is what it’s called in the UI,
[00:28:44]
it’s called multiple record links under
[00:28:47]
the hood.
[00:28:48]
And then lookup is called multiple lookup
[00:28:50]
values.
[00:28:51]
Rollup is just rollup.
[00:28:53]
So I’ll just check that right here.
[00:28:55]
If I search for the word count in
[00:28:57]
the documentation, yep,
[00:28:59]
count fields are just called count.
[00:29:01]
So just as straightforward as a rollup.
[00:29:03]
That’s what you would do in order to
[00:29:06]
add counts to the list.
[00:29:08]
And then you’d make sure to add them
[00:29:09]
to this array as well.
[00:29:11]
This is just combining all of the renamed
[00:29:14]
fields from each of these three.
[00:29:18]
function calls.
[00:29:20]
And then the last bit is saying,
[00:29:22]
did anything change?
[00:29:24]
If so,
[00:29:26]
put it in a table so people can
[00:29:28]
like preview the output before you commit
[00:29:31]
that change.
[00:29:33]
And then this is a function that’s like,
[00:29:38]
if someone says yes,
[00:29:39]
these are to be renamed, rename them.
[00:29:42]
If they say no, skip.
[00:29:46]
So these two functions at the bottom are
[00:29:50]
the ones that are doing the bulk of
[00:29:52]
the work.
[00:29:53]
This one is finding,
[00:29:57]
based on what type of field it is,
[00:29:59]
so multiple record links in this case,
[00:30:03]
get the correct formatting options,
[00:30:05]
so way back up at the top.
[00:30:07]
I had two different options, right?
[00:30:10]
And this one is relevant for linked record
[00:30:13]
fields.
[00:30:13]
So first part is what naming conventions
[00:30:17]
are possible for this type of field.
[00:30:22]
And then the next is I have to
[00:30:24]
find what are the relevant fields to fill
[00:30:27]
in those placeholders.
[00:30:28]
It’s a record link.
[00:30:30]
I need the inverse field.
[00:30:32]
What is the linked record field on the
[00:30:34]
other table?
[00:30:35]
If it’s a lookup or a rollup,
[00:30:37]
then I need the reference field,
[00:30:40]
which is what is the field on this
[00:30:41]
table that this is a lookup stemming from?
[00:30:46]
Uh, so very similar,
[00:30:49]
but slightly different things that we’re
[00:30:51]
targeting.
[00:30:52]
Again, if you were adding account field,
[00:30:54]
you would add it to this condition here.
[00:30:58]
Uh,
[00:30:58]
multiple record links probably doesn’t
[00:31:00]
need to be touched at all.
[00:31:03]
Yeah.
[00:31:05]
And then this part, real simple,
[00:31:07]
take the name of whatever format the
[00:31:13]
person clicked on.
[00:31:14]
So if I clicked this one, for example,
[00:31:17]
go through and replace all of those
[00:31:20]
variables with what their actual name
[00:31:23]
would be,
[00:31:24]
which is determined by this block of code
[00:31:26]
up here.
[00:31:27]
So it’s a simple find and replace.
[00:31:31]
Yeah,
[00:31:31]
so there’s a table name would likely get
[00:31:34]
replaced if you had that in a rollup.
[00:31:36]
Yep.
[00:31:36]
And suffix.
[00:31:39]
Cool.
[00:31:41]
Maybe you could add a prefix as well
[00:31:44]
if you wanted.
[00:31:46]
I don’t know why I didn’t do a
[00:31:47]
prefix.
[00:31:50]
I certainly could.
[00:31:54]
Yeah.
[00:31:55]
Yeah.
[00:31:56]
Cool.
[00:31:59]
Yeah, so yeah, so it’s,
[00:32:01]
that’s the variables that you have to play
[00:32:04]
with.
[00:32:06]
And awesome.
[00:32:08]
Anything else to show in here?
[00:32:11]
I think so.
[00:32:13]
This one was,
[00:32:15]
you could check the GitHub history of it.
[00:32:18]
It originally only did linked record
[00:32:20]
fields,
[00:32:21]
and then I went back and added lookup
[00:32:23]
and rollups to it.
[00:32:25]
And while doing that,
[00:32:26]
I made it more function-y.
[00:32:30]
My instinct is not to write
[00:32:33]
based on putting everything in functions,
[00:32:36]
which is best practice.
[00:32:39]
So I went back and tried to clean
[00:32:40]
this up to make it more readable for
[00:32:42]
other folks.
[00:32:43]
It probably could be more legible if I
[00:32:46]
kept going.
[00:32:48]
But I stopped here because this, I think,
[00:32:51]
works pretty well.
[00:32:52]
And it limits the amount of places that
[00:32:54]
someone would have to go in and customize
[00:32:57]
if you wanted to customize it.
[00:32:59]
Yeah.
[00:33:01]
Yeah, and something like this,
[00:33:03]
Even if you like pre-configured your
[00:33:07]
naming conventions could not run in
[00:33:10]
automation because you can’t update the
[00:33:12]
fields.
[00:33:14]
Yeah.
[00:33:15]
Any schema adjustment can’t be done in,
[00:33:17]
in automation, which is adjustment, uh,
[00:33:20]
which not great because.
[00:33:23]
even if you wanted to update a single
[00:33:25]
selects options,
[00:33:27]
an automation action that’s like update
[00:33:30]
record, that could add new select options,
[00:33:33]
but a script can’t, which is…
[00:33:35]
Interesting,
[00:33:36]
because they’re both automations in that
[00:33:37]
case.
[00:33:38]
So this has to be a script extension.
[00:33:43]
And the hope is that you don’t have
[00:33:44]
to be running this constantly.
[00:33:46]
It’s really as you’re setting up the table
[00:33:49]
structure and field structure,
[00:33:51]
you kind of run this once and then
[00:33:54]
it’s kind of you don’t need it anymore.
[00:33:55]
Yeah, because you never go back in and
[00:33:59]
add more fields and stuff.
[00:34:01]
Nope.
[00:34:03]
What about,
[00:34:03]
do you know if a custom interface
[00:34:07]
extension can update?
[00:34:10]
Ooh, I actually don’t know.
[00:34:16]
That is a good question because I’m
[00:34:20]
thinking through what the docs say.
[00:34:23]
And I don’t remember there being a section
[00:34:25]
about modifying table structure.
[00:34:30]
Yeah, I don’t know about that.
[00:34:31]
Yeah, I don’t remember that being there,
[00:34:35]
at least on the old custom extensions.
[00:34:42]
I made a…
[00:34:46]
And I guess you could use the REST
[00:34:48]
API.
[00:34:49]
You could,
[00:34:51]
but then it’s a whole separate thing.
[00:34:56]
It’d be nice if you could perform this
[00:34:58]
same sort of,
[00:35:00]
function everywhere,
[00:35:03]
obviously with an automation script,
[00:35:04]
you wouldn’t be able to have the like
[00:35:06]
buttons.
[00:35:08]
Like there’s no person there to make these
[00:35:10]
selections, but if you pre-configured,
[00:35:14]
as you said earlier, Dan,
[00:35:15]
what these options would be,
[00:35:17]
you just standardized your naming
[00:35:19]
convention.
[00:35:20]
It’d be nice if an automation can do
[00:35:22]
it for you.
[00:35:23]
Um,
[00:35:24]
but until then you’re kind of stuck with
[00:35:26]
this.
[00:35:26]
Yeah.
[00:35:27]
Yeah.
[00:35:28]
Cool.
[00:35:31]
Very cool.
[00:35:32]
This is very useful.
[00:35:33]
So we will make,
[00:35:34]
we’ll put that link to your GitHub.
[00:35:37]
So this is,
[00:35:39]
Kamille’s made this freely available for
[00:35:42]
people to install into your own basis.
[00:35:44]
So thank you for offering that up.
[00:35:47]
Yep.
[00:35:49]
And yeah, check it out.
[00:35:50]
See how it works.
[00:35:51]
See if there’s anything that would be
[00:35:55]
useful to include in it.
[00:35:57]
I’m sure Kamille would take a look at
[00:35:59]
it.
[00:36:02]
Cool.
[00:36:03]
Well, that’s today’s show.
[00:36:05]
We’ll be back next week.
[00:36:06]
We’ll have a special guest next week that
[00:36:08]
will come on and show some very cool
[00:36:10]
stuff I’m excited for next week’s show.
[00:36:12]
So check it out.
[00:36:14]
Fingers crossed that Airtable will stay up
[00:36:18]
week and we’ll have a productive week and
[00:36:20]
we’ll see everybody next week.
[00:36:23]
See ya.