12/6/2022 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S12-E12

Duration: 61 minutes

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

In This Episode

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

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

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

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

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

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:07 –

Meet the Creators – 00:30:56 –

Meet Sam Ruiz from Aureo.

I’m the co-founder of Aureo, a platform that connects freelancers and brands for project-based work. I’m a marketer-turned-entrepreneur and recently built our entire platform using Airtable. Prior to launching Aureo, I ran an e-commerce focused marketing agency called, Tgthr Collective.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:42:24 –

We dive into a full working base that will Sam will showcase a base she uses with her startup: Aureo (https://meetaureo.com)

A Case for Interface – 00:54:17 –

Explore Interfaces with “Interface for Teachers”.

Kamille showcases an interface she built to help with her college course she teaches..

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:07

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:30:56

Sam Ruiz –

Meet Sam Ruiz from Aureo.

I’m the co-founder of Aureo, a platform that connects freelancers and brands for project-based work. I’m a marketer-turned-entrepreneur and recently built our entire platform using Airtable. Prior to launching Aureo, I ran an e-commerce focused marketing agency called, Tgthr Collective.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:42:24

Meet Aureo

We dive into a full working base that will Sam will showcase a base she uses with her startup: Aureo (https://meetaureo.com)

Segment: A Case for Interface

Start Time: 00:54:17

Interface for Teachers

Explore Interfaces with “Interface for Teachers”.

Kamille showcases an interface she built to help with her college course she teaches..

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome Back to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:45] This is our final episode of season 12,
[00:01:48] episode 12, also our final
[00:01:50] season of the year.
[00:01:52] This year flew by fast.
[00:01:54] We did four seasons of 12 episodes each.
[00:01:58] So 40 48 episodes for the year,
[00:02:01] quite the accomplishment.
[00:02:04] We're always excited
[00:02:05] to be with you.
[00:02:06] We've got myself Dan Fellars,
[00:02:08] Kamille Parks and Alli Alosa
[00:02:09] with us and we have special guest
[00:02:12] Sam Ruiz. Welcome Sam
[00:02:14] Hi, thank you. Happy to be here.
[00:02:16] Good to have you on.
[00:02:17] We will learn more about
[00:02:19] Sam later on in the show. So stick around.
[00:02:21] We've got a great show for you. I'll go
[00:02:23] through what we're gonna be
[00:02:25] talking about today.
[00:02:26] As always, we'll start off with
[00:02:28] Round the Bases, talking about
[00:02:30] what's going on,
[00:02:31] keep you up today in all things
[00:02:32] Airtable. Then a quick spotlight
[00:02:35] on On2Air our primary sponsor and then
[00:02:39] we will learn more about Sam
[00:02:40] and her story
[00:02:41] and how she came into the world of
[00:02:42] Airtable.
[00:02:44] And then Sam's gonna walk us through
[00:02:46] the base that she has for her business
[00:02:48] called Aureo.
[00:02:50] And then we will talk a little bit
[00:02:53] about our community at BuiltOnAir and how
[00:02:55] you can join. And then finally,
[00:02:57] we'll wrap up with Kamille talking about
[00:02:59] interface that she has built
[00:03:03] so with that
[00:03:05] Round the Bases with what's going on.
[00:03:08] There's one big thing that we will
[00:03:10] talk about.
[00:03:11] I'll keep that for our last one.
[00:03:13] But other than that,
[00:03:14] that big change from Airtable,
[00:03:17] just a couple of things
[00:03:19] it wasn't too active
[00:03:20] on on any of the communities,
[00:03:22] lots of you know questions
[00:03:23] but a couple of things
[00:03:24] that
[00:03:25] I found from our BuiltOnAir community
[00:03:28] that I thought were showing a couple
[00:03:30] tidbits and tricks. We have a channel
[00:03:32] called Airtable tricks and people will
[00:03:35] post some cool things they find
[00:03:36] of how to do things in Airtable.
[00:03:38] So Ben Bailey who has been on the show
[00:03:42] gives us the fact of the day,
[00:03:44] you cannot group records
[00:03:46] with long text fields
[00:03:47] if rich text formatting is
[00:03:49] enabled. So if you ever wanted to group,
[00:03:53] you can't use rich text formatting
[00:03:56] to group your fields. And that's probably
[00:03:59] because of the syntax underneath
[00:04:01] the hood of markdown
[00:04:03] makes it tricky because
[00:04:04] there's there's characters that you
[00:04:07] don't actually see that are actually there
[00:04:09] behind the scenes.
[00:04:10] So it probably mess up grouping
[00:04:12] is likely the reasoning for
[00:04:14] that. Probably.
[00:04:17] Yeah. So anyways, tidbit trick of the day,
[00:04:20] we've got another one from Russell
[00:04:22] Bishop also
[00:04:23] guest of the show
[00:04:25] said I started reusing my
[00:04:27] open URL interface button
[00:04:29] in automations as I realized
[00:04:31] that it just paste
[00:04:33] the URL in there for you
[00:04:35] having just migrated
[00:04:36] my interfaces to new URLs
[00:04:38] this has kept my links updated
[00:04:40] everywhere which I'm pleased about
[00:04:43] so I don't think I've ever
[00:04:45] tried that trick.
[00:04:47] I'm not sure I quite understand
[00:04:49] what's happening here.
[00:04:51] So I think he's so inside of a button
[00:04:55] if you're using the open URL
[00:04:57] you specify the URL and it's a formula.
[00:05:01] And so if you need to access that URL
[00:05:04] you could basically just insert the
[00:05:07] button as the URL
[00:05:10] Give you the URL I get it.
[00:05:12] So anywhere he had set up an automation to
[00:05:16] insert that button,
[00:05:18] it still works because all he had
[00:05:20] to do was change the value
[00:05:22] or change the field
[00:05:23] configuration for the button itself
[00:05:25] and everyone else is updated.
[00:05:27] Yeah so the alternative would
[00:05:29] be to like create a formula field
[00:05:32] that creates the
[00:05:33] the URL And then use that in your button.
[00:05:36] This kind of saves you from
[00:05:38] having to create the formula field.
[00:05:42] So you can still access that URL
[00:05:45] in other places. I wonder.
[00:05:48] I've never tried.
[00:05:49] Have you ever tried a formula
[00:05:51] that references a button?
[00:05:52] Does it display the URL? It does
[00:05:58] actually. A little trick I used for this
[00:06:01] is kind of a little bit in the weeds.
[00:06:03] Bu you know when you sync,
[00:06:06] you sync a view or a table,
[00:06:08] there's an option to
[00:06:10] either delete the records
[00:06:11] as they're hidden or deleted
[00:06:13] in the source space or
[00:06:14] keep the records in that sync table.
[00:06:16] Even if you delete them
[00:06:18] or filter them away.
[00:06:20] The annoying thing that I've found
[00:06:22] with that is that if you do at some point
[00:06:24] want to remove records
[00:06:26] the really only way to do
[00:06:28] that is to go into this little
[00:06:30] thing and they have a list
[00:06:31] and you can check off the records
[00:06:33] you want to remove
[00:06:33] which is really not easy especially
[00:06:36] if you don't have unique
[00:06:38] names and you don't
[00:06:39] know which one is which
[00:06:41] which has happened I'm sure.
[00:06:43] But if you create a
[00:06:44] button that says open source record
[00:06:46] you know how that option is in the sync
[00:06:48] table?
[00:06:49] That will be greyed out
[00:06:51] if that record is no longer
[00:06:53] in the sync table.
[00:06:54] So then you can use a formula to say
[00:06:56] if this button does not have a value in it
[00:06:59] then I know that this record
[00:07:01] has been removed.
[00:07:02] Little trick then I can filter
[00:07:04] those out if I need to.
[00:07:06] Yeah I think you can do that with
[00:07:09] oh you know what I've done for that trick
[00:07:12] is in the source field
[00:07:14] if you create a formula
[00:07:15] that exposes the record ID,
[00:07:18] it'll be blank in the destination.
[00:07:21] So that we've done we've done that work
[00:07:24] around
[00:07:26] but yeah okay yeah that button
[00:07:28] is another way you can do it.
[00:07:30] But does it display the URL
[00:07:32] of the button or the record id?
[00:07:34] I guess the full URL to the,
[00:07:37] it does if I recall correctly.
[00:07:40] Yeah. Gotcha. Okay cool
[00:07:42] so a couple of tricks of
[00:07:44] dealing with buttons and URL S.
[00:07:46] I wonder what it displays
[00:07:49] in this scenario.
[00:07:50] Not in yours but in this scenario
[00:07:52] if you're using like open an extension or
[00:07:54] something. I wonder if it's like the URL
[00:07:57] to the extension. I've tried that.
[00:08:00] I can't remember what happened.
[00:08:01] I wanted to see if I could
[00:08:03] sync over like open
[00:08:03] and page designer to a
[00:08:06] base and I think it came through
[00:08:09] as a URL But there was something that
[00:08:11] prevented it from being smooth
[00:08:13] and working well.
[00:08:14] I mean actually open up the
[00:08:15] page designer in the other
[00:08:16] and I think it just brought
[00:08:17] you to the other base but
[00:08:18] it didn't actually
[00:08:20] have it would be looking for the
[00:08:25] each extension installation has its own
[00:08:28] unique ID much like a record table or
[00:08:30] view. So it would be looking for
[00:08:32] the wrong one
[00:08:32] that doesn't exist in your sync
[00:08:34] over base.
[00:08:36] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:38] Very cool. Some cool tricks there.
[00:08:41] This one comes this one just came in
[00:08:43] actually this morning from Peter Nelson.
[00:08:47] Man I don't know about you but I'm
[00:08:49] seeing this chart gpt everywhere.
[00:08:52] Everybody's or chat gpt.
[00:08:54] Sorry, popping up everywhere
[00:08:57] if you read any technology newsletters
[00:09:01] This thing's kind of taken over.
[00:09:03] It's kind of cool
[00:09:04] but kind of scary as well,
[00:09:04] but artificial intelligence
[00:09:07] and man it's I've seen some examples
[00:09:10] that are kind
[00:09:11] of mind blowing.
[00:09:13] But anyways peter is like
[00:09:15] how can we use this with Airtable?
[00:09:17] So he wanted to.
[00:09:18] So it looks like he did some examples
[00:09:22] asking this ai you
[00:09:23] basically type it and you can actually
[00:09:25] have like long conversations with this
[00:09:27] chat ai system. And apparently
[00:09:31] it understands Airtable formulas.
[00:09:35] And so you can ask it to
[00:09:39] to generate an Airtable formula for you.
[00:09:42] And it understands Rejex.
[00:09:45] So pretty
[00:09:49] amazing. This is
[00:09:50] so I don't know if he typed this in
[00:09:53] or if that's the
[00:09:54] response,
[00:09:55] if he's like helping to train it,
[00:09:57] maybe he's helping to train it.
[00:09:59] Maybe because that, you know,
[00:10:01] Rejex is a common thing,
[00:10:03] it's used like all over the place,
[00:10:04] it's not just Airtable
[00:10:05] that implements Rejex
[00:10:07] but Rejex underscore replace
[00:10:09] is a specific Airtable
[00:10:10] function and that's not
[00:10:12] necessarily the syntax
[00:10:14] that many or all Rejex
[00:10:16] implementations would be
[00:10:17] expecting input string,
[00:10:20] what you're trying, what's your
[00:10:22] formula and then
[00:10:23] what are you trying to extract?
[00:10:25] Some things are not exactly the
[00:10:27] same across different implementations
[00:10:30] and so that's really impressive if it
[00:10:32] just knows Airtables formula
[00:10:34] structure and was able to interpret.
[00:10:37] Yeah. The fact that yeah,
[00:10:40] it's already ingested the Airtable syntax.
[00:10:44] Yeah, it's it's crazy.
[00:10:46] So this I don't think this is
[00:10:49] the last of that we've
[00:10:50] heard of this, this is kind of crazy
[00:10:54] actually. I saw on Reddit,
[00:10:55] I should probably post to it
[00:10:57] but somebody posted I
[00:10:57] had seen he had built basically
[00:11:02] natural language processor for Excel
[00:11:06] where you can type in kind of human syntax
[00:11:09] and then it will generate
[00:11:12] the formula for that.
[00:11:13] And he just launched
[00:11:15] an Airtable equivalent.
[00:11:17] It's still under like Excel
[00:11:19] formula
[00:11:22] should probably I'll put a link to it
[00:11:25] but it's in the Reddit recent threads
[00:11:29] but anyways this is kind of coming
[00:11:31] where you can just say similar to this and
[00:11:34] it will generate the syntex for you.
[00:11:36] That sounds really helpful back when I had
[00:11:39] more time if I was answering
[00:11:40] something on the community forums,
[00:11:42] if someone was like how do I make
[00:11:44] this formula
[00:11:45] and they would explain what they
[00:11:47] would want it to do,
[00:11:48] I would re explain it in human language
[00:11:51] but in the order
[00:11:52] that Airtable is expecting the formula
[00:11:55] and then I would write the formula so
[00:11:56] sort of bridge the gap between
[00:11:59] how we speak generally speaking I want to
[00:12:02] multiply X by whatever
[00:12:04] and then just putting it
[00:12:06] in the way of formulas expecting
[00:12:08] and I think tools like that
[00:12:10] are gonna be helpful for
[00:12:12] not just writing the
[00:12:13] formula for you,
[00:12:14] but teaching people how to
[00:12:16] think in a very particular formula
[00:12:17] writing language.
[00:12:19] Yeah. Yeah. So cool stuff coming
[00:12:22] it will likely this
[00:12:24] this is kind of the new
[00:12:26] frontier of technology,
[00:12:28] this ai stuff that is
[00:12:30] kind of frightening as well.
[00:12:34] All right, this is the big release.
[00:12:38] So I believe I believe on last week's show
[00:12:42] the community was down.
[00:12:43] Yeah the community at least
[00:12:45] was on pause and they
[00:12:46] launched it shortly after the show ended.
[00:12:49] And this is the new release of the
[00:12:52] Airtable community.
[00:12:56] let's say mixed reaction.
[00:12:58] Well actually I don't have,
[00:13:00] I found anybody that's
[00:13:01] positive about it?
[00:13:03] I don't think positive about it yet.
[00:13:06] I don't know who wants
[00:13:08] to open up their feedback.
[00:13:11] Well, let me first start by saying
[00:13:13] the community was down for like three days
[00:13:16] and I was so bored.
[00:13:18] It's been my homepage for
[00:13:21] like three years now and I was like,
[00:13:23] well, what do I do in the morning?
[00:13:25] What do I do?
[00:13:26] What do I do with all my time?
[00:13:28] And then it was released and
[00:13:31] it's even more different than I think
[00:13:34] I was expecting it to be
[00:13:36] from the previous iteration
[00:13:38] of the forum's previous
[00:13:39] iteration felt
[00:13:41] explicitly like ask a question,
[00:13:45] receive one or more answers to a question.
[00:13:48] And then this platform seems
[00:13:50] like that is part of what it does,
[00:13:52] but it's also seems to try
[00:13:54] and gear more towards
[00:13:56] like building a community.
[00:13:58] So there's a section on events
[00:13:59] and like make sure you
[00:14:00] sign up for this thing.
[00:14:02] That's not really a question
[00:14:03] that a user is asking other
[00:14:05] people to help answer.
[00:14:07] And you know,
[00:14:08] there's a section for like groups to be
[00:14:10] like, oh, if you want to just
[00:14:12] talk about your experience doing whatever.
[00:14:13] So there's a lot of things
[00:14:15] that were added,
[00:14:16] I think at the top level in addition
[00:14:18] to you also go to this place to
[00:14:21] ask and answer questions.
[00:14:23] But I think in moving into
[00:14:24] that transition in order to
[00:14:26] accommodate some of those
[00:14:27] other things that this site is now doing,
[00:14:30] it seems a little less suited for
[00:14:32] asking a question
[00:14:33] and receiving a series of
[00:14:34] answers. I think that the text editor
[00:14:37] or the comment editor,
[00:14:39] I don't know how to describe it
[00:14:41] is less intuitive,
[00:14:42] I think overall and this is
[00:14:43] very, very petty.
[00:14:45] I don't think anyone else
[00:14:46] has the same complaint.
[00:14:47] I think the font size is too big.
[00:14:52] Yeah, yeah, definitely.
[00:14:56] I mean, Jen Jen comments
[00:14:58] about the upcoming events, which is nice,
[00:15:00] although I feel like this should
[00:15:03] be the opposite order. Right?
[00:15:04] So December 7th
[00:15:07] Is down here. I was like,
[00:15:09] Oh, the next event is until January 26,
[00:15:11] but there's actually two before it. Yeah,
[00:15:17] it's a weird sorting.
[00:15:19] So it can you scroll up
[00:15:21] to the top just to go over all of
[00:15:23] the things that are now in here,
[00:15:26] accept your cookies,
[00:15:32] it failed,
[00:15:34] I can't accept them.
[00:15:36] What
[00:15:39] try again,
[00:15:44] must have timed out.
[00:15:46] So announcements is kind of up
[00:15:48] front and center.
[00:15:49] I think that's fine. Groups is
[00:15:51] what I was talking about where
[00:15:53] if you want to
[00:15:55] talk and co mingle with people in a
[00:15:57] particular setting
[00:15:58] research opportunities,
[00:16:00] I think was the one that was more
[00:16:01] exciting because that was framed
[00:16:04] as Airtable is going to be reaching out to
[00:16:06] people for advice
[00:16:08] or looking at how they're
[00:16:10] using Airtable to get an idea
[00:16:12] of certain use cases
[00:16:13] or at least that was my
[00:16:14] understanding. I think that's nice
[00:16:16] that that's more publicized a thing.
[00:16:19] And then under product ideas,
[00:16:22] last time I looked at it,
[00:16:24] it didn't actually
[00:16:25] work yet, but product ideas
[00:16:28] to the all the way to the right,
[00:16:32] it used to be called product
[00:16:34] suggestions and people would just say,
[00:16:36] I want this in the product
[00:16:37] and it would get a whole bunch
[00:16:38] of likes and then
[00:16:39] there was no response ever at all
[00:16:41] about whether or not it was being added to
[00:16:44] the roadmap and now
[00:16:46] there's a structure at least in place
[00:16:48] for marking a product
[00:16:50] idea as either it's in the pipeline
[00:16:52] or it's already an Airtable or something
[00:16:55] else. So
[00:16:56] we're in product operations,
[00:16:59] product ideas,
[00:17:00] the, all the way to the right.
[00:17:05] Yeah.
[00:17:12] And then if you scroll down
[00:17:15] idea statuses last time I checked,
[00:17:18] they weren't sorted into
[00:17:20] all of the status is yet,
[00:17:22] but I like that that
[00:17:23] infrastructure is in place.
[00:17:24] It's one of my biggest complaints
[00:17:26] for the longest time
[00:17:27] is there's no road map
[00:17:28] and now there's, you know,
[00:17:30] a clear demarcation
[00:17:32] of Airtable will just say
[00:17:34] eventually we're not gonna do that.
[00:17:36] And I think that's valuable.
[00:17:38] I would rather know
[00:17:39] if I suggest something
[00:17:40] and they're not gonna do it.
[00:17:41] I want them to say
[00:17:42] they're not going to do it,
[00:17:43] so I don't have to keep
[00:17:43] complaining about it.
[00:17:45] And then conversely
[00:17:48] development, that's what I'm saying.
[00:17:50] I don't I don't think they've all been
[00:17:52] sorted yet.
[00:17:54] I think everything is still
[00:17:56] under new ideas,
[00:17:57] so something that hasn't been
[00:17:59] reviewed internally by Airtable.
[00:18:01] So those are generally
[00:18:02] the moves that I like
[00:18:03] with this new sort of platform,
[00:18:06] but again, going into like
[00:18:08] the ask and answer
[00:18:09] portion of if you have
[00:18:11] a question regarding Airtable.
[00:18:13] The thing that annoyed
[00:18:15] me the most yesterday
[00:18:16] was someone had a
[00:18:18] a formula question and what
[00:18:21] I used to do is use a code block to,
[00:18:23] you know, format all of my formula
[00:18:26] suggestions really nicely and to prevent
[00:18:29] curly quotes
[00:18:30] from messing up the formula and
[00:18:33] like the default for this
[00:18:35] new code block when you're
[00:18:37] replying to a message is html.
[00:18:38] And then I kept getting
[00:18:40] an error message saying
[00:18:41] that's not a valid html format
[00:18:43] that you just inserted. I'm like,
[00:18:45] I know, I'm not actually
[00:18:46] trying to write html.
[00:18:47] I'm just writing a formula.
[00:18:48] So I had to use a quote block,
[00:18:52] but it was,
[00:18:53] it was way less smooth than it used
[00:18:56] to be is the
[00:18:59] here's the thing. And also again
[00:19:01] I just think the font size
[00:19:03] is just so massive.
[00:19:04] That's pretty big,
[00:19:06] I have to agree
[00:19:08] those are my team.
[00:19:13] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see
[00:19:16] how this plays out.
[00:19:17] My biggest fear is if you
[00:19:19] look at
[00:19:23] if you look at this list of of,
[00:19:26] you know, the top people
[00:19:28] sacrificing their time
[00:19:30] to to answer people's questions.
[00:19:34] you know, and and and Bill's
[00:19:36] not even on here, but if you scroll down,
[00:19:38] Bill has already, you know,
[00:19:41] said he's leaving,
[00:19:42] I know Scott is definitely less
[00:19:45] active on the communities
[00:19:47] you know, Kuovonne and Justin
[00:19:50] I've heard from not,
[00:19:51] you know, too pleased about it, but
[00:19:55] yeah, so the biggest fear is that
[00:19:56] if you're not making it easy
[00:19:58] for people to ask
[00:19:58] questions, you're just gonna get
[00:20:00] all of these questions
[00:20:02] with zero responses and
[00:20:03] then it just becomes a wasteland
[00:20:06] and so they really need to make sure
[00:20:09] that they're not losing their biggest
[00:20:11] assets which is these people
[00:20:13] or Kamille yourself included
[00:20:16] on this list of top solution authors.
[00:20:20] Yeah.
[00:20:23] yeah, I wanna be, I wanna be
[00:20:25] on the forums and answering
[00:20:27] questions I think in a
[00:20:28] perfect world, you know, you keep
[00:20:32] a lot of the new stuff how it is.
[00:20:34] I think the stuff that wasn't tackled
[00:20:36] previously in the,
[00:20:38] in the other platform,
[00:20:40] it's like fine the way it is,
[00:20:41] if this section here
[00:20:44] the ask a question portion were
[00:20:49] much closer to the original,
[00:20:51] I think it was discus
[00:20:53] or something with the
[00:20:54] platform that
[00:20:56] was used prior to that
[00:20:58] if that was more like that,
[00:21:00] I wouldn't have any issues,
[00:21:02] I would just press,
[00:21:03] you know, control minus to make
[00:21:05] it appear smaller on my screen
[00:21:07] and then I'd be fine.
[00:21:09] But the process of reviewing
[00:21:12] bulk questions
[00:21:13] even like this before it would just
[00:21:16] give you the title of, you know,
[00:21:19] posts, you'd be able to see
[00:21:22] like eight post
[00:21:23] titles in a row
[00:21:24] and then that's all I need.
[00:21:26] But seeing a little bit of the post
[00:21:30] for each one in this list,
[00:21:32] I now have to scroll a lot
[00:21:34] more to sort of get to a
[00:21:36] question I want to answer.
[00:21:38] And it's just not,
[00:21:40] it's just from my perspective,
[00:21:43] as someone who's constantly
[00:21:45] answering questions, it's more difficult.
[00:21:48] I don't know what the experience
[00:21:51] changes like for someone who only asks a
[00:21:53] question
[00:21:55] occasionally
[00:21:56] to them, it might not matter at all.
[00:22:00] Yeah, I agree. I think, you know,
[00:22:03] posting a question,
[00:22:04] I think that's manageable.
[00:22:06] It's really ease of use of replying
[00:22:09] and that's where some of the comment is is
[00:22:11] this is more of a kind of more
[00:22:13] of a blog creation platform,
[00:22:16] more kind of content
[00:22:17] writing articles,
[00:22:18] getting responses to
[00:22:20] to those as opposed to being more of a Q
[00:22:23] and A type platform. Yeah,
[00:22:27] I think part of the issue is before
[00:22:30] the platform
[00:22:31] was
[00:22:33] it was kind of a community
[00:22:35] but it was mostly like tech support,
[00:22:39] not necessarily getting tech support
[00:22:41] from people who work at Airtable.
[00:22:43] That would happen occasionally,
[00:22:45] but most of the time
[00:22:46] the answers would come from
[00:22:47] people who just didn't work at Airtable.
[00:22:49] But it was treated
[00:22:50] as the tech support site and
[00:22:53] this site feels more like it's trying to
[00:22:57] build a community, but the part that
[00:22:59] people need, you know,
[00:23:01] in order to continue the product
[00:23:03] with confidence for the
[00:23:05] product being Airtable,
[00:23:06] not these forms is the tech support part.
[00:23:09] So I haven't really tested
[00:23:11] how easy it is to search for
[00:23:14] a topic or an answer.
[00:23:15] I know a lot of things are tagged still.
[00:23:18] But that would be
[00:23:21] the next concern. If it,
[00:23:23] if it's harder to search for things,
[00:23:24] that would be an issue.
[00:23:26] Yeah,
[00:23:29] yeah. We shall see.
[00:23:30] Hopefully, hopefully,
[00:23:32] I know they're still working on,
[00:23:35] tweaks and changes
[00:23:36] and there's a lot of configuration
[00:23:39] stuff that they can do
[00:23:40] behind the scenes
[00:23:41] to improve the experience. So
[00:23:44] hopefully with time there's
[00:23:47] improvements to be made.
[00:23:49] But if the end result
[00:23:50] is that nobody really is incentivized
[00:23:54] to respond to people, I think it will be a
[00:23:58] disaster to, to lose these,
[00:24:00] these good people
[00:24:01] who are responding a lot and
[00:24:03] helping the community grow,
[00:24:05] couldn't agree more.
[00:24:07] It was honestly,
[00:24:09] I credit the original community forum with
[00:24:12] like my foray into this industry.
[00:24:14] Like if it wasn't for
[00:24:15] that community forum,
[00:24:16] I wouldn't be sitting right here
[00:24:19] on this podcast right now.
[00:24:21] So I'm hopeful that
[00:24:22] we don't lose that community aspect
[00:24:24] and I'm also grateful
[00:24:25] for things like
[00:24:26] BuiltOnAir because
[00:24:30] that's right. We're in slack.
[00:24:32] If you have questions,
[00:24:33] you can join our community
[00:24:34] and there's people still
[00:24:36] responding and answering in there.
[00:24:40] Sam any any, have you spent
[00:24:43] much time on the new forums?
[00:24:45] Not really at all.
[00:24:46] But I can say that I also googled
[00:24:50] my way through Airtable
[00:24:52] not too long ago and
[00:24:53] got a lot of answers from,
[00:24:55] you know, looking at people's
[00:24:57] previous responses in
[00:24:58] the community forum
[00:25:00] and on the slack channel. And
[00:25:04] I think I'm looking at it from
[00:25:06] a very different perspective
[00:25:08] versus responding,
[00:25:09] but like if I were to post a question
[00:25:11] and I'm not getting people aren't replying
[00:25:13] to it and helping me,
[00:25:15] then that's not the direction
[00:25:17] I'm gonna go to ask
[00:25:18] questions.
[00:25:19] I'm going to find a different solution.
[00:25:21] And so it sounds like
[00:25:23] that's something that they need to
[00:25:26] be aware of and be really
[00:25:28] kind is enough I guess.
[00:25:32] and a community is great.
[00:25:33] Everybody wants a community right now.
[00:25:35] I feel like that's like a big conversation
[00:25:37] across every single business is how
[00:25:39] can we build community,
[00:25:41] but you can't do it by,
[00:25:42] you know, ignoring the initial
[00:25:45] people who started
[00:25:47] your less formal community.
[00:25:50] Yeah, that was one of the huge,
[00:25:52] I mean, I noticed right away,
[00:25:54] like I've,
[00:25:54] I've researched a ton of enterprise.
[00:25:56] I used to work as an investor
[00:25:58] where I evaluated lots of software
[00:26:00] companies and would dig into their
[00:26:02] communities and there was just
[00:26:04] something unique about Airtable's
[00:26:06] community and
[00:26:06] and people helping each other and,
[00:26:09] and so that was, that was
[00:26:11] part of the power of Airtable
[00:26:14] that they better not
[00:26:15] lose.
[00:26:18] Yeah. That like network effect
[00:26:20] I feel like is what grew them
[00:26:22] as fast as they
[00:26:23] grew. You know, it's because
[00:26:24] people are like, oh my God,
[00:26:26] I absolutely love this.
[00:26:26] Like it's so easy to learn.
[00:26:28] There's always people
[00:26:29] who want to help you and if
[00:26:31] they lose that,
[00:26:32] then it just kind of becomes
[00:26:34] another platform.
[00:26:37] Well, we'll see, we will keep track
[00:26:40] on on how this progresses and,
[00:26:42] and improvements and see see
[00:26:44] where they get. Maybe they'll just say,
[00:26:46] okay, this is a good experiment.
[00:26:49] Let's go back to the old one.
[00:26:50] I wonder if they can somehow
[00:26:53] find a hybrid of like using,
[00:26:55] you know,
[00:26:56] this for like the community aspect,
[00:26:58] but the Q and A is still kind of
[00:27:00] the old school approach.
[00:27:02] I don't know,
[00:27:03] I would be happy with a happy medium
[00:27:06] because I do think it,
[00:27:07] I think it's a good idea
[00:27:09] to have a lot of what they've
[00:27:11] added at it. You know,
[00:27:12] it this may not be the most perfect
[00:27:15] platform in the world
[00:27:16] for those things, but I
[00:27:18] I like a lot of the new stuff
[00:27:21] that is present.
[00:27:22] I dislike
[00:27:24] the
[00:27:25] core of what it used to be is less
[00:27:31] not efficient conducive,
[00:27:33] I guess it's less conducive
[00:27:36] to actually like answering
[00:27:38] other people's questions.
[00:27:41] Right, right.
[00:27:43] very good. We shall see
[00:27:45] what the future holds.
[00:27:46] So that kind of rounds up our,
[00:27:48] Round the Bases,
[00:27:49] keep you up to date with
[00:27:50] what's going on in the Airtable
[00:27:51] communities up next is a spotlight on,
[00:27:55] On2Air, On2Air is a toolkit to run
[00:27:58] your business on Airtable.
[00:28:00] It's a suite of apps that
[00:28:01] allow you to extend and augment
[00:28:03] your business on Airtable.
[00:28:05] If you are running
[00:28:06] your business in Airtable,
[00:28:08] you definitely need to
[00:28:09] check out On2Air and
[00:28:10] the suite of apps that we have.
[00:28:13] I just want to give a spotlight on
[00:28:17] our new forms product
[00:28:19] that is still in private beta.
[00:28:21] We're looking at
[00:28:22] launching it publicly in January
[00:28:25] and some of the cool
[00:28:28] things that, that you can do in here,
[00:28:31] we just upon request, you know where
[00:28:35] we position ourselves as being
[00:28:37] deep into Airtable,
[00:28:39] we are specific to Airtable,
[00:28:40] is the only platform that we support
[00:28:43] and so we go deep into how
[00:28:46] Airtable works. One of the ways that
[00:28:49] that would showcase is understanding,
[00:28:52] you know, the fields within Airtable,
[00:28:54] so our forms have the ability
[00:28:57] to either create or update
[00:28:59] an existing record.
[00:29:00] So you only have to create one form
[00:29:02] that would allow you
[00:29:03] to create a new record
[00:29:04] or edit an existing and one
[00:29:06] of the ways that,
[00:29:08] that understanding Airtable is
[00:29:11] beneficial is
[00:29:13] knowing that formula Fields,
[00:29:16] roll up fields,
[00:29:18] anything that's a
[00:29:21] what do they call it?
[00:29:23] A calculated, thank you Kamille,
[00:29:25] a calculated field meaning
[00:29:27] it's not editable does not really apply
[00:29:30] when you're creating a new record
[00:29:32] because the record has to be created
[00:29:34] to calculate those fields.
[00:29:35] And so because of that
[00:29:37] we just added a feature
[00:29:39] to hide computed fields when
[00:29:41] you're using this form to create a record.
[00:29:44] So that helps clean up the form
[00:29:46] before it showed those fields
[00:29:47] and there's just
[00:29:48] no value in them.
[00:29:50] So now you can actually hide
[00:29:52] all your computed fields on the
[00:29:53] create version of the form
[00:29:55] but then they would show up
[00:29:57] on the edit version
[00:29:58] so that's just one little tidbit
[00:30:00] of how we're going deep
[00:30:02] into understanding Airtable.
[00:30:04] There's a lot of stuff in there
[00:30:06] so check it out
[00:30:07] on2air.com/forms and
[00:30:09] let us know you want to join
[00:30:12] the private beta will
[00:30:13] get your access to it
[00:30:14] and love to get your feedback.
[00:30:16] We're starting to see
[00:30:17] this out in the wild people using it
[00:30:20] in production now and getting great
[00:30:22] feedback so
[00:30:24] do
[00:30:26] a user
[00:30:29] customer and gives her shout out here
[00:30:36] There it is. Alright,
[00:30:39] Jen loves the forms,
[00:30:41] uses it with an insurance client
[00:30:44] and working out well for her
[00:30:46] as well as many
[00:30:47] others so check it out at on2air.com
[00:30:51] with that
[00:30:53] Jen or Sam Ruiz is with us
[00:30:56] and Sam why don't you
[00:30:58] if I'll just kind of turn it
[00:31:01] over to you,
[00:31:02] give us a history of you
[00:31:04] what you kind of do, what your background
[00:31:06] is. And then really like tell us
[00:31:08] your story of finding Airtable,
[00:31:10] how you use it, how it's impacted
[00:31:13] your business, all that stuff.
[00:31:15] Yeah, so I am a marker at heart,
[00:31:18] that is where I started my career,
[00:31:21] began working on the agency side
[00:31:24] of things and eventually
[00:31:26] down a couple of paths
[00:31:28] launched my own agency,
[00:31:29] which I did for about two years and
[00:31:32] did this during the pandemic.
[00:31:33] I really decided I didn't want to work for
[00:31:35] other people anymore.
[00:31:37] I really wanted to do work
[00:31:38] that align with my personal
[00:31:39] values and so I launched an agency
[00:31:41] that was really focused
[00:31:43] on working with value
[00:31:45] aligned clients
[00:31:46] and it grew really fast.
[00:31:48] I was very fortunate
[00:31:49] that I had great people supporting
[00:31:50] me, great clients.
[00:31:53] But as we grew, I began finding
[00:31:56] myself less enchanted
[00:31:59] with the work I was doing
[00:32:01] and really just excited
[00:32:03] to have conversations with
[00:32:05] clients, have conversations
[00:32:07] with team members and connect them.
[00:32:10] And I found that I really loved
[00:32:12] talking to clients and being like,
[00:32:13] oh well I am a sustainable food company
[00:32:17] and I really value, you know,
[00:32:21] making sure that we're not wasting water
[00:32:23] in our production or whatever it might
[00:32:24] be. And then talking with a freelancer
[00:32:27] and maybe they're a copywriter and
[00:32:28] they're like, oh well, you know,
[00:32:30] my passion is like water conservation,
[00:32:32] and then like introducing those
[00:32:34] two people and seeing them
[00:32:35] create something
[00:32:36] really amazing together. And
[00:32:40] in addition to that, I found that brands
[00:32:42] were constantly saying how hard it was
[00:32:44] to find good talent and freelancers
[00:32:47] or marketers saying
[00:32:49] that it was really hard
[00:32:50] for them to find opportunities
[00:32:52] that they were really excited about.
[00:32:53] And so I kind of just was like,
[00:32:55] I feel like this is a problem we can fix,
[00:32:57] like you guys are both asking
[00:32:59] for the same thing,
[00:33:00] like let's just connect you
[00:33:01] guys. And so I closed down my agency
[00:33:04] and earlier this year with my co
[00:33:08] founder launched Aureo and Aureo
[00:33:10] is basically just a platform that connects
[00:33:13] brands or clients of any sort
[00:33:17] with freelance talent focused on value
[00:33:20] alignment skills and experience.
[00:33:22] So it's kind of people like to say like,
[00:33:25] oh sorry, you like up work
[00:33:27] and it's like kind of
[00:33:28] but we got all of our talent
[00:33:29] before we accept them,
[00:33:31] we have a pretty thorough vetting process,
[00:33:33] but we also really focus,
[00:33:35] like I said earlier
[00:33:36] on that value alignment,
[00:33:37] making sure that people
[00:33:39] are buying into the why of the client.
[00:33:43] And the idea is that if you are
[00:33:45] passionate and you share
[00:33:46] that purpose with the
[00:33:47] people that you're working with,
[00:33:49] then you're going to be
[00:33:50] way more excited to do
[00:33:50] the work and your new way better work
[00:33:52] and hopefully we're creating more long
[00:33:54] term relationships
[00:33:55] and everything like that.
[00:33:57] So that's how I got to where I am
[00:33:58] now. Like like I was saying
[00:34:01] marketer at heart,
[00:34:02] I've always been a more data
[00:34:05] driven marketer but I am not
[00:34:07] by trade a technical person.
[00:34:10] So this is a whole new
[00:34:11] foray for me. And when I was saying
[00:34:14] that I googled my way through Airtable,
[00:34:16] I truly truly did
[00:34:20] very cool,
[00:34:21] awesome.
[00:34:23] And so now you've got your new business
[00:34:27] up and running just a few months and
[00:34:30] how's it going?
[00:34:31] It's yeah, it's been a whirlwind
[00:34:33] of a few months.
[00:34:35] We launched late summer and
[00:34:37] it has honestly been as good
[00:34:39] as I probably could
[00:34:41] have expected it to be.
[00:34:43] We have close to 200 vetted
[00:34:46] freelancers in our network.
[00:34:49] and they range anything
[00:34:51] from you know front end
[00:34:53] or dev uX ui
[00:34:57] everything in the marketing world.
[00:34:59] So anything from like paid media to social
[00:35:00] media, to growth marketing,
[00:35:02] to you know, google analytics,
[00:35:05] to tag management and
[00:35:06] attribution like everything there.
[00:35:08] And then a couple in the creative space
[00:35:11] where it's like more like
[00:35:12] content creation
[00:35:14] or photography, videography.
[00:35:15] You have a lot of copywriters
[00:35:17] if anyone ever needs a copywriter.
[00:35:18] I have a lot of really wonderful
[00:35:20] copywriters in our network.
[00:35:22] And so it's been amazing
[00:35:24] to see that grow.
[00:35:25] It's been really exciting to talk
[00:35:27] with freelancers and
[00:35:29] since we are vetting everyone
[00:35:32] and we are interviewing
[00:35:34] most of these candidates
[00:35:36] are most of these people who are applying.
[00:35:38] We're really getting to know
[00:35:40] what they're looking for
[00:35:42] and what they want and
[00:35:44] what they how we can best support them.
[00:35:46] And then the same on the brand side,
[00:35:48] we're talking to brands
[00:35:49] and we're figuring out
[00:35:51] what are your pain points where
[00:35:52] you struggling to find talent,
[00:35:54] how can we make this
[00:35:55] process easier for you?
[00:35:57] And when we built this platform
[00:35:59] the first time,
[00:36:01] and I say that because I'm in
[00:36:03] the midst of building it the second time,
[00:36:05] my goal was to build it as fast
[00:36:09] as possible
[00:36:10] and still have it work because I
[00:36:13] knew we were gonna get
[00:36:14] a ton of feedback
[00:36:15] and it was going to be something that
[00:36:17] if I spent six months building something,
[00:36:20] I would still tear it down two months
[00:36:21] later, so why not build six weeks
[00:36:24] on build in six weeks
[00:36:25] and see what happens?
[00:36:26] That's basically what we did.
[00:36:28] I like, you can't see my office right now,
[00:36:30] but the wall next to me
[00:36:31] is like a completely it's like a
[00:36:34] mirrored wall.
[00:36:36] I live in like a 1960s building.
[00:36:40] It's like a mirrored wall and it was
[00:36:43] like covered in sticky notes
[00:36:44] on the different things
[00:36:45] that I was working on,
[00:36:46] and I turned it into like a full combo
[00:36:48] on board and I was just like sitting in
[00:36:49] this office, googling my way
[00:36:52] through how to do everything,
[00:36:54] trying to branch my
[00:36:55] what I once thought was good
[00:36:57] excel knowledge
[00:36:58] and I realized was quite limited
[00:37:00] excel knowledge into an Airtable.
[00:37:04] And yeah it's I'm really glad
[00:37:06] that we went that approach because
[00:37:09] we've learned so much about
[00:37:10] our users and we've learned
[00:37:12] so much about what they
[00:37:13] want and we've learned so much
[00:37:15] about our process
[00:37:16] and how we can make it better
[00:37:17] that it's now fun to rebuild it again.
[00:37:20] And also I've learned a lot since I
[00:37:23] started this
[00:37:24] and so it's really interesting too
[00:37:26] to take that knowledge and put
[00:37:28] into use.
[00:37:31] Had you had you known
[00:37:33] about Airtable prior to this company?
[00:37:35] We're using it before that.
[00:37:38] Yes, but in a very different
[00:37:40] and limited capacity in
[00:37:42] which it was basically a shared
[00:37:45] Excel spreadsheet.
[00:37:47] And we were using it for
[00:37:49] an agency for content management
[00:37:51] and content calendars,
[00:37:53] so it was just a really
[00:37:55] easy way to share data
[00:37:56] and let multiple people use it and
[00:37:59] also limit what people could
[00:38:02] edit and access.
[00:38:03] And one of our team members
[00:38:06] actually have used at a previous agency
[00:38:07] and they said let's use this and I was
[00:38:09] like fine if you've got it figured out,
[00:38:12] go for it. Never would I have thought
[00:38:15] that I would have that Nugget
[00:38:16] would have been implanted
[00:38:17] deep enough in my brain
[00:38:18] that I built my entire
[00:38:20] next company on Airtable.
[00:38:25] Very cool. So maybe talk about
[00:38:27] like how has Airtable, like what kind of
[00:38:30] impact has it had on your business?
[00:38:33] Huge. And I think about this
[00:38:36] a lot actually because if this was,
[00:38:39] I don't know, 5 7 years ago,
[00:38:40] I would have never been
[00:38:42] able to build this company,
[00:38:43] I would have needed
[00:38:45] a large amount of investment,
[00:38:47] I would have needed a ton of debs.
[00:38:49] Well I would have at least made
[00:38:52] it like a high quality Deb
[00:38:54] who could go into
[00:38:55] like sequel and build out
[00:38:56] a full database
[00:38:57] and then build out a friend and like
[00:38:59] do everything. I would have never,
[00:39:02] ever been able to do this
[00:39:04] with my co founder
[00:39:05] were both marketers.
[00:39:08] you know, seven years ago,
[00:39:10] it just wouldn't have been
[00:39:12] feasible and what I love
[00:39:14] about Airtable and no code apps
[00:39:16] and the direction that
[00:39:18] technology is moving is
[00:39:19] that it's becoming so much
[00:39:21] more accessible for people
[00:39:23] to build something with
[00:39:25] limited knowledge of how to do it.
[00:39:29] I think that it's going to release
[00:39:32] a lot of really amazing
[00:39:34] ideas and it's going
[00:39:35] to make it a lot,
[00:39:36] just a lot more accessible
[00:39:38] for people to try something and see
[00:39:40] what happens.
[00:39:41] Like Dan, you were mentioning
[00:39:43] the app that your son
[00:39:44] built for his science
[00:39:45] fair project, like I would have,
[00:39:47] I would have never been
[00:39:48] able to do that in high
[00:39:49] school, you know,
[00:39:50] I would have never been able
[00:39:52] to do that, you know,
[00:39:52] seven years ago,
[00:39:54] I just wouldn't have been possible
[00:39:57] and I love that,
[00:39:59] I love the accessibility of it.
[00:40:02] Yeah, very cool.
[00:40:05] Any other questions Kamille, Alli?
[00:40:07] It just reminded me
[00:40:09] the concept of building something
[00:40:12] and then knowing that
[00:40:13] you have to build it again
[00:40:15] once you have a foothold
[00:40:17] on what what the basics are
[00:40:18] and then how it can be improved.
[00:40:20] Just reminded me of grad school,
[00:40:24] I went to school for urban planning
[00:40:26] and you know when
[00:40:27] you're doing site planning,
[00:40:28] looking at a parcel and saying,
[00:40:30] I want to put this building here in this
[00:40:32] building here.
[00:40:33] One of my professors refused
[00:40:34] to let us draw anything in pencil,
[00:40:36] she was like do everything in pen
[00:40:38] because whatever you draw
[00:40:39] first is not going
[00:40:40] to be what you end up with.
[00:40:42] So don't sit there
[00:40:44] and be painstaking about,
[00:40:45] you know, well I gotta get it perfect,
[00:40:47] you're not going to get it perfect,
[00:40:49] get an idea down and figure out
[00:40:50] what's wrong with that idea
[00:40:52] and then do draft
[00:40:53] number two
[00:40:54] and when your five drafts
[00:40:55] and then you can start using pencil and
[00:40:57] that that is a similar sort of idea
[00:41:00] when it comes to building
[00:41:02] systems with Airtable
[00:41:03] or more traditionally with code,
[00:41:06] you just, you have to start wire framing
[00:41:08] and putting your ideas down
[00:41:11] because if you get too focused
[00:41:14] on one little piece,
[00:41:15] you're gonna have a really great
[00:41:18] something and then all the
[00:41:19] other connected bits
[00:41:20] are not even going to be started.
[00:41:23] Yeah, and that really great something
[00:41:26] might be great for you,
[00:41:27] but not for the user or the end customer,
[00:41:30] whoever that is. And it's like
[00:41:33] done is better than perfect. I have,
[00:41:35] a sticky note that says that.
[00:41:37] But I have to constantly remind myself of
[00:41:40] that right now, that like
[00:41:41] we are V one, you know,
[00:41:43] hopefully a year from now,
[00:41:44] we're gonna be on V 12
[00:41:45] and it's gonna be a completely different
[00:41:48] situation and
[00:41:52] so much is going to change
[00:41:54] and evolve and I'm
[00:41:56] humble enough to say that I do not
[00:41:58] know exactly the best way to do what I'm
[00:42:01] doing, but the only way I'm gonna
[00:42:03] find that best way is if I pull something
[00:42:05] together and put it out there
[00:42:07] and see what happens.
[00:42:08] Yeah.
[00:42:10] Very cool. Alright.
[00:42:12] If you wanna share your screen,
[00:42:14] we'll get it on
[00:42:16] and let's move back here.
[00:42:19] So Sam's gonna walk us through
[00:42:21] the actual or a copy of the
[00:42:24] base that use in
[00:42:25] running your business. Yes.
[00:42:29] So I have
[00:42:34] window.
[00:42:39] All right. Can you guys see it?
[00:42:42] Alright, so I have
[00:42:44] a fake base here because I
[00:42:47] don't want to share 10 tables,
[00:42:50] email addresses.
[00:42:52] But basically how this works
[00:42:54] is as things move through our system,
[00:42:58] they kind of push down
[00:43:00] different tables.
[00:43:02] So we have a single base.
[00:43:04] Everything's run off
[00:43:06] our one base and then
[00:43:08] as you proceed in the process,
[00:43:10] you kind of go down different tables.
[00:43:13] And the reason is because we
[00:43:15] are using softer as our ui and
[00:43:19] A) that seems like the
[00:43:21] best way to do it and B)
[00:43:22] it was the only way I could figure out
[00:43:24] how to do it, build it the first time.
[00:43:25] This may change as I do this again.
[00:43:28] But again, that's kind of one of those
[00:43:30] things that's interesting to think about
[00:43:32] when you are building it for the first
[00:43:34] time, you know,
[00:43:35] like here's a solution like
[00:43:36] let's do it. Even if we look too
[00:43:38] deeply at some of these columns
[00:43:40] which we're not going to do,
[00:43:41] there are a lot of columns
[00:43:43] that are no longer in use
[00:43:44] because I was trying to
[00:43:45] figure out how to build something.
[00:43:47] But for a freelancer,
[00:43:50] when a freelancer applies
[00:43:52] to join our network,
[00:43:54] they show up in this applicant column.
[00:43:58] On the same side of that we have a
[00:44:01] column here in are not gonna actually
[00:44:04] because this is a real data
[00:44:05] in our softer board where we can
[00:44:08] kind of like view everything
[00:44:11] in this one ui
[00:44:12] but all of the data comes in here
[00:44:15] has all of their information
[00:44:17] and we can easily
[00:44:18] accept or deny them
[00:44:20] or waitlist them or request an interview
[00:44:23] or whatever we need to do. When we
[00:44:25] accept them, it
[00:44:27] had a ton of automations
[00:44:29] and they basically get pushed
[00:44:31] into this users table and
[00:44:32] it's just copied over
[00:44:34] into our users table.
[00:44:35] So this is the real table that all
[00:44:36] of our users data stored.
[00:44:38] We have all of our brands are freelancers,
[00:44:40] the admin, which is our company.
[00:44:43] And we're actually in the midst
[00:44:45] of building an agency
[00:44:46] one as well because we've
[00:44:47] had a lot of agencies talked to us
[00:44:50] about wanting to not only find work
[00:44:52] opportunities but also
[00:44:55] hire people for projects
[00:44:58] that they have going on. So
[00:45:01] we have users here and
[00:45:03] I would say that users
[00:45:05] are like the ultimate parent
[00:45:07] group, everything kind of falls
[00:45:09] under a user as one would expect.
[00:45:11] The brands can submit
[00:45:14] RFPs and those all come in here.
[00:45:19] So they are just a simple project
[00:45:23] request form that we have on our site
[00:45:27] and they fill it out
[00:45:28] that data comes in here.
[00:45:30] Like I said, it's associated with
[00:45:31] a certain user and then we have
[00:45:35] an automation set up here
[00:45:39] somewhere.
[00:45:41] Sorry, like I said,
[00:45:43] we have a lot of columns. Yeah,
[00:45:47] hear that automatically matches
[00:45:50] those freelancers the best. Or the
[00:45:53] freelancers that have the values
[00:45:55] and skills and the experience for those
[00:45:56] opportunities. We then take our human
[00:46:00] kind of ability to double check that
[00:46:03] and in the invite column is where
[00:46:05] we actually have the freelancers that are
[00:46:08] invited to pitch for
[00:46:09] those different projects
[00:46:10] from there, we have an
[00:46:13] automation setup that
[00:46:16] once we put people in the invite column,
[00:46:20] the and update the status to accepting
[00:46:23] proposals, then we have automations
[00:46:26] basically throughout this entire process
[00:46:28] that notifies those freelancers
[00:46:30] invites them to pitch,
[00:46:32] notifies the brands,
[00:46:33] let them
[00:46:33] let them know that the status is updated.
[00:46:36] If a freelancer is
[00:46:37] interested in the project,
[00:46:38] then they can go ahead and submit
[00:46:39] a proposal. And the proposals
[00:46:42] are kind of like the secondary
[00:46:44] child to the RFP
[00:46:45] submissions.
[00:46:47] in this situation they can also decline,
[00:46:50] as you can see there's a couple
[00:46:53] declined opportunities here.
[00:46:54] Sometimes people don't
[00:46:56] have the right timing or
[00:46:57] something just doesn't work out.
[00:47:01] And brands can see all the
[00:47:05] different projects,
[00:47:06] they can award shortlist
[00:47:08] etcetera once they receive the
[00:47:10] proposals and then eventually end up
[00:47:12] moving them down when the project becomes
[00:47:15] an open project
[00:47:16] into that open project column,
[00:47:17] which is basically just like a
[00:47:19] shortened version of
[00:47:24] the proposal submissions
[00:47:28] lot of information there.
[00:47:30] Yeah,
[00:47:31] we also do all of our invoicing.
[00:47:34] So as you can see here's
[00:47:36] a bunch of random
[00:47:36] invoices here.
[00:47:38] Our contract data is also in Airtable
[00:47:42] and people can also
[00:47:44] schedule discovery calls,
[00:47:45] which was a really fun thing
[00:47:47] for me to try to figure
[00:47:48] out how to deal with time zones,
[00:47:51] but Discovery calls can be scheduled
[00:47:55] through this as well, another thing
[00:47:59] that I had to figure out was like
[00:48:01] how do you offer discovery call times but
[00:48:04] then immediately remove the times
[00:48:06] that someone takes
[00:48:08] and just there were so many
[00:48:09] nuances that I hadn't realized
[00:48:11] I would have to solve
[00:48:13] when I thought of the idea
[00:48:15] versus when I was actually
[00:48:17] kind of building it out
[00:48:19] and it's it's fun every time
[00:48:21] we see someone go further
[00:48:23] in the process or like do
[00:48:24] this certain action or do an action
[00:48:27] in a way that we didn't
[00:48:29] expect someone to do
[00:48:30] like the other day somebody
[00:48:32] didn't shortlist anyone
[00:48:33] but submitted their
[00:48:34] discovery call times and we were like
[00:48:37] this seems weird
[00:48:38] but obviously there's like something
[00:48:40] in the user flow that made
[00:48:42] you think that you didn't have
[00:48:44] to do that first step
[00:48:45] to do the second step and
[00:48:46] there's interesting complications.
[00:48:49] Yeah.
[00:48:50] Cool. How has your experience
[00:48:52] with the automations been?
[00:48:56] It's been a learning curve.
[00:48:58] I don't know if they're all in this copied
[00:49:01] version.
[00:49:03] Yeah, they are. Okay,
[00:49:05] so we have a ton or another
[00:49:07] and I don't think
[00:49:09] we have a ton that like
[00:49:11] send slack messages
[00:49:12] for example to our team when people
[00:49:14] hit certain points or do certain things
[00:49:17] so we can stay in the loop of their
[00:49:19] process. Those ones were like
[00:49:21] obviously the most straightforward
[00:49:23] and easy to
[00:49:23] do.
[00:49:26] we use jot form for
[00:49:29] some of our form data. So
[00:49:33] kind of what you were saying
[00:49:35] before when you're like
[00:49:36] having someone submit
[00:49:37] records but they are submitting
[00:49:39] instead of editing records.
[00:49:41] That has been a fun
[00:49:42] like challenge to overcome.
[00:49:44] So maybe I'll be emailing
[00:49:45] you later about getting on
[00:49:47] your forms. But we have like
[00:49:50] basically data being duplicated emerged
[00:49:53] through our Jot form
[00:49:55] or from Jot form through
[00:49:57] automations and then we
[00:49:59] have
[00:50:02] like I was saying earlier
[00:50:04] the call times,
[00:50:05] that was a fun thing to figure out how
[00:50:07] to get people to put in times
[00:50:10] and get their correct time zone
[00:50:12] and then display
[00:50:13] it in a way that the freelancers
[00:50:15] can then view and select a time
[00:50:18] and then remove
[00:50:19] that time. So there's a lot of automations
[00:50:22] around that. And then all of our
[00:50:25] emails are being triggered
[00:50:27] through send grid and Zapier right now.
[00:50:32] Solid.
[00:50:34] Have you explored interfaces yet?
[00:50:36] Are you using interfaces?
[00:50:38] A little bit
[00:50:40] but mostly for internal like analyses.
[00:50:44] I don't know
[00:50:46] if this is gonna pull the right data
[00:50:49] but Okay, so this is obviously not pulling
[00:50:52] our accurate data but we have
[00:50:53] one that kind of shows
[00:50:55] how many freelancers we
[00:50:56] have in our network
[00:50:58] if their strategy or activation
[00:51:00] and what their skill set
[00:51:02] is based on five years
[00:51:04] of experience or more
[00:51:05] so this is really helpful for us as
[00:51:07] we are constantly
[00:51:09] trying to balance the
[00:51:10] different skills that we have.
[00:51:13] And if I need to quickly
[00:51:16] talk to a brand
[00:51:17] and they're like, do you have X Y?
[00:51:19] I can use this to say like okay yes we
[00:51:22] have a ton here or
[00:51:23] we don't have anybody.
[00:51:25] Well this is showing that we have
[00:51:26] not done anything right now,
[00:51:28] but for example, maybe we didn't have any
[00:51:31] researchers or something like that
[00:51:33] to be able to say easily without having to
[00:51:36] go through like our 200 person
[00:51:39] list and all their skills.
[00:51:41] Yeah. The one thing I want
[00:51:43] to explore in interfaces next
[00:51:46] is the question we're
[00:51:47] constantly getting is around rates
[00:51:50] from both the brand side and the talent
[00:51:52] side. What's an average rate for this?
[00:51:55] How much should I expect to pay for
[00:51:57] this? And how much
[00:51:59] should I expect to charge for this?
[00:52:02] And so I think the next
[00:52:04] thing that we're going to do is
[00:52:06] start using some of the formulas
[00:52:08] to figure out what average rates
[00:52:12] are for these different
[00:52:15] skills.
[00:52:17] Gotcha,
[00:52:18] awesome. So where tell people
[00:52:20] where they can find you,
[00:52:22] do you take Airtable
[00:52:23] freelancers?
[00:52:25] We have a couple who have applied
[00:52:27] to the network, we aren't getting a ton of
[00:52:29] Airtable Like database or backend
[00:52:32] sort of work right now,
[00:52:34] we're more focused on front end
[00:52:37] and marketing and stuff.
[00:52:38] But you can find us
[00:52:40] at meetaureo.com
[00:52:41] so I can just go to our website quickly.
[00:52:47] And here you can easily,
[00:52:50] you know fill out our P2
[00:52:52] hire or you can apply to
[00:52:54] join the network
[00:52:55] and it's pretty straight
[00:52:57] forward from here.
[00:53:00] Yeah,
[00:53:00] it's all on softer as well.
[00:53:03] No, this is actually on
[00:53:06] show it although we may
[00:53:08] shift it to softr too because
[00:53:10] I don't think that we're doing anything
[00:53:12] that we couldn't do on softr with us.
[00:53:17] Awesome. Thank you Sam for showing that
[00:53:20] and I love seeing world world examples
[00:53:23] of businesses running on Airtable.
[00:53:26] It's so thank you. It's fun to kind of
[00:53:29] reflect on it.
[00:53:31] Yeah.
[00:53:33] Yeah and I totally agree with you
[00:53:35] that it's opened up, you know,
[00:53:37] 5, 7 years ago what you couldn't do
[00:53:40] is now possible on Airtable.
[00:53:41] So you are living proof of that.
[00:53:46] Alright, real quick shout out to our
[00:53:49] BuiltOnAir community if you are looking
[00:53:51] for help and not getting any answers
[00:53:53] on the Airtable community.
[00:53:54] Feel free to join us.
[00:53:56] builtonair.com/join.
[00:53:58] We have an active slack
[00:54:00] community of thousands of Airtable
[00:54:02] users and fans and experts
[00:54:04] that can help you
[00:54:05] out and always love others
[00:54:07] that can also help others out as well.
[00:54:09] So join us at builtonair.com/join
[00:54:14] with that, Kamille is going to
[00:54:16] showcase one of her interfaces she uses.
[00:54:20] There you go Kamille.
[00:54:22] Okay, so one of the several,
[00:54:24] several jobs that I have
[00:54:27] is sometimes I teach at
[00:54:28] USC and I decided to create
[00:54:31] a base and an interface
[00:54:34] that kind of helps me manage
[00:54:37] my
[00:54:41] manage my workflow for
[00:54:43] or looking at assignments,
[00:54:45] grading assignments, and
[00:54:48] applying a rubric of grading.
[00:54:51] So it's a pretty simple base setup,
[00:54:54] There's only a handful of table
[00:54:56] so far courses.
[00:54:58] Those are if you look at your
[00:55:00] academic catalog,
[00:55:01] all of the courses that can be
[00:55:04] taught at a university terms
[00:55:07] are you know fall 2019, Spring 2020
[00:55:10] sections are a course applied
[00:55:14] to a term assignments
[00:55:17] are applied to a section.
[00:55:20] So for spring 2023 I'm gonna have
[00:55:23] three assignments that are going to be
[00:55:26] assigned to my students
[00:55:28] some of them are individual
[00:55:30] assignments and some are
[00:55:31] group assignments,
[00:55:33] they have date assigned
[00:55:35] and due date et cetera.
[00:55:36] A roster is students applied to a section.
[00:55:41] So in spring 2023 I'm going to
[00:55:45] have five students.
[00:55:46] And at the end of the day
[00:55:48] once all of their assignments
[00:55:50] are in they're gonna receive
[00:55:52] a grade for that course.
[00:55:54] And then submissions are
[00:55:56] students or a roster applied
[00:55:59] to an assignment. So
[00:56:03] that's just sort of breaking down
[00:56:06] all of the different pieces of a puzzle.
[00:56:08] And then just going into my
[00:56:13] assignments interface.
[00:56:15] Really what I wanted to do
[00:56:18] was to lay things out in a way
[00:56:20] that would make it quick
[00:56:22] or at least quicker to create
[00:56:25] new assignments that are
[00:56:27] you know applied to a particular section.
[00:56:30] So for assignment one this is the name
[00:56:33] of the assignment.
[00:56:34] This is the general thing
[00:56:36] that they have to do.
[00:56:37] I can say whether or not
[00:56:38] it's an individual or a group
[00:56:40] assignment and give it
[00:56:41] some dates.
[00:56:43] USC uses blackboard as it's
[00:56:45] content management system
[00:56:47] for courses and if I
[00:56:49] wanted to give a direct link
[00:56:51] to where this assignment lives in USC
[00:56:53] system I would put it in here.
[00:56:56] But the real reason why I wanted to show
[00:56:58] this off is because this was
[00:57:00] a headache to build
[00:57:02] the second part which is the
[00:57:03] rubric and grading. So
[00:57:06] the assignment record itself,
[00:57:09] I have a series of fields
[00:57:11] that allow me to apply a
[00:57:13] rubric to a course assignment.
[00:57:17] If I flip back to assignments really
[00:57:22] quickly a lot of those fields
[00:57:25] are hidden but you can kind of
[00:57:27] see where I'm going
[00:57:29] for assignment two
[00:57:32] in order to receive an A
[00:57:34] on an assignment
[00:57:35] you have to hit a series of different
[00:57:37] criteria. So for assignment two
[00:57:39] one of the tasks that you
[00:57:41] have to do is document
[00:57:42] initial impressions
[00:57:44] of a development project.
[00:57:45] A second thing you have to do for
[00:57:47] that assignment is to record some
[00:57:50] project data and then evaluate the project
[00:57:53] based on using some design guidelines.
[00:57:56] And then each of these tasks that are
[00:57:59] assigned to
[00:58:00] the
[00:58:02] to the assignment
[00:58:03] have a different weighting.
[00:58:05] So part one is worth 20 points.
[00:58:07] Part two is worth 20 points,
[00:58:10] but part three is worth 30 points.
[00:58:13] Now how does one get
[00:58:16] an A on an assignment?
[00:58:18] I wanted to be fairly consistent
[00:58:22] and fair about that.
[00:58:24] And the last time I taught this
[00:58:26] course we used a rubric
[00:58:28] system that said you know
[00:58:30] for documenting initial impressions.
[00:58:32] If you listed 10 initial
[00:58:36] Impressions, then you get the score
[00:58:39] excellent for that particular criteria.
[00:58:41] And then for the second thing
[00:58:43] that you had to do,
[00:58:44] you know this one's a freebie.
[00:58:46] If you just did it, you got points.
[00:58:48] And then the third one again it's listing
[00:58:50] what you have to do to get like
[00:58:53] a perfect score
[00:58:54] on this particular task and
[00:58:56] here's what you get.
[00:58:58] If you got like 70% of what is
[00:59:01] asked of you and you know
[00:59:04] 60% or something.
[00:59:07] If you did what was asked
[00:59:08] of you and then if you didn't do
[00:59:10] what was asked of you,
[00:59:10] you get nothing.
[00:59:12] So again this is weighted 30 points.
[00:59:15] If you were excellent then you get 30
[00:59:19] points. If you were good you'd get
[00:59:22] I think it was 70% of 30 points etc.
[00:59:26] And the way I set up my interface
[00:59:29] For all of the submissions,
[00:59:31] so this was a group assignment.
[00:59:33] There are two groups,
[00:59:34] group two submitted their assignment,
[00:59:37] I could go through and review what they
[00:59:40] submitted and say well
[00:59:42] for the first criteria they did excellent,
[00:59:44] they get 100% of the points
[00:59:47] that they should be getting.
[00:59:50] And then for the second criteria,
[00:59:53] yeah they were they were good.
[00:59:55] The third one incomplete,
[00:59:58] they didn't do it.
[00:59:59] I set up my single select options
[01:00:05] to have a value in it 100% 85% 0%
[01:00:11] etcetera. And that helps my formula
[01:00:14] field extract out that number
[01:00:16] multiplied by
[01:00:17] the criteria weight in order to
[01:00:19] give me the points awarded
[01:00:20] which is effectively
[01:00:21] their score.
[01:00:23] So for each criteria
[01:00:25] there's the description,
[01:00:28] the weight
[01:00:29] excellent, good, satisfactory
[01:00:31] and needs improvement descriptions.
[01:00:33] All of those
[01:00:34] live on the assignment record.
[01:00:36] Those are the rubric for the assignment.
[01:00:38] But the score record lives on
[01:00:41] the submission.
[01:00:42] This is
[01:00:43] group two got the score excellent.
[01:00:46] And then I could flip over
[01:00:48] to group one
[01:00:49] and start grading their assignments.
[01:00:50] All of this stuff is the exact same
[01:00:53] because I'm looking at
[01:00:54] the same assignment.
[01:00:55] But I could say well Group one
[01:00:57] didn't do excellent,
[01:00:59] they did good and you can
[01:01:00] see the points awarded
[01:01:02] is being affected as I go on.
[01:01:05] And then I could flip to another
[01:01:07] assignment and it's a completely different
[01:01:09] rubric. There's no rubric actually
[01:01:11] I didn't fill it in yet.
[01:01:12] But that was sort of
[01:01:13] the idea behind
[01:01:15] this interface and it does a lot of
[01:01:19] other things like I've set it up
[01:01:22] where if an
[01:01:23] assignment is an individual assignment,
[01:01:26] I could click this button,
[01:01:27] it will create a submission record
[01:01:31] for every student assigned
[01:01:33] to this section.
[01:01:35] But if it's a group assignment,
[01:01:37] it will look at all of the groups and then
[01:01:39] create one submission per group.
[01:01:43] And I'll stop there because we're at 9:00.
[01:01:48] That's awesome. But your
[01:01:50] your your students
[01:01:51] don't have access to this,
[01:01:53] right? No, they don't see this
[01:01:55] in blackboard, there is a rubric
[01:01:59] which is annoying to set up.
[01:02:02] It's actually very annoying
[01:02:04] to grade in black board,
[01:02:06] the way the system was
[01:02:07] set up or at least it was last spring.
[01:02:10] And so all of this same information
[01:02:13] they would be able to see,
[01:02:15] they would be able to see in blackboard.
[01:02:18] I gave them the score
[01:02:19] excellent on the criteria one.
[01:02:22] They just wouldn't see this
[01:02:23] Airtable version. The
[01:02:24] next time I were to teach a course
[01:02:26] I would want to do all of my grading here
[01:02:29] first just because it's faster
[01:02:31] and then I would copy that
[01:02:33] information over into blackboard
[01:02:35] once I'm done.
[01:02:35] So there's still a level of transparency.
[01:02:38] But it allows me to sort of,
[01:02:39] if I need to tweak what constitutes good,
[01:02:43] I could do it here first before doing
[01:02:46] it in blackboard when I've already
[01:02:48] started grading for group one
[01:02:50] or group two.
[01:02:52] Yeah.
[01:02:53] So awesome.
[01:02:53] I bet there's a market for this.
[01:02:55] I bet there's people,
[01:02:56] teachers out there saying I want this,
[01:02:59] this is the first base in a while that
[01:03:01] I've built where I'm like somebody,
[01:03:03] this should be on the the universe.
[01:03:05] So I think whenever I'm
[01:03:07] done building out all of the use cases
[01:03:10] I think I would want for it,
[01:03:11] I would
[01:03:13] probably end up putting this
[01:03:15] on the universe,
[01:03:17] which hopefully I think includes
[01:03:18] the interface along with it
[01:03:21] because this is annoying
[01:03:23] if you have a lot of fields
[01:03:24] to add to a single page,
[01:03:27] it is really annoying to add them
[01:03:30] and then move them how you want.
[01:03:32] So I have these templates
[01:03:34] that have to handle up to
[01:03:36] five criteria per assignment
[01:03:38] and each criteria has four different
[01:03:41] levels that can be and a description and a
[01:03:43] weight and then a score
[01:03:45] from a different table.
[01:03:46] It's just a lot of fields to
[01:03:47] manage, but once it's in there it's easy.
[01:03:50] Nice. So, awesome.
[01:03:53] Yeah, this, you gotta hold onto this
[01:03:55] for the next interface competition.
[01:03:59] Yeah, all of my good ideas I came up
[01:04:01] with after the competition was over
[01:04:05] awesome. Thank you Kamille
[01:04:07] for showing that and
[01:04:09] that concludes today's show.
[01:04:11] We hope everybody has a great
[01:04:13] we take the we take a month off
[01:04:15] after each episode,
[01:04:16] especially end of year holidays
[01:04:18] and everything.
[01:04:19] Hope everybody has a great
[01:04:20] December and we will be back
[01:04:23] with you in January
[01:04:24] excited for a new year and new
[01:04:26] exciting things coming
[01:04:28] and we will showcase them all on
[01:04:30] BuiltOnAir.
[01:04:30] Take care everyone,
[01:04:32] Bye
[01:04:33] bye