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All right. Welcome back to the built. On air podcast. We've been off for a month. We're ready to begin a new season. We're in season. 25 episode 1. Welcome Back. Everyone, Ali Camille. Good to see you again.
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Hello.
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Any any fun updates in the month we’ve been off.
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What did I do? Okay, I went on vacation request.
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Yeah. Nothing really on my end, just
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Survive the heat wave. It was brutal up here.
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Yeah. Yeah. We
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Yeah, doing with fires, we had some pretty bad fires out here. Actually, Fourth of July, like the whole city said no fireworks but then some idiots go up on the mountain to light off fireworks and start a fire like literally hundreds of yards away from my house and luckily their able to put it out before it got me home but
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Stupid. Yeah, so but anyways, it was a good month.
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Think since the last time my daughter got married so we had a wedding.
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and,
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Yeah, I had some vacation time as well. So
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Yeah, it’s been good.
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But yeah. Ready to to kick back off into the air table world. So, today, we’re gonna go through latest news and updates and, and things going on, and then we’re gonna do some deep dives into some new features that airtable is released since we’ve been off, and kind of do some unboxing and play with them and check them out. So gonna have some fun today.
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Let’s do it. So
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So first of all kind of talking about the air table community. So right around the time we last last saw each other they they kind of changed things up. They’re now doing Builder, Cruise you can tell like reading reading like this article and just the idea, you know, somebody did around with, with Chachi PT. It was like, what should we name our groups? And so they moved away from user groups to build a cruise.
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Sure.
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Yeah, so now they have Builder Crews. So um,
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So, so what I didn’t realize, let me see, let me click on this where they are.
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That’s no, that’s not it. That’s a form to get involved.
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Here we go. Cruise directory. Okay so they have virtual ones so I know like Jen Rudd she’s been running the air table AI I think.
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Ben, Green’s been running the marketing.
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So and then they believe a new one that Jen’s running she mentioned.
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She’s doing.
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Virtual can’t help but know this isn’t in.
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Alphabetical order or order by number of group members. So maybe I created a yeah, because I think these were the first two created ones.
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So pmo. This is a new one. Yeah.
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This one shouldn’t be in Virtual. This tagging doesn’t work in person, so yeah.
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There we go. Yeah. And then they do have some in-person ones around the world, so
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If you I’d be curious how these in-person ones.
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Work out. Let’s see any of my neck of the woods. Maybe I need to start one.
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Yeah, we’re in the Boston one.
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You are. There is one. There is. I just saw on the list there. Okay. I thought there was a bay area in San Diego but not Los Angeles. Thank you. There is one it’s in the middle.
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Of it. 24 people.
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You go more than Bay Area.
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As there should be, we’re the larger County.
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Yeah, no. Milwaukee where to represent?
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Well yeah I be curious. Yeah after if you’re participating in any of these or if you’re running one of these and and you want to talk about what you guys are doing, come on the show. We’d love to have you.
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You know, I got my current job through networking at one of these in-person airtable meetups. I mean, it wasn’t this specifically, it was before they came up with this sort of concept, but the idea of irritable hosted were supportive event. So, I mean, you never know there’s people in this community that are
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doing interesting things for a lot of different use cases, you know, non-profits for profits education, and there’s a lot I think.
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And going out of sort of meeting other people who are doing similar or even completely different things. As you is always interesting because he get more, you get more knowledge, you might not get in your day-to-day. So I think these are good.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, so they’re starting to get people together. She’s good, let’s check real quick events.
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Coming up in person, navigating your AI Journey.
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It doesn’t say where you stack London. Okay.
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The other.
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So they have the, the crew meet up. So, there you go.
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Tonight.
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I don’t know what I’m doing, Maybe.
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Yeah, that’s something to do tonight.
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The other ones coming up.
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There’s one Spanish somewhere virtual.
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Air table virtual virtual.
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Cat product, let’s Summit and September.
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Cast on that January out. So I wonder if this is it for the rest of the years as far as
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In person.
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Looks like nothing.
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No other like airtable specific ones coming up.
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Cool. All right. Here’s a here’s a question from from Reddit community.
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Is airtable Omni going to replace tools like softer?
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You, it depends on what you’re building with software. So one of the core like,
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oh, there’s a specific term for this but like reasons why you would get the product for softer and all the other ear table specific or table focused from and Builders was that are tables license structure meant that if you had to edit something,
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it was expensive because you have to pay for a license for everybody and it’s alleviated a little bit with guest users, but if you’re building, only internal tools. Like my job is to build internal tools for the company that employees. So
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That’s how the window.
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That is still a hindrance with on me because it’s building an air table. There’s some work around so you can do. But who knows how long those work around? So, going to be there and
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My principal complaint with are tables. Custom interfaces right now is the same complete I had with retool that they have since fixed but you know I’m an equal opportunity here. So a leverage the same complaint against your table. You’re building multi-page apps in a single app infrastructure. Where
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If you want to build a whole website with Omni you absolutely can but it is one URL and that’s not great as a user experience. You lose so much with stuffing and app in that way, and that makes sense.
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Doable, but not a good idea.
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Yeah.
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Good. I like the top comment on this. I saw this post last night and it was like, it was like, on me is not great at Best, Yet at best isn’t great.
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It’s like, yeah, I agree.
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Do some good stuff.
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But man, do you got a hold of?
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Me. He’s not, he may as well let us three year old loose with their table. I’ll give you a ten year old man. It is not an irritable expert quite yet, which is
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strange, even though it’s been by the people who make it,
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And there is and somebody hinted that I’ve heard that from others that there’s a version two coming.
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There will be a significant upgrade.
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I hope so. I I basically just use Claude now and like I use Omni to get a page started and then I just use Claude to edit the rest of it like,
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but,
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There are? Yeah, there are some things that Omni can do that. Claude can’t do. Yeah, right.
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True. But I’ve found that like, Omni has these like keywords that if you even just use it in your prompt. Like if it’s completely like out of context, it will like pick up on this keyword and be like, I can’t do exports, I can’t do exports and I’m like that’s not what I said. I like I’m like that’s what it’s like I said the word export in my prompt and so it’s like I can’t do that. You have to try again. I’m like, what are like, I don’t know. It’s wild. Like you just rework it to remove that word, then it’s fine.
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It’s funny now.
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What my be the killer to to software and whatnot is.
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This guy, right?
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So canvas is in airtable labs.
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I do have access to it. I have played with it for a minute.
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It’s got potential. I think it’s better.
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At building than the nominee. It’s a different. So it’s basically
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you know, it’s basically like custom extensions like taking outside of
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interface Builder.
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And it feels more like a lovable or bolt or something.
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And so this I think could compete with with softer.
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So what does it like? Does it run inside canvas, or does it give you code that you run somewhere else like what they run? It basically is like, it’s a chat.
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Editor, the allows you and then and then the visual, you know, Visual outlay. And so it’s basically automatically hosts the code that it generates. So it generates the code that gets rendered but it has a direct connection to your air table data so it understands so airtable is your source of data. So it’s it’s the underlying database and then it’s an app builder on top of that.
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Yeah.
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I’m excited.
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Yeah, so it’s air table Dash Labs. I tried poking around to see if they had other things on here, but just redirects to your table. So you have to know if there’s another airtable Labs project, this is the only one I’m aware of on the domain.
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so,
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Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. The challenge is and I’ve always said this is like airtable as a, as a database.
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Is not built to support like a large public facing website.
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you know, and so now with them exploring this concept,
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I don’t know how that’s gonna work. If it’s read only. They can cash it, you know, you could get by with read only but if it’s editable, which canvas allows for, you know, updating records,
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you’re not going to be able to support a large quantity of simultaneous users.
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Unless, you know, unless they figure out.
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workarounds for it, but
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Yeah, so that’s that’s where I Think It’s Tricky.
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This product and why it’s experimental and may never see the light of day.
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But if anything, you know, this this is their attempt to to go after the the app Builders like softer and whatnot. I would agree, I think.
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Omni and interfaces in general, have
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your own section and the market, it’s not going to be the same as make your own website and
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Have that website from the ground up to dance point being built with traffic in mind? Yeah, accounting for that.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Sorry, I got I just gonna say, I really loved a lot of the new features that software’s been doing. They have a new ish Vibe, coding block where you can like if they don’t have what you’re looking for in terms of like drag and drop elements, you can just
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Ask it to create like, create me a timeline pointed at my that this table and it knows. It can like look into your data and figure out what the fields are. Like, it can do out just like, Claude can just like omnican with the custom interface and I’ve been like really impressed with like the first result, I get, I’m usually like, oh, wow, okay, that’s that’s what I wanted great. I can move on.
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It’s been really cool.
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That’s cool. Yeah, and I know like
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You could build apps on top of. I’m pretty sure they could. You can use air table as your as your back end. They also
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As softer has their own database now as well, right? And they do and they just launched workflows as well. And like they’ve been moving so fast like just in the last month. They’ve released like six features that I’ve been waiting for for a really long time and I’m just like so excited.
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But yeah, workflows really powerful.
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Like you can even show the user like a wave screen. That’s like, like, please wait while we do your like work on some stuff on the back end, it’s really nice. It’s a great user experience.
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yeah, a little messy on some things like I’ve found that, you know, one block will refresh to update and the other one doesn’t and you might have to do like custom code to get them to both match up but
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I digress. But yeah.
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Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, it’s interesting. How
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These platforms start, you know, on top of an air table, and then they eventually become it, you know, independent where you don’t need third parties to use them. That’s the Natural Evolution of these these Solutions.
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it is just gonna bag because I think,
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Yeah, I don’t know, it’ll be interesting, how? Then they just become direct competitors to to the are tables of the world.
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so,
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All right. Yeah, I think the other the other thing I was just gonna bring up, I’ll bring this over. So high for agent continues to evolve, they now have like a Marketplace, although they sent an email out and I think the they forgot to put the link and then they sent another one, but they don’t have like in an obvious like Marketplace. But I think just these are the
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Let me see if I can get to.
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Maybe you have to sign in to see all the things.
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There’s no link to their Marketplace anywhere, their website suffers from what A noise me about a lot of technology companies is like, there’s three pages, the homepage, there’s logging in and they’re signing up, but there’s no, like God help you. If you wanted to know what the features were if you wanted to read and about page, I think, people think you don’t need those anymore, for whatever reason. Yeah. Yeah. That’s how you. That’s how you navigate. Yeah, old school. You just gotta remember,
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Everywhere. So yeah, they don’t they don’t link to it from their homepage but here’s the marketplace.
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So, yeah, so you can kind of do this. And I want to say
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Do you have to?
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I want to say, let’s see.
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Looks like, now this is from Alex. Who’s the main guy that works there trying to think if like you have to buy these if they’re Community ones?
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A similar to are tables marketplace where the name might imply. It’s a market and its really Gallery. Here’s one from somebody other than Alex,
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There’s no cost associated with it.
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So, this is a
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He’s a big YouTuber YouTuber that I follow.
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That makes sense because I noticed that hybrid agent sponsors is YouTube channel.
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See. So yeah. Maybe
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maybe you don’t have to pay for. These are just kind of
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like the air table.
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Universe.
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People just throw up their stuff for free.
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Yeah, some point. Um, some point, we’ll do a deep dive on hyper agent. I have somebody that I’m talking to the
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Uses it, heavily, that will share some stuff if we can get them on.
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That’s awesome. I do that.
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Okay, let’s talk about new features. Let’s see, I think I’ll just skip the what’s new? Because we I think we highlight all of them and in the build-time are Community. Russ is our
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Russ’s, always first to highlight new features.
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Injury.
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Yeah, looking for new new stuff.
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so, okay, so this one
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Let’s, let’s highlight each of them, and then we’ll come back. And we’ll actually like,
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Set up some demos of the ones that we can do. Yep. So this one when when comment added. So this is a new trigger that you can set up an automation to. So basically anytime I comment is added you can set up an automation
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Which is really good because comments are kind of like a black box.
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They’re really hard to expose. So now in theory, you could like set up automations at any time, there’s a comment, you could then add it to a table and then you could do what you wanted with it.
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That’s really nice. You could do this with the rest API, but it would require like setting up a crime job. Basically, or
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I think they might have had a webhook re-added for it too, but either way it was. Yeah, I remember, I remember when comments came out and they exposed the rest API and I remember talking to the developers, no longer their table of, like, why did you implement it? So, you have to go to the record level to get any comments on a record, which is good. But they don’t have like a top level comments and point where you can say, give me all the latest comments on this table, or bass or included as a parameter within list. Records include comments. It’s just a Boolean. Yes or no? Yeah, query 10 at a time. Anyway, I will not let that die.
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Okay, I know you can it you can say, tell me, how many records or how many comments there are on a record. So when you query records, you can get the comment count.
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He loves making you query in their API twice because you anyway, the thing I noticed with this implementation that I’ve been able to do, you know how when you get a notification of a comment on a record and you have interface only access but you have access to two different interfaces, sometimes it doesn’t know which interface it should send you to.
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We’ve been able to say because it’ll tell you who made the comment, and then you could with a conditional block, you could say, is this person in this group?
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Great. Then send them an email with a link to this page versus that page and you’re fine. Art control over those emails. So I personally I set up an email role to delete all comment notifications but I still have the in-app notifications on. So notified twice about this. Same thing. And this is been pretty helpful in.
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Better directing people where to go. Yeah. All right. It’s one thing I I like when you do duplicate a base you can all it also duplicates the comments which is
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Actually really helpful. But
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Record revision history. I ran into a big problem. The other day where like there is no way to retain the revision. History airtable can’t even do it in your back end.
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like,
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So I like to extract that. Yeah. Like I’m deprecating a table, a large table in a big base and there’s absolutely no way for us to hold on to
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the revision history. It’s like if we want to delete the table, we have to say bye-bye to that.
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Data.
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In air quotes. So,
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That’s a problem of have not run into before, but a big one.
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Or you could use an external backup solution like onto her and I can help with that. Yes, 100%.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so we’ll we’ll do a demo of this. This is pretty easy demo. So we’ll jump into this in a minute. Let’s move on next one. What do we got here? Okay.
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This one is not in their what’s new. So this is they haven’t like announced this so insert as a Json string. So this is within automations.
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um,
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you can you can insert
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I’ve noticed.
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This, this is created some issues for me, I believe, I haven’t like verified this, but I feel like this changed behavior in certain field types.
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I don’t know if you guys have noticed this.
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I’ve noticed do I changes but I don’t know if it would have to do with this. So when you’re inserting, when you’re like updating a record and in an Automation and you you I’m pretty sure I could be wrong in this, but I’m pretty sure you could insert just about any field type like into. Let’s say you’re just updating
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You know, even a text field.
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If you had like a fine Step before, that was only finding like one record. You know, you limit it. I know there’s only going to be one record and I just want to update this field. If you’re if you’re updating a field from that find record that’s like a look up. So it’s an array
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It used to allow. I’m pretty sure you still allow you to insert that. Whereas, now, I found use cases where it doesn’t allow, you know, like an array to get inserted into field types. And I think because now, the only option I have is like insert as a Json string and it’ll put like, quotes on it or brackets or something.
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And I’m pretty sure it used to just convert it, you know, to just like a single element string. And then you’d be able to insert it
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You guys notice that? I’ve noticed an error, I mean
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I I find it exceedingly rare and I can I find it hard to remember what exact scenario, but if what you’re describing, it’s like when you have an array being put into a string but I think it’s been around for a while. It’s like a weird error message that comes up. It’s like invalid, Union type or something?
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And, but I do.
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I I agree that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and I don’t really understand the Rhyme or Reason as to why it wouldn’t.
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Yeah, so now I have to and even there’s been times where yeah, if it comes from a fine Step.
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Mm-hmm. Even like I think I used to be able to like convert the lookup or create a formula field that you know.
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Did like an array join on the lookup or something, to get it to a text field. But now I’ve had to like, I had to go through a scripting step to like convert this array into just a single.
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Camera. Remember the exact use case, but I’m finding all these edge cases that I feel like I used to be able to just the automation would make the conversion for you.
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It’s possible that they’ve changed, I’ve there’s been a lot of just really weirdo little, tiny things that I’ve seen people talk like, oh, they must be using AI to update their code stack and not going all the way through with everything like yeah.
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I don’t know, but the Json string though, like that, that I think is hugely beneficial particularly for Scripts.
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When?
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like previously, if you were say, you had a web hook calling an automation to start an Automation and sometimes
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One of the field values is empty.
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But sometimes it’s not like that will cause an error. If you’re relying on that field, even if like your script is written in such a way where it’s okay for it to be empty.
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It won’t even run because it’s empty. So if you do it with this Json string, instead and you parse the whole thing, then you won’t have to worry about that failing.
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Conception. Yeah.
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Yeah, where I, where this comes in handy. I’ve got automation, especially with scripting. Like this is huge with scripting where you can just insert, you know, like the entire object instead of having to do like a field for every item. You know, you can just say
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put the whole string in there. So that’s where I this Json string is really useful and in script and stuffs.
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I I agree. I do. I have some notes.
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I would like if you know how when you’re inserting into like an email.
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Step and you can insert a record or list of records as a list or a grid. And then you could pick which fields for either one, something for the Json string. Let me take which fields.
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To be part of the Json, object that you’re about to form for me.
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And then,
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Similar to the API. If the Json object comes from an airtable record, I want it to give me the option of should the keys be the field names or the IDS
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because it
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Uses film named only, right? Yeah. So it’s like there’s some tweaks for like real practical use case of this implementation but it is.
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So much more useful. I’ve had so many scripts where I need it insert.
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10 Fields into a script where tenfield isn’t a lot of fields, but it’s so mechanically annoying to grab little by little and then you can only when you’re inserting a field, you could only pick one of the
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parameters out of it. Like if you want to give
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The result of a single select field you could pick the ID, the name or the color, but you can’t settle three unless you have three different inputs. That’s annoying.
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You have to do that with inserting the whole thing as Json street. But if it lets me take with keys to bring as part of the full object and let’s meet, do you build IDs and set of field names?
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Oh yeah.
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Amazing. Yeah. And
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At some point there will be a day where like Omni this is where Omni could really shine, as if it could get inside of an automation, where you could just prompt it to say, add these 10 input Fields. So you don’t have to manually create every input field, you can just prompt it. Yeah, that’s those are the things that I would use.
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Or just generally it’s like I know what I’m doing. I just don’t want to do it all.
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Sure.
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so,
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But yeah, this is I think this will come in handy. It’s a little bit more.
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Technical, you got to know what to do with it but yeah, I haven’t.
[00:31:53]
I feel like a lot of times.
[00:31:56]
It’s frustrating. If unless you’re in, putting it into a scripting tasks outside of a scripting tasks. Usually, you don’t want Json because it adds, you know, the quotes and the brackets and everything, and that’s usually not what you want.
[00:32:14]
Unless you’re saving it as like a log. If you’re just doing like a text dump or something of
[00:32:20]
Blogging something.
[00:32:23]
So yeah, it’s useful. I really wanted this in zapier which I think you can do now. But back when I wanted it, you couldn’t. Because of the way that calendly saves
[00:32:36]
Questions. When you when you like fill out a calendly and you say like you can set custom questions for your users to fill out, but then they come as separate Fields. It’s like question one question. One answer question 2. Question 2 answer and it’s like
[00:32:52]
Ah, so you know if you don’t know which one it’s coming from, you can’t map them appropriately and this would have been really happy helpful and made me very happy.
[00:33:02]
Existed at that time.
[00:33:05]
Sure.
[00:33:06]
All right.
[00:33:07]
That one we probably won’t demo. We can maybe look at it, not a nation’s. Okay, here’s a big one. I thought I had one more, there’s one more that I know Russ found. So I’ll talk about it, but
[00:33:19]
Yeah, here’s the big one. Inline editing data validation and this one will play with as well.
[00:33:29]
And high level thoughts on this. This one falls into my standard Airtel review, good idea.
[00:33:37]
Upsetting implementation.
[00:33:41]
Yeah, I agree.
[00:33:44]
Yeah.
[00:33:46]
So, some weird.
[00:33:47]
About it.
[00:33:48]
and that kind of covers, both parts of this, the validation informs and the
[00:33:55]
detail page as a form idea. Both of them, I have notes.
[00:34:02]
Yeah, which we can get into. Yeah.
[00:34:06]
Yeah, let’s let’s do that. Okay, there’s one more and then we’ll dive into these
[00:34:12]
There’s one about.
[00:34:15]
See if I can find it.
[00:34:19]
Table in Slack.
[00:34:25]
There you go.
[00:34:26]
But I had this one pulled.
[00:34:29]
Cat are tables. AI assistant is available directly in Slack.
[00:34:34]
I don’t know if this has been around for a while, maybe.
[00:34:38]
Or if it’s near updated on June’s. Oh yeah. Published okay. So this is new
[00:34:46]
so yeah, I’ll have to
[00:34:48]
Play with this.
[00:34:51]
So you can add a bot and then you could just ask it questioned by tagging airtable.
[00:34:58]
A few using Slack.
[00:35:01]
so, I’m assuming
[00:35:04]
Does this use like the mCP? Like is it? Yeah, so it’s our table AI assistant so it’s probably using the mCP
[00:35:12]
Yeah.
[00:35:15]
That’s cool.
[00:35:18]
Yeah.
[00:35:19]
Scroll up a little bit under limitations.
[00:35:23]
Actually a little bit before. Yeah.
[00:35:28]
Okay, no, it’s Fields per record up to 10.
[00:35:32]
Records per response up to 50.
[00:35:35]
Why limit only 10 Fields? That’s seems
[00:35:40]
Really small. Now,
[00:35:43]
maybe just for the display.
[00:35:47]
And characters per cell to 250.
[00:35:51]
Messages per response.
[00:35:55]
So slack. My handsome women on size? Sure, yeah.
[00:36:02]
Yeah.
[00:36:07]
So they’re even, so they’re even calling it on the in Slack.
[00:36:12]
Just a little.
[00:36:14]
Tricky of like, what is Omni what actually is on me. Well, it’s on me omnipresent.
[00:36:23]
Probably omnipotent as well. Omniscient. Whatever.
[00:36:29]
Yeah.
[00:36:31]
So okay. So the I mean I get it from a marketing standpoint, they want to give their AI a name.
[00:36:38]
but if behaves differently Omni and slack is different than air table,
[00:36:46]
it’s back to their problem with forms, where they have four different types of forms. They all the stuff there’s five now. Now, they’re in, you’re right. I’ve got to update my complaint.
[00:37:00]
And there’s a totally different features that.
[00:37:06]
What is an interface for good?
[00:37:09]
Oh my gosh, like explaining, what an interface forum is? They really just get rid of the form. Like when you go to create an interface page, like the form, the interface Forum page just in my opinion should just not exist. Like every time people go to make one, I’m like stop don’t do that, you will regret it because you can only access it here. You can’t like go to a list page and point the add new button that form, like, like, you’re gonna waste all your time, building this and then never be able to use it again.
[00:37:42]
I don’t.
[00:37:44]
You not to get ahead of ourselves with that form page can’t edit.
[00:37:49]
You like why let you reuse the same form that you might have already built? Know, make another one?
[00:38:00]
Yeah, making another one. The only one.
[00:38:03]
Yeah, my same complaint with the record review layout. It’s like no I built this detail page.
[00:38:09]
I want to just keep that one. Like, I like the way I like how it looks. I like the record review UI. But
[00:38:17]
I’m not going to use it because I spend all this time building a page that only lives there like. Okay. Yep. And also if you duplicate that page there’s actually two names given to the page, there’s one for the page as a whole and a second for the detail page. It’s on the right side. The only way I found to rename the one on the right hand side which is important if you have sandbox on because it’ll say inbox detail too. Has been up to but you might have four twos because if you speaking from experience, I had to deal with this yesterday. And the only way to do it is to like you put a four, a button that triggers an Automation, and then sever the connection to the automation, or do something with it to break it. It will give you a link that will open, just the detail page, and then you can read it. This is the madness that I sometimes have to deal with in a cable interface is, which extends to the new
[00:39:17]
edit this form, which again,
[00:39:20]
Well, after that’d be a good episode of doing a full deep of the different forms and that is the day where I end up looking the Charlie Damien from Subway, funny, where he’s like, the conspiracy board in the background crazy. That’s me trying to explain some of you know, designers intricacies. So
[00:39:43]
Good.
[00:39:45]
Cool. Let’s let’s do, we got time for two. We’ll do. We’ll do comments and then the forms.
[00:39:53]
Okay, great. There is one great thing I do like about the implementation of the comment trigger.
[00:40:01]
The test of the trigger. It just gives you a fake comment. It is a force you to make a comment on the record which is great. What I would want, give me the structure like I don’t need
[00:40:15]
You know, it just does it.
[00:40:18]
Yeah.
[00:40:21]
I know exactly what it’s gonna return. I don’t have to pollute my own. Yeah you know records with a comment I’ll have to go back and delete. Yeah.
[00:40:31]
Yeah, this is perfect. Yeah. So then we could do
[00:40:36]
Okay, so let’s look at this. So it gives us
[00:40:40]
So you can tell it’s a, it’s a Json type output, they’ve got layers to it. So this users and subscribers are erased.
[00:40:53]
Car. What? I’ll be curious to test is
[00:40:59]
Child comments.
[00:41:02]
So, let’s just do, let’s create a new table.
[00:41:11]
Yeah, I didn’t think about a threaded replies. Yeah, and you can have attachments in comments, right?
[00:41:18]
Yeah.
[00:41:19]
Right. Yeah.
[00:41:22]
here’s my, here’s my trick for getting rid of all the default
[00:41:28]
fields.
[00:41:30]
You can do that. You can select multiple and delete them right on the table, too. That’s true. I forgot you can do that. That’s a better trick slowly. But surely they add more default fields.
[00:41:43]
That you have to delete.
[00:41:45]
What I do love, though, the manage Fields board is so helpful if you because you can search for anything across the whole field. So like the name, the description like you can search for things in the description too so that really useful. Yeah. I I’m quite a fan of that tool. Again, I have some notes but those are all like man. It’d be great if this nothing that I’m like mad about and I’m mad about a lot of things.
[00:42:12]
Yes.
[00:42:13]
100%.
[00:42:16]
Should that Steppy create Dan?
[00:42:21]
You have update.
[00:42:23]
You’re right. Yeah.
[00:42:27]
So let me convert step types.
[00:42:33]
Again, it will break a lot.
[00:42:36]
You if I’m going from update to create in the same table, let me make that switch. And then decide, if it breaks something, it preemptively decides, whatever you’re about to do is gonna be completely different. It’s gonna be very similar, actually,
[00:42:58]
Yeah.
[00:42:59]
Try to record.
[00:43:20]
Comment.
[00:43:23]
Wait, what is it giving me?
[00:43:26]
so when comment added,
[00:43:30]
Why is it giving me fields from the tape? I guess it’s also, oh, it’s giving you.
[00:43:36]
The record that so that’s cool. It’s the same payload as record created a record updated with the addition of the comment itself. Okay?
[00:43:49]
Placement of comment in that selection is I think confusing because the trigger is the comment and the record, it’s attached to is additional information. In my opinion, if you’re thinking about, you know, where this automation is sourced from, yeah,
[00:44:09]
Okay, go into comment.
[00:44:11]
know, it’s interesting is
[00:44:13]
There’s no unique identifier, there’s no comment ID.
[00:44:18]
There’s gotta behind the scenes. So I mean,
[00:44:23]
They would expose that. Yeah, this is interesting, omission.
[00:44:30]
Right? Because then how do you threads work like is it going to say?
[00:44:34]
In response to.
[00:44:38]
The ID. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s gonna be a an impermanent key. Probably.
[00:44:45]
Sometimes we’ll be there and sometimes it won’t which annoys me the key should be static.
[00:44:50]
Yep.
[00:44:53]
All right, so we’ll do make a list.
[00:44:56]
There we go.
[00:44:58]
All right, let’s do this.
[00:45:01]
Anything else kind of covers enough?
[00:45:05]
Okay.
[00:45:08]
so,
[00:45:19]
okay, so we’re gonna comment there and then we’re going to
[00:45:24]
probably doesn’t do reactions. Thanks.
[00:45:40]
If it’s one common, created a new comment created, the reaction wouldn’t be there at that moment. So it
[00:45:50]
Yes, they’re when comment is updated because you can edit a comment, right?
[00:45:55]
well, so this
[00:45:59]
and step one notice, it doesn’t even it doesn’t trigger on sub replies. That seems like a Miss. I understand not having a trigger yet, for
[00:46:15]
A comment being edited because I would be a different trigger giving energy balls, you know? The way that records I see it would be the same for comments.
[00:46:28]
but threaded replies, if you look at the count of comments,
[00:46:35]
does it in just the number include the number of replies? Yeah. Okay. Well then airtable come on now.
[00:46:43]
You’ve lied to your customers. They’re three Commons. There should be three rows in this table. Yeah, does it, did it run it all? Can you look at the history?
[00:46:56]
Like maybe I don’t know why it would have failed, but okay.
[00:47:03]
Yeah, so it doesn’t handle replies.
[00:47:06]
and there isn’t
[00:47:10]
Just, there is not.
[00:47:20]
And yeah, if you edit it.
[00:47:24]
It’s not gonna change anything. So,
[00:47:30]
See.
[00:47:33]
What if you reset? Yeah. And if you resolve it, I’m not going to do anything.
[00:47:39]
And let’s do a new top level.
[00:47:46]
Yeah, I doubt it gives you attachments.
[00:47:52]
Can I put in here?
[00:47:55]
You can pull from one of your open tabs. Just wanna are tables.
[00:48:00]
Like screenshots of a new feature. Some of that. Yeah. I’ll just take a screenshot or something.
[00:48:20]
so, I didn’t have
[00:48:27]
But it might be in the payload, let’s see if it’s in here.
[00:48:35]
No.
[00:48:37]
okay, well,
[00:48:43]
Interesting. Yeah, so it’s it’s at the top level. It’s not in the field, it’s comments.
[00:48:51]
Anyways, some good, some bad. But gives you a sense of comment triggers.
[00:48:59]
On comic crate.
[00:49:01]
So, it’s a start.
[00:49:03]
Half Baked.
[00:49:06]
Things to be.
[00:49:08]
Always the case. So, all right, let’s do one more.
[00:49:12]
Do interfaces.
[00:49:15]
Forms. Okay, you have to be on a detail page. Yeah.
[00:49:21]
And then it’s yeah. So we have off. So used to be before this, there used to be, you could do like at the group level. It’s like,
[00:49:34]
Like a group.
[00:49:36]
Yeah. Okay.
[00:49:39]
Okay. Okay, so that’s still there. Yeah.
[00:49:43]
How does that change? It doesn’t the form because then it, yeah, the form is a
[00:49:51]
Page level. So it will override whatever specific group level setting you have. I’ve said before that, I would prefer the option of having the form at the group level, because I don’t want to have one complicated form with every possible field. I often have like, sequential workflows of like phase one phase, two phase, three, and some field should only be editable depending on which phase you’re in. And that’s really difficult to do on a form without hiding the field altogether and
[00:50:27]
Sometimes they don’t want to hide the field. Sometimes, I want the field to be there and not editable, and that’s not something you can do with this current implementation. Yeah.
[00:50:37]
Okay.
[00:50:43]
So one thing. Yeah, yeah. I totally agree. It’s like and I think that was the comments in the discussion of like okay now you need some multiple forms one for this, use case for you want to edit these things and then one for everything
[00:51:02]
Um yeah, just for those who haven’t played around with this yet.
[00:51:08]
The button that it will add to the top right? Is its own, kind of separate button, type, if that makes sense. It, you can’t have more than one of that button on the page. So you’re stuck with one form per detail page.
[00:51:29]
Right. It’s not it’s not there.
[00:51:33]
When it should be, I don’t see why it’s so cordoned off to be its own thing.
[00:51:41]
Right.
[00:51:45]
Right? And if it’s gonna be at the top, like it should freeze.
[00:51:52]
At the top, right?
[00:51:53]
Yeah, I didn’t notice until you said it.
[00:51:57]
You can’t? Yeah, you can’t control where this button is. Yeah.
[00:52:04]
Okay, so this this action is new, right? So open record update.
[00:52:11]
Right. There’s an open record, create action that kind of works.
[00:52:17]
I think it only works on something like this.
[00:52:22]
Yeah. Yeah. So if you toggle the link, yeah, yeah.
[00:52:35]
What in the edit? One edit as a form it, it kind of locks you into
[00:52:42]
That and then you can’t switch, which form it creates a new form for you, and then you have to edit it. So you can’t pick a pre-existing even if you have one of these pop-up forms. Before if you can’t, like duplicate that layout and settings into this start over
[00:53:00]
Yeah.
[00:53:03]
Yeah, it’s really. It’s
[00:53:06]
It’s frustrating that they did it that way, they took away the ability to have flexibility where you aren’t this limited and other similar places in.
[00:53:18]
Interfaces.
[00:53:21]
I would have liked to see, like, the like you said, have an edit button at the group level.
[00:53:27]
and then, even
[00:53:29]
Kind of a merging of those two features, like I’d like to be able to have right on the screen with the inline, like make the feel tired while it’s an edit mode. It’s required like something like that. Not I
[00:53:42]
I completely agree Dan. If you could scroll to the top of your detail page, like the description and assignees and Status field. I thought this is going to be if you edit click the edit button, you see exactly where you are. And then now you can type as though it were in line and then edit would probably rename itself to save or something you that to me, would be much better experience. Because then I have all of the Power of a detail page versus a form, which is still relatively limited. You can’t show a look up, or a roll up or a formula on a form, but you can’t on a detail page. So, like
[00:54:21]
And you I know inline editing is available because I was the only way to do it before this, so it is interesting that they were like yeah, for more. That’s the way to go.
[00:54:35]
up button, if I go back to inline,
[00:54:39]
Goes away the way, it’s gone.
[00:54:43]
And like if they had done it that way, like they could have kept like with linked records, like, you’d be able to add new linked records like and you can’t do that in the form. Like, yeah, that’s
[00:54:53]
I don’t know.
[00:54:57]
Yeah, I am excited though. I mean like I’m happy that they did this because it does afford like just the simple reason of like being able to have somebody like have a field, be required while you’re editing that is cute. So
[00:55:11]
Yeah. Thank you. Good start but it is
[00:55:17]
the thing I was going to use this for, I couldn’t actually use it for this because it was so,
[00:55:24]
like,
[00:55:26]
it just wouldn’t work.
[00:55:31]
Yeah, and let’s see if you make changes.
[00:55:36]
so, if you get rid of this, if you’re like,
[00:55:39]
if you’re like, okay, I want to switch back to inline.
[00:55:44]
Oh no. I want to go back to form.
[00:55:47]
You just lost all of your changes.
[00:55:50]
That you made to the button. It did. Keep the change I made to the form itself. It’s not creating a new
[00:55:58]
detail record button.
[00:56:02]
Okay.
[00:56:04]
so,
[00:56:06]
Very good. I know you gotta run we could wrap up there but yeah, good good stuff.
[00:56:12]
See how you use it.
[00:56:14]
Definitely something that it’s useful for other roadblocks. That creates
[00:56:19]
But hopefully there’s iterations to come to continue to work out the Kinks but yeah that’s an update of everything new the last month or so and next week we’ll be back. We’ll do a deep dive into something fun and exciting. So come join us again. Everybody have a great week.
[00:56:36]
Thank you.