4/18/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S14-E02

Duration: 64 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.

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 – 00:03:31 –

Meet the Creators – 00:24:23 –

Meet Jason Montoya.

As a follower of the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am also a husband, father, teacher and storyteller.
I believe in sharing good, and not so good, stories from my journey through this website as a way to process ideas and inspire others.
In my journey, I have personally experienced and seen others experience the life of surviving in isolation. In these times of need, others helped and inspired me when I needed it. As a result, my personal aim is to inspire others to a place of thriving and togetherness.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:36:07 –

We dive into a full working base that will Jason Montoya showcases a few bases he uses to run his business. These will demonstrate how to use Airtable for Freelancer Project Management and another for SEO Optimization Marketing.

Scripting Time – 00:54:25 –

Explore Scripting with “Date Based Change Log”.

Kamille will walk through a script that generates a change log for one or more date fields..

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:31

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:24:23

Jason Montoya –

Meet Jason Montoya.

As a follower of the Way, the Truth and the Life, I am also a husband, father, teacher and storyteller.
I believe in sharing good, and not so good, stories from my journey through this website as a way to process ideas and inspire others.
In my journey, I have personally experienced and seen others experience the life of surviving in isolation. In these times of need, others helped and inspired me when I needed it. As a result, my personal aim is to inspire others to a place of thriving and togetherness.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:36:07

Project Management | SEO Optimization

We dive into a full working base that will Jason Montoya showcases a few bases he uses to run his business. These will demonstrate how to use Airtable for Freelancer Project Management and another for SEO Optimization Marketing.

Segment: Scripting Time

Start Time: 00:54:25

Scripting Time: Date Based Change Log

Explore Scripting with “Date Based Change Log”.

Kamille will walk through a script that generates a change log for one or more date fields..

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:44] We are now in episode two of season 14.
[00:01:47] Good to be with you myself,
[00:01:48] Dan Fellars and we have
[00:01:50] Kamille with us after a week
[00:01:51] off. Welcome back, Kamille.
[00:01:53] Hello,
[00:01:55] good to have you as always.
[00:01:57] Alli is off this week and we
[00:01:59] should be joined shortly
[00:02:01] by our special guest,
[00:02:03] Jason,
[00:02:04] hoping that he comes on to join us,
[00:02:07] but we're gonna get started.
[00:02:09] And if he doesn't join us,
[00:02:11] we'll, we'll call an audible.
[00:02:13] So, welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:02:15] Every week, we go through four different
[00:02:17] segments, talk about what's going on.
[00:02:19] I'll walk you through what we're gonna be
[00:02:21] doing today.
[00:02:23] We always start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:25] to get you caught up on what's going
[00:02:27] on in the Airtable world
[00:02:28] and all the different communities
[00:02:30] and make sure that
[00:02:31] you know, the latest and greatest
[00:02:33] in all the news.
[00:02:35] Then we'll do a spotlight on On2Air
[00:02:38] our primary sponsor, get you up to date
[00:02:40] on that product
[00:02:42] and then assuming Jason joins us,
[00:02:45] we'll learn about him and his story and
[00:02:48] how he found Airtable,
[00:02:49] then he will hopefully be walking
[00:02:52] through some bases that he uses in his,
[00:02:54] in his daily business.
[00:02:56] And then we'll do a quick shout out
[00:02:58] to our community, how you can join and
[00:03:00] participate.
[00:03:02] And then
[00:03:03] Kamille will walk us through
[00:03:05] some scripting,
[00:03:05] how to do database change logs.
[00:03:09] So
[00:03:10] we'll assume that's the show
[00:03:12] after we get through our roundup
[00:03:15] if Jason still hasn't showed us,
[00:03:17] we'll get him on in a future episode
[00:03:19] and we'll do, we'll go to Kamille
[00:03:21] and then we'll,
[00:03:22] we'll do a couple other fun
[00:03:23] activities to make sure that
[00:03:25] you are learning this hour. So
[00:03:28] Round the Bases,
[00:03:30] it was a relatively quiet week this week.
[00:03:34] not a whole lot going on
[00:03:36] couple P S A announcements.
[00:03:39] Airtable is gonna have some
[00:03:42] outages with the database.
[00:03:44] let's see, April 28th.
[00:03:47] That's still next week.
[00:03:48] So that's coming up.
[00:03:50] They, they've actually had a
[00:03:51] couple outages.
[00:03:52] They, they've been doing this
[00:03:54] and I haven't noticed that I,
[00:03:55] last time I was on and I didn't,
[00:03:57] I didn't get any errors or anything.
[00:04:00] And so it was a very minor downtime.
[00:04:03] So they're getting better at their,
[00:04:06] at their outages. Hopefully
[00:04:09] when the, when was the
[00:04:11] unannounced outage?
[00:04:13] Unannounced outage?
[00:04:16] I think about two weeks ago,
[00:04:18] 2.5 weeks ago or, or something,
[00:04:20] something like that.
[00:04:24] Yeah. So here's an announced outage.
[00:04:26] So they're getting better,
[00:04:27] at least at, at announcing their,
[00:04:29] when they know it will be down.
[00:04:31] So keep that on your radar.
[00:04:33] They do it Friday evenings at night.
[00:04:35] So,
[00:04:37] shouldn't impact too many people.
[00:04:41] The other P S A
[00:04:44] coming from Chris Dancy
[00:04:46] and,
[00:04:48] Ben Green who run the,
[00:04:50] Airtable community in Facebook
[00:04:53] are announcing a DareTable.
[00:04:56] So thirtyish days left, actually,
[00:04:58] less than,
[00:05:00] yeah, less than 30 a month
[00:05:02] from today is actually when it is May 18th
[00:05:05] so, it's in San Francisco.
[00:05:07] It'll be at the headquarters of Airtable.
[00:05:11] So
[00:05:12] we'll see what life is like at
[00:05:14] Airtable. Myself, Kamille will be there.
[00:05:17] Alli will be there.
[00:05:19] Kuovonne,
[00:05:20] friend of the show will be there.
[00:05:21] She got the spotlight
[00:05:23] in this one on formulas
[00:05:24] you didn't know you need.
[00:05:25] So she'll be doing a show.
[00:05:27] Kamille you'll be doing a
[00:05:28] segment.
[00:05:29] What, what's your
[00:05:30] topic?
[00:05:32] The title is called
[00:05:34] Your Wish is My Command line. And the,
[00:05:38] what I'm hoping to get out
[00:05:41] of that session is to sort of explain
[00:05:43] that a lot of what you can do
[00:05:46] in your table. There's different tiers,
[00:05:48] there's stuff that's,
[00:05:49] you know, baked, right.
[00:05:50] And it's a feature of Airtable,
[00:05:52] there's stuff that you
[00:05:52] gotta do. Maybe a formula,
[00:05:54] maybe an automation to do.
[00:05:55] And there's some things
[00:05:56] that
[00:05:57] you need to go outside of Airtable
[00:05:59] to fully accomplish
[00:06:00] what it is you're you're
[00:06:02] looking for and the
[00:06:03] purpose of that session is more
[00:06:06] hoping to be a little bit interactive
[00:06:08] where people can say I have this problem,
[00:06:11] how might I solve it? And then
[00:06:13] if I can do it on stage, I will.
[00:06:15] And if I can't, then just, you know,
[00:06:17] just good advice
[00:06:18] of what I've seen and what
[00:06:19] I think might work for
[00:06:21] the, just
[00:06:23] the problem as described to me.
[00:06:25] So obviously I'm not gonna be able
[00:06:27] to go deep into everybody's use cases,
[00:06:30] but
[00:06:30] some quick advice for how might
[00:06:32] you do a couple of different
[00:06:34] things in your
[00:06:35] table because you can do a lot.
[00:06:37] Nice, nice.
[00:06:39] And we have Jason with us. Welcome Jason.
[00:06:41] Hello. Hello. Thank you
[00:06:43] for having me.
[00:06:44] Sorry, I'm a few minutes behind.
[00:06:46] No worries. No worries.
[00:06:48] We're glad to have you.
[00:06:49] We're going through our round
[00:06:50] up and keeping people up to date
[00:06:52] with what's going on in the community
[00:06:55] and we'll get to hear Jason's
[00:06:57] story in a bit.
[00:06:58] So glad to have you feel free
[00:07:00] to, to chime in.
[00:07:01] Are you planning to go to
[00:07:02] DareTable conference?
[00:07:03] That's what we're talking about.
[00:07:05] I didn't even know it was happening.
[00:07:07] So that's news to me.
[00:07:08] Where is it? Is it a virtual or in person?
[00:07:10] So this is in person in San Francisco
[00:07:13] at Airtables headquarters a month from
[00:07:15] today
[00:07:16] and
[00:07:17] not sure how many tickets are left.
[00:07:20] But yeah, daretable.com
[00:07:22] ok. Yeah, I'll check it out.
[00:07:23] I guess I missed,
[00:07:24] I missed the announcement.
[00:07:25] Yeah.
[00:07:26] Yeah. So we're getting the word out
[00:07:28] and some friends of the show,
[00:07:30] help run it. Chris and Chris
[00:07:32] and Ben have both been
[00:07:33] on the show in the past
[00:07:35] and,
[00:07:36] and they put on a great show.
[00:07:38] They did. This is their 2nd,
[00:07:39] 2nd year doing this.
[00:07:40] So last year was in Austin
[00:07:42] and,
[00:07:44] this year it's,
[00:07:45] it's actually at Airtable's
[00:07:46] headquarters, so have good
[00:07:47] participation from Airtable. And
[00:07:50] so yeah, we'll be there.
[00:07:52] And so yeah, get the word out.
[00:07:55] I think it was a pretty tight,
[00:07:57] I think only like 75
[00:07:58] spots just because of the,
[00:08:00] the location couldn't handle a lot.
[00:08:03] So it's gonna be a pretty small,
[00:08:04] small group. Should be fun.
[00:08:07] Cool.
[00:08:09] Awesome. All right.
[00:08:11] That's, that's the P S A announcements.
[00:08:16] Then one other, a couple other
[00:08:18] things this came from the BuiltOnAir
[00:08:20] community
[00:08:21] Hannah who is involved with BuiltOnAir
[00:08:25] noticed this link to a support.
[00:08:27] So we've talked about.
[00:08:29] So this is a two way
[00:08:30] sync overview.
[00:08:32] So we've talked about this
[00:08:34] in the past. It's been in beta
[00:08:36] at the enterprise level,
[00:08:38] I believe you have to be an
[00:08:40] enterprise account to,
[00:08:41] to get access to this beta.
[00:08:43] But I know I've, I've seen it,
[00:08:45] I've, I've played with it and it's out
[00:08:48] there.
[00:08:49] So, but I don't know, so this
[00:08:52] this update or, or I guess this article
[00:08:55] is relatively new. Maybe,
[00:08:57] maybe this has been around.
[00:08:58] I don't think they've publicly
[00:09:00] shared information
[00:09:00] about,
[00:09:01] this beta
[00:09:02] but now there's more
[00:09:04] information about it. So
[00:09:05] worth pointing out.
[00:09:08] The thing that jumped out to me
[00:09:10] is I knew about this,
[00:09:11] but I didn't know about
[00:09:12] all the limitations.
[00:09:15] Click down here on this limitations.
[00:09:18] There's actually quite a few limitations
[00:09:20] that I didn't, I didn't realize
[00:09:23] I don't know Kamille.
[00:09:24] Are you using this at all?
[00:09:28] This the
[00:09:29] first true test of,
[00:09:31] of me being on a podcast
[00:09:33] and also being a member of an interview,
[00:09:36] I'm not gonna say in what,
[00:09:38] in what company or
[00:09:40] Well, I could say I,
[00:09:42] I work at Apple now. It's
[00:09:44] an
[00:09:45] interesting series
[00:09:46] of events that led me here.
[00:09:47] We are an enterprise client of
[00:09:49] Airtable and we've interacted
[00:09:52] with the two way syncing
[00:09:55] beta and yeah, there's
[00:09:57] none of my projects use the
[00:10:00] two way sync. I could see it being
[00:10:02] extraordinarily useful
[00:10:03] in a lot of different
[00:10:04] use cases. But there are,
[00:10:05] you know,
[00:10:06] as this page points out a lot of different
[00:10:08] ways and that it,
[00:10:09] there's some things that you
[00:10:11] might expect to be there and they're not
[00:10:13] one of them that makes
[00:10:15] sense to me is formulas
[00:10:17] quite work because they're,
[00:10:19] you know,
[00:10:20] if you're not syncing in all of the data
[00:10:22] that the formula relies on, then it,
[00:10:23] the logic of it would break
[00:10:25] that kind of makes sense. But also like,
[00:10:28] can you just
[00:10:29] import the value as a text field?
[00:10:31] Like, you know,
[00:10:32] maybe there's a warning symbol
[00:10:33] that says it's not always up to date or
[00:10:35] there's a couple of different things that
[00:10:39] you know,
[00:10:40] are
[00:10:42] I understand why. But also,
[00:10:45] isn't there another way?
[00:10:47] That's kind of how I feel
[00:10:48] for a lot of the things that
[00:10:50] we see on this bulleted list
[00:10:51] here.
[00:10:52] Yeah.
[00:10:52] And it could be just in phases,
[00:10:55] you know, for this phase.
[00:10:57] They don't want to deal with that
[00:10:59] because of the complexity
[00:11:00] that it introduces
[00:11:00] and
[00:11:02] right down the road. But yeah.
[00:11:06] it's just, there's things
[00:11:07] like the first one,
[00:11:09] I don't know why it's listed in
[00:11:10] this order, but the first
[00:11:12] one is two way syncs
[00:11:13] aren't available in gant
[00:11:14] views.
[00:11:15] And
[00:11:16] like
[00:11:18] I get it because gant views
[00:11:19] are the ones
[00:11:20] that have very specific linking
[00:11:22] relationships with the records
[00:11:24] that are being shown.
[00:11:24] I get it.
[00:11:25] That's somewhat complex to do for,
[00:11:27] you know, a two way sync
[00:11:29] item. But it is like
[00:11:31] it works in all views except for gant.
[00:11:34] Yeah,
[00:11:36] it feels a little odd.
[00:11:37] Yeah. Yeah. There must be something
[00:11:40] under the hood in the code of the
[00:11:41] gant view.
[00:11:43] And then the one I thought
[00:11:45] was interesting is that
[00:11:46] you can't use automations to,
[00:11:49] to update the destination
[00:11:51] that one is confusing to me
[00:11:54] or API call. So you basically,
[00:11:56] yeah, you can't, you can't modify it.
[00:11:58] So that that's a big limitation
[00:12:01] that
[00:12:02] is really gonna hamper what
[00:12:04] you can do with the two way sync
[00:12:05] and using the destination table
[00:12:09] or the mobile app.
[00:12:11] Why the mobile app,
[00:12:13] what, what, what there
[00:12:16] I can like. Again, I can think of like,
[00:12:19] oh maybe they're trying to get around
[00:12:21] people circumventing certain
[00:12:23] Airtable limitations by having
[00:12:25] two way syncs into various
[00:12:26] different bases.
[00:12:27] You're splitting apart the total,
[00:12:29] you know, number of records
[00:12:31] that you could fit in one base.
[00:12:33] Technically speaking,
[00:12:34] blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
[00:12:36] that I can kind of understand.
[00:12:38] But like the mobile app
[00:12:40] is like that's your product,
[00:12:42] you
[00:12:43] Yeah, you know?
[00:12:45] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:45] Yeah, hopefully that's
[00:12:47] a future edition. Yeah.
[00:12:50] What else in here?
[00:12:53] So basically the general concept,
[00:12:55] if you're not familiar with it,
[00:12:57] you know, right now in production,
[00:12:59] you can do a one way sync
[00:13:00] from a source to a
[00:13:01] destination,
[00:13:02] but in the destination,
[00:13:04] all those fields can't be modified,
[00:13:06] they're read only.
[00:13:07] And so if you needed to change that,
[00:13:09] you'd have to go back to the source.
[00:13:11] Now you can
[00:13:13] to a limited extent,
[00:13:15] modify changes in the destination
[00:13:18] and
[00:13:20] and do that. So,
[00:13:23] but there are these limitations.
[00:13:24] Yeah, automations,
[00:13:25] so that means there's gonna
[00:13:26] be,
[00:13:27] you know, I'm just thinking
[00:13:28] about implementing this.
[00:13:30] You're gonna be talking back
[00:13:32] to the source base through an API call or,
[00:13:34] or a web hook or something
[00:13:36] to update the source from the destination.
[00:13:39] Some, some hack like that
[00:13:41] to get that to work,
[00:13:43] which will be frustrating.
[00:13:45] But
[00:13:47] but yeah, this and then,
[00:13:49] you know, hopefully
[00:13:50] at some point they said
[00:13:52] when they announce,
[00:13:53] I'm thinking of the, the new feature, the
[00:13:57] the data source, the one,
[00:13:59] what, what are those called? The
[00:14:02] you know, like the the
[00:14:05] universal tables
[00:14:08] that they announced
[00:14:11] verified data source,
[00:14:13] verified data source. Yeah,
[00:14:15] yeah. So when that comes out
[00:14:18] that that will probably
[00:14:19] reduce the need for two-way
[00:14:21] syncing.
[00:14:22] Because a lot of things might make
[00:14:25] better sense to put into one of those
[00:14:28] verified data sources
[00:14:30] and not sync them between tables. So
[00:14:36] let's see. Let's see.
[00:14:39] All right,
[00:14:41] good stuff there. Next one.
[00:14:43] This is coming from the new table forums,
[00:14:46] check out join table forums if you
[00:14:48] haven't already great
[00:14:50] great interactions going on there.
[00:14:53] Lots of,
[00:14:54] lots of experts that
[00:14:55] are answering questions.
[00:14:57] This one I answered.
[00:14:59] So I thought it would be worth
[00:15:01] worth showing on
[00:15:02] here since I'm a little familiar with it.
[00:15:05] This comes from Brandon
[00:15:06] who's actually a friend of mine
[00:15:09] and doing some Airtable stuff. So,
[00:15:11] so talking about so this is dealing
[00:15:14] with web hooks, which is fairly common if
[00:15:16] you want to send data from
[00:15:19] one system to another
[00:15:21] web hooks is a very generic
[00:15:23] way, universally supported
[00:15:25] across lots of different platforms and,
[00:15:28] and systems.
[00:15:30] So it's essentially you,
[00:15:32] you define a URL
[00:15:33] and then you send data to that URL and
[00:15:36] then and then on the other end,
[00:15:38] it will receive that data.
[00:15:39] So it's a way to message between systems.
[00:15:43] And so Scott had a,
[00:15:45] a post here that he linked to
[00:15:47] with an example of how to
[00:15:52] this is a pretty good detail of how
[00:15:54] to send to a web hook
[00:15:56] such as make it could
[00:15:57] be Zapier
[00:15:57] it could be any other system.
[00:16:00] This one
[00:16:01] is again a little bit technical
[00:16:03] but in the internet world,
[00:16:05] the
[00:16:06] the defined protocol that that you
[00:16:09] send data between basically when a browser
[00:16:12] hits a a website,
[00:16:15] it's doing what's called a get
[00:16:16] requests and the the server
[00:16:19] is responding in that
[00:16:20] there's different types of requests.
[00:16:23] So this one is the standard
[00:16:25] get request that that is kind of
[00:16:27] how browsers work
[00:16:28] by default.
[00:16:31] What Brandon is asking for is
[00:16:33] is a post request.
[00:16:34] So there's a get and a post.
[00:16:36] The main difference is in a post,
[00:16:39] you can actually send like a body of data
[00:16:42] with the message into the server.
[00:16:45] So most API S
[00:16:46] you're sending
[00:16:48] a get usually if you're querying
[00:16:51] for data, that's a get request.
[00:16:53] If you're sending data, that's a post or,
[00:16:56] or a put those are the
[00:16:57] two different types. So
[00:16:59] that's kind of
[00:17:01] you know, high level of,
[00:17:02] of how API S work.
[00:17:03] And so that example didn't quite
[00:17:05] work for Brandon scenario.
[00:17:07] So I just replied with a
[00:17:09] small snippet of code
[00:17:11] and this is how you would send a,
[00:17:13] a post request. So that right there is the
[00:17:16] method of the the fetch.
[00:17:17] So you're, you're, you're fetching data,
[00:17:20] but you're sending it as a post
[00:17:23] and you're,
[00:17:24] you're wrapping it in this body
[00:17:26] and you also have to have this header
[00:17:28] in here to tell it that that it's JSON
[00:17:30] which is, which is
[00:17:31] what this body gets converted to
[00:17:33] use my name.
[00:17:35] That's right. That's right. You're famous.
[00:17:38] Yeah, JSON,
[00:17:41] I'm just now realizing why
[00:17:44] I never liked the function name fetch.
[00:17:47] It's because you can post with it as well
[00:17:52] because you, you still are fetching data.
[00:17:54] You're you're fetching a response.
[00:17:56] So you still get a response back.
[00:17:57] Yeah, but like
[00:17:59] am I? I
[00:18:00] don't want a response, just take the data.
[00:18:03] Yeah, this one, I actually didn't
[00:18:05] even do anything with the response.
[00:18:07] You could store the response
[00:18:09] in a variable and
[00:18:10] a
[00:18:11] lot of times and it's poor
[00:18:14] coding structure because you,
[00:18:15] you want to catch
[00:18:16] a response in case there's an
[00:18:17] error and you wanna know,
[00:18:19] but sometimes I'm just,
[00:18:20] I'm just sending stuff away and I,
[00:18:23] I don't want anything to do with
[00:18:25] what gets returned to me
[00:18:27] Yeah.
[00:18:28] So this is the code.
[00:18:30] If you're in an automation
[00:18:32] and you need to send a message
[00:18:33] to a web hook somewhere,
[00:18:35] it does require a little bit of code.
[00:18:37] They don't have a built
[00:18:39] in,
[00:18:39] you know, automation task.
[00:18:42] like Zapier and may have,
[00:18:44] you know, a task that's like an
[00:18:46] http request is
[00:18:47] probably something what it's called.
[00:18:51] I will throw out, throw out there.
[00:18:53] I need someone who needed a javascript
[00:18:55] written the other day
[00:18:56] and I didn't know how to do it. So
[00:18:58] I just used chat GP T and said,
[00:18:59] hey, can you write me the script and then
[00:19:01] they gave me what I needed. So
[00:19:03] if there's a
[00:19:04] table Airtablers
[00:19:06] out there that don't know how to script,
[00:19:08] you can use a tool like that.
[00:19:09] So yeah, yeah.
[00:19:10] Yeah. That would be a good test
[00:19:12] to see if, if chat GP T can answer,
[00:19:14] answer this one.
[00:19:16] Probably could,
[00:19:18] there would be some like nuances.
[00:19:20] So like we've talked in the past about
[00:19:22] so this would likely work
[00:19:25] inside of an automation
[00:19:27] script because those run server side,
[00:19:30] if you were to put this inside
[00:19:32] of a scripting extension,
[00:19:35] it may not work.
[00:19:36] It depends on the web hook
[00:19:38] that you're sending to.
[00:19:39] You might have to,
[00:19:40] they implemented a fetch remote.
[00:19:43] What's the name?
[00:19:44] Fetch, remote?
[00:19:45] That's
[00:19:46] a sync
[00:19:46] I think fetch remote
[00:19:48] a sync
[00:19:49] which is Airtable specific.
[00:19:51] That's not fetch is a,
[00:19:53] a javascript specific
[00:19:55] function that, that fetch remote
[00:19:57] a sync is Airtable specific.
[00:20:00] And so there's nuances like that,
[00:20:02] that I doubt Chat GP T
[00:20:04] would be smart enough
[00:20:05] to know. Maybe it does. Like
[00:20:07] you could feed it if you knew
[00:20:08] if you knew that the nuances
[00:20:09] of time.
[00:20:10] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:10] Yeah.
[00:20:12] Yeah.
[00:20:13] Yeah.
[00:20:14] Yeah, that's common.
[00:20:15] We're talking, yeah, we talk quite a bit.
[00:20:16] We actually have,
[00:20:18] I think two shows coming up
[00:20:19] this season on,
[00:20:20] on chat GP T
[00:20:21] using it with Airtable.
[00:20:23] So we might showcase some of that.
[00:20:25] Yeah, there are definitely
[00:20:26] a lot of opportunities there
[00:20:27] and, and the flexibility of Airtable
[00:20:29] and all the integrations just makes the
[00:20:31] sky sky the limit for what you wanna do.
[00:20:34] Yeah, very true.
[00:20:36] So, yeah, that's kind of,
[00:20:37] that's kind of the,
[00:20:39] the world of Airtable this
[00:20:40] week. Relatively quiet.
[00:20:42] I don't think there's
[00:20:44] any product releases,
[00:20:45] any feature updates that,
[00:20:47] that I'm aware of.
[00:20:49] So that means maybe today,
[00:20:51] maybe this afternoon.
[00:20:53] So usually it's like during the
[00:20:54] show they'll, they'll put out some stuff.
[00:20:57] So we
[00:20:57] made,
[00:20:58] I believe I've made suggestions
[00:21:00] before that they just make
[00:21:02] feature release or
[00:21:03] announcements on like the
[00:21:05] Thursday of the week because it's,
[00:21:06] it's our show. It used to be Aaron Corn
[00:21:09] Show and then it was
[00:21:12] Chris Dancy
[00:21:13] and Ben Green show on that Facebook. Yeah.
[00:21:16] And each was on a different day,
[00:21:17] Tuesday, Wednesday,
[00:21:19] Thursday and I was like,
[00:21:19] just do it on Thursday when we're all done
[00:21:22] so that we're not,
[00:21:25] you know, I, who knows
[00:21:26] what they actually listened.
[00:21:28] Yep. Yep. So,
[00:21:30] we'll see, maybe next week
[00:21:31] we've got some good stuff to talk about.
[00:21:33] So,
[00:21:34] with that, we'll move on to On2Air.
[00:21:36] Our primary sponsor. It's an all in one
[00:21:38] tool kit to run your business
[00:21:40] on Airtable. If you,
[00:21:42] if your business relies on
[00:21:43] Airtable,
[00:21:44] you definitely need to check out On2Air.
[00:21:46] I was hoping to make one
[00:21:48] announcement today,
[00:21:49] but I think I'll save it for
[00:21:51] next week. So
[00:21:52] today I'm just gonna give a
[00:21:54] shout out to our backups product.
[00:21:56] This is you know, really important
[00:21:59] if you've got your important
[00:22:01] data in Airtable
[00:22:02] best practice is to make sure
[00:22:04] you've got a copy
[00:22:06] of that somewhere outside
[00:22:07] of Airtable.
[00:22:08] That's where On2Air
[00:22:09] backups comes in.
[00:22:11] It helps you to back up your data
[00:22:13] and store it in your own repository,
[00:22:16] either in Google Drive box or Dropbox
[00:22:20] are the ones we support.
[00:22:22] Somebody asked me this week about,
[00:22:24] about backups. If we're storing the data,
[00:22:26] we do not store your data.
[00:22:28] We act as a proxy
[00:22:30] to move it from Airtable to
[00:22:32] to your destination.
[00:22:34] So we do have, you know,
[00:22:36] obviously access to read
[00:22:38] from your Airtable and push
[00:22:39] to your destination, but
[00:22:41] we don't store other
[00:22:43] than meta information.
[00:22:44] We do store some meta information
[00:22:46] and it does pass through our servers
[00:22:48] from one to the other, but there's no long
[00:22:50] term storage of your record data
[00:22:52] or your attachment data. So
[00:22:55] trying to do best practices
[00:22:57] on security there
[00:22:59] and just kind of a quick shot
[00:23:01] showcase of what it looks like.
[00:23:03] You create a project
[00:23:05] and a project. It can have multiple bases.
[00:23:08] We do have an app in the
[00:23:11] marketplace. But if you,
[00:23:12] if you have lots of bases and
[00:23:14] it might be easier just to go to the
[00:23:16] website and just add them all
[00:23:18] at once. So you, you don't have
[00:23:20] to go and install the extension
[00:23:23] in every base
[00:23:23] that you want to back up.
[00:23:25] You can do it all in one place
[00:23:27] here and add them all
[00:23:28] at the same time now
[00:23:30] and then it, and then it gives
[00:23:32] you a little bit of showcase of how many
[00:23:34] records are in each base,
[00:23:36] how many attachments are in each base.
[00:23:39] And you can actually drill down
[00:23:41] into those and see even
[00:23:42] at the table level,
[00:23:43] how many records in each table
[00:23:46] and attachments in each table.
[00:23:48] And then if you go back,
[00:23:50] this is showing you every time
[00:23:52] it performs a backup,
[00:23:53] you'll see that it was completed
[00:23:55] how many tables
[00:23:56] and the total number of records
[00:23:58] and attachments that, that,
[00:24:00] that have been backed up. So
[00:24:01] great information we do,
[00:24:03] we do have some exciting
[00:24:05] features that will be
[00:24:06] coming out this year
[00:24:08] to enhance the backup experience. But
[00:24:11] definitely worth checking out
[00:24:13] to get your data backed up
[00:24:15] and in a secure place
[00:24:16] outside of Airtable.
[00:24:19] All right, with that, Jason,
[00:24:21] good to have you on the show.
[00:24:23] Second time you were
[00:24:24] one of our,
[00:24:26] one of our earlier,
[00:24:27] you were an early guest
[00:24:29] on our old format
[00:24:30] where we spent an hour drilling you
[00:24:32] and, and learning all about you.
[00:24:35] But that was a long time ago.
[00:24:37] So we want an update. Give us,
[00:24:38] give us the background,
[00:24:40] give us your story.
[00:24:41] I love to learn more about you
[00:24:42] and then also your story
[00:24:44] of how you came into
[00:24:45] Airtable, how you found it and
[00:24:47] what it's done for you.
[00:24:48] Yeah. So, so I'm a full time freelancer,
[00:24:51] I think of myself as a sales and
[00:24:53] influence amplifier.
[00:24:55] So I take
[00:24:55] and, and really focused around
[00:24:57] content marketing.
[00:24:59] So companies that have archives,
[00:25:01] let's say they've got an archive of
[00:25:04] several 100 blog posts.
[00:25:05] And it's kind of sitting there
[00:25:07] collecting dust and they're wondering,
[00:25:08] hey, should I have spent all
[00:25:10] that time creating that content?
[00:25:11] I'm the guy that comes in and says,
[00:25:13] hey, here's how from an S E O standpoint,
[00:25:14] from a email nurturing standpoint,
[00:25:17] how do we take that?
[00:25:18] And so I've been freelancing
[00:25:19] since 2014.
[00:25:20] I owned a marketing agency for about
[00:25:22] seven years before that.
[00:25:23] And I made a transition.
[00:25:24] But when I had my,
[00:25:25] one of the kind of the
[00:25:27] connections to Airtable is
[00:25:28] when I had my agency,
[00:25:29] I, I learned about a lot of
[00:25:31] and created some ideas and
[00:25:32] frameworks and systems
[00:25:34] to really how to operate the business.
[00:25:36] And those are a lot of the things I
[00:25:37] took with me,
[00:25:39] into freelancing, I took those
[00:25:41] business lessons and I applied them.
[00:25:43] and they were hard earned lessons
[00:25:46] because running a business is no easy
[00:25:48] matter.
[00:25:49] But,
[00:25:51] what I, one of the things
[00:25:52] I was able to excel at
[00:25:53] freelancing was because I,
[00:25:54] I operated with a business mindset
[00:25:56] and I think a lot of freelancers struggle
[00:25:58] with that.
[00:25:58] They are more of the technical person,
[00:26:01] they're doing the,
[00:26:02] the work, but they're not necessarily
[00:26:04] thinking of the work that they're
[00:26:05] doing as a business and when
[00:26:07] you're an employee, you don't have to.
[00:26:08] But when you're a freelancer,
[00:26:09] you have to do that.
[00:26:10] So that was something that was
[00:26:12] really impactful.
[00:26:12] Well, a lot of those systems
[00:26:14] and frameworks,
[00:26:15] we didn't necessarily have any
[00:26:16] tools that really allowed us to,
[00:26:18] to, to manage those things.
[00:26:20] So we used spreadsheets a lot of times.
[00:26:23] And,
[00:26:24] so
[00:26:25] I ended up when I started freelancing,
[00:26:28] I built
[00:26:28] in a spreadsheet, I built
[00:26:30] like a freelancing dashboard
[00:26:32] and that allowed me to manage,
[00:26:34] you know, my clients and
[00:26:35] how much work I had.
[00:26:36] And how much I could expect
[00:26:37] and all these different factors.
[00:26:39] So I knew I was
[00:26:40] on track from the sales
[00:26:41] and marketing side,
[00:26:42] but also from delivering for my
[00:26:44] clients.
[00:26:45] And, so I had this spreadsheet
[00:26:47] dashboard and then a friend of mine,
[00:26:49] he stumbled upon Airtable.
[00:26:51] I mean, this would have been
[00:26:53] almost 10 years ago, maybe,
[00:26:56] 2015 or 16, maybe.
[00:26:59] And,
[00:27:00] so I had this, this dashboard
[00:27:02] and he told me about Airtable
[00:27:04] and I was like,
[00:27:05] wow, this is perfect because it,
[00:27:07] the, the limitations of a spreadsheet
[00:27:09] Airtable kind of took that and,
[00:27:10] and allowed me to go much further with it
[00:27:12] and you had the database
[00:27:14] kind of approach. And
[00:27:15] so I, I moved my dashboard over
[00:27:18] and just made my life much easier to
[00:27:21] manage
[00:27:22] and
[00:27:23] and I was able to sort of discard the,
[00:27:25] the
[00:27:26] the spreadsheet
[00:27:27] now funny, funny recent story
[00:27:29] is in that transition process,
[00:27:31] I brought most things over.
[00:27:33] But as my freelancing has evolved,
[00:27:37] there's some systems that I used
[00:27:39] to have on the spreadsheet
[00:27:40] that I forgotten
[00:27:40] that I didn't move over.
[00:27:42] And I've recently implemented a new,
[00:27:44] a new system to kind of measure,
[00:27:46] measure that in Airtable.
[00:27:48] So I went back to the spreadsheet
[00:27:49] a couple of months
[00:27:50] ago to discover that thing.
[00:27:51] I was like,
[00:27:52] I, I used to have, I used to be really
[00:27:53] good about
[00:27:54] this particular thing
[00:27:56] and I can even dive into that in the,
[00:27:58] in the template that I use if,
[00:27:59] if you want to do that.
[00:28:00] So I recreated it and I actually
[00:28:02] made a much, much better version of it.
[00:28:04] So,
[00:28:05] so that's, that's it in a nutshell.
[00:28:07] I, I wrote two books,
[00:28:08] one on freelancing
[00:28:09] that I published in 2017
[00:28:10] and another for small business
[00:28:11] owners in 2019.
[00:28:13] And you can see the on,
[00:28:14] on, on this side, the or the orange,
[00:28:16] the orange book here.
[00:28:17] And then this is the path
[00:28:19] of the freelancer over here.
[00:28:20] So,
[00:28:22] yeah, what else do you want
[00:28:23] to know about my story?
[00:28:24] Looks like you're a
[00:28:25] Star Wars fan as well.
[00:28:27] Yes, a big Star Wars fan
[00:28:29] and grew up with it camped out
[00:28:33] for the prequels
[00:28:34] was
[00:28:34] more of like,
[00:28:36] yeah,
[00:28:37] The Millennium Falcon and
[00:28:38] Star Destroyer.
[00:28:40] I, yeah, I was looking
[00:28:41] at the pattern and I was like,
[00:28:43] oh, what an interesting pattern.
[00:28:45] And then like as soon as
[00:28:47] I noticed baby Yoda
[00:28:49] in the corner, I was like, oh, ok,
[00:28:52] a
[00:28:52] baby
[00:28:53] or
[00:28:53] as he's formerly known
[00:28:55] at first, I thought maybe those
[00:28:57] were your own sketches. I was like,
[00:28:59] wow.
[00:28:59] Now the over here are my own sketches.
[00:29:02] So my degree, I went to the Art
[00:29:03] Institute of Atlanta
[00:29:04] and I got a degree in,
[00:29:05] in animation, 3D animation.
[00:29:07] And that's, that's another part
[00:29:09] of my story is is the 3D animation and the
[00:29:11] artistic side
[00:29:13] done stuff for Discovery Channel
[00:29:15] and PBS and through my uncle's animation
[00:29:17] studio
[00:29:18] before I had the,
[00:29:19] the marketing company. So
[00:29:21] so these are some of the,
[00:29:23] the drawings I I found in my, my
[00:29:25] portfolio that I thought,
[00:29:27] oh, I'll put those up there.
[00:29:28] Something interesting.
[00:29:30] So, so my question for you is how has
[00:29:34] how, how have you seen Airtable
[00:29:36] used in kind of the freelancer community,
[00:29:39] the people you interact with,
[00:29:41] is it something that is
[00:29:42] heavily adopted or what's
[00:29:44] the?
[00:29:45] So
[00:29:46] I think it could be.
[00:29:48] So
[00:29:49] it's it, I would say yes in some ways,
[00:29:51] but not to the degree that I think it
[00:29:54] should be or could be.
[00:29:55] So I definitely like an
[00:29:56] ambassador for Airtable,
[00:29:57] like if you are not using it
[00:29:58] or you haven't heard of it.
[00:30:00] And whenever I work
[00:30:00] with a new client,
[00:30:02] I have a template
[00:30:03] for project management.
[00:30:05] And so most clients I work with,
[00:30:08] I say, do you have a project
[00:30:09] management system? They probably say no.
[00:30:11] And if they don't, then they said
[00:30:13] we're gonna, we're gonna set up an
[00:30:14] Airtable base and we're
[00:30:15] gonna manage it through Airtable.
[00:30:17] So for me as a freelancer, I use it.
[00:30:19] Other freelancers
[00:30:21] once they start to realize the power,
[00:30:24] then they start to,
[00:30:26] to get more and more on board.
[00:30:28] But there is a,
[00:30:30] there's, I think one of the maybe
[00:30:31] one of the challenges
[00:30:32] with Airtable is it is
[00:30:33] kind of a build your own adventure.
[00:30:36] And so having templates and, and,
[00:30:39] and for the ones that they provide
[00:30:40] to you and then the Airtable Universe and
[00:30:42] I've got three templates
[00:30:43] in there that people can check out.
[00:30:45] That definitely helps with
[00:30:46] that kind of that starting point
[00:30:48] of like going
[00:30:48] from a blank canvas
[00:30:50] to something to work with.
[00:30:51] So I think that can be a barrier.
[00:30:53] A lot of people like tools that maybe do
[00:30:55] similar things like a Monday
[00:30:57] dot com or something
[00:30:58] that already has the
[00:30:59] structure implemented.
[00:31:01] But for those that kind of can get,
[00:31:03] get the value of it and realize,
[00:31:05] I think for me,
[00:31:06] one of the big points
[00:31:08] of value for Airtable is
[00:31:10] and kind of build my own app
[00:31:11] without having to be a coder.
[00:31:13] And so I can do so many things
[00:31:16] from an operational standpoint,
[00:31:19] both for me and my, my customers
[00:31:22] that I wouldn't be able to do
[00:31:24] without Airtable
[00:31:25] or I would have to find some
[00:31:26] tool that might be able to do it.
[00:31:27] And I'm the type of person who can
[00:31:29] be the configurable to kind
[00:31:31] of work it out and build the frameworks.
[00:31:34] And so giving me that flexibility
[00:31:36] is a huge point of value for me.
[00:31:38] So
[00:31:40] yeah,
[00:31:42] what would you, I imagine to be
[00:31:44] able to change things
[00:31:45] pretty closely because
[00:31:47] to your, to your point,
[00:31:48] you started off with a subset of
[00:31:51] work flows that you had in,
[00:31:52] in sheets and you move them
[00:31:54] into Airtable and
[00:31:55] then down the line,
[00:31:57] you moved in something else and had you
[00:31:59] built a very complete system
[00:32:02] in something that's more
[00:32:04] code reliant or on a premade
[00:32:07] sort of system, custom built or whatever.
[00:32:10] Your market share is
[00:32:13] adding that other piece down
[00:32:15] the line would have been difficult in
[00:32:18] a
[00:32:19] couple of different ways.
[00:32:20] Whereas an Airtable,
[00:32:21] it's, it's a different
[00:32:21] experience. It's not easy,
[00:32:23] but it's a different experience.
[00:32:24] Yeah.
[00:32:25] And, and I was also sad too,
[00:32:27] like, because I used to use
[00:32:28] Trello,
[00:32:29] but as soon as when,
[00:32:30] when Airtable just pulled in the kanban
[00:32:32] boards, it was like game over for Trello
[00:32:34] and I love
[00:32:34] Trello, but it was like,
[00:32:36] there's just not a reason
[00:32:37] to use it anymore because
[00:32:38] the beauty of Airtable
[00:32:40] is you can look at the data
[00:32:41] in so many different ways
[00:32:42] and it's really grown so
[00:32:43] much and it actually,
[00:32:45] it's grows so much faster
[00:32:46] in functionality than I can
[00:32:47] really keep up
[00:32:49] because I'm not like
[00:32:50] strictly an Airtable consultant.
[00:32:52] I can't like, always know what's
[00:32:54] going on and I'm using it
[00:32:55] more as a tool for,
[00:32:56] for other than
[00:32:56] watching our podcast
[00:32:58] every week? Not enough.
[00:33:00] In fact, I, you know, I've, I've had to
[00:33:02] get to the point where I refer other
[00:33:04] Airtable specialists
[00:33:05] for these advanced projects and
[00:33:07] it just is not, not the, the wheelhouse
[00:33:09] that I'm, I'm playing in,
[00:33:10] but I, but I love it
[00:33:12] and we'll continue to use it and,
[00:33:13] and advocate for it.
[00:33:15] So
[00:33:16] what
[00:33:17] so favorite feature and must have that,
[00:33:21] that you want them to add?
[00:33:25] Yeah, that's a really good question.
[00:33:28] I guess that just thinking about what I
[00:33:29] just said in terms of like,
[00:33:31] there's so many things
[00:33:32] that are unraveling in
[00:33:33] terms of rolling out new functions,
[00:33:36] it would be cool if there was a way for
[00:33:39] like, so we have Air, we have Airtable
[00:33:41] Universe and you got those
[00:33:42] and you have templates when you start.
[00:33:44] I don't know if, if there were like
[00:33:46] micro templates that I could install on
[00:33:48] an existing base.
[00:33:50] Like I just wanna kind of
[00:33:51] build out this particular function.
[00:33:53] And I, I don't know if that
[00:33:54] kind of thing exists,
[00:33:55] but that would be one thing
[00:33:56] that comes to mind is
[00:33:58] how you make it easy for me
[00:33:59] to adapt some of these systems.
[00:34:01] Maybe it's the automation tool or
[00:34:03] I've been playing with the interfaces.
[00:34:06] And I think the interface is actually
[00:34:07] a big game changer from when I first
[00:34:09] started using Airtable
[00:34:11] for visualizing data.
[00:34:13] That was always one of my,
[00:34:14] I guess the obstacles I had
[00:34:15] with the dashboards
[00:34:16] I was making is I didn't have a
[00:34:17] way to visualize it now with
[00:34:19] the interfaces that I've been out,
[00:34:20] I don't know what, two years?
[00:34:23] You know, that's given me a
[00:34:24] chance to
[00:34:25] leverage that with both myself or
[00:34:27] some of my clients
[00:34:28] and not have to use a separate,
[00:34:30] a separate system.
[00:34:31] So,
[00:34:33] yeah. Does that
[00:34:34] answer the questions? I had
[00:34:35] them
[00:34:35] all?
[00:34:37] Yeah,
[00:34:37] that's a great call out too. In that
[00:34:40] Airtable has a lot of
[00:34:41] different resources for.
[00:34:43] I'm starting from scratch,
[00:34:45] give me something
[00:34:46] that is sort of prebuilt.
[00:34:47] That's close to what I want.
[00:34:49] But if you've already started
[00:34:51] and you just want one automation
[00:34:53] added to your system, you gotta build it
[00:34:56] yourself and have two screens
[00:34:58] open and sort of look at
[00:34:59] someone else's screenshot
[00:35:01] and then there's
[00:35:02] no easy way to sort of pull
[00:35:04] up
[00:35:04] coping and pasting like pieces
[00:35:06] of it would be nice. Yeah.
[00:35:07] Yeah.
[00:35:10] Yeah.
[00:35:11] Go ahead.
[00:35:12] Oh, I was just gonna say
[00:35:13] to your point for interfaces,
[00:35:15] they're great.
[00:35:15] They're wonderful.
[00:35:16] If you start an interface
[00:35:18] in one base and want to do
[00:35:19] something very similar in a
[00:35:20] different base.
[00:35:22] Good luck.
[00:35:23] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:24] Yeah. And that, I, I've seen some
[00:35:26] shifts in the interfaces just in terms of
[00:35:28] making it easier to create them.
[00:35:31] But that's, you know,
[00:35:32] probably got more that they're,
[00:35:34] they're doing,
[00:35:34] but like, it would be just a
[00:35:36] practical example I have
[00:35:37] like in one of my
[00:35:38] bases for my clients,
[00:35:39] I have a calendar function
[00:35:40] for their email marketing.
[00:35:41] And so I built that out,
[00:35:43] but it'd be nice if I could
[00:35:44] just copy that one piece
[00:35:45] into another one
[00:35:46] that I already have instead
[00:35:47] of doing all the stuff you're
[00:35:48] talking about.
[00:35:50] Yeah.
[00:35:51] Yeah, for sure.
[00:35:52] Cool. Awesome. Thank you
[00:35:54] for sharing that.
[00:35:55] If you want to start sharing your
[00:35:56] screen, we'll, we'll move on
[00:35:58] to the next
[00:35:59] segment here. Let's go back to the
[00:36:02] screen, share screen. And then,
[00:36:04] and so yeah, we're gonna check out some,
[00:36:07] some bases that, that you use in your,
[00:36:10] in your world and how they work.
[00:36:13] All right, let
[00:36:13] me
[00:36:13] know.
[00:36:14] OK,
[00:36:14] cool.
[00:36:15] All right. So I want to just start
[00:36:17] with this because I do have
[00:36:18] three templates in the Airtable universe.
[00:36:21] This first one is
[00:36:22] the freelancing dashboard that I made
[00:36:25] and so you can go in there and if
[00:36:27] you're a freelancer play with that
[00:36:29] and I have I actually on this one,
[00:36:31] I have pretty good
[00:36:33] kind of instructions on how it works and
[00:36:36] documentation on it to, to help people.
[00:36:42] The second one is the system,
[00:36:43] it's called Idema.
[00:36:44] And let me
[00:36:46] Idema
[00:36:47] is this five phase process.
[00:36:49] So it's, everything starts with an idea.
[00:36:52] So we I capture the idea,
[00:36:54] we discover the idea,
[00:36:55] we execute the idea we maintain
[00:36:57] the idea and then we audit the idea.
[00:36:58] So it's these five stages
[00:37:00] and this was actually born out of
[00:37:02] a desperate when I had my marketing
[00:37:05] company,
[00:37:06] we were, it was very chaotic.
[00:37:07] It was kind of like the Wild West
[00:37:09] with project management
[00:37:10] and we'd bring in a
[00:37:12] project manager that was
[00:37:13] like really good and organized.
[00:37:15] But the chaos was just so
[00:37:17] much that they would
[00:37:18] leave. They're like,
[00:37:19] I can't handle the chaos anymore.
[00:37:20] So we kind of got to the point
[00:37:22] where like, OK,
[00:37:22] all these people are leaving,
[00:37:23] maybe there's something wrong with this.
[00:37:24] We should figure it out.
[00:37:25] And being entrepreneurial
[00:37:26] and creative
[00:37:27] that's just kind of how I was.
[00:37:28] But I wanted to, I wanted to
[00:37:30] figure out what was kind
[00:37:31] of the life cycle of every
[00:37:31] project. And so this is where the Idema
[00:37:34] came from.
[00:37:35] And so I have this kind of framework
[00:37:38] in my mind whenever I'm doing project
[00:37:40] management or I'm working with clients is
[00:37:42] OK, how do we, you know,
[00:37:44] capture the idea,
[00:37:45] how do we plan those ideas,
[00:37:46] execute them?
[00:37:47] And then how do we have
[00:37:48] visibility in a dashboard
[00:37:49] to be able to see those?
[00:37:51] So that's the second one.
[00:37:52] And then the third one
[00:37:54] is actually
[00:37:56] it's how to find a job
[00:37:58] in the modern era and it's really
[00:38:00] a template for people to
[00:38:03] to, to kind of manage
[00:38:05] outreach. So when I think about,
[00:38:07] when I was, when I shifted
[00:38:09] to freelancing, I kind of realized,
[00:38:11] you know,
[00:38:11] some of the things I was doing
[00:38:13] was similar to like a job search.
[00:38:14] And so I kind of built a,
[00:38:16] a template to help people
[00:38:17] that were in that,
[00:38:18] that process, but I ended up
[00:38:19] going down the freelancing road.
[00:38:20] So,
[00:38:21] so that was one of the remnants of that.
[00:38:24] So, I will start
[00:38:26] with my freelancing dashboard,
[00:38:28] just show a couple of things.
[00:38:31] This, I've got a list of my clients
[00:38:33] here and one of the things that I do is
[00:38:35] I have these different categories.
[00:38:37] As a freelancer,
[00:38:38] there's a lot going on just
[00:38:39] as an entrepreneur,
[00:38:40] creative and we have to
[00:38:41] build our own structure.
[00:38:41] And so having these
[00:38:43] I have a list of all my clients here
[00:38:45] and this is my people tab
[00:38:47] and I have different tabs for different,
[00:38:48] different things,
[00:38:49] but I wanna just show two of the tabs
[00:38:50] today.
[00:38:52] But
[00:38:53] I order this, these clients.
[00:38:54] So I have clients,
[00:38:55] I have eight clients and this
[00:38:57] normal client
[00:38:57] and then I have this day
[00:38:59] complete grouping
[00:39:01] and I group them this way
[00:39:02] and I do it in order.
[00:39:04] So I essentially work through
[00:39:06] my clients based on this order.
[00:39:09] So in terms of priority
[00:39:11] and I my, I do an hourly,
[00:39:12] I do batches of 10 hours with my clients.
[00:39:15] And so I, I identify how many hours,
[00:39:17] you know, I've been approved and invoiced
[00:39:18] and then how many potential new hours that
[00:39:21] that are on the horizon this month
[00:39:23] and then it calculates that
[00:39:25] and tells me how many hours
[00:39:26] I need to work per day,
[00:39:28] per client in order to
[00:39:29] finish those hours.
[00:39:31] And then I have an adjustment
[00:39:32] column that I can use and then I have
[00:39:34] different columns
[00:39:35] for the status so I can change
[00:39:37] the group the invoice status
[00:39:39] that they paid. If they, if they,
[00:39:40] if I invoice them yet or not,
[00:39:42] do I invoice them
[00:39:43] before or after what kind of
[00:39:44] thing project, then I,
[00:39:46] I have them all on another Airtable.
[00:39:48] So they have, I have a link to
[00:39:49] their Airtable project management.
[00:39:52] And so now I can just easily access
[00:39:54] their Airtable with one click and go
[00:39:57] into their spot.
[00:39:58] So, so I have all my clients here
[00:40:01] and then I organize them in this priority.
[00:40:03] And so
[00:40:04] that way, you know, if I have one
[00:40:06] that I have a client that's like an
[00:40:08] important, I put him in an important
[00:40:10] column and it'll move it up.
[00:40:11] Or I have a client that's urgent
[00:40:13] needs something right now and then it'll,
[00:40:15] it'll go up. So I have a hierarchy
[00:40:17] that allows me to figure out
[00:40:18] what to focus on.
[00:40:19] And then I have the,
[00:40:20] the columns to figure out
[00:40:21] how much to, to do that.
[00:40:23] And So my focus metric is
[00:40:24] really time like number
[00:40:25] of billable hours per day, per week,
[00:40:27] per month, per year.
[00:40:29] And so if I follow this column,
[00:40:30] you know, I'm gonna hit my goals
[00:40:32] assuming I've got enough
[00:40:33] client work to do that.
[00:40:34] So.
[00:40:35] The new one that I added
[00:40:36] is this thing called Daily Tracking here.
[00:40:39] And
[00:40:40] this is where
[00:40:42] I have, let's see,
[00:40:46] some of these real quick.
[00:40:50] So these columns,
[00:40:52] so I have that really,
[00:40:54] it's each day I put in,
[00:40:56] you know, these different check marks here
[00:40:58] and then how many
[00:41:01] hours, my goal is to log four hours
[00:41:04] and 20 minutes available time each day.
[00:41:07] And so I'm actually tracking
[00:41:09] that throughout each month
[00:41:10] and I can see the
[00:41:11] pattern. So if I got 4 of the hours,
[00:41:16] and then have I gone over it
[00:41:17] and have I gone extra hours? And I,
[00:41:19] you know, do I, sometimes I might work in
[00:41:21] this case on the 11th,
[00:41:22] I did over five hours, 48 minutes.
[00:41:25] So I'm tracking this and the reason
[00:41:26] I'm tracking it is I'm tracking it against
[00:41:28] my goals. So this month I've logged 40
[00:41:32] hours billable hours
[00:41:33] and my goal is 43.
[00:41:34] So I'm a little, I'm at 93% so I'm a
[00:41:36] little bit behind.
[00:41:37] So then I, I can adjust, you know,
[00:41:40] today or tomorrow or this week,
[00:41:41] you know, work a little bit extra
[00:41:43] to kind of make up the difference.
[00:41:43] But ideally I would be
[00:41:45] pretty consistent. But,
[00:41:46] that doesn't always
[00:41:47] happen with being married,
[00:41:49] having five kids
[00:41:50] and all the, all the life things,
[00:41:52] getting injured,
[00:41:54] all the kinds of things. So
[00:41:55] this is a cool system.
[00:41:56] I just, I built, this is the thing
[00:41:58] that I realized I kind
[00:41:58] of lost in my spreadsheet
[00:42:00] was I didn't have a way
[00:42:01] to really motivate me on a daily basis
[00:42:03] in terms of really tracking how I was
[00:42:05] doing going throughout the day.
[00:42:06] You know, if I'm halfway through the day,
[00:42:08] I need to make sure that I'm kind of
[00:42:09] pacing myself so that I can adjust for the
[00:42:11] second half of the day
[00:42:12] if I'm missing my, my
[00:42:13] mark.
[00:42:15] So
[00:42:15] any questions on that before I move the,
[00:42:18] the jump to the next one?
[00:42:21] I don't think so. No.
[00:42:23] Yeah. So
[00:42:24] I'll jump. This is a client of mine.
[00:42:27] The
[00:42:28] this is the going back to this template.
[00:42:31] This is the Idema
[00:42:32] template. I've made
[00:42:33] some adjustments to it.
[00:42:35] But I essentially I take that Idema
[00:42:37] framework and then I create these micros
[00:42:39] stages within that.
[00:42:41] So all of these groupings here
[00:42:44] are within one of those areas you have to
[00:42:47] maintain up here and then the done.
[00:42:50] And so,
[00:42:51] you know, these are maintained items,
[00:42:53] these are things I need to do on a regular
[00:42:54] basis.
[00:42:55] It might be in this case,
[00:42:57] I, I don't have a, a pacing
[00:42:59] but in some cases I
[00:43:00] might put, you know,
[00:43:00] this is a weekly thing or a monthly thing
[00:43:02] or trigger based.
[00:43:05] I have a done this done thing
[00:43:07] and then I also have an archive column
[00:43:09] and the reason I do that is so
[00:43:10] I put everything in the done
[00:43:12] when I'm done.
[00:43:12] But then I can do, I can report
[00:43:13] with my clients
[00:43:15] on, you know, what's been done
[00:43:16] and then I'll archive it.
[00:43:18] So it kind of gives
[00:43:18] me a process for reporting.
[00:43:22] But I can go, here's the things
[00:43:23] I'm stuck on. Here's the things that are
[00:43:25] active. And again,
[00:43:27] I, I order these hierarchically
[00:43:29] from top to bottom
[00:43:30] based on what to focus on.
[00:43:31] So
[00:43:32] I, you know, I need to knock out
[00:43:34] the stuck thing before
[00:43:35] I work on the active
[00:43:36] things.
[00:43:37] So in this case,
[00:43:38] I need to figure out
[00:43:39] how to get access to the,
[00:43:40] the Facebook page for this client,
[00:43:42] but I'm stuck because
[00:43:43] they haven't provided that and,
[00:43:44] and they don't necessarily,
[00:43:45] you know,
[00:43:45] it's kind of a lost page.
[00:43:47] So we're trying to recover it.
[00:43:49] With active, these are things
[00:43:51] I'm currently working on projects that I'm
[00:43:53] currently working on.
[00:43:54] And then in this case
[00:43:55] I'm using um Airtable's recently,
[00:43:58] you know, it's formatting
[00:43:59] to do a checklist inside of it.
[00:44:01] So I do like that.
[00:44:02] What I'm gonna work on next.
[00:44:04] What are the top ideas
[00:44:05] that then follow that.
[00:44:06] I also have a templates here
[00:44:08] because these are tasks
[00:44:09] that I do every month
[00:44:11] for this client. So what I'll do
[00:44:12] is I'll just copy, I'll make duplicate the
[00:44:14] record and then it has my checklist
[00:44:16] inside of it, of what to do.
[00:44:18] And then I'll move it up to
[00:44:20] one of these other stages.
[00:44:22] And then I there is another big thing
[00:44:24] that I do on all my Airtables is I
[00:44:26] have an idea repository.
[00:44:27] So whenever I'm working with clients,
[00:44:29] I see opportunities for improvement things
[00:44:30] we could do
[00:44:31] where they have suggestions.
[00:44:33] And so we're just capturing
[00:44:34] all the ideas here.
[00:44:35] So we have a place
[00:44:36] and they don't get forgotten.
[00:44:37] So that's a big thing.
[00:44:39] A couple other things
[00:44:41] I added on this base
[00:44:42] is I have an email tracking system.
[00:44:45] So we use mailchimp and
[00:44:46] help them run their campaigns. And so I,
[00:44:48] I put them all in here.
[00:44:49] One of things I like about
[00:44:51] Airtable is the ability to
[00:44:52] both track data and then be able to,
[00:44:54] to look at it in different
[00:44:55] ways that might,
[00:44:56] that might not be possible
[00:44:57] in the tool of which we're using.
[00:44:59] So in the case of mailchimp,
[00:45:00] so what I'll do is I'll
[00:45:02] I can see then I can put
[00:45:03] in the, the time I sent
[00:45:05] the day, the time
[00:45:06] AM PM,
[00:45:07] number of sents opens, clicks
[00:45:10] what type of email it is.
[00:45:11] So this is the chronological view
[00:45:13] and then I have a calendar view
[00:45:15] where I can actually, you know,
[00:45:16] move things around this way
[00:45:18] and see where they
[00:45:18] are.
[00:45:20] And this is something I can share
[00:45:21] with the client
[00:45:22] so they know what's going out
[00:45:22] when it's going out.
[00:45:24] And then I have this,
[00:45:25] what I, this, I call it a stat slicing.
[00:45:27] And this is where I can,
[00:45:29] I can, I can sort
[00:45:31] or group by different factors
[00:45:33] in order to kind of get an
[00:45:35] idea of like what time
[00:45:36] is the best
[00:45:37] or what day. So,
[00:45:39] you know,
[00:45:40] in this case, I can,
[00:45:44] you know, pull up the day
[00:45:45] and go OK for the normal emails.
[00:45:50] and it looks like these
[00:45:51] are not loading for, oh,
[00:45:53] I'm missing the data now.
[00:45:56] So it'll show me, you know,
[00:45:58] what's the open rate and the click,
[00:46:01] the click rate.
[00:46:02] So I can go which day is the best?
[00:46:04] And I can actually
[00:46:05] identify that real quickly.
[00:46:06] Or I can do a,
[00:46:08] I can also group by AM or PM
[00:46:11] and go which you know,
[00:46:12] is it better to send in the,
[00:46:13] in the morning or the
[00:46:14] afternoon?
[00:46:15] And I
[00:46:15] can get
[00:46:16] you give, do you
[00:46:17] give access to your clients,
[00:46:19] like read only access or are they in here?
[00:46:21] How much time do they spend in here?
[00:46:23] So with this, I,
[00:46:24] I'm open to giving as much
[00:46:26] or as little access as a
[00:46:28] client wants,
[00:46:29] most clients
[00:46:33] are gonna be just read or
[00:46:35] commenting. Not even commenting,
[00:46:38] I would say read is probably
[00:46:39] the most common.
[00:46:40] Some will do commenting.
[00:46:41] I've had some clients and some projects
[00:46:44] where they're actually will project,
[00:46:45] manage together through the,
[00:46:47] you know, they'll,
[00:46:49] we'll have a column here,
[00:46:50] which I've got hidden,
[00:46:51] I call it passengers,
[00:46:53] you know, I'm working on this.
[00:46:55] So and so is working on that
[00:46:57] and we can actually
[00:46:57] have different views
[00:46:59] for the different people.
[00:47:01] But what I've discovered is
[00:47:03] that most people
[00:47:04] don't necessarily do that,
[00:47:05] but I've had teams
[00:47:06] often I'm managing a team
[00:47:08] of freelancers and so sometimes
[00:47:09] there's like three or four
[00:47:11] of us working on the same client.
[00:47:12] And so we'll use Airtable
[00:47:14] together and I'll,
[00:47:15] I'll project manage and,
[00:47:16] and they'll participate.
[00:47:18] But for the most part, clients are pretty,
[00:47:21] pretty hands off. So,
[00:47:24] so,
[00:47:25] but there is a, I think a big part
[00:47:27] of it is a reassurance factor.
[00:47:29] The fact that it's there
[00:47:30] and that they have access to it,
[00:47:32] it, it kind of just
[00:47:34] helps build trust.
[00:47:37] And so that seems to be more
[00:47:39] valuable than actually them,
[00:47:41] like reviewing things
[00:47:42] in it.
[00:47:43] So it tends to be more for me
[00:47:45] and then in some cases I have clients that
[00:47:47] they, they're so kind of like
[00:47:50] maybe just just disordered or in chaos
[00:47:53] that
[00:47:54] instead of even sending
[00:47:56] and sending them to Airtable,
[00:47:57] I'll like send him an
[00:47:58] email with like kind of a summary
[00:47:59] of things and then
[00:48:00] a link to the Airtable if
[00:48:01] they want more details.
[00:48:02] So trying to translate it for them
[00:48:05] makes sense. So,
[00:48:08] this one is another thing
[00:48:10] I've been kind of experimenting with,
[00:48:11] this is another client.
[00:48:12] Some of the S E O stuff
[00:48:14] that I've been doing.
[00:48:15] I'm or I've got in this case,
[00:48:17] I've got all their pages listed in here,
[00:48:20] the URL S
[00:48:21] and then I've got different columns
[00:48:22] for different things.
[00:48:23] But the big thing that
[00:48:23] I'm doing
[00:48:24] is S E O
[00:48:27] change tracking.
[00:48:29] So we might make a change to a page.
[00:48:34] So this might be, you know,
[00:48:36] a title change or a content change.
[00:48:38] And so I've got a column for that
[00:48:40] and
[00:48:41] and then I date,
[00:48:43] I have the upgraded and updated
[00:48:45] and then I started doing
[00:48:46] a change date column as well.
[00:48:48] So we have more precision.
[00:48:51] But from an S E O standpoint,
[00:48:52] we can change the title on a page.
[00:48:54] So we might change this page
[00:48:56] and I can look, I did that on March 31st.
[00:48:57] So this was almost three weeks ago.
[00:48:59] So now I can look on Google
[00:49:01] and see in the search
[00:49:02] console that they have or in
[00:49:03] our keyword tracking.
[00:49:05] And I can see after I made
[00:49:06] that change, what happened?
[00:49:07] And so this log, lets me do
[00:49:10] that and then it, it links back,
[00:49:12] this column links back to the pages
[00:49:14] so I can also look at a page
[00:49:17] and go okay,
[00:49:18] this page has had three changes.
[00:49:20] These are the three changes here
[00:49:22] and there's two title changes,
[00:49:24] one and one URL change.
[00:49:26] And
[00:49:27] and so then that, that's another thing
[00:49:29] that I'm, I'm doing just to see how that
[00:49:31] changes are,
[00:49:32] are affecting things and then
[00:49:34] be able to either reverse course or,
[00:49:37] see that it's a positive change.
[00:49:39] So, does that make sense?
[00:49:41] Yeah, I think I, I heard that
[00:49:45] on the startups for the rest
[00:49:47] of us podcast, I think,
[00:49:48] I think they were talking
[00:49:50] about that the strategy of
[00:49:52] keeping track of marketing log of changes.
[00:49:55] And so it makes it really easy
[00:49:56] and then it's also a value because of the,
[00:49:58] the ups and downs of
[00:49:59] whether the change makes
[00:50:01] a difference on Google.
[00:50:03] So,
[00:50:04] I got one other base,
[00:50:06] I could show you real quick.
[00:50:09] Yeah, maybe a minute. Ok.
[00:50:11] All right.
[00:50:11] So this is just a personal base.
[00:50:13] So I'm me and two of my kids are
[00:50:14] going to
[00:50:16] Honduras this summer
[00:50:17] to serve the community in,
[00:50:20] in
[00:50:21] on
[00:50:21] in a
[00:50:22] valley. So we're actually doing
[00:50:24] a fundraiser
[00:50:25] to help raise for the service trip
[00:50:26] and we're doing it through our church. And
[00:50:28] anyways, it's
[00:50:30] it's a lot of work to,
[00:50:31] to do to a lot of people
[00:50:33] that we're reaching out to,
[00:50:34] we're sending letters,
[00:50:35] we're emailing them.
[00:50:36] We're hand mailing some or snail mail.
[00:50:39] And then we also have like
[00:50:42] who's donated, you know,
[00:50:43] so I have these different groupings
[00:50:45] just to help me track, like,
[00:50:47] OK, who have I sent? You know,
[00:50:49] because there's like almost 300
[00:50:50] people that I reached out to,
[00:50:51] who have I sent it?
[00:50:52] How have I sent it?
[00:50:53] How have they responded?
[00:50:54] Who's donated?
[00:50:55] Who's committed to donating?
[00:50:57] Am I in track?
[00:50:58] You know,
[00:50:59] and so
[00:51:00] I use Airtable both personally
[00:51:02] and professionally and,
[00:51:03] and I just wanted to
[00:51:04] give a quick example.
[00:51:06] You know, I have a goals and plan
[00:51:08] and then I have the people tab is really
[00:51:09] the main one I use for tracking,
[00:51:13] you know, who's giving and,
[00:51:14] and what they're giving.
[00:51:15] And
[00:51:17] and I, I went to Mexico last year
[00:51:20] and I kind of built this system and,
[00:51:22] and used it again for this year.
[00:51:24] But me and my oldest daughter
[00:51:26] just went last time.
[00:51:28] But we were able to raise
[00:51:31] within two weeks, we raised all
[00:51:32] the money we needed
[00:51:33] and we ended up raising a
[00:51:34] lot more, which helped some of the
[00:51:36] other teams members that weren't able to.
[00:51:38] So the system worked pretty good
[00:51:40] and I would like to add template
[00:51:41] this and add it into the Airtable
[00:51:43] universe in case anyone
[00:51:44] is there,
[00:51:45] but it's just a simple
[00:51:47] way to track, to
[00:51:48] track what I'm doing and what I
[00:51:50] on a personal level. So,
[00:51:52] wanted to just
[00:51:53] mention
[00:51:53] that,
[00:51:54] I hope that Airtable doesn't lose
[00:51:57] sight of that overlap between using it for
[00:52:00] your personal life and business.
[00:52:02] You know, as they focus
[00:52:04] more on the enterprise,
[00:52:05] I hope they don't lose.
[00:52:07] That's a good point.
[00:52:08] I, I do hope that as well because,
[00:52:10] as a, just a freelancer and a small,
[00:52:13] a small guy who's not a big deal,
[00:52:15] obviously
[00:52:16] it's from a financial standpoint
[00:52:18] and that's kind of one of the things
[00:52:20] that's happened with hubspot.
[00:52:21] Unfortunately,
[00:52:22] I, I work with a lot of clients
[00:52:23] that use it and help them
[00:52:24] with their hubspot
[00:52:25] systems but they kind of made that
[00:52:27] shift towards enterprise
[00:52:28] and kind of left the
[00:52:29] rest of us
[00:52:30] staying.
[00:52:31] So,
[00:52:33] yeah, for sure. I'm sure. I
[00:52:35] I would imagine most people
[00:52:37] that use Airtable
[00:52:38] in their, in their business world
[00:52:40] also find a use case for it in person.
[00:52:42] Yeah.
[00:52:43] Yeah.
[00:52:44] And a lot of people start with a
[00:52:46] personal use case
[00:52:47] and move it to their business.
[00:52:48] Yeah. Yeah. Good
[00:52:49] point.
[00:52:50] Yeah. And I have a personal,
[00:52:52] I use it personally
[00:52:53] for other things like tracking
[00:52:54] our savings and giving and
[00:52:55] budget stuff and,
[00:52:57] yeah. Yeah.
[00:52:59] Awesome. So people can find
[00:53:01] you on your website Jason Scott
[00:53:03] Montoya
[00:53:04] dot com.
[00:53:05] Yeah. So, jasonscottmontoya.com
[00:53:07] if you type in and if you're in the
[00:53:08] Airtable Universe and you want to
[00:53:10] search for the templates,
[00:53:11] just type in my last name Montoya.
[00:53:13] On my website, I've got tons
[00:53:15] of blogs on personal development,
[00:53:17] entrepreneurship, leading others.
[00:53:18] I've got a podcast
[00:53:19] called the Share
[00:53:20] Life. It's called Share
[00:53:22] Life systems and stories
[00:53:23] to live better and work smarter.
[00:53:25] And and then I've got, yeah,
[00:53:26] everything's on Jason Scott
[00:53:28] Montoya dot com. If you need
[00:53:29] or want to explore any of that.
[00:53:31] Thank you. Thanks for coming on.
[00:53:33] So
[00:53:33] I
[00:53:34] think it's safe to say that
[00:53:36] your business is very
[00:53:37] dependent on Airtable.
[00:53:39] Yes. Yes, I couldn't do
[00:53:40] what I do without it. And
[00:53:42] and hopefully,
[00:53:44] I've made some many
[00:53:46] Airtables over the years
[00:53:48] to help them grow as well.
[00:53:50] Awesome. Thank you, Jason.
[00:53:52] OK. A quick shout out to
[00:53:54] join our community and in particular,
[00:53:57] subscribe to our youtube channel.
[00:53:58] We're trying to get that up to 1000.
[00:54:00] We're in the pushing 800 range.
[00:54:02] So we're hoping to get
[00:54:04] to 1000 here this year.
[00:54:05] So tell your friends join us
[00:54:07] in the community
[00:54:08] builtonair.com/join
[00:54:10] that gets you into the Slack community
[00:54:12] where there's thousands of other
[00:54:14] Airtable fans
[00:54:15] converse conversing and whatnot.
[00:54:18] So we'd love to have you
[00:54:19] join us there.
[00:54:21] Let's move on to scripting
[00:54:23] time with Kamille.
[00:54:24] Gonna show us some
[00:54:27] cool scripting go for it.
[00:54:30] So
[00:54:33] this is something that comes up,
[00:54:36] I think a lot when you have a
[00:54:39] one or more columns that contain data and
[00:54:43] it's easy to know when a value
[00:54:46] has changed because Airtable has a last
[00:54:49] modified by and last modified
[00:54:52] time
[00:54:53] field types that tell you when
[00:54:55] something changed, but it doesn't tell you
[00:54:57] what something changed from
[00:55:00] to what. So if you look at
[00:55:03] the
[00:55:06] activity log or any particular record,
[00:55:09] you can see this information here,
[00:55:11] but that's not really
[00:55:13] shareable to people outside
[00:55:15] of your base or if you want
[00:55:17] a weekly sort of email that lists
[00:55:20] out in plain English,
[00:55:22] what things used to be
[00:55:23] and what they are now,
[00:55:25] it's sort of difficult to achieve.
[00:55:27] So I wrote a script
[00:55:27] that is
[00:55:29] pretty extensible that
[00:55:31] gives you an overview of
[00:55:34] how data changes from blank to blank.
[00:55:37] So I'm going to
[00:55:39] make a test
[00:55:40] and sure hope that the script
[00:55:42] hasn't broken since
[00:55:43] the last time I checked it.
[00:55:45] So I've just changed that date
[00:55:47] from the 27th to the 28th.
[00:55:48] After a couple of seconds delay,
[00:55:51] I see Airtable is still saving.
[00:55:54] Yeah, so an automation will run
[00:55:56] and it will output that today's date
[00:56:00] is the 18th. So on the 18th,
[00:56:03] the field due date c
[00:56:07] went from the 27th to the 28th,
[00:56:09] which is a positive difference of one day.
[00:56:12] I'm going to stop here in preface that
[00:56:15] while I'm comfortable giving
[00:56:18] this base and script out to people.
[00:56:20] I'm not gonna answer
[00:56:22] questions about it because
[00:56:26] the reason I built this was for,
[00:56:28] you know, my current position,
[00:56:29] there are two different teams that wanted
[00:56:31] effectively this, but they wanted
[00:56:33] this output in two different
[00:56:36] sort of formats. One of them wanted the
[00:56:39] number of days difference in
[00:56:40] parentheses and the other one
[00:56:42] wanted it grouped by
[00:56:43] field and not by the date
[00:56:45] on which the values changed,
[00:56:48] that affects how the script is
[00:56:49] ultimately written.
[00:56:51] And everyone is gonna want
[00:56:52] this sort of thing
[00:56:54] formatted slightly differently. So
[00:56:57] I'm gonna give you what
[00:56:59] you see as is and then,
[00:57:01] you know,
[00:57:02] it's
[00:57:02] up
[00:57:03] to,
[00:57:04] it's up to you. You've gotta,
[00:57:06] there's things in here like you'll
[00:57:08] see the, the text is bold here and
[00:57:10] I here, I'm not gonna customize
[00:57:12] that for you. You're on your own.
[00:57:15] But what you don't see
[00:57:16] is this
[00:57:18] field that outputs
[00:57:20] a bunch of JSON again,
[00:57:22] we're, we're back at JSON
[00:57:25] where effectively I have an object where
[00:57:30] the key of that object is the day
[00:57:33] that the values were logged.
[00:57:35] And then
[00:57:37] its value
[00:57:39] is another object for
[00:57:41] each of my fields that I'm tracking
[00:57:44] and then what the value is on that day.
[00:57:47] In this case, the 15th and then
[00:57:49] the second batch of dates
[00:57:51] is today the
[00:57:53] 18th when I change the value
[00:57:55] from the 27th to the 28th.
[00:57:57] Now I'm logging the value for all
[00:57:59] of the fields that I'm tracking.
[00:58:01] Not just the one
[00:58:03] that was changed.
[00:58:04] And the reason is
[00:58:06] if I want to go back and change the value
[00:58:08] of another field, let's make due date b
[00:58:12] the fifth, what I want it to do,
[00:58:14] I don't want
[00:58:16] changes made on the same day
[00:58:18] to be logged as like completely separate
[00:58:21] changes. I want them to be grouped
[00:58:23] by the day. And that's what happened here.
[00:58:26] You know, that date B came
[00:58:28] above due date C
[00:58:29] and that has to do with how things
[00:58:32] are ordered in the script itself.
[00:58:34] So
[00:58:35] with that
[00:58:38] sort of
[00:58:39] all in here, I will note
[00:58:41] that the reason
[00:58:43] this isn't counting the way I want it
[00:58:46] to is because this
[00:58:47] is a different list type.
[00:58:48] This is sort of a defect in
[00:58:51] Airtables markdown.
[00:58:53] I think if I do that, yeah,
[00:58:54] that's the, that's the problem.
[00:58:56] It's not really a
[00:58:56] script thing. It's the,
[00:58:58] the chosen method of formatting,
[00:59:00] which again is why I'm
[00:59:01] not gonna answer any questions
[00:59:02] about
[00:59:05] how this thing is is ultimately written.
[00:59:07] But if I look at it,
[00:59:10] I'm going to start by
[00:59:12] going with a very simple
[00:59:13] when a record is updated.
[00:59:15] I'm watching three fields
[00:59:17] then a script is run.
[00:59:19] I'm gonna explain in plain English what
[00:59:21] the script is doing. I'm gonna have to
[00:59:24] zoom out just a little bit
[00:59:25] in order to do that.
[00:59:27] I'm pulling in the record ID
[00:59:29] of the record that was just updated.
[00:59:32] I am pulling in the table.
[00:59:34] In this case, I only have one table.
[00:59:36] It's called projects
[00:59:37] the
[00:59:38] JSON
[00:59:38] field. That is the long text field
[00:59:41] that you can almost certainly hide 100% of
[00:59:43] the time that just lists
[00:59:45] all of the values on every date
[00:59:48] that a value possibly was changed.
[00:59:50] The summary field.
[00:59:52] That's the one that's formatted
[00:59:54] for people to actually
[00:59:55] read
[00:59:56] and then the watched field I DS
[00:59:58] in a perfect world, I would be able to
[01:00:01] say any field that is currently
[01:00:03] visible in this particular view.
[01:00:05] I can't do that in an automation script,
[01:00:08] but instead what I'm doing is
[01:00:11] getting an array of different field names.
[01:00:14] Now, in practice in the solutions
[01:00:16] that I've actually built,
[01:00:17] these are all I DS,
[01:00:18] the id of the table,
[01:00:20] the ID of these different fields.
[01:00:22] Just because that's
[01:00:23] more sustainable. If someone changes
[01:00:26] the name of any of these due dates
[01:00:29] fields, then the script will break.
[01:00:31] So if you're going to adapt this process,
[01:00:33] all you would do is instead of
[01:00:35] putting in the name of the field,
[01:00:36] you put in the id of the
[01:00:38] field
[01:00:39] just as a warning,
[01:00:40] then I'm getting the actual table
[01:00:43] itself and I'm pulling in all the details
[01:00:46] about the record, not just the record ID.
[01:00:48] When I'm passing that
[01:00:50] I only need to get the
[01:00:52] JSON
[01:00:52] field, the fields that I'm watching
[01:00:55] for changes that's at array here
[01:00:57] and then the summary field itself.
[01:00:59] So I'm not pulling in
[01:01:00] every single column that has
[01:01:03] to do with this record,
[01:01:05] then I'm just getting for
[01:01:07] what is today's date.
[01:01:08] And I'm converting that
[01:01:11] date time into a string.
[01:01:13] Something I learned in
[01:01:15] version two of the thing
[01:01:17] that I built in practice,
[01:01:19] I want to make sure that a change
[01:01:21] is logged according to my time zone,
[01:01:23] which is America Los Angeles.
[01:01:25] Because if you make a change
[01:01:27] at like five PM
[01:01:28] my time it gets logged as a change
[01:01:30] made tomorrow when that's
[01:01:31] a little bit confusing
[01:01:32] when you're actually trying to
[01:01:34] get a running history of changes.
[01:01:37] Next thing, I am getting
[01:01:41] the value of all of the
[01:01:44] history for that
[01:01:47] For that record that's in that
[01:01:49] Json field.
[01:01:50] I'm parsing it out. It right now
[01:01:52] it is just plain text,
[01:01:53] but I wanted it in true
[01:01:54] json
[01:01:55] to give it a
[01:01:56] a workable object in javascript
[01:01:59] from there.
[01:02:01] Each key of
[01:02:05] each key of that outer object
[01:02:08] is going to be the date
[01:02:10] that a change was logged.
[01:02:11] And then
[01:02:13] I'm building a new set
[01:02:15] of objects for what are the
[01:02:17] current values.
[01:02:18] So some value just changed because
[01:02:20] it triggered the automation
[01:02:22] what are all of the values now
[01:02:24] and I'm overwriting any log
[01:02:27] for today that's already in there.
[01:02:29] That's why I made a change to
[01:02:32] due date c
[01:02:33] it logged the change.
[01:02:35] I then made a due date change for date B
[01:02:39] it logged the change again,
[01:02:40] but it didn't show up as two different
[01:02:42] groups. It all came in under today,
[01:02:45] April 18th.
[01:02:49] I'm combining that together.
[01:02:51] What is my current history
[01:02:53] plus all of the values
[01:02:54] from today? Making that one new object.
[01:02:57] And then this is the part where
[01:02:59] things get very specific
[01:03:01] to how you want things
[01:03:02] arranged. But generally
[01:03:05] speaking, I'm taking each
[01:03:07] day of history that I have
[01:03:09] and then for each field on those days,
[01:03:13] I'm checking, does this value equal the
[01:03:16] same thing as the value from the next time
[01:03:19] the
[01:03:21] history is logged.
[01:03:22] If it's exactly the same,
[01:03:24] then I don't need a summary.
[01:03:25] Nothing changed.
[01:03:26] If something is different,
[01:03:28] then
[01:03:29] do both of those values exist?
[01:03:32] If so what is the difference in time?
[01:03:34] And then format it, however,
[01:03:36] this particular implementation,
[01:03:38] once it formatted, that's
[01:03:39] a nested bullet.
[01:03:40] That's why there's all these
[01:03:42] spaces and then an asterisk,
[01:03:43] the name of the field
[01:03:45] went from blank to blank.
[01:03:47] Then I want to check if
[01:03:50] I have added,
[01:03:54] I'm gonna back up and
[01:03:55] just give this as an example
[01:03:57] right now, I'm checking three fields
[01:03:59] if I want to suddenly track due date D I
[01:04:01] can do that but there's no history
[01:04:04] for due date b in any of this.
[01:04:06] So the next time
[01:04:07] I add a value to due date D
[01:04:10] I don't want it to say it went from
[01:04:13] blank to whatever it is now
[01:04:16] because it might not have
[01:04:17] actually been blank.
[01:04:19] I don't wanna log that as
[01:04:20] a change and that's what that
[01:04:22] last if statement is doing. It's saying
[01:04:24] do you have history
[01:04:25] to compare for this field?
[01:04:27] If so compare it.
[01:04:28] If you don't have history,
[01:04:30] then don't compare it.
[01:04:32] If I have history and it really
[01:04:33] was blank the last time I checked,
[01:04:35] then say it went from blank to this.
[01:04:38] That is the explanation of this
[01:04:42] implementation.
[01:04:46] Again, I, I don't wanna answer questions.
[01:04:50] I will have pressed,
[01:04:51] I don't want to answer questions.
[01:04:53] Yeah,
[01:04:55] that's awesome.
[01:04:56] I mean, this is such a useful
[01:04:58] use case. Comes in handy quite a bit. So,
[01:05:02] yeah, lots of things you could do.
[01:05:04] You could also log,
[01:05:06] you know, like you were saying,
[01:05:07] if there is no history,
[01:05:08] then maybe you want to
[01:05:09] that, that was the first entry
[01:05:11] or you know, it was created or whatever,
[01:05:14] first set.
[01:05:15] Yes,
[01:05:16] that is, that's something you could do
[01:05:18] and you could do that pretty easily.
[01:05:19] But again, you get in and change the,
[01:05:21] the if statements and all that
[01:05:23] and there's nothing that says that
[01:05:25] you have to log date field.
[01:05:27] You could do this with any field type.
[01:05:28] It's just that they particularly
[01:05:30] wanted to know the difference
[01:05:32] in days and that
[01:05:32] only really
[01:05:34] for date fields if you wanted to
[01:05:36] track text fields,
[01:05:37] changing from when to when
[01:05:38] or who was assigned to a task.
[01:05:40] But with a collaborative field,
[01:05:42] you could do that with this
[01:05:44] script as well,
[01:05:45] modifying the formatted tasks a
[01:05:46] little bit
[01:05:49] and there is a limit 100
[01:05:51] 100,000 characters to a long text field.
[01:05:56] So we have a ton of history. Then you
[01:05:59] might need to add some
[01:06:01] some archiving or
[01:06:03] some removing older entries.
[01:06:06] I would not advise tracking more than
[01:06:10] real realistically, more than
[01:06:12] five different fields
[01:06:14] in one implementation.
[01:06:15] You could
[01:06:15] chain these together and have multiple
[01:06:18] JSON
[01:06:19] and summary fields. And I wouldn't
[01:06:23] recommend doing this for fields
[01:06:25] that are literally constantly changing.
[01:06:28] It's more for like,
[01:06:29] you know, the due date
[01:06:31] of an overall project
[01:06:32] that's probably gonna change. Hopefully,
[01:06:35] I don't know your process,
[01:06:36] hopefully, only a couple of times
[01:06:38] it's constantly changing,
[01:06:40] then you're gonna run into a barrier
[01:06:42] and then you might want to log
[01:06:44] every change its its own record.
[01:06:46] Yep.
[01:06:48] Awesome. Thank you Kamille
[01:06:50] for sharing that.
[01:06:51] We'll put the link out and we'll
[01:06:53] put a disclaimer.
[01:06:55] Do not contact Kamille.
[01:06:57] No,
[01:06:57] don't, don't
[01:07:01] buyer beware.
[01:07:03] Yeah.
[01:07:03] Buyer
[01:07:03] beware. You gotta Yeah.
[01:07:05] If you're gonna,
[01:07:06] if you're gonna start going into
[01:07:07] that world, you gotta be OK.
[01:07:09] Tinkering with the scripting
[01:07:11] or like Jason said,
[01:07:12] throw it in the chat GP T and
[01:07:14] say, how do I change this to
[01:07:16] do what I want?
[01:07:19] Well, Jason, thank you again
[01:07:21] for coming on the show.
[01:07:22] Always appreciate it.
[01:07:23] And good luck with your
[01:07:25] trip to Honduras. And
[01:07:28] that's awesome. And
[01:07:30] yeah,
[01:07:31] and Kamille, good to see you again.
[01:07:33] We will be back next week with the new
[01:07:34] episode. Take care everyone.