5/2/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S14-E04

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.

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.

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 – 00:03:13 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] Airtable sunsetting extensions Hangouts, Whereby, Name Quiz – General Discussion / Airtable News & Announcements – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

Scripting Time – 00:33:32 –

Explore Scripting with “Secrets to Scripting”.

Scripting expert, Kuovonne, will share some ways to dive into the world of Airtable Scripting.

View Script

Base Showcase – 00:46:40 –

We dive into a full working base that will Alli will share how to build a simple invoicing base with line items.

Field Focus – 00:57:07 –

A deep dive into the Record Templates – Dan will walk through the new Record Templates and how they work. 

Learn More Here

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:13

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

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] Airtable sunsetting extensions Hangouts, Whereby, Name Quiz – General Discussion / Airtable News & Announcements – TableForums: The Unofficial Airtable Discussion Community

Segment: Scripting Time

Start Time: 00:33:32

Scripting Time: Secrets to Scripting

Explore Scripting with “Secrets to Scripting”.

Scripting expert, Kuovonne, will share some ways to dive into the world of Airtable Scripting.

View Script

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:46:40

Invoicing with Line Items

We dive into a full working base that will Alli will share how to build a simple invoicing base with line items.

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:57:07

Learn about the Record Templates – Dan will walk through the new Record Templates and how they work.

A deep dive into the Record Templates – Dan will walk through the new Record Templates and how they work. 

Learn More Here

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:44] We are in season 14, episode four,
[00:01:47] Dan Fellars, coming to you
[00:01:49] from a hotel room. Hopefully, my internet
[00:01:51] holds strong this episode.
[00:01:53] Good to be back with you. We've got
[00:01:55] Alli, our regular guest with us,
[00:01:57] our host with us. Welcome Alli.
[00:01:59] Hello
[00:02:00] and special guest, Kuovonne.
[00:02:03] Welcome back, Kuovonne.
[00:02:04] Hello, good to be here.
[00:02:06] Good to have you as always,
[00:02:08] you've been on the show a few times.
[00:02:09] So good to always have you back on.
[00:02:12] We'll talk more with Kuovonne
[00:02:14] later in the show.
[00:02:15] So I will walk through
[00:02:17] what we're gonna be talking about today.
[00:02:19] The BuiltOnAir Podcast is an hour long.
[00:02:22] We go through four different segments.
[00:02:24] Keep you up to date
[00:02:25] on everything Airtable.
[00:02:26] We always start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:28] with what people are talking about
[00:02:30] what's new
[00:02:31] in the communities.
[00:02:33] Then a quick shout out to
[00:02:35] our primary sponsor On2Air.
[00:02:36] Then Kuovonne
[00:02:37] will be going through some of her
[00:02:40] guides and tutorials that she has made
[00:02:42] available
[00:02:43] many of them specific to scripting
[00:02:46] and how to do scripting
[00:02:48] in Airtable. And then
[00:02:50] Alli will walk through a base
[00:02:52] how to use line items with invoicing.
[00:02:56] Then a quick shout out to our
[00:02:57] community at BuiltOnAir
[00:02:59] and how you can join.
[00:02:59] And then finally,
[00:03:01] I'll go through the new
[00:03:02] record templates and how you use
[00:03:04] those, set them up and everything.
[00:03:08] All right, Round the Bases.
[00:03:12] So a
[00:03:13] few things. First,
[00:03:16] let's start with
[00:03:19] DareTable. We are two weeks away.
[00:03:23] Right? It's not next week.
[00:03:24] It's a week after two weeks.
[00:03:26] Yeah, two weeks. Okay.
[00:03:28] So,
[00:03:30] two weeks and one day. Yeah,
[00:03:32] it'll be Wednesday and Thursday.
[00:03:34] And so,
[00:03:35] I don't know, is, is,
[00:03:37] sign ups closed? I haven't heard, there
[00:03:41] might still be some slots open.
[00:03:43] Last I heard there
[00:03:44] were three tickets left.
[00:03:45] They might have gone by then but
[00:03:49] it's,
[00:03:50] not many spots left if you,
[00:03:52] if you wanna go
[00:03:54] hurry up and get your ticket.
[00:03:55] Yep daretable.com
[00:03:57] there is a post that
[00:03:59] somebody posted in the,
[00:04:01] in the Facebook group
[00:04:02] about
[00:04:03] whether it would be streamed
[00:04:05] and Chris answered that, that it wouldn't,
[00:04:07] last time they, they had some
[00:04:10] issues and so decided not to.
[00:04:12] But the cool thing that I saw in here,
[00:04:15] let's see. Where is it?
[00:04:17] They are already working on
[00:04:20] Dare Table Europe. 2023.
[00:04:22] I was thinking 24.
[00:04:23] So that means this year in the fall.
[00:04:26] So
[00:04:27] there's gonna be another
[00:04:28] DareTable in Europe.
[00:04:31] So that's a nice little
[00:04:33] tidbit of information there.
[00:04:35] That'll be exciting.
[00:04:37] Yeah. So we'll see, we'll see if I,
[00:04:40] who's all gonna be in Europe
[00:04:42] for that in the fall. So, anyways,
[00:04:44] but two weeks San Francisco
[00:04:46] at Airtable's headquarters.
[00:04:48] Sounds like there may be a
[00:04:50] few slots available.
[00:04:51] If you haven't signed up,
[00:04:52] all three of us will be there.
[00:04:55] Kuovonne is speaking.
[00:04:56] Alli
[00:04:56] Alli, are you speaking?
[00:04:58] She got kicked off
[00:04:59] and excellent.
[00:05:00] Can you, can you let her back in?
[00:05:03] Yep. Yep.
[00:05:05] I am speaking.
[00:05:08] Yeah.
[00:05:09] Yes, I'm looking forward to it.
[00:05:11] Very good. Ok,
[00:05:13] we'll have both Alli and Kuovonne as
[00:05:15] speakers, trainers
[00:05:17] along with many other people
[00:05:20] and get access to Airtable.
[00:05:22] I'm sure they'll be
[00:05:24] making some announcements or,
[00:05:26] or reviewing some announcements of I know
[00:05:28] there's there's stuff
[00:05:30] in the pipeline coming.
[00:05:32] So I imagine by by the time of
[00:05:33] DareTable they'll be able to
[00:05:35] talk more about
[00:05:36] some new stuff coming out.
[00:05:38] So that will be exciting.
[00:05:40] We're excited to,
[00:05:40] to see everybody there.
[00:05:42] Reach out to us.
[00:05:45] All right, moving on.
[00:05:50] There was one other, let's see.
[00:05:54] I think this one I wanna start. Ok.
[00:05:57] So this, I first saw in the
[00:06:00] in the BuiltOnAir Group, Jan
[00:06:03] who goes by databaser,
[00:06:04] posted
[00:06:06] a article on, on linkedin.
[00:06:08] I don't know,
[00:06:09] I assume maybe this was posted in the
[00:06:11] community forum.
[00:06:12] I didn't see it in
[00:06:13] Airtable's community but
[00:06:14] highlighting a new feature
[00:06:18] as far as coloring list views.
[00:06:20] So if you have a the new list view,
[00:06:24] you can color the rows.
[00:06:26] It looks like it puts a little bar
[00:06:29] in there. So that is one new feature.
[00:06:32] Maybe this has been out for a
[00:06:34] while and they just posted on linkedin.
[00:06:38] No, it hasn't been out for a while. It,
[00:06:40] it was just released.
[00:06:42] It was something that actually
[00:06:43] frustrated me when they
[00:06:44] first came out with the list view.
[00:06:45] You couldn't use the color feature.
[00:06:48] So excited to see that reinstated
[00:06:51] or put, put there for the first time,
[00:06:53] I guess.
[00:06:54] Yeah.
[00:06:55] So it's the same approach
[00:06:57] that they take in kind of the normal grid.
[00:06:59] When you want to color the,
[00:07:01] the records,
[00:07:01] it puts that that line at the beginning.
[00:07:04] Now you can do that in list views.
[00:07:08] So I think those were the only,
[00:07:10] that was the only
[00:07:11] feature announcement that,
[00:07:13] that I saw this week.
[00:07:16] So we'll go through,
[00:07:18] let's let's go this way.
[00:07:20] Got that one.
[00:07:22] And there's the feature removal.
[00:07:25] What is the feature removal?
[00:07:27] Attachment, URL from formula fields,
[00:07:31] attachment URL S is
[00:07:33] that new?
[00:07:34] Well,
[00:07:35] it was when they removed.
[00:07:37] So when they went to expiring URL S
[00:07:40] for attachments,
[00:07:41] they said that they were
[00:07:42] going to invalidate the
[00:07:44] URL S that were produced
[00:07:46] in formula fields,
[00:07:47] but it didn't actually happen
[00:07:48] when they made the changeover
[00:07:50] until
[00:07:51] last week when all of a sudden
[00:07:53] people were starting
[00:07:54] complaining that all of
[00:07:55] these
[00:07:56] D L dot Airtable dot com
[00:07:58] attachment links
[00:07:59] are actually starting to fail now.
[00:08:01] Yeah.
[00:08:03] I
[00:08:03] didn't realize that that just changed. Ok.
[00:08:07] Yeah.
[00:08:08] So I think it makes a lot of sense
[00:08:11] because what happened was it used to be
[00:08:13] that all attachments had the same
[00:08:16] basic URL structure H E T P S D L dot air
[00:08:18] ta
[00:08:19] dot com.
[00:08:20] And then
[00:08:21] it was a permanent link where
[00:08:23] even if you actually
[00:08:25] deleted your attachment,
[00:08:27] you could still get to that file
[00:08:29] at that URL.
[00:08:30] So it was a security issue because
[00:08:32] if you ever
[00:08:33] accidentally released that URL,
[00:08:35] anyone who got that URL could get
[00:08:37] your file,
[00:08:38] even if you had never made
[00:08:40] that file public
[00:08:41] and even if you had tried to delete
[00:08:42] it from your base,
[00:08:44] so Airtable went in and
[00:08:45] they rearranged how they did URLs
[00:08:48] and they went to
[00:08:50] a system of expiring URL S.
[00:08:52] So if you send out an email,
[00:08:55] you get an expiring URL
[00:08:57] after two hours that URL
[00:08:59] doesn't work anymore so that
[00:09:01] you don't have this
[00:09:03] URL to your content just out
[00:09:05] there forever that you can't revoke.
[00:09:07] And they also have viewer URL S
[00:09:08] where you actually have to
[00:09:10] be logged into Airtable
[00:09:10] and then you can view it,
[00:09:12] but those don't expire
[00:09:13] and then you have this weird thing
[00:09:15] where you had URL s in
[00:09:16] formula fields that were exposed.
[00:09:18] And what were they gonna do with that?
[00:09:20] And
[00:09:21] the question is you can't just
[00:09:23] turn it into a viewer URL or a
[00:09:26] expiring URL because
[00:09:30] you would change the actual
[00:09:31] value of the formula.
[00:09:33] And if you have formula fields
[00:09:34] that are based on that,
[00:09:35] if you have other things
[00:09:36] that are calculating on it,
[00:09:37] you're gonna mess up everyone's
[00:09:39] bases that say extracting out
[00:09:41] the file name out
[00:09:42] of that. And so you can totally
[00:09:43] mess up all the other downstream formulas
[00:09:45] and you can't just change it.
[00:09:47] So it's always going to be
[00:09:48] an actual valid URL the
[00:09:49] way the expiring are
[00:09:50] because then you have to
[00:09:52] constantly recalculate those
[00:09:53] values and that's just a mess.
[00:09:55] They decided that they're
[00:09:56] gonna keep the format
[00:09:57] but invalidate the URL.
[00:09:59] That means that
[00:10:01] they had to get all
[00:10:02] the other systems first
[00:10:03] where make sure the actual
[00:10:05] expiring ones worked.
[00:10:06] And that took them a while to
[00:10:07] get that
[00:10:08] worked out because like sometimes
[00:10:10] we're having things where like
[00:10:11] they're expiring too soon
[00:10:12] or not long enough
[00:10:14] and just get people used to that.
[00:10:16] And that's why here it is
[00:10:17] several months later
[00:10:18] when they're actually saying,
[00:10:18] OK, now we think they've got
[00:10:20] all of the kinks and that ironed out.
[00:10:22] Now they can actually take down those
[00:10:25] formula field produced
[00:10:28] URLs.
[00:10:29] Got you.
[00:10:30] So,
[00:10:31] so what happened was,
[00:10:33] so the what happened is
[00:10:35] they finally invalidated these,
[00:10:36] these static URL S that you could
[00:10:39] extract from the formula in the formula.
[00:10:42] And one of the problem is
[00:10:44] it was really, really convenient
[00:10:46] to just use those URL S and say,
[00:10:47] put it in for a static image.
[00:10:49] Let's say you had
[00:10:50] your company logo in a page
[00:10:51] designer block or in an email
[00:10:52] that you were sending out,
[00:10:54] people were just using
[00:10:54] those and they might have even
[00:10:56] deleted the original attachment
[00:10:57] and then everything was working,
[00:11:00] expiring URL S went out
[00:11:01] fine and everything
[00:11:02] still continued to work
[00:11:04] and then now they're invalidating
[00:11:06] those URL S and now
[00:11:07] things are breaking.
[00:11:09] Yeah.
[00:11:10] Yeah.
[00:11:11] Yeah. Interesting.
[00:11:13] So what really sucks is
[00:11:15] that if all you have is that URL
[00:11:17] that was the
[00:11:18] attachment URL,
[00:11:19] there's no way of going back and
[00:11:22] tracing the links back
[00:11:23] to what the original file is.
[00:11:25] You have to manually find
[00:11:26] it yourself.
[00:11:27] But then once you actually find it
[00:11:29] or find a closer version,
[00:11:30] you know, if it's your company logo,
[00:11:32] hopefully you have that somewhere else.
[00:11:33] Then you can just upload it to
[00:11:37] some other service like cloud
[00:11:38] that will host it for free.
[00:11:40] Get a static URL from that
[00:11:42] and then plop that into
[00:11:43] your page designer into your
[00:11:45] email template
[00:11:45] and then you come back in business.
[00:11:48] Yeah.
[00:11:49] Yeah,
[00:11:50] much easier said than done there. But
[00:11:54] yeah, so that that could be
[00:11:56] impacting a lot of people
[00:11:58] because there isn't a way
[00:11:59] where so like if you look
[00:12:01] at these URL S, you can see
[00:12:03] it's cut off in the image,
[00:12:04] but it's start,
[00:12:05] you see the start of the ID.
[00:12:07] So each attachment has a unique ID,
[00:12:10] but there isn't a way to just
[00:12:13] extract that ID
[00:12:14] and then like create a new URL
[00:12:16] structure that would work. I don't believe
[00:12:19] like there's no static
[00:12:22] representation of attachments.
[00:12:26] Not really. I haven't found
[00:12:28] a way where you can take that URL
[00:12:30] and then find out
[00:12:32] what the original attachment
[00:12:34] field in the original base is.
[00:12:35] What we ended up doing
[00:12:37] at my company was
[00:12:38] back in January, we actually
[00:12:40] painstakingly went through
[00:12:41] every single page designer block,
[00:12:43] every email automation
[00:12:45] looked for every single thing
[00:12:47] where it was a static one,
[00:12:48] grabbed it
[00:12:50] and then we actually hosted ours
[00:12:52] on Aws and then put in the Aws
[00:12:54] URL.
[00:12:56] Right. Right.
[00:12:57] Yeah.
[00:12:58] So basically Airtable can't be your
[00:13:01] CD N anymore. That's officially dead
[00:13:04] unless you're going through a portal.
[00:13:06] In which case, it still seems to work
[00:13:08] because the portal seem to be grabbing
[00:13:11] whatever the current expiring URL is.
[00:13:14] Right. Right. Right.
[00:13:16] Yeah. And some of the portal
[00:13:18] tools actually cash it for you,
[00:13:19] like put it on their own CD N.
[00:13:23] So then it's long living. So,
[00:13:25] all right.
[00:13:26] That's a good summary. Thank you.
[00:13:27] Let's see, a couple other things.
[00:13:31] I don't know if we need to call out
[00:13:32] every time there's a,
[00:13:34] there's an outage but
[00:13:34] there was a pretty significant one
[00:13:37] last week.
[00:13:38] Actually there is two, so one,
[00:13:40] pretty much everything
[00:13:41] was down. The website
[00:13:43] was getting a 504 error, I believe.
[00:13:46] And then there was one more.
[00:13:49] Let me find it.
[00:13:52] Oh, yeah. With the, with the forms,
[00:13:56] they were glitchy for a while
[00:13:57] where like the buttons weren't working.
[00:14:01] I don't know if you came across that
[00:14:03] where you tried to click on the ad for the
[00:14:05] linked records and they weren't working.
[00:14:07] I noticed that a few people mentioned
[00:14:08] that.
[00:14:11] So, but I think they got this
[00:14:13] one back up in a hour or so.
[00:14:16] Yes.
[00:14:18] All right. Let's see what else we got.
[00:14:21] OK. This was a cool one.
[00:14:23] We actually,
[00:14:23] there was actually some pretty cool
[00:14:25] conversations in the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:14:27] This was just kind of a quick
[00:14:30] easy solution from Jen.
[00:14:32] Shout out to Jen on this answer. So
[00:14:34] Veronique is asking
[00:14:36] wants a calendar view
[00:14:38] and has like a grid of,
[00:14:40] of records that have dates,
[00:14:42] but they want a calendar view
[00:14:45] of what dates are not used
[00:14:47] within the records.
[00:14:49] And so Jen just, you know,
[00:14:50] says, basically you have to
[00:14:51] create another table that
[00:14:52] has a record for every date
[00:14:54] and then you link
[00:14:56] the calendar views
[00:14:58] or the other table to those dates.
[00:15:01] And then you can create a view
[00:15:04] of dates that don't have links to them.
[00:15:06] And then that would show you
[00:15:08] the available dates and then you put that,
[00:15:11] that view on a calendar.
[00:15:15] Yeah,
[00:15:16] nice little,
[00:15:18] nice little trick of how to
[00:15:20] get the inverse,
[00:15:21] but it does require another table
[00:15:23] and you probably have to
[00:15:24] create an automation
[00:15:25] that's automatically adding dates
[00:15:27] in the future as they come up.
[00:15:30] Yeah, something like that is,
[00:15:32] that's the initial one to set up.
[00:15:33] The thing about it is that you
[00:15:35] have to be very careful
[00:15:36] in your design of how you
[00:15:37] maintain it.
[00:15:38] Because for example, one thing is
[00:15:40] you have to make sure
[00:15:41] that you don't like take
[00:15:42] a date record and drag it
[00:15:43] to a different date.
[00:15:45] If you're viewing
[00:15:46] that editable one
[00:15:47] because that thing's mess up.
[00:15:49] The other thing that's
[00:15:50] not so nice about this is
[00:15:51] you can't get a record that shows
[00:15:53] a range,
[00:15:54] you can see records on the individual
[00:15:55] dates that saying this day is available,
[00:15:58] but it's hard to calculate to say,
[00:15:59] well, actually, I have a range
[00:16:01] of three dates
[00:16:02] that are open as opposed to four
[00:16:03] or five.
[00:16:07] That's true.
[00:16:09] All right, let's move on.
[00:16:11] We've got a few here.
[00:16:13] Actually Kuovonne
[00:16:14] in this one. So
[00:16:16] this is asking him about scripting.
[00:16:18] Basically saying
[00:16:21] they want a button that when pressed
[00:16:24] changes the article and has the script and
[00:16:26] it doesn't seem to be working,
[00:16:28] getting an error message,
[00:16:30] a record from button field
[00:16:32] was not used.
[00:16:33] The script did not use the record from
[00:16:35] the button field
[00:16:36] to use a record you call, input record
[00:16:38] as sync.
[00:16:40] How did, what, what were your thoughts
[00:16:42] Kuovonne, on this one?
[00:16:43] Can you go ahead and expand the,
[00:16:45] the script samples so that you can see it
[00:16:48] like? So the first thing
[00:16:49] I looked at this and I've seen
[00:16:50] this a couple of times
[00:16:51] and my first glance
[00:16:52] where I'm reading through this is,
[00:16:53] was this a script
[00:16:55] that was generated by A I?
[00:16:56] Because if you know how to code,
[00:16:58] then you just do things a certain way.
[00:17:01] And
[00:17:03] what I notice in here is
[00:17:05] that you don't have things labeled,
[00:17:07] it's just not written the way
[00:17:09] someone who's experienced writing code,
[00:17:11] it would, would write it as far as
[00:17:13] like how you have things commented and how
[00:17:15] you have things called,
[00:17:17] like I've seen someone,
[00:17:18] one's scripts where
[00:17:18] they'll be the name of the function
[00:17:20] that's declared and then that function is
[00:17:22] never actually called.
[00:17:23] So it's just kind of like
[00:17:25] weird little things like that.
[00:17:27] And I'm just seeing more
[00:17:28] and more of those
[00:17:29] and they don't necessarily actually
[00:17:32] work right because
[00:17:34] it's not using the actual
[00:17:36] grammar and syntax that's created.
[00:17:39] So my first thing was I think this is
[00:17:41] A I
[00:17:42] generated
[00:17:43] by someone who knows enough
[00:17:45] to know that it looks good,
[00:17:47] but it doesn't actually have
[00:17:49] everything completely fleshed out in it.
[00:17:51] So for example, this one,
[00:17:52] it, if you scroll to the top,
[00:17:54] you'll see it says,
[00:17:55] get status and it says, you know,
[00:17:57] you, you're putting in a record
[00:17:58] but nowhere does the script
[00:18:00] actually get the record to begin with.
[00:18:03] So it doesn't know what record to use.
[00:18:05] And if you were actually writing the
[00:18:06] script yourself,
[00:18:07] you would recognize that and say,
[00:18:09] well, I have to go actually
[00:18:10] get the record somewhere
[00:18:12] but the A I doesn't know that
[00:18:13] when it's creating this. And so that's an
[00:18:15] important part of the puzzle
[00:18:17] that it just doesn't have.
[00:18:20] Then the other thing,
[00:18:22] I don't know if it was
[00:18:23] this one or another one where
[00:18:24] the person actually
[00:18:26] wanted to have it where
[00:18:27] there is a,
[00:18:29] they wanted a button to be pressed
[00:18:32] and they want the button
[00:18:33] to be pressed by a read only user
[00:18:36] and
[00:18:38] well, that's disabled for read only users
[00:18:40] so you can't even do that to
[00:18:41] begin with. And so if you
[00:18:43] go down this A I route,
[00:18:45] if you don't know enough about scripting,
[00:18:47] it's not necessarily gonna give
[00:18:48] you a complete working
[00:18:49] script and you're not
[00:18:49] necessarily know how to
[00:18:51] go back and say that.
[00:18:52] But it's also might be
[00:18:53] overlooking the fact that
[00:18:55] you spent all this time writing a script.
[00:18:56] It's actually not gonna work for your
[00:18:57] full use case
[00:18:58] because the person you want
[00:19:00] to push the button
[00:19:01] won't have the permission
[00:19:02] level to push the button.
[00:19:04] Right. Right.
[00:19:05] So yeah, they're trying to get around
[00:19:07] the read only, you know,
[00:19:08] paid user. But
[00:19:11] that's why the buttons are disabled
[00:19:13] because you can't
[00:19:14] modify the data as a read
[00:19:15] only user, even if it's
[00:19:18] running a script.
[00:19:21] So the one thing,
[00:19:22] the one thing I noticed
[00:19:23] just looking at this,
[00:19:24] which would lead me to believe,
[00:19:26] maybe this part wasn't written by A I
[00:19:28] because I think A I
[00:19:29] would have gotten this. But
[00:19:31] you notice, they call main
[00:19:34] which is an a sync
[00:19:35] function but they don't
[00:19:36] have a weight in front of it.
[00:19:38] And I bet that that's the problem
[00:19:40] because then none
[00:19:42] of this is gonna work and
[00:19:43] the error is related to this
[00:19:45] right here to get the record.
[00:19:46] Yeah. Oh, actually,
[00:19:47] so this one, it does say input
[00:19:49] record a sync but there's
[00:19:49] nothing inside the parameters
[00:19:51] where you actually you need to
[00:19:52] have a prompt and
[00:19:53] you need to have something
[00:19:54] that says what table
[00:19:55] you're getting the record from.
[00:19:56] Yeah.
[00:19:56] Yeah.
[00:19:57] Yeah,
[00:19:58] that's true.
[00:20:00] Yeah. So those are,
[00:20:01] those are two things.
[00:20:02] So maybe we'll update that and
[00:20:04] let
[00:20:04] know. But
[00:20:07] so yeah, anyway, good,
[00:20:08] good scripting advice.
[00:20:09] I think we'll get more of that in
[00:20:11] a bit
[00:20:13] to move on.
[00:20:14] OK. Ben asks,
[00:20:16] does the find record actions in Airtable
[00:20:18] automation seem slow to anyone else
[00:20:20] compared to the find
[00:20:22] records in other apps?
[00:20:24] Just talking about like third party apps
[00:20:26] zapier, Make, so kind of
[00:20:27] using inside the automations
[00:20:30] to find records versus
[00:20:31] versus using like the API
[00:20:34] I
[00:20:34] think I like this one mainly
[00:20:36] because of the back and forth
[00:20:38] between Bill and
[00:20:38] Catherine who recently
[00:20:40] joined the BuiltOnAir community,
[00:20:42] who used to work at Airtable she mentions.
[00:20:45] And so there's some really good,
[00:20:47] you get some good in insights into
[00:20:49] how Airtable works under the hood.
[00:20:53] So really good back and forth
[00:20:54] between the two of them in this thread.
[00:20:57] Yeah. The big point is just because
[00:20:59] you think nobody's doing
[00:21:01] something inside an
[00:21:01] Airtable base doesn't actually mean
[00:21:03] that there isn't a lot of
[00:21:05] stuff going on in
[00:21:05] it.
[00:21:07] Yep. Yep.
[00:21:09] So yeah, so good. If you,
[00:21:11] if you're trying to optimize the speed of
[00:21:14] performance, this thread is good.
[00:21:16] It has some good tidbits on
[00:21:18] things to look at
[00:21:19] and what might be causing.
[00:21:21] I know Alli you've got experience
[00:21:23] working with,
[00:21:24] you're on the top 10 naughty list
[00:21:30] of Airtable abusers.
[00:21:35] So you can see that now formula.
[00:21:38] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:40] That one is a, that's a big one.
[00:21:43] Yeah.
[00:21:44] So others as well.
[00:21:46] All right. Moving on.
[00:21:48] Oh, we already did that one.
[00:21:49] So I think that's all from the BuiltOnAir
[00:21:52] community. Moving on to
[00:21:55] to Table Forums, a couple,
[00:21:57] a couple interesting ones.
[00:22:00] So this, this post is from a while
[00:22:02] ago back in March about the changes to the
[00:22:05] home screen, but then somebody updated it.
[00:22:10] When they logged in,
[00:22:12] they're delaying the rollout
[00:22:14] of the new home screen
[00:22:15] based on feedback no longer
[00:22:17] being forced into using it for now,
[00:22:19] at least.
[00:22:20] So it sounds like they may
[00:22:22] be switched. It used to be,
[00:22:24] they, they, they switched everybody
[00:22:27] over or were starting
[00:22:28] to switch people over.
[00:22:29] But you could go into your account
[00:22:32] drop down and revert back
[00:22:34] now. It looks like it might
[00:22:36] be more of an opt
[00:22:37] in where you can switch
[00:22:38] if you want, but they're not forcing it.
[00:22:42] I don't know if you've seen that.
[00:22:43] I was very happy when I was able to revert
[00:22:45] back.
[00:22:46] I
[00:22:46] hate the new home screen. I have to say
[00:22:49] it's terrible.
[00:22:50] I, yeah,
[00:22:51] I will be very sad on the day
[00:22:53] that they decide you can no longer
[00:22:55] extend.
[00:22:57] Yeah,
[00:22:58] I'm kind of maybe more in the middle.
[00:23:01] Like I like some things about it.
[00:23:02] I feel like there's still room
[00:23:04] for improvement,
[00:23:05] but I think they can find a
[00:23:07] workable solution with the new approach.
[00:23:10] I'm saying with you, Dan,
[00:23:12] there, there was actually
[00:23:13] a couple of things
[00:23:13] that I liked about it.
[00:23:14] It's just that they broke some
[00:23:16] of the fundamental things
[00:23:16] that I used to do,
[00:23:18] like dragging a base
[00:23:19] from one workspace to another that
[00:23:21] I, I do that a lot and most people
[00:23:23] probably don't, but especially
[00:23:25] when I was working as a consultant
[00:23:26] and you have something
[00:23:27] in your base and you
[00:23:28] to transfer ownership.
[00:23:29] you would do that or
[00:23:31] what I do a lot now
[00:23:32] is I have certain bases and
[00:23:34] I just move them to an archive
[00:23:35] workspace because
[00:23:36] I don't want to actively see it
[00:23:37] anymore, but I want to be able to
[00:23:39] retain access to it.
[00:23:40] And so dragging,
[00:23:41] I actually do drag bases around
[00:23:43] from one workspace to another a lot.
[00:23:44] And that was just completely broken
[00:23:46] in the new interface. But I really do
[00:23:48] believe that they can come up
[00:23:50] with a better solution.
[00:23:51] I want to bring back to ideas
[00:23:53] when we had the views side bar.
[00:23:55] At
[00:23:55] first, they came up with a system
[00:23:57] that just didn't work.
[00:23:59] They went back to the
[00:24:00] drawing board,
[00:24:01] we heard nothing
[00:24:02] for like it felt like weeks
[00:24:04] or months and they
[00:24:05] came back with a beautiful
[00:24:06] new design on that where it, like,
[00:24:08] it made so much more sense
[00:24:09] they took in the feedback
[00:24:10] from all kinds of different
[00:24:11] people, what people wanted to do
[00:24:13] and it was even better
[00:24:14] than what they used to have.
[00:24:15] So I'm very hopeful that
[00:24:16] they will come up
[00:24:17] and that they'll pull another one
[00:24:18] out of the bag that they'll
[00:24:19] say here's how it works. Here's
[00:24:22] they rolled out something
[00:24:23] that didn't work.
[00:24:24] They're gonna go back to the drawing
[00:24:25] board and they'll come up with something
[00:24:26] that takes the best of all the
[00:24:27] different situations
[00:24:28] that's totally different from anything
[00:24:30] we've seen and even
[00:24:30] better.
[00:24:31] Yeah, I
[00:24:32] hope
[00:24:32] so. Looking forward to that for sure.
[00:24:34] Yep. Yep. That would be nice.
[00:24:37] But yeah, this one
[00:24:38] this last comment says that
[00:24:40] he doesn't have the rollback
[00:24:41] option, which is, which is odd.
[00:24:43] I, I feel like I've seen that in all of my
[00:24:46] accounts.
[00:24:47] It could be a situation where
[00:24:49] the rollback option has not
[00:24:51] yet been rolled out to him.
[00:24:53] Maybe.
[00:24:56] Roll back the roll back.
[00:25:00] So,
[00:25:01] yeah, so still in the works,
[00:25:02] the home screen,
[00:25:03] we'll see, we'll see maybe more to
[00:25:05] come there.
[00:25:07] All right, here's another one.
[00:25:10] I think, yeah, Kuovonne,
[00:25:11] you're in this discussion.
[00:25:13] Kuovonne is everywhere
[00:25:15] can records or fields
[00:25:17] read from extensions?
[00:25:18] So somebody asking
[00:25:20] if an extension or if a field
[00:25:22] can basically communicate
[00:25:24] with an extension in some way,
[00:25:27] how do you answer this
[00:25:28] Kuovonne?
[00:25:29] Well, basically the answer is no that
[00:25:33] formulas
[00:25:35] they don't even know
[00:25:36] that extensions exist.
[00:25:38] So there's no way that they can go back.
[00:25:41] All the formula can do is
[00:25:42] it can pull from other field data.
[00:25:45] And so what you can do is
[00:25:46] you can have your extension,
[00:25:48] modify the editable data
[00:25:50] and then the formula would pull from that.
[00:25:52] But I don't think that will work.
[00:25:53] And then later on in this thread
[00:25:55] Bill brings up the idea
[00:25:56] that he really wishes
[00:25:57] that we could have
[00:25:58] custom formulas where you can
[00:26:00] define your own formula
[00:26:02] using javascript and then
[00:26:03] have that formula go
[00:26:05] and do whatever calculations.
[00:26:08] And then he points out that
[00:26:10] it's been a while since
[00:26:13] Google Sheets and Excel have had that,
[00:26:15] but it's just not there on Airtable yet.
[00:26:19] Yeah.
[00:26:19] Yeah.
[00:26:20] But I think this is part of the trend
[00:26:23] of we've seen a deemphasize on
[00:26:24] extensions
[00:26:26] and there was also recently
[00:26:27] a thread where someone was somewhere.
[00:26:29] I don't remember where,
[00:26:30] where someone was trying to
[00:26:31] get page designer to work.
[00:26:32] But the problem was they
[00:26:33] were trying to print
[00:26:34] from a view that had like
[00:26:35] 1500 records
[00:26:35] and it just was too many.
[00:26:37] And the answer is that you need to go and
[00:26:39] scale back your views.
[00:26:40] So you don't have so many.
[00:26:42] And one of the ways
[00:26:43] that extensions works
[00:26:45] is they have the ability to watch all
[00:26:47] of the records in a view.
[00:26:50] But the problem with that is
[00:26:52] it's incredibly resource intensive.
[00:26:53] And so, you know,
[00:26:55] say you have something like
[00:26:56] a dashboard open with a
[00:26:57] just even a simple count
[00:27:00] one.
[00:27:00] Well, that count extension
[00:27:02] is constantly reading all
[00:27:04] of the records because that
[00:27:06] count could change at any moment if anyone
[00:27:08] creates a record or updates record.
[00:27:10] And so that just can be a really
[00:27:12] big drain
[00:27:12] and it makes things a lot slower.
[00:27:14] So
[00:27:15] by moving away and deemphasizing
[00:27:16] extensions,
[00:27:17] you're having fewer people that are
[00:27:18] writing extensions
[00:27:19] that are taking advantage
[00:27:20] of this fact that it's going to be
[00:27:21] watching every single record
[00:27:23] in however many tables.
[00:27:24] To hopefully not have that drain
[00:27:27] on performance.
[00:27:28] Yeah.
[00:27:29] Yeah.
[00:27:31] Yeah. Let's
[00:27:32] let's continue on that theme.
[00:27:34] There's another one from the Airtable
[00:27:36] community. I know this is
[00:27:39] near to both myself and Kuovonne
[00:27:41] and others,
[00:27:42] the future of extensions Tobias asks.
[00:27:46] Basically with the emphasis on,
[00:27:49] on interfaces and pushing users to use
[00:27:51] interfaces.
[00:27:53] What is the future of extensions?
[00:27:55] That's the question I know I have,
[00:27:57] I'm sure I have that, Kuovonne
[00:27:58] you have the same question.
[00:28:01] Yeah.
[00:28:02] And I think that's a big question
[00:28:04] and I think that Airtable
[00:28:05] probably themselves
[00:28:06] doesn't even really know.
[00:28:08] I think that's,
[00:28:09] they're trying to juggle a lot of things.
[00:28:11] The, the one extension that I really,
[00:28:13] really wish that they would bring to
[00:28:15] interfaces is scripting extension.
[00:28:17] If they brought
[00:28:18] nothing else to interfaces,
[00:28:19] I wish they could bring that
[00:28:20] because scripting extension
[00:28:21] is available to
[00:28:22] everybody
[00:28:22] and it can do things that you cannot do
[00:28:25] with
[00:28:27] automations.
[00:28:28] And automation script.
[00:28:30] And I think that has the most potential
[00:28:33] to
[00:28:36] improve what you can do with interfaces,
[00:28:39] but I maybe they're holding off
[00:28:41] because they want to have a more general
[00:28:43] approach because it,
[00:28:44] it really would not be good
[00:28:45] if they had just like this one
[00:28:46] off. This is the one thing
[00:28:48] that you can do in scripting,
[00:28:49] but none of the other
[00:28:49] extensions work.
[00:28:52] But it's a big thorny issue,
[00:28:53] but they have many
[00:28:54] big thorny issues to deal
[00:28:55] with interfaces and until then
[00:28:59] when it comes to developing extensions,
[00:29:01] my focus has been more on what are
[00:29:03] utilities that can help
[00:29:06] the base designers
[00:29:07] because they're always
[00:29:09] going to be in grid views
[00:29:11] and less on extensions
[00:29:12] that would help the end users
[00:29:15] that need to be in a front
[00:29:16] end type of environment.
[00:29:18] Yep.
[00:29:19] Yep.
[00:29:20] Yeah, I totally agree with that
[00:29:23] very well said. All right, let's move on.
[00:29:25] Going to Twitter.
[00:29:27] Let's go here.
[00:29:29] So we had an example.
[00:29:31] We talked a little bit about how
[00:29:33] A I maybe wasn't perfect
[00:29:34] in helping.
[00:29:35] Here's an example from John talking about
[00:29:40] so it's a video,
[00:29:41] it's actually a two minute video
[00:29:45] about how he basically used chat GP T
[00:29:48] to write a server code
[00:29:52] to get all the Airtable records
[00:29:54] and kind of complete something.
[00:29:56] So
[00:29:56] there's examples of, of using A I
[00:29:59] where it actually works
[00:30:01] and examples of where
[00:30:02] it doesn't work.
[00:30:04] So still mix mixed bag on,
[00:30:06] on the future of A I coding for you.
[00:30:10] So I see A I it's,
[00:30:11] it's A I is learning how to talk,
[00:30:13] it's learning how to speak
[00:30:14] both English and then it's also trying
[00:30:16] to learn how to speak code.
[00:30:18] When a little baby learns to speak,
[00:30:20] it just babbles
[00:30:21] nonsense and then gradually
[00:30:22] they say intelligent words
[00:30:24] and then they string together sentences
[00:30:25] and then they string together
[00:30:27] longer sentences
[00:30:27] and then eventually they can
[00:30:28] speak in paragraphs.
[00:30:30] So what A I can do
[00:30:31] with this code is it can do words and
[00:30:33] sentences and phrases.
[00:30:34] It can't really do essays yet
[00:30:38] in code. Yeah.
[00:30:39] Yeah. Code
[00:30:40] powerful applications. Yeah.
[00:30:43] Yeah. So good stuff there.
[00:30:45] All right. I think this is the last one.
[00:30:47] Shout out to, to Gareth.
[00:30:50] It looks like Phil Blacken
[00:30:52] who runs a no code ops
[00:30:55] community.
[00:30:56] They're gonna be doing a live build
[00:30:59] a C R M in public together with Gareth.
[00:31:02] So
[00:31:03] the series, it looks like a month's worth
[00:31:06] of events where they're gonna be
[00:31:07] connecting
[00:31:09] and I assume Gareth is gonna be
[00:31:11] helping him build his C R M.
[00:31:12] So
[00:31:13] if you want to see a
[00:31:15] C R M built in public,
[00:31:16] you can check out their channel.
[00:31:18] Likely it'll be on both their,
[00:31:21] their respective communities.
[00:31:23] So
[00:31:24] it could be a,
[00:31:25] could be a worthwhile watching that.
[00:31:30] All right. So I think that's
[00:31:31] everything in our Round the Bases,
[00:31:32] getting everybody
[00:31:34] up to speed on what's going on.
[00:31:36] So we'll give a shout out to On2Air
[00:31:39] it's an on one tool kit
[00:31:40] to run your business on Airtable.
[00:31:42] It's a suite of apps that help you
[00:31:44] do more with your Airtable.
[00:31:45] So if your business is dependent
[00:31:47] on Airtable, you need to check out On2Air
[00:31:49] at on2air.com
[00:31:51] and find out all the amazing
[00:31:53] apps that we have there.
[00:31:55] For today's shout out,
[00:31:57] I'm gonna go to Twitter
[00:31:59] and I figured I'll have one
[00:32:01] of our customers,
[00:32:02] Peter who was kind enough to do a
[00:32:04] case study with us,
[00:32:06] share in his own words what the On2Air
[00:32:09] backups has meant for his business.
[00:32:11] So, let's see if this,
[00:32:12] I don't know if the audio will work.
[00:32:14] Let me let me know
[00:32:15] if you can hear it or if
[00:32:16] you can't hear it,
[00:32:19] can't hear.
[00:32:20] No,
[00:32:23] so you can read it.
[00:32:49] All right. So charm and many others
[00:32:51] are using backup to back up their data
[00:32:54] from Airtable into Google drive box
[00:32:57] or Dropbox, whatever solution you're
[00:33:00] already using
[00:33:01] for your file storage.
[00:33:03] So check out On2Air
[00:33:04] at on2air.com
[00:33:05] and our backups
[00:33:08] on2air.com/backups
[00:33:09] to learn more
[00:33:11] highly recommend backups.
[00:33:13] Today is the one day
[00:33:14] anniversary of where I started
[00:33:16] my job at Luke Lamco
[00:33:17] and one of the first things
[00:33:19] that I did was got them
[00:33:20] On2Air backups.
[00:33:21] Nice. Appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:33:25] All right,
[00:33:26] Kuovonne is going to spill her secrets
[00:33:32] on scripting and all things Airtable.
[00:33:38] I don't know if I would go that far.
[00:33:40] What it is is I have a new initiative that
[00:33:43] I started and let's see. How can I,
[00:33:46] do I click present?
[00:33:48] Yeah.
[00:33:52] Share screen,
[00:33:57] share screen. Now, how do I pick
[00:34:01] which window?
[00:34:04] Let's see. I think this is this window.
[00:34:08] Ok.
[00:34:11] Now how to see?
[00:34:13] Ok. All right here we go. So
[00:34:15] what happened was
[00:34:17] I've been posting content
[00:34:19] about Airtable on different places
[00:34:21] for a couple of years now.
[00:34:23] The Airtable community forums,
[00:34:26] sometimes in Slack,
[00:34:27] I've been doing it on Table Forums
[00:34:29] and on Facebook groups.
[00:34:31] And I found that my
[00:34:31] content was getting split
[00:34:33] off into all these different places and I
[00:34:36] it was fun creating it.
[00:34:37] But like if I want to refer back
[00:34:38] to it or there's this
[00:34:39] other useful comment
[00:34:40] that would go in
[00:34:41] and then it would just be lost
[00:34:43] because it's on some old thread.
[00:34:45] That's not the original post
[00:34:47] that you can't search on anymore.
[00:34:48] And I said, you know what?
[00:34:50] I wish I could just have
[00:34:51] one place where I could put
[00:34:53] my knowledge and the information
[00:34:55] that I want to put it together
[00:34:56] and
[00:34:57] just
[00:34:58] have it all consolidated
[00:34:59] where stuff won't get lost.
[00:35:01] And I decided over this
[00:35:02] past weekend that you know what,
[00:35:04] I'm just gonna go ahead and create an coda
[00:35:07] dock where I can put it together.
[00:35:08] And I ended up creating two coder docks.
[00:35:10] And I decided
[00:35:11] if you go here, it's
[00:35:14] H T P S coda dot I O slash
[00:35:16] at Kuovonne,
[00:35:17] you will have to know how
[00:35:18] to spell my name in order to get there.
[00:35:19] But one of them is my guide to Airtable
[00:35:22] and what this is is it's
[00:35:24] a work in progress, but it is
[00:35:26] the different knowledge
[00:35:28] of that I think is important.
[00:35:29] About knowing about Airtable.
[00:35:30] So I've got stuff about
[00:35:32] different field types
[00:35:33] where I say, OK,
[00:35:34] here are all the different field types.
[00:35:36] What's the data type
[00:35:37] that there are in there?
[00:35:39] Computed field types,
[00:35:41] field types, how they work in scripting.
[00:35:44] Stuff about formula fields
[00:35:46] where I have my presentation from
[00:35:48] last year's Dare Table
[00:35:50] conference, I've also got
[00:35:53] my beginnings of my style guide
[00:35:56] on how I write my styles for formulas,
[00:36:01] information on meta data fields.
[00:36:03] A lot of different other information
[00:36:06] that I think is useful information about
[00:36:08] Airtable and using Airtable
[00:36:10] that
[00:36:12] is not readily available on the website.
[00:36:14] And it's just my business take on how
[00:36:16] I'm doing it.
[00:36:17] And I just want to consolidate
[00:36:18] the information.
[00:36:18] So the plan is like rather than just
[00:36:21] writing a post that gets read by a couple
[00:36:23] of people in a forum
[00:36:24] and then just is lost
[00:36:25] that I'm gonna put it all here.
[00:36:26] And if you like love my content,
[00:36:29] you can just go here
[00:36:30] and then you can just see
[00:36:31] all of it all together,
[00:36:32] hopefully nicely organized,
[00:36:34] but also in an ongoing way that I plan on
[00:36:37] maintaining this. So that
[00:36:39] if I have a new idea or a new formula
[00:36:41] that I think is the common,
[00:36:42] the pattern is
[00:36:43] that you can see that's there.
[00:36:44] So for example,
[00:36:45] like
[00:36:46] here, I've got my common
[00:36:47] formula patterns. I've only put in.
[00:36:49] I said I've only been doing
[00:36:50] this over this weekend,
[00:36:51] right? So we're like,
[00:36:52] I've put in like
[00:36:53] examples of the formulas here.
[00:36:58] So this is what it is
[00:36:59] for Airtable as itself.
[00:37:00] But that also I had so much other
[00:37:01] information about scripting.
[00:37:03] I said, you know what,
[00:37:04] I need to have another doc
[00:37:04] that talks about scripting.
[00:37:07] And so that's this one here.
[00:37:10] So you want to learn scripting?
[00:37:11] I think this is one of the
[00:37:12] most important pages
[00:37:13] to start off with is
[00:37:14] do you actually want to learn
[00:37:15] how to write scripts
[00:37:16] or do you just want working
[00:37:17] code? Because if you just want
[00:37:19] working code to do something else,
[00:37:20] a little discussion of what
[00:37:22] you might want to think of
[00:37:24] if you want to have AI
[00:37:24] write the script for you
[00:37:26] and then I get asked this
[00:37:28] so many times it's
[00:37:29] what do you do if you actually said
[00:37:31] yes, I actually want to write
[00:37:32] the script myself, but where do I start?
[00:37:34] So depends on whether or not
[00:37:36] you know
[00:37:36] Airtable depends on whether or not you
[00:37:38] know code.
[00:37:39] And then after that,
[00:37:40] it goes straight to the
[00:37:41] scripting documentation.
[00:37:42] Then this is the part these free scripts.
[00:37:45] I think is what people might be
[00:37:46] most interested in. What it is is
[00:37:49] every now and then I'll see
[00:37:51] like a particular use case
[00:37:53] come up in a forum. And I thought,
[00:37:54] oh, that's interesting.
[00:37:56] And I'll write like a little script
[00:37:58] to do that and then
[00:37:58] I'll publish it. And I'm like,
[00:37:59] well, maybe someone else
[00:38:00] will be interested in it.
[00:38:02] And I said, what
[00:38:03] I
[00:38:03] do, so I'll stay here.
[00:38:04] So, like here, this was a Facebook post
[00:38:07] where someone wanted to do
[00:38:08] a schedule something
[00:38:09] to go on the second and the
[00:38:10] fourth Monday,
[00:38:11] there was a little conversation
[00:38:13] about people suggesting things.
[00:38:14] And
[00:38:17] if we look at these here,
[00:38:18] she'll said, ok, well,
[00:38:20] can you do the scripting option?
[00:38:21] And so I said, you know what,
[00:38:23] let me go ahead and write that.
[00:38:24] And so I wrote it here
[00:38:25] with the inspiration of saying, well,
[00:38:27] if you want to do something
[00:38:28] that goes out on the second
[00:38:29] and the fourth Monday
[00:38:30] just have your own automation
[00:38:32] run every month,
[00:38:33] excuse me, every week,
[00:38:35] every Monday
[00:38:35] and then have a script determine if it is
[00:38:37] the second or the fourth.
[00:38:40] And so I walk through how
[00:38:42] to do it, how you get the date,
[00:38:44] get the day of the month,
[00:38:45] so on determine whether or not it is.
[00:38:47] And this is how I thought about doing it.
[00:38:50] So for example, first,
[00:38:51] he said, well, ok,
[00:38:52] if it's going to be in these days,
[00:38:54] but then we have another
[00:38:54] way and we can actually
[00:38:56] make that a little bit
[00:38:57] concise. So it needs a little bit less
[00:38:59] set it out and then we have the full
[00:39:00] script. So this full script,
[00:39:02] you see it's only four lines long
[00:39:04] and if we really
[00:39:04] wanted it to be shorter,
[00:39:06] it could be shorter.
[00:39:07] So it's not something that it's a
[00:39:08] script that I'm gonna go and like
[00:39:09] sell
[00:39:10] because it's so short.
[00:39:12] It has very little use case
[00:39:14] for people actually putting
[00:39:15] in practice. But it would be very useful
[00:39:17] to this particular person.
[00:39:18] And also
[00:39:19] part of it is to teach other people
[00:39:21] how to do scripting. So that they see here
[00:39:24] are the different steps.
[00:39:25] This is how you get a date.
[00:39:27] This is how you think
[00:39:28] through the logic.
[00:39:29] And then you think, oh, well,
[00:39:30] maybe I could recapture that
[00:39:31] logic to make it
[00:39:32] a little bit more efficient.
[00:39:33] And this is how you output it.
[00:39:36] And
[00:39:37] that helps people learn scripting
[00:39:39] because I'm a really big believer that if
[00:39:41] anyone who wants to learn scripting
[00:39:43] and is motivated doing it,
[00:39:45] they should have the chance to do it.
[00:39:47] And this is a way of paying back all the
[00:39:49] free websites that I saw that taught me
[00:39:51] all the different tricks that I know.
[00:39:54] And
[00:39:55] well, just because
[00:39:58] I think I am offering in a way
[00:39:59] of knowing whether or not
[00:40:00] I'm actually offering a
[00:40:01] useful service is,
[00:40:04] oh, I lost my
[00:40:05] is,
[00:40:06] you know, if you found this was helpful,
[00:40:09] you can buy me a coffee,
[00:40:10] just give a little tip. It takes me to,
[00:40:12] it'll take you to
[00:40:14] my coffee shop of
[00:40:15] ros gone. And I actually,
[00:40:17] I did get this one person did
[00:40:18] like it and gave
[00:40:20] me a little tip for that.
[00:40:21] So,
[00:40:22] actually, I don't, I don't think it
[00:40:24] was this one. I think that was for a,
[00:40:26] that one was for a different person.
[00:40:28] If we look here, I think this one might
[00:40:29] have been
[00:40:31] for,
[00:40:32] so I've tried to break them up,
[00:40:33] I think. So this is like an automation
[00:40:35] for a formatted time stamp.
[00:40:37] So for example,
[00:40:38] if you want to have a formatted time stamp
[00:40:40] that you want to use
[00:40:40] in an email,
[00:40:41] you have the time stamp
[00:40:43] that when the automation was run,
[00:40:44] but it gets an I S O screen
[00:40:45] which is really ugly.
[00:40:46] You want something that's
[00:40:47] pretty.
[00:40:48] And so
[00:40:50] I talk through how you use the two local
[00:40:53] string explaining the different
[00:40:55] parts that you need.
[00:40:56] I give links to say here's
[00:40:58] the different choices
[00:40:59] that you can include in them.
[00:41:01] And then at the end
[00:41:04] is the full script.
[00:41:05] So it's really a short script.
[00:41:07] It's not worth trying to
[00:41:08] charge money for. But you know,
[00:41:10] if it was useful to you,
[00:41:12] it might be worth it to give a tip because
[00:41:15] I'm not gonna keep rooting through this.
[00:41:17] People aren't finding it useful.
[00:41:18] The way people tell me
[00:41:20] that it's useful is,
[00:41:22] you know, they fill that tip jar.
[00:41:23] Nice, very cool.
[00:41:25] This is good stuff. It's like
[00:41:27] if you, if you've spent any time
[00:41:29] in any of the communities,
[00:41:31] you've seen Kuovonne's
[00:41:32] name and how valuable her,
[00:41:34] her feedback
[00:41:35] and and time spent on answering
[00:41:38] hundreds, thousands of questions.
[00:41:42] So compiling it all into one place is,
[00:41:45] is invaluable to anybody
[00:41:46] getting up to speed in Airtable.
[00:41:48] So this is an awesome resource.
[00:41:52] As I said, if, if you,
[00:41:54] if you want to learn scripting,
[00:41:56] I think it's better if you actually
[00:41:58] learn scripting
[00:41:59] than try and rely on A I for
[00:42:00] now because the A I
[00:42:01] is gonna have weird errors
[00:42:02] that you're not gonna know how to
[00:42:04] debug.
[00:42:06] Yeah.
[00:42:07] Yeah,
[00:42:08] that's true. It's like
[00:42:09] if you don't know
[00:42:11] what you're dealing with, like A I could
[00:42:15] give you get you close enough. But
[00:42:18] that last part is the hardest part.
[00:42:21] Absolutely.
[00:42:22] Well,
[00:42:22] and you're you're what,
[00:42:24] what are you speaking on at DareTable?
[00:42:26] So let's go back a little bit here.
[00:42:31] So this is back scripting.
[00:42:33] Let me go back to my guide to Airtable.
[00:42:36] One of the things that
[00:42:38] is one of my current kicks
[00:42:39] is the idea of metadata
[00:42:41] fields. So some simple metadata
[00:42:43] fields are like you're created by or your
[00:42:45] created time or your last modified,
[00:42:48] this is data about your data.
[00:42:52] So not the data that's actually
[00:42:54] being used to run the business,
[00:42:55] but data that helps you manage it.
[00:42:57] And
[00:42:59] one of my recent skis is the idea
[00:43:01] is that we have two other
[00:43:03] metadata
[00:43:03] type fields that I'm going to be talking
[00:43:06] about that are particularly interesting.
[00:43:08] One of them is data validation.
[00:43:10] So this section will be coming
[00:43:12] after DareTable
[00:43:14] and the other one is going
[00:43:16] to be additional dependencies.
[00:43:18] So what these are the ideas,
[00:43:20] data validation is when you have
[00:43:22] say you've got
[00:43:24] if you have a form,
[00:43:26] so someone creating a new record, you say,
[00:43:27] OK, we need to make sure that
[00:43:29] these three fields are filled out.
[00:43:30] You can do that when they fill
[00:43:32] out the form, right?
[00:43:33] But what happens after the
[00:43:34] fact that people are editing the data
[00:43:35] and maybe they like delete
[00:43:37] one of those fields.
[00:43:38] Well, suddenly you have invalid
[00:43:40] data. What if you have something
[00:43:42] that says if you're gonna choose,
[00:43:43] you know,
[00:43:44] other as the single select option,
[00:43:45] we want to make sure that you
[00:43:46] filled in this text field
[00:43:48] where you actually type in
[00:43:50] what that other thing is.
[00:43:52] These are data validation issues.
[00:43:53] Airtable doesn't have
[00:43:55] a built way of in way
[00:43:55] of doing that, but we can
[00:43:57] generate a formula field that says,
[00:43:58] OK, let's take a look at all
[00:44:00] these different different
[00:44:02] conditions and apply in
[00:44:03] what is your business logic to say
[00:44:05] is this set of data in this valid
[00:44:07] in this record actually valid?
[00:44:08] And so I'll be talking about
[00:44:10] why you want a field
[00:44:11] like this,
[00:44:11] how to construct a field like this
[00:44:14] and
[00:44:17] why I think it's important to put it all
[00:44:19] and just have one field that puts it
[00:44:21] all together rather than having it
[00:44:22] scattered over in different places.
[00:44:25] Then the other metadata,
[00:44:26] one is this additional dependencies.
[00:44:28] The idea is you've got your
[00:44:30] Airtable base and you can look
[00:44:32] there if there are additional tendencies,
[00:44:34] you can say, OK,
[00:44:35] when I try and delete this field,
[00:44:36] it gives me a warning.
[00:44:37] It says actually there's these
[00:44:38] two other formula fields. Well,
[00:44:40] it won't necessarily tell you
[00:44:41] what the formula fields are
[00:44:43] unless you're an enterprise.
[00:44:44] But it'll actually,
[00:44:44] it will tell you no matter what you are,
[00:44:46] it'll tell you which field fields
[00:44:47] are that depend on that field that you're
[00:44:48] about to delete.
[00:44:50] But the problem is,
[00:44:51] is say you have something else,
[00:44:52] say you've got to make
[00:44:53] scenario or a zap
[00:44:54] that depends on that field,
[00:44:56] it doesn't know that, Airtable
[00:44:57] will just let you delete it
[00:44:58] so you can create another formula field
[00:45:00] that says these are my additional
[00:45:01] dependencies. Here's on everything
[00:45:03] outside of this scope
[00:45:05] that's gonna blow up if
[00:45:06] you delete this field.
[00:45:07] And so I'm gonna show you
[00:45:09] why you want this additional
[00:45:10] dependencies field,
[00:45:11] how to write it so that you can
[00:45:13] document and say where things are,
[00:45:15] what they were used in.
[00:45:16] We actually had a situation where
[00:45:18] we had a field
[00:45:19] that no one was really quite
[00:45:20] sure what they were using out.
[00:45:21] It turned out that it
[00:45:22] was actually used in a page
[00:45:23] designer block
[00:45:24] and no one ever looked at it.
[00:45:26] They just printed the page designer
[00:45:28] block and if we had actually deleted that
[00:45:29] field, it would have messed up
[00:45:31] the page designer block
[00:45:32] without people even
[00:45:33] really
[00:45:33] notice looking at it.
[00:45:34] So
[00:45:36] we went ahead and said,
[00:45:37] OK, in my additional dependencies,
[00:45:39] everything that's
[00:45:40] used in the page designer block,
[00:45:41] I'm gonna be put it there.
[00:45:42] So that when we go
[00:45:43] through, we don't actually delete
[00:45:44] something that's used in page designer.
[00:45:48] Very useful.
[00:45:49] Well, that would be a good segment.
[00:45:52] We will end this with
[00:45:54] a shout out from Zeki.
[00:45:56] If Airtable had a community member
[00:45:58] Hall of Fame, Kuovonne
[00:45:59] would be in it.
[00:46:00] Agreed.
[00:46:02] I, I think there are many
[00:46:04] people that should,
[00:46:05] that deserve to be in it.
[00:46:07] Yeah,
[00:46:08] for sure. But you are definitely
[00:46:10] in that group. So I welcome.
[00:46:11] Thank you Kuovonne
[00:46:13] for sharing that.
[00:46:14] So we'll put a link to it
[00:46:17] coda to your coda sites
[00:46:19] so people can find you in my recognition.
[00:46:21] Just go to coda dot I O slash
[00:46:24] at Kuovonne.
[00:46:25] Because I've been changing
[00:46:27] the names of the files.
[00:46:28] So if you're trying to,
[00:46:29] to link to a specific doc
[00:46:31] or deep inside a doc,
[00:46:32] I'm not gonna guarantee that any
[00:46:34] of those URL S are gonna stay static.
[00:46:36] Fair enough.
[00:46:38] All right, let's move on.
[00:46:39] Alli is going to share some
[00:46:42] invoicing and line items.
[00:46:46] All right.
[00:46:48] Excellent.
[00:46:50] OK. So this is a question
[00:46:52] I see getting asked like,
[00:46:55] if not daily, definitely several times
[00:46:57] a week across all the different platforms.
[00:47:00] It's something that like, really,
[00:47:02] I think once you understand this concept,
[00:47:04] like
[00:47:05] it kind of helps you
[00:47:06] bring your Airtable usage
[00:47:08] to the next level.
[00:47:09] It's a good introduction to
[00:47:11] understanding a junction table,
[00:47:12] which I'm sure if, if you've
[00:47:14] done a lot of reading on Airtable
[00:47:16] and you don't know what that is,
[00:47:17] you might have seen that term
[00:47:19] tossed around quite a bit
[00:47:20] and been like,
[00:47:21] what the heck are people talking about?
[00:47:23] So hopefully this will kind of help
[00:47:25] to bring all that together into a pretty
[00:47:28] solid use case that I think
[00:47:30] many people will need
[00:47:32] and use on a regular basis.
[00:47:35] So here I do have all this built out,
[00:47:37] but I'm just gonna kind of start off from
[00:47:39] like where I usually see people
[00:47:41] starting off from
[00:47:42] and then they get confused and
[00:47:43] frustrated and then
[00:47:44] we'll go into the solution.
[00:47:46] So here I've got a table of invoices,
[00:47:48] just ignore the line items table for now.
[00:47:52] Invoices and then I have
[00:47:54] a table of products here
[00:47:55] to get rid of this as well.
[00:47:57] Just so it's simple.
[00:47:59] So
[00:48:00] on
[00:48:02] the products table,
[00:48:03] I have a unit price field.
[00:48:05] I've got some other items
[00:48:07] or pieces of data about those items.
[00:48:12] And on the invoices table,
[00:48:14] I'm just saying the invoice number,
[00:48:16] the date and it's linked off to a customer
[00:48:18] and what I will usually see
[00:48:20] people do and they're very
[00:48:22] first learning how to use Airtable
[00:48:25] is they might link directly
[00:48:27] to that products table and say,
[00:48:29] well,
[00:48:31] let's say
[00:48:32] products on invoice.
[00:48:35] And they might say, well, I've got
[00:48:38] item A
[00:48:39] item B on this one,
[00:48:42] this one's got just item B
[00:48:44] and this one's got item C
[00:48:46] and
[00:48:47] then they'll do, they might learn
[00:48:49] how to use a roll up field
[00:48:51] and roll up that
[00:48:52] unit price
[00:48:55] and sum that up,
[00:48:58] which is great if you only have
[00:49:00] one of each of these items.
[00:49:03] But
[00:49:03] what if, what if on this invoice,
[00:49:05] I actually have a quantity
[00:49:07] of two for item A
[00:49:08] and a quantity of three for item B or any
[00:49:11] such numbers.
[00:49:13] You're not gonna be able to
[00:49:14] record any of that data
[00:49:16] here using just these two
[00:49:17] tables. It's just
[00:49:19] you don't have enough dimensions
[00:49:21] there to be able to get the data you need.
[00:49:24] So that's where a junction table
[00:49:26] comes in which is super,
[00:49:28] super helpful and a
[00:49:30] very, very powerful thing
[00:49:31] that Airtable allows you to do
[00:49:33] and a good way to structure your data
[00:49:35] when it's necessary.
[00:49:37] So I'm just gonna delete this
[00:49:39] products on invoice field altogether.
[00:49:42] Don't need to worry about that dependency
[00:49:45] and the back link.
[00:49:47] I know, right. I've got to just
[00:49:49] go over there and do that now.
[00:49:50] Thank you. Might as well.
[00:49:52] I wish that you could have
[00:49:54] that as an option. But I, yeah,
[00:49:56] it'd be cool.
[00:49:57] Sorry, I just had to bring that up
[00:49:59] because I see so many
[00:50:00] people not delete their back links
[00:50:02] and then their tables littered
[00:50:03] with the stuff that they don't
[00:50:04] know what it is. The carry on.
[00:50:05] You see invoices two
[00:50:07] invoices three
[00:50:07] invoices four like a million times.
[00:50:09] Yeah. Oh my gosh, it's frustrating.
[00:50:12] So then I'm gonna just go over
[00:50:14] directly to this line items
[00:50:16] table and talk about
[00:50:17] how this is set up.
[00:50:18] So a junction table,
[00:50:20] how I would define it is
[00:50:22] a table that's taking
[00:50:25] data from two different other tables
[00:50:28] and bringing them together
[00:50:30] into this one dimension here.
[00:50:31] So here I've got one row
[00:50:33] that's representing
[00:50:35] one product
[00:50:36] on one invoice.
[00:50:38] But here I can put in
[00:50:40] what that quantity is.
[00:50:42] I can pull over the unit price
[00:50:44] from the products table.
[00:50:45] I can then create a formula here.
[00:50:48] That's saying
[00:50:49] the quantity times the unit price,
[00:50:51] I can get each line item
[00:50:54] individually what that sub total is
[00:50:56] and that adds up to the total cost of the
[00:50:59] invoice.
[00:51:02] Another thing
[00:51:03] that
[00:51:04] might be helpful is I actually have this
[00:51:07] unit price free text field here
[00:51:10] because
[00:51:12] if we don't have this right.
[00:51:13] So generally speaking,
[00:51:15] what I would do and I
[00:51:16] haven't built out all of this all the way
[00:51:18] is I'd say once you mark this
[00:51:20] invoice as sent,
[00:51:21] for example, do you have like a
[00:51:22] status field on your invoices table,
[00:51:25] then I would write an automation that
[00:51:27] would take your unit prices
[00:51:30] and copy them into this
[00:51:31] unit price pretext field.
[00:51:34] And if you look at my formula
[00:51:36] for unit price, I'm essentially saying
[00:51:39] this is another little known
[00:51:40] fact I talked about
[00:51:42] last week on the show
[00:51:44] is you can actually write if statements
[00:51:46] and other formulas inside of your roll
[00:51:48] up fields.
[00:51:49] So this saves you from having
[00:51:51] to have, you know,
[00:51:53] multiple formula fields across
[00:51:54] the table.
[00:51:57] So basically I'm just saying,
[00:51:58] if I have unit price pretext,
[00:52:00] if I have a value in
[00:52:01] that field,
[00:52:02] then I wanna use that value.
[00:52:04] Otherwise I wanna just use
[00:52:05] the sum of whatever the
[00:52:06] unit price is for the value.
[00:52:08] I mean for the product
[00:52:09] that I'm linking to.
[00:52:11] And why I wanna do that is because
[00:52:14] let's say I haven't set that up
[00:52:17] and item A,
[00:52:19] you know, six months down the line,
[00:52:21] I'm changing my prices and I'm saying
[00:52:23] this is no longer $15. This is now
[00:52:27] $17.
[00:52:30] Now, when I go over to my line items,
[00:52:33] my sub total and my unit price
[00:52:35] has changed even if I've already sent this
[00:52:37] invoice out
[00:52:38] a year ago, even
[00:52:40] then it's gonna show
[00:52:41] it's gonna change
[00:52:42] all of my historical data.
[00:52:44] But you can see here where
[00:52:45] I'm linking over to item A
[00:52:47] and I've frozen that value
[00:52:48] in time.
[00:52:50] It stayed as $15
[00:52:51] and didn't change my sub total
[00:52:53] or the whole total price of the
[00:52:55] invoice.
[00:52:56] So that's a mistake
[00:52:57] I see people making a lot and
[00:53:00] it's, it's really,
[00:53:02] it's, it's hard to explain, but
[00:53:05] it's very important to make sure
[00:53:07] that you freeze those values in time,
[00:53:09] especially when you want to be
[00:53:11] relying on your historical data.
[00:53:14] Otherwise things get messy.
[00:53:15] One quick comment is
[00:53:17] I notice you use the word free text
[00:53:19] in the name of that
[00:53:19] field. So naming things is really tricky.
[00:53:23] Yeah,
[00:53:24] maybe a different name
[00:53:25] because we actually have a
[00:53:26] number rather than the word
[00:53:27] text. No, totally. Yeah, this is,
[00:53:30] you know, I built this in 2019
[00:53:31] and I used the word free text
[00:53:34] in 2019 and never changed it ever,
[00:53:36] right? You know what I would
[00:53:37] actually do is say like
[00:53:39] unit price override even
[00:53:39] because that would be
[00:53:41] work as an override field.
[00:53:43] So if I wanted to be like,
[00:53:45] actually this was $15
[00:53:47] I could override it or maybe
[00:53:49] maybe for this person's getting
[00:53:51] a discount or something. And I
[00:53:53] mean, obviously I've maybe
[00:53:54] have something actually
[00:53:55] built in to allow for
[00:53:55] discounts. But
[00:53:57] if for whatever reason,
[00:53:58] this product actually in this
[00:53:59] case was $20 you'd be have
[00:54:00] the ability to override it.
[00:54:04] But yes, thank you Kuovonne,
[00:54:05] naming things is very important.
[00:54:10] So yeah, junction tables
[00:54:12] are super, super powerful to understand.
[00:54:15] But now when I go back
[00:54:17] to my invoices table,
[00:54:19] I'll actually unhide what I've got here.
[00:54:24] So I've got my invoice total.
[00:54:26] I've got my line items.
[00:54:27] I can actually still see
[00:54:29] what products are on that
[00:54:30] invoice in the same way
[00:54:31] I would if I had that direct link,
[00:54:33] but now I can
[00:54:34] actually set different quantities and
[00:54:38] see the actual dimensions
[00:54:40] of that product on that invoice.
[00:54:45] People sometimes ask like
[00:54:47] where the easiest place
[00:54:48] to like manage this is.
[00:54:50] And for me,
[00:54:51] I usually do it just directly
[00:54:53] from the line items table.
[00:54:56] Like even if you needed
[00:54:57] to start a new invoice,
[00:54:58] I would just hit the plus button,
[00:55:00] create a new line here
[00:55:02] and then just say,
[00:55:03] all right, I'm starting invoice
[00:55:05] 10004
[00:55:07] and then you can just go
[00:55:09] to town, maybe you have a couple,
[00:55:10] you know,
[00:55:12] finds in there,
[00:55:14] but really, really super, super simple.
[00:55:20] And yeah, that's about it.
[00:55:23] Another thing that's really
[00:55:24] nice about having the separate
[00:55:26] line items table is
[00:55:26] right now, you've got a grouped
[00:55:28] by invoice,
[00:55:29] but you can also have another grid
[00:55:30] view where you have it grouped
[00:55:32] by the product.
[00:55:33] So that way it's easier to see
[00:55:34] summary information.
[00:55:35] Like what are your different products?
[00:55:37] And do you have some
[00:55:38] products that are being used
[00:55:40] in a whole lot of different line items?
[00:55:43] Absolutely.
[00:55:45] Yeah. So we can see quickly
[00:55:46] item A is definitely
[00:55:47] getting the most usage,
[00:55:48] but I'm making the
[00:55:49] most money off of item C.
[00:55:52] Well, I mean, this doesn't include profit
[00:55:57] but gross gross dollars.
[00:55:59] I don't see he's winning.
[00:56:02] Other things you can do
[00:56:03] really nicely,
[00:56:04] I think I did actually throw together a
[00:56:05] page designer
[00:56:07] block in here.
[00:56:08] Yes. So this is super,
[00:56:09] super simple. It could be a lot prettier
[00:56:11] but you can
[00:56:13] you know, build off having
[00:56:15] this junction table
[00:56:16] linked to your invoices
[00:56:19] and build a nice looking grid view
[00:56:21] or table on that page showing what
[00:56:24] quantity and the price
[00:56:25] was and the sub total for each item.
[00:56:29] Nice.
[00:56:30] Very, very useful. Yeah,
[00:56:32] you need to understand
[00:56:33] junction tables and how those
[00:56:35] work.
[00:56:36] Fundamental aspect,
[00:56:37] understanding link records,
[00:56:39] understanding junction tables.
[00:56:42] Yeah.
[00:56:43] All right,
[00:56:44] cool. Let's uh give a quick
[00:56:46] shout out to our community at
[00:56:47] builtonair.com
[00:56:47] if you are not in there,
[00:56:50] please join builtonair.com/join
[00:56:53] get you access to a slack community
[00:56:55] of thousands of Airtable
[00:56:57] users and fans and experts
[00:56:59] and lots of people helping each other out.
[00:57:02] So
[00:57:03] check us out
[00:57:04] at builtonair.com
[00:57:06] Okay. We've got a few minutes
[00:57:08] and we don't need much
[00:57:09] to go over record templates.
[00:57:11] So record templates
[00:57:14] if
[00:57:16] if you have been following
[00:57:18] the recent announcement, so
[00:57:20] you'll find this in the tool section.
[00:57:22] Although sometimes
[00:57:23] it's weird in some bases like I'll see
[00:57:26] it at the top level.
[00:57:27] I don't know if they finalized
[00:57:29] like where you find things.
[00:57:30] But I think for the most part
[00:57:32] now there's a tools drop down
[00:57:34] and you'll see record templates
[00:57:36] along with some other
[00:57:37] tools that are coming
[00:57:39] were available. And so what
[00:57:41] record templates are,
[00:57:43] is basically think of it as
[00:57:44] like default values for a record
[00:57:47] that you can use when
[00:57:49] creating a new record.
[00:57:50] And so
[00:57:52] at the base level,
[00:57:54] each of the fields
[00:57:55] have or not all the fields,
[00:57:56] but some of the fields have
[00:57:58] default values you can specify
[00:58:01] well URL, you can't but single text
[00:58:04] you can.
[00:58:05] Now you can do drop downs where you
[00:58:07] can specify in the field configuration,
[00:58:09] what the default value is.
[00:58:11] But if you need something
[00:58:13] a little bit more dynamic
[00:58:14] and also supporting these
[00:58:16] other fields that don't
[00:58:17] have that default value,
[00:58:18] that's where you come to these templates.
[00:58:21] So in here, you can create a new template
[00:58:24] and you, you'll first, I'll show
[00:58:28] you'll first pick which table
[00:58:30] you're, you're gonna be
[00:58:31] creating the template for.
[00:58:33] So
[00:58:33] one template per or a template
[00:58:36] is associated with one table.
[00:58:38] And then once you pick your table,
[00:58:41] then it'll basically show you all of the
[00:58:43] values for all or all the
[00:58:46] fields in that table.
[00:58:48] This is the, the main,
[00:58:49] the primary field
[00:58:51] and you're essentially inserting
[00:58:52] default values
[00:58:54] that you want to specify in there.
[00:58:57] The cool thing is,
[00:58:58] is you can actually link to
[00:59:01] you can actually set up linked
[00:59:03] records
[00:59:04] and those links can either go to,
[00:59:07] let me show a blank one.
[00:59:12] Yeah, let me start over.
[00:59:14] So if you have a linked record,
[00:59:16] you can link to a new record
[00:59:19] and it can be
[00:59:26] where did I miss?
[00:59:27] There was an option
[00:59:28] to link to an existing record?
[00:59:30] I have not seen an option
[00:59:32] to link to an existing record.
[00:59:33] I've only seen the
[00:59:34] ability to create new records.
[00:59:37] New linked records.
[00:59:38] Yeah, I just saw it a second ago
[00:59:40] when I was playing, maybe,
[00:59:42] maybe I was hallucinating
[00:59:45] like my A I does.
[00:59:47] So if you've defined another
[00:59:50] record for the other table,
[00:59:52] you can do that but not an existing
[00:59:57] inside here. Gotcha.
[01:00:00] Well, that's already linked.
[01:00:03] I saw an option where
[01:00:05] do you want to link
[01:00:06] to an existing record or create a
[01:00:08] new record?
[01:00:10] So
[01:00:11] that is somewhere,
[01:00:13] maybe that was when it
[01:00:15] was beta and they found it.
[01:00:17] No,
[01:00:18] just earlier today,
[01:00:20] I saw it when I was playing
[01:00:21] with this. But anyways,
[01:00:24] let's see, I think I did this.
[01:00:31] I think if I delete these,
[01:00:34] but you can basically
[01:00:39] it
[01:00:39] is not,
[01:00:40] so you can set up linked records
[01:00:42] that will actually get created
[01:00:44] when this record
[01:00:45] gets used. So
[01:00:46] you set up all your default values,
[01:00:48] you can set up the default
[01:00:49] values for the link record
[01:00:51] and then
[01:00:52] there's a couple ways that you
[01:00:54] can actually use these templates.
[01:00:55] So if you're in here,
[01:00:57] you can, you can just click
[01:00:59] on the dot dot dot And create
[01:01:01] a record from this template.
[01:01:03] And that will automatically,
[01:01:05] if I go to the results table
[01:01:07] that will automatically
[01:01:11] just add a new row
[01:01:13] and you'll see there.
[01:01:14] And it basically inserts
[01:01:16] a new record using all the
[01:01:17] default values that you
[01:01:18] set in your template.
[01:01:19] You can also do the same down here in this
[01:01:22] a
[01:01:22] record. You can just click on,
[01:01:24] add a blank one
[01:01:26] or add a record from a template.
[01:01:27] And this will show any templates
[01:01:30] that are associated with this table.
[01:01:33] And when you click on them,
[01:01:34] it'll add it and this one
[01:01:36] didn't have any default
[01:01:37] value set. So
[01:01:40] it will add it there.
[01:01:41] The other way that is probably
[01:01:43] more powerful is if you're
[01:01:45] inside in automation,
[01:01:47] one of the steps that you
[01:01:49] specify is a create record step
[01:01:53] and it gives you the option now
[01:01:56] to once you specify the table,
[01:01:59] I believe this will only show if you have
[01:02:02] templates associated with that table.
[01:02:04] But it will allow you the option of using
[01:02:07] specific fields to create a temp
[01:02:10] record or from a template.
[01:02:13] And so you can specify from a template
[01:02:15] and then it'll give you the list
[01:02:17] of the templates
[01:02:18] associated with this table.
[01:02:20] And then once you run this step,
[01:02:23] it will then create a record
[01:02:25] for that rec that table
[01:02:27] using all the default values.
[01:02:30] Now, here's the, so that is kind of cool
[01:02:34] the the wish list is
[01:02:36] that you could maybe override
[01:02:38] some of these values dynamically from.
[01:02:40] So you like use these as true defaults,
[01:02:43] I guess you could then add another step.
[01:02:45] Because this will return the record
[01:02:48] for that just got created and then you,
[01:02:51] if you needed to update it with more
[01:02:53] dynamic stuff from a previous step,
[01:02:55] you could, you could do that in an update
[01:02:58] record step.
[01:03:00] The other thing I wish you could do
[01:03:02] is dynamically pick which template based
[01:03:05] off of a, a value.
[01:03:08] You know, you could have a drop down
[01:03:09] that determined which template you wanted
[01:03:11] to use to create a record.
[01:03:13] That was in a previous step.
[01:03:16] I wish it could be dynamic.
[01:03:18] You could re implement that
[01:03:20] by using the,
[01:03:21] the advanced logic and setting up
[01:03:23] conditional logic.
[01:03:25] But then you'd have to have like
[01:03:27] a step for every template that you have.
[01:03:29] If you have 10 different templates,
[01:03:31] you'd have to set up 10 different
[01:03:34] conditional logic steps.
[01:03:36] So there are workarounds,
[01:03:37] but those would be nicer
[01:03:39] if you could do that
[01:03:40] if you had an input variable
[01:03:42] type of thing that says
[01:03:43] this is the name of the
[01:03:43] template.
[01:03:45] Yep. Yep, that would be nice.
[01:03:47] You could dynamically do that.
[01:03:49] So
[01:03:50] that is a, a little bit of how
[01:03:52] you use record templates.
[01:03:54] Be curious to know
[01:03:55] how people are using it in production.
[01:03:58] I'm probably not
[01:04:00] using
[01:04:00] of how you can use record templates.
[01:04:02] OK. What's the advanced step?
[01:04:04] The other half is using record templates
[01:04:07] to update existing records.
[01:04:10] Let's do that.
[01:04:11] And
[01:04:13] the issue with that is
[01:04:16] it's more confusing because
[01:04:18] you have a record template
[01:04:20] but you have an existing
[01:04:21] record that has certain cell values.
[01:04:23] And how do you merge the two of them?
[01:04:28] The logic that Airtable has said
[01:04:31] is if that field is
[01:04:33] blank in your record but
[01:04:34] not blank in the
[01:04:38] template, then it will
[01:04:39] put that template value in.
[01:04:43] If there is a value
[01:04:46] in your record and it's a singular value
[01:04:48] like a single select or a text field or
[01:04:51] a number,
[01:04:51] then you keep whatever
[01:04:53] value you had already.
[01:04:56] Or
[01:04:57] if you have a field that can take
[01:04:59] multiple values
[01:05:00] like a multiple select or a
[01:05:02] multiple collaborators
[01:05:04] or a linked record field,
[01:05:06] then what happens is
[01:05:09] the two values get merged,
[01:05:11] the existing value
[01:05:12] that you had in the record
[01:05:14] and the template value.
[01:05:16] So
[01:05:17] any of three different things
[01:05:19] could happen
[01:05:19] when you update a record using an
[01:05:21] existing template and
[01:05:23] it gets a little bit confusing.
[01:05:25] Yeah, because yeah,
[01:05:26] it doesn't give you any options on
[01:05:28] how that's gonna work.
[01:05:32] That's good to know.
[01:05:33] Yeah, I haven't, I haven't
[01:05:34] used that
[01:05:35] part of it.
[01:05:38] So you can do this
[01:05:39] when you are in an automation and
[01:05:42] you can also do that.
[01:05:43] I believe you can right click
[01:05:45] on an existing record.
[01:05:46] In the grid view and you can say
[01:05:48] update using
[01:05:50] yeah apply template
[01:05:51] template.
[01:05:52] That's right. Yeah, I have,
[01:05:54] I have done that one. So
[01:05:56] it will backfill.
[01:05:58] Yeah.
[01:05:58] Yeah. So for example there in
[01:06:00] your channels, you have a multi
[01:06:01] select. What would happen is it
[01:06:03] would add any new channels
[01:06:05] that were in the
[01:06:05] template but not here
[01:06:07] and it would not take away any.
[01:06:10] On the other hand,
[01:06:11] on any of the of the other
[01:06:13] values they would be
[01:06:14] filled in.
[01:06:16] Yeah
[01:06:16] or not.
[01:06:18] So
[01:06:19] like I said, three different possible
[01:06:21] things that could happen.
[01:06:22] And and so this behavior
[01:06:23] would be the same,
[01:06:25] this is the same behavior as the
[01:06:26] automation update?
[01:06:28] The app
[01:06:29] template. It'd be the same as
[01:06:31] when you use an automation
[01:06:32] that says apply template. Yeah.
[01:06:34] OK.
[01:06:34] Yeah.
[01:06:36] Very cool. Yeah, that is good.
[01:06:38] Good addition. Awesome.
[01:06:41] Thank you.
[01:06:42] Thank you Alli for being on the show.
[01:06:44] Another great episode.
[01:06:45] We will do one more and then,
[01:06:47] and then I believe
[01:06:49] we'll do a live one in person
[01:06:50] in San Francisco. So excited for that
[01:06:53] as always good to be with everybody
[01:06:55] and we will see you
[01:06:56] next week on the BuiltOnAir
[01:06:57] podcast. Take care.
[01:06:59] Thank you.
[01:07:01] Thank you.