7/11/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S15-E01

Duration: 56 minutes

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

In This Episode

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

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

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

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

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

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:11 –

Automate Create – 00:35:27 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Alli will walk through how to set up 2 way sync and what to be aware of

Learn more about the automation

Audience Questions – 00:44:51 –

Lisa Bauer answers the Airtable question: “Create new records for each week of another record’s timeframe”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille will walk through this question and provide a working solution.

Field Focus – 00:51:44 –

A deep dive into the Progress Bars Percentage – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars 

Learn More Here

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:11

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

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:35:27

Airtable Automations – 2 Way Sync

Watch as we review and work through automations. Alli will walk through how to set up 2 way sync and what to be aware of

Learn more about the automation

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:44:51

Airtable Question – Create new records for each week of another record's timeframe

Lisa Bauer answers the Airtable question: “Create new records for each week of another record’s timeframe”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille will walk through this question and provide a working solution.

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:51:44

Learn about the Progress Bars – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars

A deep dive into the Progress Bars Percentage – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars 

Learn More Here

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to season 15, episode one.
[00:01:45] It's good to be back with you after a
[00:01:47] month off.
[00:01:48] Alli, Kamille, good to see you again.
[00:01:51] Are we live?
[00:01:52] We are live.
[00:01:54] Yeah.
[00:01:55] All right, cool. Hi. Hello.
[00:01:59] We've had a, a few weeks off.
[00:02:01] You guys have a good break?
[00:02:03] Absolutely.
[00:02:05] Yeah. Very good. I'm glad to be back.
[00:02:08] Always good to have people watching us.
[00:02:11] Good to have.
[00:02:13] Hi,
[00:02:13] Brandy.
[00:02:14] Brandy. That's right. That's who that is.
[00:02:18] Well, for our new season,
[00:02:20] we'll be kicking off with some fun,
[00:02:23] exciting things.
[00:02:25] Welcome Garrett to the show.
[00:02:27] So for today, we'll always start with our
[00:02:30] Round the Bases. We've got a lot of
[00:02:31] things to get caught up on,
[00:02:33] on what's new in the last
[00:02:35] month since we've been off
[00:02:37] and then a quick shout out to
[00:02:38] On2Air, our primary sponsor.
[00:02:41] And then it doesn't show up here
[00:02:43] my automation broke, but we'll do some
[00:02:45] more automation create.
[00:02:46] Alli is gonna walk through a two way sync
[00:02:50] and then Kamille is going to
[00:02:52] answer a question from a community
[00:02:54] member and then a quick shout out to
[00:02:57] join our community and then finally,
[00:02:59] we'll talk about the new progress bars. So
[00:03:03] with that, that's a little sneak peek
[00:03:05] to something that came out.
[00:03:07] Let's talk about what's new.
[00:03:10] So the first one
[00:03:13] is in interfaces. So they launched,
[00:03:16] this was middle of June,
[00:03:18] they launched some new interface features.
[00:03:23] Let's see what they
[00:03:24] talk about. So we've got
[00:03:26] conditional form fields.
[00:03:29] So as far as visibility
[00:03:31] got helper text
[00:03:33] limit, select options
[00:03:35] and read only default values.
[00:03:38] So a lot of things,
[00:03:39] thoughts and
[00:03:41] these
[00:03:42] I have, they're pretty useful.
[00:03:44] These are more because they're interfaces,
[00:03:46] they're still
[00:03:48] internal facing. Whereas a regular form
[00:03:50] view is the one that you could send to
[00:03:52] anybody in the world to fill out. But
[00:03:55] these are bringing them more
[00:03:57] into parity with what form views can do.
[00:04:00] I've made a lot of use of
[00:04:03] particularly with select fields
[00:04:05] just showing one option and then making it
[00:04:07] required and then not letting them
[00:04:09] edit that field. So you basically come in
[00:04:12] with a default value and
[00:04:14] that's pretty useful for
[00:04:17] you know, certain use cases,
[00:04:19] especially since you could
[00:04:20] have multiple different
[00:04:20] forms. So each form can
[00:04:22] have a different default depending on
[00:04:24] like, oh, you're a manager,
[00:04:26] fill out the manager form if you're a,
[00:04:28] you know, regular employee,
[00:04:29] fill out the regular one
[00:04:30] and it comes in with a
[00:04:31] different value.
[00:04:35] Yeah. Exciting stuff. I think
[00:04:38] I still don't really use
[00:04:40] the interface forms
[00:04:41] just
[00:04:42] because of a couple
[00:04:44] of different things, but
[00:04:46] mainly I want them to be,
[00:04:47] I want there to be a redirect option
[00:04:49] because right now when you
[00:04:50] just hit submit,
[00:04:51] it's just like record created and
[00:04:53] then you stay on the page and like
[00:04:55] nothing really happens,
[00:04:58] which I don't love.
[00:05:01] And then I also just don't love how
[00:05:04] I wish there were more options
[00:05:06] to get to the form rather
[00:05:07] than having a page
[00:05:08] specifically for the form
[00:05:10] or like having a little plus
[00:05:12] by the record picker.
[00:05:13] Like
[00:05:14] if you could just,
[00:05:17] you know, bypass needing a record picker
[00:05:19] to get to the form like or all sorts of
[00:05:21] things. And basically I'm just using
[00:05:23] buttons and automations to create new
[00:05:24] records and interfaces still.
[00:05:27] Yeah.
[00:05:27] Yeah.
[00:05:28] And
[00:05:30] and forms in here are just
[00:05:33] for creating new records.
[00:05:35] Yes, they're, they're
[00:05:37] not for editing. So it, it is,
[00:05:41] it has like the
[00:05:42] it's positioned such that
[00:05:45] it makes sense to me that it should
[00:05:48] be able to be like adapted to edit an
[00:05:50] existing record and the changes
[00:05:52] only happen when you hit submit because
[00:05:54] otherwise it's just a normal page, right?
[00:05:56] It it all changes would happen as you
[00:05:57] keystroke. Maybe you
[00:05:59] want a page that's like
[00:06:00] show me everything non editable.
[00:06:02] You click a button, you get to a form that
[00:06:04] edits it, but only when you click submit.
[00:06:07] I could see that being very useful
[00:06:09] to a lot of different people and that's
[00:06:10] something you could do in
[00:06:12] a interface form but not in an interface
[00:06:14] or a form view as easily. So,
[00:06:17] I don't know if that's something
[00:06:19] that they'd work towards. I feel like it
[00:06:21] wouldn't be a
[00:06:22] monstrous lift on the back end
[00:06:24] because interfaces are baked in
[00:06:27] the record I DS in the URL somewhere.
[00:06:29] This is the record I'm trying to edit for
[00:06:31] all the other types of views. So,
[00:06:33] who knows?
[00:06:34] Yeah.
[00:06:36] And Jen mentions it only really works
[00:06:39] on the same screen if you use list view,
[00:06:41] which is a pain.
[00:06:44] So
[00:06:45] yeah, so it's good, good step forward.
[00:06:48] I think there's always more,
[00:06:49] more room for,
[00:06:50] for growth on the future side
[00:06:53] and functionality. But definitely
[00:06:55] I love to hear your experiences using
[00:06:57] interface forms.
[00:06:59] Yeah. Likewise, I don't, yeah,
[00:07:01] I don't think we use the actual forms
[00:07:03] as much yet. So
[00:07:05] it's getting there.
[00:07:07] All right. Next one.
[00:07:09] I already mentioned we're gonna
[00:07:11] go deep into this
[00:07:12] so we don't need to talk
[00:07:13] too much, but they now have
[00:07:15] a new, it's not a new field type.
[00:07:16] It's still a percentage field
[00:07:19] which we'll talk about later in the show.
[00:07:22] But now you get a nice visual
[00:07:23] progress bar that you can display.
[00:07:26] So that is cool.
[00:07:29] Yeah. Really, really like that one.
[00:07:31] Yeah.
[00:07:32] Yeah.
[00:07:33] And
[00:07:35] yeah,
[00:07:36] but you can also use it with
[00:07:37] computed fields as well.
[00:07:38] That's important too.
[00:07:39] So, but you have to
[00:07:40] format it as a percent. So
[00:07:43] can be used with with formulas,
[00:07:45] roll ups and lookups.
[00:07:50] All right.
[00:07:51] Next one, there's another
[00:07:52] one I didn't see this one
[00:07:55] shared directly from Airtable, but Jan
[00:07:58] who goes by a Databaser,
[00:08:00] found this
[00:08:01] and posted on the Airtable forums.
[00:08:04] And
[00:08:06] so basically, if you're using
[00:08:09] a sync source, it will show you a link
[00:08:13] back to the back to the original
[00:08:17] source to make it easy to jump back to it
[00:08:20] because I believe otherwise you
[00:08:22] would need to create a button that,
[00:08:24] that linked back to the source field.
[00:08:27] So now they make that easy.
[00:08:30] Yeah, I can't remember when this
[00:08:32] first appeared, but it is pretty useful.
[00:08:34] Especially if you have a multi sources
[00:08:36] going on and you don't
[00:08:38] know like which base
[00:08:39] this particular record came from.
[00:08:43] Right.
[00:08:46] Yeah. But like I, I think it's,
[00:08:49] it's
[00:08:50] there in
[00:08:51] the expanded record model.
[00:08:52] It'd be great if you could have
[00:08:57] I don't know something similar
[00:08:58] in an interface environment.
[00:08:59] I know you could
[00:09:00] create
[00:09:01] like Dan said, a button
[00:09:02] that would take you there. But like
[00:09:04] you, you lose the syncing from
[00:09:06] and then the name of the sync source
[00:09:08] that sort of automatically update if you
[00:09:10] rename the sync source.
[00:09:11] So like if there was,
[00:09:13] I don't know if it's a field type,
[00:09:14] I don't know if it's a formula that you
[00:09:16] could
[00:09:17] plug in. That'd be great if you could
[00:09:19] add these into anywhere you might see a
[00:09:21] record
[00:09:22] including interfaces.
[00:09:24] Yeah. And right now they have the,
[00:09:26] the sync source field
[00:09:28] that gets automatically
[00:09:29] added is only if you have more than
[00:09:31] one source syncing to the same table.
[00:09:33] So it would be nice to be able to add that
[00:09:36] just even if you only have one source.
[00:09:39] Yeah, I'm, I'm dealing right now
[00:09:41] where I'm setting up a base
[00:09:43] where one of the
[00:09:44] bases that's gonna sync into it
[00:09:46] is ready.
[00:09:47] And then there's three more that will
[00:09:48] be created eventually.
[00:09:50] But I already know that
[00:09:51] certain records from certain
[00:09:53] bases need to be treated differently.
[00:09:55] And I can't create a formula that says if
[00:09:57] sync source is blah,
[00:09:58] blah, blah, blah blah yet
[00:09:59] because it won't let me put
[00:10:01] that field in and it just feels,
[00:10:03] feels like arbitrary
[00:10:05] that it's not there
[00:10:06] unless you have a multi
[00:10:07] source sync, just put it there.
[00:10:09] If you have a sync at all.
[00:10:10] I think, I
[00:10:11] think if you
[00:10:13] think you can kind of hack it
[00:10:15] if you add a sync a second
[00:10:17] source and then remove
[00:10:19] it,
[00:10:19] I think it keeps
[00:10:21] the sync, it will work,
[00:10:23] but I don't wanna do that.
[00:10:24] I want it to be there.
[00:10:29] Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice.
[00:10:31] Yeah. That's the hidden
[00:10:33] hidden field that only
[00:10:34] shows up in magical instances.
[00:10:39] All right. So yeah, that's
[00:10:41] I think that's all the features.
[00:10:43] This one came out at the end
[00:10:45] of May but after our last episode.
[00:10:46] And then those other
[00:10:49] ones, as far as I know the only
[00:10:51] feature announcements that that came out
[00:10:54] the last month.
[00:10:56] So let's move on. Let's go to the
[00:10:58] BuiltOnAir community.
[00:11:00] This is always a fun one.
[00:11:01] Hannah posts
[00:11:03] some nice questions. Food for thought.
[00:11:06] This one is if Airtable disappeared
[00:11:09] tomorrow, what would you use?
[00:11:11] Always good to see what people
[00:11:12] have to say. Kamille,
[00:11:14] you were the first to
[00:11:14] respond.
[00:11:17] Yeah, I said Xano and if I needed
[00:11:19] to edit a bunch of records in like a grid
[00:11:22] like format, glide has its own open
[00:11:25] source table component that I would
[00:11:28] probably try and make use of
[00:11:29] because it editing records
[00:11:31] one by one and Xano is
[00:11:32] very annoying.
[00:11:33] Granted, you're not supposed to do
[00:11:35] that one by one. It's an API builder.
[00:11:37] So logically you would edit
[00:11:38] your records via API
[00:11:39] but if you're getting started,
[00:11:41] my God, is it annoying.
[00:11:42] Other than that
[00:11:43] I've been playing with it a lot this
[00:11:45] past month and it's, you know,
[00:11:48] I like it. There's some things
[00:11:49] I miss but a lot of
[00:11:50] things that it adds that I
[00:11:51] think are pretty good.
[00:11:53] Nice. Yeah, that's cool.
[00:11:55] Yeah, some other ones.
[00:11:59] let's see here.
[00:12:02] Ng
[00:12:03] says I can't imagine using anything else
[00:12:06] by Airtable for no code database.
[00:12:08] Ben says antidepressants
[00:12:11] comment there.
[00:12:13] So there are a few,
[00:12:15] you know, I said glide,
[00:12:17] maybe spreadsheet.com or Google Tables
[00:12:20] if Google continues to support that
[00:12:23] or maybe just go back to Google Sheets.
[00:12:27] The other interesting ones.
[00:12:31] Yeah, Alli
[00:12:32] do you have to go to?
[00:12:34] Oh, gosh, I try not to even think
[00:12:36] about it but I probably should.
[00:12:42] No, I don't right now.
[00:12:44] I mean, I played with coda a lot
[00:12:46] and I really liked it
[00:12:47] but it didn't scale well.
[00:12:49] But I've heard good things about
[00:12:51] some updates that they've made
[00:12:53] in the last couple of years.
[00:12:54] So maybe I'd try
[00:12:54] that out again.
[00:12:57] Yeah, Mecca says indeed to find a new job.
[00:13:02] Kuovonne says, Coda.
[00:13:04] Scott says Filemaker.
[00:13:06] Andres says smart sheet.
[00:13:07] Zapier tables.
[00:13:09] I haven't played with Zapier tables.
[00:13:11] I saw the launch,
[00:13:12] I think I did like look
[00:13:13] at it for a minute but
[00:13:15] I don't think it's quite there
[00:13:17] for replacement. Notion you could do,
[00:13:19] you could do a lot with notion.
[00:13:22] It
[00:13:22] would be quite the same experience.
[00:13:28] And then graph API from, from Jen. So
[00:13:34] interesting.
[00:13:34] It would be interesting to see how jot
[00:13:37] form has a nobody
[00:13:38] mentioned jot form tables.
[00:13:41] I remembered it as soon as you said
[00:13:43] Zapier tables. I was like,
[00:13:44] oh yeah, and then jot form has one too,
[00:13:47] but no one ever, at least no one in my
[00:13:48] sphere references either of those.
[00:13:51] And that's not to say that they're not
[00:13:52] good. It's just that,
[00:13:54] I don't know anyone who's ever used them,
[00:13:56] so
[00:13:57] I don't know what that says.
[00:13:59] Yeah,
[00:13:59] there's a couple open source replacements,
[00:14:02] like kind of clones of Airtable that
[00:14:05] are out there that,
[00:14:06] that could be worth exploring. So,
[00:14:08] yeah, there's something,
[00:14:10] there's something unique about Airtable.
[00:14:11] I mean, I think Smart Suite
[00:14:13] is coming up as kind of a pretty,
[00:14:15] you know, direct competitor and
[00:14:18] coming up market. So we'll see
[00:14:20] how that continues to, to expand.
[00:14:23] It's probably the one to watch.
[00:14:26] All right, let's move on.
[00:14:28] We're in the DEV channel in BuiltOnAir.
[00:14:33] This one, Jen asked a
[00:14:34] common question about
[00:14:36] how to append to, to the URL
[00:14:39] and I thought this was worth pointing.
[00:14:42] Just talking about just general,
[00:14:44] you know, if you're, if you're trying
[00:14:47] to create URL S, if it's a
[00:14:51] if it's a get request, I don't know,
[00:14:53] it's hard to explain. But if it,
[00:14:54] there's a get and a post
[00:14:56] and a get means you're retrieving data.
[00:14:59] So most website, when you go to a
[00:15:00] website, you're actually
[00:15:02] performing a, a get request.
[00:15:05] And a post is when you're sending data.
[00:15:08] So a get request does not have a body,
[00:15:10] a post does.
[00:15:11] So if you need to pass information
[00:15:14] into a get request, like a URL,
[00:15:16] you have to pass it as parameters.
[00:15:20] And so, but the big thing that
[00:15:22] I wanted to share here.
[00:15:24] So we kind of clarify,
[00:15:25] she, she figures out how to do parameters.
[00:15:28] But the big thing was this link
[00:15:30] from Scott,
[00:15:31] which I had never seen this tool.
[00:15:33] I don't know if somebody created
[00:15:36] a nice little tool that's free
[00:15:38] and helps you to generate the URL.
[00:15:42] that would be necessary for using
[00:15:45] the Airtable API. So if you're ever doing
[00:15:48] anything with the API
[00:15:50] and you want to figure out how to
[00:15:52] generate the URL, this is a nice
[00:15:54] little tool that will help you.
[00:15:56] I believe this is built by Airtable
[00:15:59] themselves or it is least directly
[00:16:01] referenced in some of their
[00:16:03] support documentation.
[00:16:05] Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Oh
[00:16:07] It's got a pen by Airtable. Yeah.
[00:16:09] Yeah.
[00:16:09] Yeah.
[00:16:10] So yeah, I was looking to see
[00:16:12] like what else they've got.
[00:16:15] It'd be nice if they sort
[00:16:17] of baked this into, they have that
[00:16:19] automatic documentation for all
[00:16:21] of your bases for like here's what the get
[00:16:23] request would be.
[00:16:25] It'd be great if you could just plug in,
[00:16:28] into that interface.
[00:16:29] Like if you wanted
[00:16:31] certain query parameters,
[00:16:32] just fill them in,
[00:16:33] in that same space. So it will be all
[00:16:35] sort of cohabitated
[00:16:37] and prefilled with what your base ID is.
[00:16:40] Yeah.
[00:16:42] If you ever needed to sort strings
[00:16:44] with emojis
[00:16:45] looks like they've got a script
[00:16:46] for that
[00:16:47] and then they've got some random ones,
[00:16:50] Edward doing some,
[00:16:53] I wonder if this is just some
[00:16:56] person at Airtable and then they, like,
[00:16:58] forgot to log out.
[00:17:00] That's like, what, what is,
[00:17:02] what's the relationship of that
[00:17:04] to Airtable?
[00:17:05] You know, one of these makes sense.
[00:17:07] Right. They've got more. Oh, wow.
[00:17:11] I wonder what they are.
[00:17:14] Yeah. I wonder if these are
[00:17:15] developers that work there.
[00:17:18] I'm beginning to notice a theme.
[00:17:21] 1200 by 900.
[00:17:23] Yeah,
[00:17:24] they must have done,
[00:17:28] what's happening?
[00:17:29] So strange
[00:17:33] that one's got 80,000 views
[00:17:34] and all the rest are like. Yeah.
[00:17:38] Ok.
[00:17:40] All right. So that's where,
[00:17:43] if you wanna see what the latest,
[00:17:44] maybe they'll, they'll leak some,
[00:17:46] upcoming updates
[00:17:47] that they're testing in there
[00:17:51] can keep an eye on that.
[00:17:52] All right, here's one from Justin,
[00:17:54] friend of the show, talking about the
[00:17:56] rest api we'll keep it in the DEV channel.
[00:17:59] This, I thought was an
[00:18:00] interesting discussion that,
[00:18:02] you actually don't have to
[00:18:05] match the table ID with the base ID.
[00:18:08] So
[00:18:09] even if you have the wrong base ID,
[00:18:11] but you have the table ID,
[00:18:13] it will still retrieve the,
[00:18:17] the, the record
[00:18:18] that, that you're looking for.
[00:18:21] Actually it's just the record ID
[00:18:23] is what you need. You don't,
[00:18:24] you don't even need the right
[00:18:27] table or base.
[00:18:28] So I thought that was interesting.
[00:18:31] Yeah, it's in the custom extensions
[00:18:35] api expand record function.
[00:18:37] You, you only provided the record ID,
[00:18:40] it doesn't even ask for the table.
[00:18:41] So,
[00:18:42] you know, record I DS are supposed
[00:18:44] to be unique and I guess they're so
[00:18:46] unique that
[00:18:47] they're like, yeah, I, we don't
[00:18:48] care what table it is. We know,
[00:18:50] we know what the record is.
[00:18:51] They're unique across
[00:18:53] all the bases and all of Airtable?
[00:18:56] It,
[00:18:57] it would seem that way now,
[00:18:59] I, you know, you obviously
[00:19:00] have to provide it a base
[00:19:01] ID, I believe. Because then it's like
[00:19:05] you're going to query all of Airtable
[00:19:07] all at once. It seems like
[00:19:08] a
[00:19:08] hefty load.
[00:19:10] But yeah, for
[00:19:12] it, it does not seem to me to parse
[00:19:15] what table it comes from.
[00:19:18] Ok.
[00:19:20] Yeah,
[00:19:22] yeah, interesting tidbit
[00:19:24] and then Bill talks about
[00:19:26] if you have like a ton,
[00:19:27] it does reduce the size
[00:19:29] by not including it.
[00:19:30] So there might be advantages of doing it.
[00:19:33] But yeah, you probably always should
[00:19:35] include the, the base ID
[00:19:38] as needed
[00:19:40] and for documentation like as
[00:19:43] you're writing a script, if you just say,
[00:19:45] oh get this record and then
[00:19:47] two months later,
[00:19:48] you have to expand the script to
[00:19:49] do some maintenance on it.
[00:19:51] You're not gonna know what,
[00:19:52] what's happening because
[00:19:53] if you can figure out,
[00:19:55] oh this record,
[00:19:56] I'm trying to pull from this table,
[00:19:58] the projects table,
[00:19:59] then I know where to look
[00:20:01] for this missing record.
[00:20:02] But if you just say get this record,
[00:20:04] it's gonna be hard to debug later in life.
[00:20:06] So
[00:20:07] just ask for it anyway, if you know it.
[00:20:12] Here's another feature actually,
[00:20:14] this one snuck in, this came from Mecca.
[00:20:16] He spotted this in the run history.
[00:20:19] So within your automations,
[00:20:21] you can now sort them
[00:20:23] or filter by the status.
[00:20:26] So you can, there's a dropdown
[00:20:28] now on the run history
[00:20:29] and you can see which
[00:20:30] one's failed,
[00:20:31] which one's canceled.
[00:20:34] So this is one step to search,
[00:20:38] they
[00:20:38] search that will be helpful.
[00:20:41] This is awesome. That's, I mean,
[00:20:43] it's been a long time coming,
[00:20:44] but
[00:20:45] it's so frustrating, especially if you
[00:20:47] have an automation that runs very often
[00:20:49] and you, like, wake up
[00:20:50] in the morning
[00:20:51] and you've got an alert from
[00:20:52] last night and you're like,
[00:20:53] OK, now I've got a search
[00:20:56] for all of them.
[00:20:57] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:20:58] especially because the email you got
[00:21:00] doesn't tell you,
[00:21:02] you know, it tells you the time
[00:21:04] but it doesn't tell you what went wrong.
[00:21:05] I know.
[00:21:07] Yeah,
[00:21:08] it's, this is one of my favorite,
[00:21:11] more recent updates just because it's a,
[00:21:13] a quality of life thing.
[00:21:15] It's not a new feature really. It's just
[00:21:18] helping you find
[00:21:20] automation runs that
[00:21:21] have already happened.
[00:21:22] And it makes, I, you know,
[00:21:24] now that I'm in an enterprise environment,
[00:21:26] practically 100% of the time.
[00:21:28] And there's so many automations
[00:21:31] going all at once,
[00:21:33] the failed to run cab
[00:21:35] is my new best friend.
[00:21:37] My goodness. If something goes wrong,
[00:21:39] I want to know
[00:21:40] and I don't wanna have to, like,
[00:21:42] you know, wade through
[00:21:45] a billion successful runs
[00:21:47] to get to the one that failed.
[00:21:48] I will say, I don't,
[00:21:50] I haven't really figured out
[00:21:52] when a run is canceled.
[00:21:54] Like,
[00:21:55] I, I know it happens,
[00:21:57] but I can't figure out what causes
[00:21:59] an automation to be canceled
[00:22:02] versus it failing to run.
[00:22:04] That's a
[00:22:04] good
[00:22:05] question.
[00:22:05] The only time I've ever seen it
[00:22:08] actually say canceled is say you,
[00:22:11] like, hopefully this never happens
[00:22:12] to you, but it,
[00:22:13] it happens to the best of us.
[00:22:15] Say, you forget, you've got an automation
[00:22:17] on and you like, are importing data or
[00:22:19] something and you forget to shut it off
[00:22:21] and then you paste all the rows and then
[00:22:23] you're like,
[00:22:24] oh no, and go into your automations
[00:22:26] and shut it off. But by that time,
[00:22:29] all of them have already started
[00:22:31] to run. Exactly. So it, it'll cancel them
[00:22:34] when they've just started.
[00:22:36] Got it.
[00:22:38] I have noticed there's
[00:22:39] other situations where if you
[00:22:42] say, like, you've made a change to
[00:22:44] a field that like nullifies
[00:22:46] your automation like makes
[00:22:48] it so it can't run anymore.
[00:22:49] That will sometimes
[00:22:51] show up as a failed run,
[00:22:52] which is weird and the error run,
[00:22:54] like the error message
[00:22:55] in the failed run will
[00:22:56] be like Airtable shut this automation
[00:22:58] off because it broke.
[00:23:01] Those are interesting.
[00:23:03] Well, that, I don't know if that one
[00:23:05] bothers me because I think I'd rather,
[00:23:06] it be failed versus canceled
[00:23:08] because then it's an error.
[00:23:10] If something is
[00:23:10] canceled, then it's like,
[00:23:13] you know,
[00:23:15] whatever, you know,
[00:23:16] the next time it'll run, it'll run.
[00:23:18] But if,
[00:23:18] you know, if something went wrong,
[00:23:20] if the automation is no longer compatible
[00:23:22] with your schema,
[00:23:23] that feels like an error. To me,
[00:23:25] it's what, what, what bothers me about it.
[00:23:28] And I think the only thing that bothers me
[00:23:29] about it is that I don't think it
[00:23:30] actually corresponds with an actual run.
[00:23:33] It's just like, not a record
[00:23:35] didn't try to run like,
[00:23:37] or didn't trigger it,
[00:23:38] it just
[00:23:39] is like a fake
[00:23:41] instance. That,
[00:23:43] yeah, that is strange. Yeah.
[00:23:45] Yeah.
[00:23:47] Yeah.
[00:23:49] Useful.
[00:23:50] Yeah. Jen has a question
[00:23:51] whether it counts against the runs or not.
[00:23:53] I don't, I don't know
[00:23:54] if you cancel it?
[00:23:55] If you cancel those mids,
[00:23:58] I think if they trigger
[00:24:00] once they trigger,
[00:24:01] I think they might count.
[00:24:02] Yeah.
[00:24:03] I, I think it is the trigger
[00:24:05] because with the repeated actions,
[00:24:07] each repeated action is not
[00:24:09] a new automation run. It's just,
[00:24:11] it's, it, it is counting
[00:24:12] the triggers and so
[00:24:14] it would be consistent
[00:24:15] of Airtable to count
[00:24:17] canceled runs as runs because they
[00:24:19] were triggered. They just didn't complete.
[00:24:23] Do fail, do failed automations count?
[00:24:26] Yeah. I mean, they, they should, by,
[00:24:29] by, by logic it'd be great if,
[00:24:32] you know, I, I think we've all been
[00:24:34] there when we've accidentally triggered
[00:24:36] like 100 automations
[00:24:38] and many of them failed.
[00:24:40] It'd be great if our,
[00:24:41] our failures didn't count but
[00:24:43] they did trigger
[00:24:44] sometimes it's Airtable's
[00:24:46] fault that they failed. That is true.
[00:24:48] There was a period,
[00:24:49] there was a period, like, I think
[00:24:52] it might have been in our month
[00:24:54] break where we had a very script heavy
[00:24:57] automation and Airtable hadn't,
[00:24:58] not even Airtable, it wasn't
[00:25:00] Airtable's fault. It was aws that went
[00:25:01] through
[00:25:02] and so every script action failed
[00:25:04] because it had nothing to process its
[00:25:06] scripting power
[00:25:08] and that's not my fault.
[00:25:10] That's not Airtable's fault either,
[00:25:11] but it does mean we still got charged.
[00:25:15] So,
[00:25:16] you know.
[00:25:18] Yeah.
[00:25:19] All right. Let's move on
[00:25:20] a couple more. This one,
[00:25:22] Kamille if you wanna explain.
[00:25:23] So you say if you edit a record
[00:25:25] in inter interface
[00:25:26] that will filter it out of
[00:25:28] your views, the relevant record picker
[00:25:30] from which that filter stems will now
[00:25:32] highlight itself in addition
[00:25:34] to the your changes,
[00:25:35] we'll hide this record toast
[00:25:36] at the bottom of the page.
[00:25:38] Yeah, this would have been great
[00:25:40] with a photo
[00:25:40] that I couldn't quite capture.
[00:25:42] But for a while now in
[00:25:46] regular grid views,
[00:25:49] if you were to edit a record and
[00:25:52] whatever you edited makes
[00:25:54] it no longer compatible
[00:25:55] with the current filters,
[00:25:57] it will disappear from that view
[00:25:59] as soon as you move your mouse away.
[00:26:01] So like as soon as you click out
[00:26:03] of that record,
[00:26:04] it will disappear from your
[00:26:05] view, but it's the whole row
[00:26:06] would be highlighted orange,
[00:26:08] that's been a feature
[00:26:08] for quite some time
[00:26:10] and somewhat recently in interfaces. Now,
[00:26:13] if you have like
[00:26:14] a record picker or the record list
[00:26:16] component or something of that effect,
[00:26:18] and you're editing
[00:26:20] a
[00:26:20] record and now it's no longer
[00:26:22] part of whatever that
[00:26:24] record picker's filter is,
[00:26:25] similarly, you'll, you'll get a toast
[00:26:28] message at the bottom.
[00:26:30] It says, hey, you're about to
[00:26:32] hide this record from view,
[00:26:33] but it will also take whatever
[00:26:35] the record picker is
[00:26:36] or the record list
[00:26:37] and outline it in orange. So it's
[00:26:40] a, I
[00:26:40] think it's a nice visual indicator
[00:26:42] of like if you have multiple
[00:26:44] record pickers
[00:26:45] on your page,
[00:26:46] it's just nice to say,
[00:26:47] oh yeah, it's this one
[00:26:49] that it's no longer compatible
[00:26:51] with and it still won't go
[00:26:52] away until you click
[00:26:53] away or click on a different record. But
[00:26:56] just another, again,
[00:26:58] quality of life improvement
[00:26:59] rather than like a feature.
[00:27:02] Yeah.
[00:27:02] Very good.
[00:27:04] All right. A few more.
[00:27:07] So I can't remember who
[00:27:09] so we had a guest on
[00:27:10] a
[00:27:10] while ago and they showed us this,
[00:27:13] this hack of how to
[00:27:16] copy and paste attachments
[00:27:18] into the file upload widget,
[00:27:21] and but you had to like click
[00:27:24] in the header area
[00:27:25] in order for it to like get focus.
[00:27:28] But apparently according to Russell
[00:27:30] that, that that's fixed now,
[00:27:32] so you don't have to click
[00:27:33] in that secret area anymore.
[00:27:37] Very nice.
[00:27:38] So now once the pop up comes up,
[00:27:41] you can, I believe,
[00:27:42] just paste directly in and
[00:27:43] it will recognize it. So that's of course,
[00:27:45] I bet, I bet one of the Airtable
[00:27:47] developers listened to that episode,
[00:27:49] and was like I can fix that.
[00:27:51] Yeah, it seems like it would have
[00:27:53] been a auto focus
[00:27:54] as a thing that you could
[00:27:55] just add to HTML elements
[00:27:56] and they were probably
[00:27:57] idea a
[00:27:59] simple fix.
[00:28:01] Nice little addition.
[00:28:03] Shout out to whatever intern
[00:28:05] or maybe a new employee fixed
[00:28:07] that. So shout out to whoever
[00:28:09] fixed that at Airtable,
[00:28:11] go unnoticed
[00:28:13] but not by us.
[00:28:15] We notice.
[00:28:16] OK, from back to the
[00:28:18] Airtable forums,
[00:28:20] question on the personal access
[00:28:22] tokens, you likely got
[00:28:24] an email or I probably
[00:28:26] got 30 emails
[00:28:28] saying that all the accounts
[00:28:30] that I have access to that,
[00:28:33] that you can no
[00:28:34] longer create account tokens
[00:28:36] starting August 1st, I believe.
[00:28:39] And that's not exactly what
[00:28:41] this is asking, but it,
[00:28:42] it's kind of the bigger
[00:28:44] question of like moving away from
[00:28:46] account tokens.
[00:28:47] And this question is more about
[00:28:49] personal access tokens and in
[00:28:51] and specifically that
[00:28:53] jot form has not
[00:28:57] made the change yet to use
[00:28:59] either O'Auth or personal access tokens.
[00:29:02] And so,
[00:29:05] what that means, I think,
[00:29:07] I think Scott mentions it
[00:29:09] is any new accounts,
[00:29:10] you know, it's fine if you've already,
[00:29:12] if you've already
[00:29:13] have your account key
[00:29:15] that you can use,
[00:29:16] but any new Airtable users,
[00:29:18] they will not have an account
[00:29:21] api key starting August 1st.
[00:29:24] And so
[00:29:25] that means they wouldn't be
[00:29:26] able to use any of these
[00:29:28] services that have not
[00:29:28] upgraded yet.
[00:29:31] So that's relevant.
[00:29:34] Absolutely.
[00:29:35] Yeah. I'm glad they,
[00:29:38] I mean, before all we knew
[00:29:39] was that it would just be
[00:29:41] a after January they'd be
[00:29:42] deprecated. But now this is
[00:29:43] kind of new where it's like, oh,
[00:29:44] you can't actually create anything new.
[00:29:48] Luckily, most of the apps out there like
[00:29:50] Zapier,
[00:29:51] I have already made the update so
[00:29:55] I actually prefer
[00:29:56] it that way, which is nice.
[00:29:59] Yeah, although I will give an update,
[00:30:02] so
[00:30:03] it, so you likely if,
[00:30:05] if you started using, I know Zapier
[00:30:07] had issues with this,
[00:30:09] I think maybe softr somebody else,
[00:30:12] a big player.
[00:30:13] So Airtable's O'Auth
[00:30:15] implementation
[00:30:18] is not perfect and they were too quick to,
[00:30:22] to cancel your connection
[00:30:24] for when it was refreshing,
[00:30:27] it's kind of technical.
[00:30:28] But
[00:30:29] what was happening is
[00:30:30] Zapier was losing its connection
[00:30:32] from Airtable because Airtable
[00:30:33] was cutting it off
[00:30:36] too aggressively
[00:30:38] and we experienced this at On2Air
[00:30:39] as well. I think we figured it out,
[00:30:42] but I also was pushing them heavy that
[00:30:44] they needed to
[00:30:45] have a grace period.
[00:30:48] And at first they were saying no,
[00:30:50] no, you gotta just deal with it.
[00:30:51] But once, you know,
[00:30:53] once the real big players
[00:30:55] were experiencing the same things.
[00:30:56] I was
[00:30:58] they, I think they finally realized
[00:31:00] they needed to implement the grace period.
[00:31:02] So
[00:31:02] I think we were able to
[00:31:04] figure it out
[00:31:04] even before they implemented it.
[00:31:06] But I believe now there's a grace period.
[00:31:08] So I haven't seen those errors coming
[00:31:10] up as much
[00:31:12] with Zapier and whatnot. So,
[00:31:14] so yeah, if you had, if you had issues
[00:31:17] where your connection was getting
[00:31:18] dropped, I think they've fixed that.
[00:31:23] Right. Good to know.
[00:31:25] Yeah, last one. Ok. From Twitter,
[00:31:27] this actually came from Airtable.
[00:31:30] Thought this was somewhat interesting.
[00:31:33] Capterra
[00:31:35] that's kind of a website you go to,
[00:31:37] to rank or to get reviews on different
[00:31:39] software
[00:31:40] they generate a report of.
[00:31:43] So this is the database software category.
[00:31:47] I don't know if I put Airtable in a,
[00:31:49] in a true database software platform.
[00:31:51] It is to a degree. But I guess they've
[00:31:54] got access on here as well.
[00:31:56] It's kind of a strange list. It's,
[00:31:59] and it's like I can't even
[00:32:01] tell who these are.
[00:32:05] And there's a whole lot more
[00:32:07] databases out there.
[00:32:08] This is pretty limited list
[00:32:09] for
[00:32:10] what not. But anyways,
[00:32:11] that's where Airtable fits
[00:32:13] in the database world.
[00:32:15] Top
[00:32:16] top performer.
[00:32:19] Yep. So
[00:32:20] emerging top performer. Yeah,
[00:32:24] so the scale is highly rated,
[00:32:27] highest rated. So it has a high
[00:32:29] rating and a popularity score.
[00:32:31] So this is based off of ratings in
[00:32:34] Capterra in their reviews. So
[00:32:37] I can only assume that like,
[00:32:39] four quadrants includes
[00:32:41] fire base because it's like,
[00:32:42] why would Mongo DB
[00:32:44] be on here but not fire?
[00:32:47] Yeah,
[00:32:47] there's post
[00:32:48] grass. I recognize the elephants.
[00:32:51] Yeah. No idea what's in there.
[00:32:53] It's so small.
[00:32:55] I know.
[00:32:56] Yeah.
[00:32:58] I checked, I checked threads.
[00:33:00] Now, threads that came
[00:33:02] out since the last time
[00:33:03] we met. So now there's a new
[00:33:06] social media platform.
[00:33:07] But you can't search on,
[00:33:09] you can't really search for
[00:33:11] keywords or anything.
[00:33:12] You can only search for people
[00:33:13] right now on on threads.
[00:33:14] And so
[00:33:15] there's still some work to do
[00:33:17] where you can really use it. But
[00:33:21] we'll see
[00:33:21] the other bad part is
[00:33:23] they don't have a web interface. It's,
[00:33:24] it's mobile app only.
[00:33:26] So it might be difficult to show
[00:33:28] if anything of interest
[00:33:30] comes up on threads
[00:33:32] interesting,
[00:33:34] but we'll keep an eye on it
[00:33:35] if there, there are people, you know,
[00:33:37] you can search profiles.
[00:33:38] And so there's like 10 people
[00:33:40] that have Airtable in
[00:33:41] their profile. So
[00:33:43] there is
[00:33:44] there is people talking
[00:33:46] about Airtable to some extent.
[00:33:50] All right, let's jump to
[00:33:52] our primary sponsor On2Air.
[00:33:54] It's an all in one
[00:33:54] tool kit to run your business on Airtable.
[00:33:57] Check us out at on2air.com
[00:34:00] So last month,
[00:34:01] I don't know if you knew this,
[00:34:04] but last month was backup
[00:34:06] awareness month,
[00:34:07] National Backup Awareness Month.
[00:34:10] So since we were off,
[00:34:11] we decided that this month
[00:34:13] we're going to highlight our
[00:34:15] backups
[00:34:16] and talk about that. So On2Air backups
[00:34:21] is our backup solution.
[00:34:22] And
[00:34:26] so you can check it
[00:34:27] out on2air.com/backups,
[00:34:29] see how people are using
[00:34:30] it to make sure that their data
[00:34:32] is safe and secure outside of Airtable.
[00:34:35] And I was gonna highlight
[00:34:37] our essential guide to backups
[00:34:39] for your Airtable base.
[00:34:41] So Hannah, who is our marketing guru
[00:34:45] wrote up this great
[00:34:47] guide and got walked you all through
[00:34:50] everything, best practices related to
[00:34:53] Airtable and backups
[00:34:54] and how you could do it
[00:34:56] either by yourself or by leveraging
[00:34:59] our tool at On2Air. So check that out
[00:35:02] in our resource section
[00:35:04] and
[00:35:07] we'll walk you through the process. So
[00:35:09] very cool. So if you're
[00:35:11] not backing up your data,
[00:35:13] June is the reminder month
[00:35:14] to remind you to back up your data.
[00:35:17] And so we'll be talking about that
[00:35:18] in the next couple of weeks
[00:35:20] on this podcast.
[00:35:23] OK. Let's move on
[00:35:25] Automate Create two way sync with Alli.
[00:35:29] Share your screen. There you go.
[00:35:31] Awesome.
[00:35:33] All right. So this is
[00:35:35] a long awaited feature
[00:35:37] that unfortunately is only
[00:35:40] available to enterprise clients.
[00:35:43] So I'm working in an
[00:35:45] enterprise workspace here.
[00:35:48] Another huge bummer is like
[00:35:50] if you had access to the private beta
[00:35:52] that is now gone
[00:35:53] So, even if you had access to it
[00:35:55] and you weren't in an enterprise
[00:35:57] workspace
[00:35:59] that went away when they released
[00:36:01] the feature full fledged,
[00:36:02] which is a huge bummer.
[00:36:05] But if you are lucky enough
[00:36:06] to have an enterprise workspace
[00:36:08] and maybe someday
[00:36:08] they will release it to the masses,
[00:36:10] which would be great.
[00:36:13] Here is how you can take
[00:36:15] advantage of two way sync.
[00:36:17] So, I've got a very, very
[00:36:19] simple table here.
[00:36:20] I just threw it together for this
[00:36:21] demo.
[00:36:23] I'm gonna start by creating a view
[00:36:25] that I'm gonna sync out to another base.
[00:36:28] And my best practice for that
[00:36:31] is I always create a new view
[00:36:34] and I name it with like a
[00:36:35] couple emojis here. That's like,
[00:36:38] you know, telling me this
[00:36:40] is integral to a process and it's also
[00:36:43] got a lightning bolt telling
[00:36:45] me it's either associated
[00:36:46] with a sync or an
[00:36:46] automation.
[00:36:48] The reason for that is if you just
[00:36:50] go with your grid view and sync this out
[00:36:52] somewhere else
[00:36:53] and then you change the filters
[00:36:55] on this main view here,
[00:36:57] then all the records on your
[00:36:59] destination base are gonna be
[00:37:01] messed with and some of them will go away.
[00:37:03] So I always create a new view
[00:37:05] and then eventually
[00:37:07] I will lock this down so that
[00:37:08] I can't even change the filters
[00:37:10] because sometimes I forget.
[00:37:13] So if I go to
[00:37:15] share and sync and actually
[00:37:17] I'm gonna do,
[00:37:18] I'm gonna add a filter and say where
[00:37:20] the status is active because I want to
[00:37:23] play with something live in a moment here.
[00:37:27] So I'm gonna go to share
[00:37:28] and sync and this menu
[00:37:30] has been updated a little bit.
[00:37:31] I think it's so much cleaner now.
[00:37:34] I can say sync data to another base
[00:37:37] and I wanna to toggle on allow data to be
[00:37:39] synced to other to other bases.
[00:37:43] This is the new feature where
[00:37:45] I can say I want to allow
[00:37:47] edits from other bases.
[00:37:49] So if I toggle that on
[00:37:51] now, I get the option to say,
[00:37:54] OK, all the editable fields
[00:37:56] can be edited
[00:37:58] in the destination base
[00:38:00] or I can say just specific fields.
[00:38:02] So if I want to
[00:38:04] let's
[00:38:06] say everything but email can be updated
[00:38:11] in the destination.
[00:38:14] Now I'm gonna say sync this view
[00:38:18] that view sync activity
[00:38:20] that seems like a new thing as well.
[00:38:22] I haven't really looked at that but that
[00:38:24] sounds cool.
[00:38:25] It, it's fairly new. It looks at
[00:38:28] once you sync to a new source,
[00:38:30] go back and look at view sync activity.
[00:38:32] So we show this view is being synced out
[00:38:34] to all of these different bases
[00:38:35] and you click and go directly to them.
[00:38:37] It's very useful, right?
[00:38:38] Absolutely. Really, really cool.
[00:38:42] So here is
[00:38:43] another caveat is you have to be
[00:38:46] syncing also to an enterprise workspace.
[00:38:48] I just tested this out where
[00:38:50] syncing from enterprise
[00:38:51] to a different workspace.
[00:38:53] You still can't edit the data
[00:38:54] as if it were
[00:38:56] two way syncable.
[00:38:57] So
[00:38:58] bummer, you've got to pick
[00:38:59] an enterprise workspace for this to work.
[00:39:02] So I'm gonna just create a new base
[00:39:05] and make sure I've got this top option
[00:39:07] on so that it'll be kept up to date as
[00:39:09] data changes.
[00:39:19] And now,
[00:39:23] I am able to
[00:39:25] Oh Wow, interesting.
[00:39:27] I think you have to enable it
[00:39:29] from within this base as well.
[00:39:31] So
[00:39:32] if you go to the, the actual table
[00:39:35] tab and then do update sync configuration
[00:39:38] and then turn edit records on,
[00:39:43] I think,
[00:39:44] I feel like if you're creating a new,
[00:39:48] you know, if you, if you went
[00:39:49] through the process that you went through,
[00:39:50] you, you're creating a new base
[00:39:52] and a new table
[00:39:53] that should just be on because
[00:39:54] you've selected it as editable from
[00:39:56] the original.
[00:39:57] There are instances where you're
[00:39:59] putting it into
[00:40:01] like you turn the toggle in
[00:40:03] on after you've already
[00:40:05] created the source that I
[00:40:06] get it not being on by default,
[00:40:08] but the way you did it, it should
[00:40:10] exactly, it should be on.
[00:40:12] But that's OK. I mean,
[00:40:14] I guess it, you know,
[00:40:15] makes the security pitfalls minimal.
[00:40:19] So this is great too. You're,
[00:40:21] you're able to decide if it's,
[00:40:22] you know, creators and above
[00:40:24] or editors and editors
[00:40:25] and above or just no one.
[00:40:27] So I'll leave it as editors and above.
[00:40:30] And now that that's on,
[00:40:32] I always
[00:40:33] hit that button when you,
[00:40:34] you don't actually have to.
[00:40:36] Now I can actually edit this data.
[00:40:38] So
[00:40:40] I actually changed this to
[00:40:42] technically my real last name.
[00:40:47] I changed my name everyone,
[00:40:49] but I'm keeping my full
[00:40:50] name professionally.
[00:40:54] now in my source base
[00:40:55] that has also been updated.
[00:40:59] And it's instant, it's super, super cool.
[00:41:02] I'm only sharing one window
[00:41:04] but I should have
[00:41:07] if I did it side by side,
[00:41:09] you could also just kind
[00:41:10] of see it being updated.
[00:41:13] Now, one thing I wanted to try out
[00:41:14] that I haven't
[00:41:15] actually tested is I want to
[00:41:16] see what happens
[00:41:18] because I have this filtered
[00:41:21] where the status is active
[00:41:24] and I've made it so that you
[00:41:26] can actually edit the status field on the
[00:41:29] destination base,
[00:41:31] which I would think is probably
[00:41:33] not best practice.
[00:41:35] But I wanted to just see what
[00:41:36] would happen live here
[00:41:38] if we actually change
[00:41:39] this to say inactive.
[00:41:40] Like is it gonna say
[00:41:42] this has been filtered out?
[00:41:43] Yeah, it doesn't, it just goes away.
[00:41:46] So
[00:41:47] that's something to note
[00:41:48] is be careful, make sure that
[00:41:51] you're either just not allowing
[00:41:53] people to edit that field
[00:41:57] in the destination base.
[00:41:59] If it's part of your
[00:42:00] filter for your source
[00:42:02] or make sure people are aware
[00:42:04] that if they do that, then
[00:42:05] there's no real way
[00:42:06] to get that record back.
[00:42:08] If I hit control Z
[00:42:09] just a second
[00:42:11] broke it
[00:42:12] Exactly.
[00:42:14] So, yeah, the, the record, it can't,
[00:42:18] it can't claw back that record
[00:42:20] because it wasn't technically
[00:42:22] deleted from your
[00:42:23] table's perspective.
[00:42:24] So it has nothing
[00:42:25] for the undo button to grab.
[00:42:27] Like they should fix that though
[00:42:29] and just say
[00:42:30] they have a pop up that comes up
[00:42:32] sometimes saying
[00:42:33] they can't undo action
[00:42:34] and it should just come up
[00:42:36] with that one in this instance.
[00:42:37] Exactly.
[00:42:39] So, just be really careful with
[00:42:40] what fields you're
[00:42:42] allowing people to edit.
[00:42:45] Another difference between
[00:42:47] the full fledge two way sync version
[00:42:49] and the beta that some of you may have had
[00:42:51] access to
[00:42:52] is in the beta, you weren't able
[00:42:55] to edit those synced fields in interfaces.
[00:42:58] But in the new full fledge release,
[00:43:00] you can, which is really,
[00:43:02] really great.
[00:43:03] I have not tried to edit any of these
[00:43:07] field values with like Zapier or API
[00:43:09] calls. Have either of you?
[00:43:12] No, I do know that you can't
[00:43:14] edit them directly
[00:43:15] through an Airtable automation
[00:43:17] which
[00:43:17] is
[00:43:17] you
[00:43:19] the API you can't,
[00:43:20] you can't edit.
[00:43:21] I think that was one of the constraints.
[00:43:23] Yeah,
[00:43:24] I would, I would think that
[00:43:26] would be my expectation.
[00:43:29] But just wanted to see which is,
[00:43:31] which is frustrating because any third
[00:43:34] party tool, any form builder or whatever
[00:43:36] you can't, you can't use on these tables.
[00:43:39] Exactly.
[00:43:42] But you also can't add a new
[00:43:44] record from the the destination base.
[00:43:46] So
[00:43:47] yeah,
[00:43:48] definitely some limitations.
[00:43:50] I mean,
[00:43:50] the other thing is like if you have
[00:43:52] two tabless that you've got synced
[00:43:55] over from a different base
[00:43:56] and you're linking them back together
[00:43:58] again with automation or something
[00:44:01] changing up, those linked relationships
[00:44:03] will not change the source base either.
[00:44:05] So it's really only just these,
[00:44:08] you know, one layer,
[00:44:09] one dimensional fields
[00:44:10] that you can edit and have sync back
[00:44:12] over.
[00:44:15] Which again, I would expect. But
[00:44:17] yeah, because
[00:44:19] does make some
[00:44:21] annoyances, I guess.
[00:44:22] Yeah.
[00:44:23] Yeah. So linked records you can't do.
[00:44:26] Yeah,
[00:44:29] very good. Thank you.
[00:44:31] But yeah, I mean, it's that,
[00:44:33] that opens up
[00:44:34] the use cases of what you can do now
[00:44:36] with, with two way sync and
[00:44:38] how to organize, especially
[00:44:40] for large enterprises
[00:44:41] like multidepartment and everything
[00:44:43] on that front.
[00:44:44] Yeah,
[00:44:45] absolutely.
[00:44:46] OK.
[00:44:48] Kamille,
[00:44:48] what do you got for us?
[00:44:51] There was a question on the forums
[00:44:54] that I thought was pretty interesting
[00:44:58] titled create New Records
[00:45:00] for each week of another records,
[00:45:02] time frame. So essentially they have
[00:45:04] a form where someone
[00:45:06] could put a start date
[00:45:07] and an end date
[00:45:08] and they want to break that one record
[00:45:11] out into multiple records
[00:45:12] for each week within that time frame.
[00:45:15] So it's unspoken in here,
[00:45:16] but I noticed the pattern that,
[00:45:19] you know, weeks start on
[00:45:20] Monday and, and on Friday.
[00:45:22] And that's not
[00:45:23] super relevant
[00:45:24] but it is relevant to this
[00:45:26] precise implementation that I
[00:45:28] tried.
[00:45:29] So
[00:45:30] they specifically asked
[00:45:32] can this be done without a script?
[00:45:34] And that's why I chose this question
[00:45:36] because I was like, can you do this
[00:45:37] script? And you can.
[00:45:39] So
[00:45:39] just as a quick look of what things
[00:45:43] look like from a table structure,
[00:45:46] it's pretty simple.
[00:45:48] Oh And before I forget,
[00:45:50] they also want to copy
[00:45:51] not just the broken out weeks
[00:45:54] into the new records,
[00:45:55] they want to copy certain
[00:45:57] fields from the original record as well.
[00:45:59] So I have a email address
[00:46:01] that is going to be copied
[00:46:03] amongst all of the
[00:46:03] different
[00:46:05] time frame records.
[00:46:06] There's a start date and end date
[00:46:08] that you would fill in
[00:46:09] from a form
[00:46:11] and then I have two helper
[00:46:13] fields and like Alli, I use
[00:46:16] emojis to sort of differentiate them.
[00:46:19] These have the gear
[00:46:20] icon because they are,
[00:46:22] you know,
[00:46:23] back end, you don't really have
[00:46:24] to look at them. But they do something
[00:46:26] important for the purposes
[00:46:28] of this automation.
[00:46:29] So the first one is clamped and date
[00:46:32] and taking a look at that formula.
[00:46:36] I'm saying
[00:46:37] if there is a start date,
[00:46:39] then add,
[00:46:41] you know, this bit five minus
[00:46:43] the weekday of the start date,
[00:46:44] that's in order to get it to be
[00:46:46] whatever the Friday of that week is
[00:46:48] and whatever necessary number
[00:46:51] of days to the start date.
[00:46:53] So, and then the second one
[00:46:55] is next start date.
[00:46:57] Now, if the clamped end date is less than
[00:47:01] end date,
[00:47:03] then add a week to
[00:47:07] add a week onto,
[00:47:11] you know, the, the appropriate
[00:47:12] start date. So,
[00:47:13] I have the automation turned on
[00:47:16] and it's pretty simple,
[00:47:18] but I'll turn it off
[00:47:19] just so you guys can see,
[00:47:21] I'm gonna say
[00:47:25] test at email dot com.
[00:47:27] I'm some person filling
[00:47:29] in some kind of form
[00:47:32] starting on
[00:47:34] the seventh and ending on,
[00:47:38] let's go all the way to the fourth
[00:47:40] of September.
[00:47:41] So now you'll see that both of
[00:47:43] these fields are filled out.
[00:47:44] Whereas for the first four,
[00:47:46] because the automation
[00:47:47] already ran for these
[00:47:48] only the first one is filled in.
[00:47:50] So the clamped end date is giving me the
[00:47:54] 11th, which should be and it is
[00:47:56] the Friday of the week
[00:47:58] of wherever I said the start date is.
[00:48:01] The next start date would be
[00:48:03] one week from
[00:48:05] this date. So what the
[00:48:07] automation is going to do now
[00:48:08] is say when this is not empty,
[00:48:13] then
[00:48:15] take this record
[00:48:18] change the end date
[00:48:19] to the clamped end date.
[00:48:21] So it's now just spanning one week
[00:48:23] and then create a new record
[00:48:25] that starts on
[00:48:27] this
[00:48:30] starts on this next start date.
[00:48:33] So I'm gonna go back
[00:48:35] and turn my automation back on
[00:48:38] and then I'm gonna have to
[00:48:41] a mess this up really quickly
[00:48:43] because it says
[00:48:44] when that field is not empty.
[00:48:47] So now if I give it a second
[00:48:49] to think a little bit,
[00:48:51] you can see that like one week
[00:48:54] by one week, it's going to
[00:48:57] duplicate the record,
[00:48:59] including the email address
[00:49:01] and then it's going to
[00:49:03] copy and paste what the
[00:49:05] next start date is into
[00:49:07] the start date of the copied record.
[00:49:10] And then it's just gonna keep doing that
[00:49:13] until it runs out of weeks
[00:49:15] where it needs to do that
[00:49:18] and looking back at the automation
[00:49:21] in detail, you might do this
[00:49:23] was specifically a form for this person.
[00:49:26] So they might have chosen
[00:49:27] when a form is submitted.
[00:49:29] First thing I'm doing again,
[00:49:31] I'm creating a new record
[00:49:33] in that same table
[00:49:34] where the start date
[00:49:35] is the next start date
[00:49:36] and the end date is whatever
[00:49:38] the old end date was,
[00:49:41] then copy the email address
[00:49:43] as well and no matter
[00:49:44] how many fields that you
[00:49:46] wanted to copy over as well,
[00:49:47] you would just keep choosing, choose field
[00:49:50] and then update the original
[00:49:52] one and get rid of the
[00:49:54] end date that's too far away.
[00:49:56] Instead insert the clamped end date.
[00:49:59] And that's what
[00:50:01] one could do in order
[00:50:02] to do this without a script.
[00:50:06] Love it. It's like a little loop
[00:50:08] with one automation run
[00:50:10] per
[00:50:12] nice little trick.
[00:50:13] Yeah. So, I mean,
[00:50:15] the, the caveat of course is that
[00:50:17] it is a fresh automation run.
[00:50:20] It's not a true loop.
[00:50:21] It's not a repeating action.
[00:50:23] So you are gonna every
[00:50:25] time,
[00:50:26] you know, for as many number
[00:50:28] of weeks there are,
[00:50:29] that's how many automation runs
[00:50:31] are going to happen.
[00:50:33] Unless
[00:50:35] your end date is exactly one week away,
[00:50:37] then this won't be filled in.
[00:50:39] And then if no automation will run
[00:50:40] you get the picture.
[00:50:42] So as long as you're not,
[00:50:43] you know, running low on
[00:50:45] the number of automations
[00:50:47] you're given in your chosen plan,
[00:50:48] then this solution might work for you
[00:50:51] and because it doesn't have a script
[00:50:53] involved, that means you can use it
[00:50:56] for a lower plan like free.
[00:51:00] Yeah.
[00:51:01] Nice, very cool,
[00:51:04] nice solution there. Hopefully that helps.
[00:51:07] We'll have the link to it on that
[00:51:09] thread.
[00:51:11] All right, quick shout out to
[00:51:12] join our community at
[00:51:14] BuiltOnAir
[00:51:14] we'd love to have you in with us.
[00:51:16] We are growing,
[00:51:17] we're approaching 1500 members
[00:51:19] in our slack community
[00:51:21] more on our newsletter and growing
[00:51:23] our youtube channel. Subscribe to all of
[00:51:26] those if you haven't already.
[00:51:28] So we'd love to have you join.
[00:51:30] We would also love to have you
[00:51:32] come on the, on the podcast.
[00:51:33] So if you've got
[00:51:34] something worth
[00:51:35] sharing with the community,
[00:51:37] please reach out and we'll have you on.
[00:51:40] All right,
[00:51:41] let's finish up with Field focus
[00:51:43] and we're gonna be talking about
[00:51:46] progress bars. So
[00:51:48] we mentioned this came out recently.
[00:51:51] So this is how you get these
[00:51:53] nice looking progress bars right here.
[00:51:56] Let's look at what they are. So
[00:51:58] they are a percent field.
[00:52:00] So this is not a new field type
[00:52:02] like I mentioned
[00:52:02] earlier. So you still have
[00:52:04] to go to a percent field
[00:52:05] or
[00:52:07] you can also let's do a formula
[00:52:11] that references the
[00:52:15] that field. And then if you format it
[00:52:18] as a percent, then it gives you the option
[00:52:20] to display it as a progress bar
[00:52:23] and it,
[00:52:25] then you set up your own condition. So
[00:52:28] I won't worry about that.
[00:52:29] Let's go back here.
[00:52:31] So if once you set it as the progress bar,
[00:52:34] the other option you have is to
[00:52:36] display the actual percent
[00:52:38] value next to the,
[00:52:40] to the progress bar.
[00:52:42] So I'll show you what that looks like.
[00:52:44] And then in here you set up your
[00:52:45] condition so you can actually have
[00:52:48] pretty, actually pretty, pretty nice
[00:52:51] layers of coloring.
[00:52:53] So it, I think it goes in order
[00:52:55] it'll look for to see
[00:52:57] if it solves this first
[00:52:59] condition first.
[00:53:00] If it does
[00:53:02] solve this as true,
[00:53:03] then it'll set it to this color,
[00:53:05] then it'll go to the next
[00:53:06] one.
[00:53:07] If you have them out of order,
[00:53:09] you can drag them around
[00:53:10] so you can change the
[00:53:11] order.
[00:53:11] But this wouldn't make sense
[00:53:14] because you, it would be true.
[00:53:16] It would never get to that second one
[00:53:18] because it would always
[00:53:19] be greater than 50.
[00:53:20] But you can also do like
[00:53:22] layered conditions.
[00:53:23] So that's kind of nice,
[00:53:24] you can say
[00:53:26] and or,
[00:53:27] and then you can also set up
[00:53:29] this otherwise,
[00:53:31] which is this default color.
[00:53:33] So you can specify if it's not any
[00:53:35] of these conditions, then set it to this
[00:53:37] color.
[00:53:38] And so you can add more,
[00:53:40] puts it up there.
[00:53:42] Whatnot. So once you have
[00:53:44] your conditions set up
[00:53:46] then
[00:53:48] that's interesting.
[00:53:50] Yeah, I think it works.
[00:53:52] What is the display for a negative number?
[00:53:55] Let's
[00:53:55] find out.
[00:53:56] I think it,
[00:53:58] I think it shows it empty
[00:54:00] like I could be remembering wrong.
[00:54:02] But
[00:54:02] we'll see now.
[00:54:05] Yeah, it shows it empty
[00:54:07] so it doesn't go negative on the display.
[00:54:10] But yeah, you see these nice
[00:54:12] so now I'm having
[00:54:13] it display the percent sign
[00:54:14] next to it.
[00:54:15] It's kind of interesting to edit it,
[00:54:18] you just click into it and then you modify
[00:54:20] the percent
[00:54:22] sign there. If you don't have it
[00:54:24] now, these aren't editable because they're
[00:54:26] formulas
[00:54:27] and roll ups and lookups would,
[00:54:30] would be the same as this,
[00:54:32] but these are editable.
[00:54:35] So it stays there.
[00:54:38] And so that's kind of it.
[00:54:40] I wanted to take it one layer deep.
[00:54:42] I wanted to know
[00:54:45] at the API level,
[00:54:47] what does it look like?
[00:54:49] So I go to the API schema
[00:54:52] page and there's no change.
[00:54:54] So basically
[00:54:55] it's just the percent sign and it
[00:54:58] just gives you the number.
[00:54:59] So it doesn't tell you
[00:55:01] what color it would be. I wish
[00:55:03] there was a way where you could say
[00:55:05] also tell me,
[00:55:06] you know what color this would
[00:55:07] be based off of my conditions.
[00:55:11] And then I also wanted to look at
[00:55:13] the metadata API
[00:55:14] to see if they've updated the
[00:55:16] configurations for the percent
[00:55:18] to give you that information.
[00:55:20] Unfortunately, it does not yet.
[00:55:23] So the according to the documentation,
[00:55:26] it just gives you the, the precision.
[00:55:29] OK.
[00:55:30] So
[00:55:33] I
[00:55:33] yeah,
[00:55:34] it'd be good if they treated it like
[00:55:37] the single select field in the API
[00:55:39] where it'll say the id
[00:55:41] of the select choice,
[00:55:42] the name of the select choice
[00:55:43] and then the color
[00:55:44] of the select choice in this
[00:55:46] case, it'd be
[00:55:47] like the precision.
[00:55:49] or I guess if you're reading
[00:55:51] the field value
[00:55:52] would say like the value and also
[00:55:54] the color.
[00:55:55] Yeah.
[00:55:55] Now that would be a pretty big
[00:55:58] change because any,
[00:55:59] any previous one it would,
[00:56:01] you know, it would break
[00:56:02] because you'd be expecting a number.
[00:56:04] So it'd have to be like a
[00:56:06] one of the options that you
[00:56:09] can specify like type cast
[00:56:12] where you could pass it in
[00:56:14] to give it to you in the other format
[00:56:16] for, for,
[00:56:18] I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:56:19] No, I was just gonna say,
[00:56:21] what about if it's a formula field?
[00:56:22] Does it give you different?
[00:56:24] They probably haven't updated it then
[00:56:25] either.
[00:56:26] There. Yeah, I think it's the same.
[00:56:28] Yeah, let me refresh.
[00:56:36] Yeah, it's a percent
[00:56:38] although it's interesting.
[00:56:45] Yeah, so it does
[00:56:46] give it to you in percent.
[00:56:48] OK.
[00:56:51] When you're doing record coloring,
[00:56:54] can you color by percent field or no?
[00:57:01] And
[00:57:03] yeah,
[00:57:03] it
[00:57:03] should be in
[00:57:04] order.
[00:57:05] Yeah, but like if you
[00:57:07] clear out these conditions,
[00:57:09] it'll give you
[00:57:10] normally it would give you the option
[00:57:12] color by select field or your conditions.
[00:57:14] Could you do
[00:57:16] color by?
[00:57:17] Yeah, get rid of those.
[00:57:19] Yeah. No.
[00:57:20] Yeah. At this point because it is,
[00:57:22] it's effectively
[00:57:23] the same because it's not a
[00:57:24] gradient of colors. It's a solid color
[00:57:27] for whatever conditions you
[00:57:29] set up within the percent field.
[00:57:30] I would like it if you could color
[00:57:32] by percent field in the same way you could
[00:57:34] color by a select field.
[00:57:35] Otherwise you have to recreate
[00:57:37] those color conditions
[00:57:39] in the color records panel.
[00:57:41] Yeah, that'd be great.
[00:57:44] Yeah. So
[00:57:46] yeah. So this is a great feature.
[00:57:48] As a third party developer,
[00:57:50] it's always frustrating because
[00:57:52] you can't recreate this in a tool.
[00:57:54] You'd have to recreate
[00:57:56] your own conditioning.
[00:57:57] You can't repurpose the
[00:57:58] conditioning already set up in here
[00:58:00] because you don't have that information.
[00:58:02] They also do not have their
[00:58:04] support article
[00:58:05] on percent file type updated.
[00:58:07] So there's no
[00:58:08] reference to
[00:58:10] progress bars in their Support docs.
[00:58:14] Yeah. And
[00:58:15] they, they do have now the thing
[00:58:17] at the bottom
[00:58:18] of this support page reminds me
[00:58:19] that they have changed since before.
[00:58:22] So
[00:58:23] I don't know what's up with
[00:58:26] percent
[00:58:27] underneath it all.
[00:58:28] But you know this is the second time
[00:58:32] they've gotten or might have,
[00:58:33] might get a shakeup
[00:58:34] if they adjust how it's
[00:58:35] reported
[00:58:37] in the FBI.
[00:58:39] Yeah, it's um
[00:58:41] very good. That concludes
[00:58:43] season 15, episode one.
[00:58:45] Good to be back with you.
[00:58:46] We will be back next week with more fun.
[00:58:49] I believe we have a guest joining.
[00:58:51] So
[00:58:51] thank you everybody for joining
[00:58:53] and we'll see you next week.
[00:58:56] Thank you.