7/25/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S15-E03

Duration: 63 minutes

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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 – 00:02:58 –

Meet the Creators – 00:30:28 –

Meet Rob Weidner from https://prettysim.pl/.

Drawing upon my unique background in the entertainment industry and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, I focus on transforming business processes, enhancing productivity, and scaling operations. My approach involves streamlining workflows, eliminating bottlenecks, and deploying efficient systems and automations.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:37:34 –

We dive into a full working base that will Film Gear South Africa is an ecommerce store that was founded in 2015 with the goal of creating a marketplace for new high-end film equipment in the South African market. The founder, who worked as an assistant cameraman in Cape Town at the time, faced challenges in finding reliable resellers for different brands of film equipment in South Africa. Leveraging their background in computer science, they decided to build a platform to address this problem and provide a solution for others in the industry. From the beginning, Film Gear South Africa was built on the Shopify platform. Shortly after starting the store, the founder realized that the value of the platform would increase by incorporating new products from various brands as they were released. However, they encountered several business problems that needed to be solved. One challenge was offering an end-to-end local currency solution in South African Rand, even though the base prices of the products were in other more stable currencies. Another challenge was the fluctuating value of the items throughout the day, as the store didn’t hold any inventory in the country. To address these challenges, the founder took matters into their own hands. They started by scraping various websites to gather up-to-date pricing and product information. This allowed them to set the prices themselves and eliminate the need to rely on distributors for information. Additionally, they developed a tool to perform currency conversions every three hours, minimizing foreign gains or losses. Initially, the founder manually loaded CSV files into the Shopify store to update prices, but this approach wasn’t scalable due to the varying formats of the CSV files from different brands. This led to another realization that website scraping could provide the information they needed. They discovered a tool called ParseHub, which allowed them to automate the scraping process and collect the data. To manage the collected data, the founder turned to Airtable, as Excel and Google Sheets weren’t sufficient for their needs. They needed a tool that could handle the translation of different pricing models and facilitate the transfer of data from one system to another. That’s when they discovered Make (formerly Integromat), which served as the bridge between ParseHub and Shopify. With this combination of tools – ParseHub, Make, and Shopify – the founder could gather information on-demand or on a schedule, at an affordable price. This enabled them to quickly onboard new brands and products with just a few clicks, while their competitors were still manually copying and pasting outdated information. Overall, the founder’s innovative use of technology, their knowledge of the film industry, and their persistence in finding solutions to business challenges led to the successful establishment of Film Gear South Africa as a thriving ecommerce store for high-end film equipment.

Field Focus – 00:59:01 –

A deep dive into the Synced Field Types All Types – Alli will review some tips and tricks when changing field types of a synced table. 

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:02:58

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:30:28

Rob Weidner –

Meet Rob Weidner from https://prettysim.pl/.

Drawing upon my unique background in the entertainment industry and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, I focus on transforming business processes, enhancing productivity, and scaling operations. My approach involves streamlining workflows, eliminating bottlenecks, and deploying efficient systems and automations.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:37:34

Film Gear South Africa

We dive into a full working base that will Film Gear South Africa is an ecommerce store that was founded in 2015 with the goal of creating a marketplace for new high-end film equipment in the South African market. The founder, who worked as an assistant cameraman in Cape Town at the time, faced challenges in finding reliable resellers for different brands of film equipment in South Africa. Leveraging their background in computer science, they decided to build a platform to address this problem and provide a solution for others in the industry. From the beginning, Film Gear South Africa was built on the Shopify platform. Shortly after starting the store, the founder realized that the value of the platform would increase by incorporating new products from various brands as they were released. However, they encountered several business problems that needed to be solved. One challenge was offering an end-to-end local currency solution in South African Rand, even though the base prices of the products were in other more stable currencies. Another challenge was the fluctuating value of the items throughout the day, as the store didn’t hold any inventory in the country. To address these challenges, the founder took matters into their own hands. They started by scraping various websites to gather up-to-date pricing and product information. This allowed them to set the prices themselves and eliminate the need to rely on distributors for information. Additionally, they developed a tool to perform currency conversions every three hours, minimizing foreign gains or losses. Initially, the founder manually loaded CSV files into the Shopify store to update prices, but this approach wasn’t scalable due to the varying formats of the CSV files from different brands. This led to another realization that website scraping could provide the information they needed. They discovered a tool called ParseHub, which allowed them to automate the scraping process and collect the data. To manage the collected data, the founder turned to Airtable, as Excel and Google Sheets weren’t sufficient for their needs. They needed a tool that could handle the translation of different pricing models and facilitate the transfer of data from one system to another. That’s when they discovered Make (formerly Integromat), which served as the bridge between ParseHub and Shopify. With this combination of tools – ParseHub, Make, and Shopify – the founder could gather information on-demand or on a schedule, at an affordable price. This enabled them to quickly onboard new brands and products with just a few clicks, while their competitors were still manually copying and pasting outdated information. Overall, the founder’s innovative use of technology, their knowledge of the film industry, and their persistence in finding solutions to business challenges led to the successful establishment of Film Gear South Africa as a thriving ecommerce store for high-end film equipment.

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:59:01

Learn about the Synced Field Types – Alli will review some tips and tricks when changing field types of a synced table.

A deep dive into the Synced Field Types All Types – Alli will review some tips and tricks when changing field types of a synced table. 

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back once again
[00:01:43] to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:45] We are in season 15,
[00:01:46] episode three.
[00:01:48] Coming to you live on a Tuesday.
[00:01:50] Good to be with you.
[00:01:51] We've got a full house
[00:01:53] with us again myself,
[00:01:54] Alli and Kamille as always
[00:01:56] and special guest, Rob. Welcome, Rob.
[00:01:59] Hello.
[00:02:01] Good to have you on.
[00:02:02] So we're gonna learn Rob's
[00:02:03] new to the show.
[00:02:04] So we're gonna learn his story
[00:02:06] and background and then he's gonna
[00:02:07] share some stuff.
[00:02:08] So I'll walk through what we're
[00:02:10] gonna be talking about today.
[00:02:11] We always do four different segments
[00:02:13] to keep you up to date,
[00:02:14] starting with our Round the Bases
[00:02:16] with what's going on in the
[00:02:18] Airtable communities.
[00:02:19] Then a quick shout out to
[00:02:21] our primary sponsor On2Air.
[00:02:23] Then we're gonna learn more about
[00:02:25] Rob and his story and how he came into the
[00:02:27] world of Airtable.
[00:02:29] And then Rob's gonna showcase
[00:02:31] the back end to an e-commerce store that,
[00:02:33] that he built called Film Gear
[00:02:36] South Africa.
[00:02:38] Then a quick
[00:02:40] shout out to join our community
[00:02:42] at BuiltOnAir. And then finally,
[00:02:44] Alli is gonna walk us through
[00:02:47] dealing with fields in synced tables.
[00:02:50] So with that
[00:02:51] do our Round the Bases.
[00:02:54] So there's definitely a lot
[00:02:56] of continued discussion
[00:02:58] around
[00:03:00] the interface design changes.
[00:03:03] I know that's an ongoing
[00:03:05] dialogue in many different communities.
[00:03:08] To kind of summarize the latest,
[00:03:10] we talked about it last week of pretty big
[00:03:12] changes. Kamille walked through
[00:03:14] in more granular detail,
[00:03:16] some of those changes.
[00:03:17] But this week we we did get
[00:03:19] a response from Airtable.
[00:03:21] So I thought this was
[00:03:22] worth sharing.
[00:03:23] Phil an employee at Airtable
[00:03:26] basically goes through
[00:03:27] and says, yes, we heard you,
[00:03:30] yes, we could have launched it better.
[00:03:34] Gives a little bit of the
[00:03:36] new functionality overview
[00:03:38] and some foundations.
[00:03:41] So it gives a little bit
[00:03:43] of insight talking about
[00:03:44] how it could work across different
[00:03:46] devices, which is what
[00:03:48] we kind of alluded to
[00:03:49] with mobile. But also PDF is interesting.
[00:03:52] So being able to export,
[00:03:54] that's kind of a little
[00:03:56] bit of tidbit there,
[00:03:57] thoughts on his, his comments
[00:04:00] or just this topic in general?
[00:04:03] So the, you know,
[00:04:05] I appreciate the sort of
[00:04:07] public response because sometimes
[00:04:10] Airtable
[00:04:11] will make a change and we'll have some
[00:04:13] criticisms or feedback
[00:04:15] and it's like radio silence
[00:04:16] so,
[00:04:17] you know, it's nice to, you know,
[00:04:19] have someone he and Phil
[00:04:21] specifically is from the product team.
[00:04:23] So somebody is actively working on
[00:04:25] the feature being discussed
[00:04:27] rather than being
[00:04:28] it's sort of a community liaison.
[00:04:30] It's just sort of nice to see
[00:04:32] their reasoning behind doing
[00:04:34] changes like this. Because
[00:04:36] from an architectural standpoint
[00:04:39] of how Airtable is built,
[00:04:41] if you want things like PDF,
[00:04:43] export, exportable
[00:04:45] export,
[00:04:47] I'm not sure that's a word.
[00:04:49] But if you want to be able
[00:04:50] to export a clean PDF out
[00:04:51] of
[00:04:52] the old interfaces that would have
[00:04:54] been really difficult for them to do.
[00:04:56] And so somewhere along the line,
[00:04:58] either someone said
[00:04:59] I really need to be able to
[00:05:00] print
[00:05:01] or they decided
[00:05:03] that for themselves, that's a direction
[00:05:05] they wanted to go. And in order to do
[00:05:07] that, they had to make this change,
[00:05:09] he also sort of acknowledges
[00:05:11] that, hey, maybe we should have given
[00:05:13] some advanced, some advanced warning
[00:05:17] because, you know,
[00:05:18] this is an active product,
[00:05:19] it's not in beta anymore.
[00:05:21] So interface designer was in beta
[00:05:23] for like a full two years.
[00:05:24] It's no longer marked as beta.
[00:05:26] So I don't give it nearly
[00:05:28] as much leeway as I
[00:05:29] used to for sudden changes
[00:05:31] that impact what you're able to do.
[00:05:34] We have a better insight
[00:05:36] into where they're going.
[00:05:37] But,
[00:05:38] you know, there's still these things
[00:05:40] that myself and others have pointed out,
[00:05:43] it really should be addressed for it to be
[00:05:45] usable in its current state
[00:05:47] as well as in the future state
[00:05:49] when they have all these
[00:05:50] things that they're kind
[00:05:51] of set up.
[00:05:54] Yeah.
[00:05:57] Yeah. This is
[00:05:59] you know, I feel like this,
[00:06:01] we hear the feedback,
[00:06:02] loud and clear and we'll learn
[00:06:03] from it with future releases.
[00:06:05] I feel like we've heard that before.
[00:06:07] We have heard that before,
[00:06:09] which is why many people
[00:06:10] are frustrated. Kuovonne
[00:06:11] and I specifically,
[00:06:13] but in a different thread,
[00:06:16] someone said
[00:06:17] they had spoken to Phil directly,
[00:06:19] they had filled out that
[00:06:20] share your feedback form thing
[00:06:22] that appears at the bottom
[00:06:23] of the interface
[00:06:24] designer. And Phil reached out
[00:06:26] based on the feedback they provided.
[00:06:27] So
[00:06:28] it does feel a little bit different
[00:06:30] in this particular instance
[00:06:32] because outside
[00:06:33] of just posting
[00:06:34] a sort of general response
[00:06:36] to this popular thread,
[00:06:37] he did apparently reach out
[00:06:39] to at least one person
[00:06:41] specifically to ask for,
[00:06:42] you know, why do you think this way?
[00:06:45] And what about this feature that you
[00:06:47] pointed out in your feedback,
[00:06:49] et cetera. So a
[00:06:50] they apparently are reading that
[00:06:51] feature feedback form.
[00:06:53] So fill it out if you have comments
[00:06:55] and and be
[00:06:57] sometimes
[00:06:58] you know, they're reaching out
[00:07:00] specifically to get clarifying
[00:07:01] information which
[00:07:02] they may or may not use.
[00:07:04] One would hope may. But
[00:07:05] yeah, we'll see.
[00:07:07] Yeah.
[00:07:09] Yeah, I think the biggest thing
[00:07:10] and Kuovonne
[00:07:11] that addresses this
[00:07:14] you know, the fact that you're
[00:07:16] now in limbo, you have some that,
[00:07:18] that work with the old way
[00:07:20] and even within the same
[00:07:22] is it even
[00:07:23] if you create just a new
[00:07:26] page within an interface,
[00:07:28] you can't use the old one.
[00:07:30] Is that how
[00:07:30] it works?
[00:07:31] So
[00:07:31] yeah,
[00:07:32] I
[00:07:32] I
[00:07:32] think
[00:07:33] this
[00:07:33] is,
[00:07:34] yeah, it it would have been
[00:07:36] preferred if it was a brand new interface
[00:07:39] and it's detail pages within it.
[00:07:41] Those are the new system, whereas old
[00:07:44] interfaces and their detail pages
[00:07:46] are the old system. You have a mix of both
[00:07:48] within the same
[00:07:50] interface environment which is,
[00:07:52] you know, to me poor planning
[00:07:53] because it is a different experience,
[00:07:55] you can handle some use cases but not all.
[00:07:58] Yeah.
[00:08:00] Yeah. Theoretically they
[00:08:02] are rolling these things out
[00:08:03] in
[00:08:04] like versions as well.
[00:08:07] So, I don't know,
[00:08:08] in traditional development,
[00:08:10] it would be nice to kind of see or
[00:08:12] at least have the ability
[00:08:14] to almost choose which version
[00:08:17] or,
[00:08:17] or maybe as like a at a certain level,
[00:08:19] be able to choose which version of
[00:08:22] Airtable
[00:08:22] you wanted to use.
[00:08:24] Or make the jump when you
[00:08:28] knew that something
[00:08:29] was in a stable version
[00:08:31] or stable for you in your use case. Yeah.
[00:08:35] Yeah, especially because they're
[00:08:37] still supporting the old one.
[00:08:38] So it's still there.
[00:08:41] Yeah.
[00:08:43] So we'll see, we'll see if the
[00:08:45] the if, if you're not happy about this,
[00:08:48] definitely give them feedback.
[00:08:50] Hopefully they'll, they'll listen and,
[00:08:53] and we'll see what, what comes from this.
[00:08:57] I, I mean, I think everybody
[00:08:58] could get on board
[00:08:59] with kind of the the direction
[00:09:01] of making it, you know,
[00:09:02] more mobile friendly,
[00:09:04] supporting different
[00:09:06] but I also think a and
[00:09:08] even if you if they said
[00:09:10] that we needed to kind of take
[00:09:13] two steps or one step back
[00:09:14] to take two steps
[00:09:15] forward. But they are going
[00:09:17] to add back that functionality
[00:09:19] because I think you
[00:09:19] could still
[00:09:21] incorporate some of the things
[00:09:23] they took away even within this new
[00:09:25] section thing that they introduced. So
[00:09:29] we'll see if they add it back.
[00:09:31] Yeah, a lot,
[00:09:33] a lot of functionality isn't necessarily
[00:09:36] gone. It's not in the way you would
[00:09:38] want some is gone.
[00:09:39] I keep mentioning charts because
[00:09:41] I wanna put a chart on the
[00:09:42] interface. I'm currently
[00:09:43] building it. I can't do. So
[00:09:46] that's a feature that is gone, but
[00:09:48] you can still put things side
[00:09:50] by side.
[00:09:51] It's not in the way that I would want
[00:09:53] but it's there,
[00:09:54] you know, so like
[00:09:56] to your point, Dan, I do,
[00:09:58] I, I think generally I like
[00:10:00] the direction but execution
[00:10:03] in its current state, there are things
[00:10:05] that I simply can't ship until they're
[00:10:07] fixed
[00:10:08] or at least adjusted so that,
[00:10:11] you know,
[00:10:12] work for whatever interface
[00:10:14] I was trying to build two weeks ago,
[00:10:16] but didn't finish before the launch.
[00:10:18] So
[00:10:20] yeah,
[00:10:20] there's, I mean, I'm super excited about
[00:10:22] a lot of little things that they rolled
[00:10:24] out with this update, like
[00:10:25] the ability to add new records
[00:10:27] and access a little form
[00:10:29] like that's huge like
[00:10:30] that
[00:10:30] previously, the
[00:10:32] forms I never used the forms
[00:10:35] at all because there was no good
[00:10:37] way to access them,
[00:10:38] like you could either put them
[00:10:40] on a page by themselves
[00:10:41] or through a record
[00:10:41] picker, which to me was never useful.
[00:10:45] So I'm really excited about
[00:10:46] those things, but little things like,
[00:10:48] like you said the charts
[00:10:49] and then the text,
[00:10:50] like not being able to put text
[00:10:51] wherever you want it. That's, that's huge
[00:10:53] like that.
[00:10:55] I need that back.
[00:10:57] You
[00:10:57] know,
[00:10:57] I struggle with the conditional
[00:10:59] visibility as well. Some things you can do
[00:11:00] conditional visibility
[00:11:02] of and some things you can't.
[00:11:03] And
[00:11:04] I get confused because it's
[00:11:05] like I don't want to show this right now,
[00:11:07] but
[00:11:08] I know that I, I
[00:11:09] had the ability at one point to be able to
[00:11:11] to not show things. So
[00:11:14] yeah,
[00:11:15] yeah,
[00:11:16] want that across the board,
[00:11:18] conditional visibility
[00:11:20] across all all interface
[00:11:21] moments would be
[00:11:22] well, now that sections are formalized
[00:11:25] to me, you should be able to say show
[00:11:26] this section if
[00:11:28] you know it's a clearly defined
[00:11:30] portion of the page and,
[00:11:32] and CS S you could just do remove or
[00:11:35] die or visibility equals
[00:11:37] fault. Like that's a
[00:11:39] thing
[00:11:39] you can do.
[00:11:40] So
[00:11:41] I see that the the infrastructure
[00:11:44] that they've set up
[00:11:45] kind of allows for all of a lot
[00:11:47] of things that I have wanted previously,
[00:11:49] some of which are in this update,
[00:11:51] some of which are not
[00:11:52] things like
[00:11:53] section
[00:11:54] based conditional visibility
[00:11:56] really would be like that would
[00:11:58] be another major win if they
[00:12:00] lump that into
[00:12:02] the the fixes for some of the stuff
[00:12:04] we've pointed out, you know,
[00:12:05] put text anywhere, put a button anywhere
[00:12:08] and conditional section visibility.
[00:12:10] I think everyone would be happy until that
[00:12:12] happens.
[00:12:14] You know, you're gonna
[00:12:15] get a mixed feedback.
[00:12:17] Yeah.
[00:12:17] Yeah.
[00:12:19] Fair enough. So
[00:12:21] anyways, yeah, there's really good
[00:12:23] dialogue here. If you want to read more
[00:12:25] about the latest
[00:12:26] what's going on,
[00:12:28] that's a good thread to follow.
[00:12:30] All right, moving on. we'll go to the
[00:12:33] the BuiltOnAir Community.
[00:12:36] This is a, a post from Ben
[00:12:39] Bailey. You know what really grinds
[00:12:41] my gear is the fact that link record field
[00:12:42] search functionality
[00:12:44] only looks at the key field
[00:12:46] and this triggered discussion.
[00:12:49] So you talk about
[00:12:53] but then he says, I think the record
[00:12:55] detail update last week might have fixed
[00:12:57] this in certain context
[00:12:59] and then posted
[00:13:01] that they pushed the update.
[00:13:03] And so one of the updates
[00:13:05] that also another undocumented
[00:13:07] update is that you can
[00:13:08] search
[00:13:09] in linked record elements
[00:13:11] within interfaces.
[00:13:14] Yeah, so that it,
[00:13:15] it
[00:13:16] that's a quality of life improvement
[00:13:19] that
[00:13:19] is useful. So normally when you
[00:13:21] have that like little record card,
[00:13:23] there's a couple other fields
[00:13:25] that are visible underneath
[00:13:26] whatever the name of
[00:13:27] the record is.
[00:13:29] If you type in words that appear
[00:13:31] in any of those other fields,
[00:13:32] it will show up as a result
[00:13:34] while you're searching now,
[00:13:36] which is very useful,
[00:13:37] I haven't tested in every
[00:13:40] place that, that sort of search box
[00:13:42] comes up. But it does happen in at least
[00:13:44] some portions of the product
[00:13:45] and it does make finding
[00:13:47] things a lot easier.
[00:13:49] Yeah.
[00:13:50] Yeah. So that's good.
[00:13:52] It was actually a two part.
[00:13:53] He then posted it in a different channel,
[00:13:57] in the, in the tricks of it being
[00:14:02] available and then some interesting
[00:14:04] discussion. If you like talking about
[00:14:06] history of databases.
[00:14:08] Bill French is always good
[00:14:10] for a history lesson
[00:14:12] so you can learn more about
[00:14:15] how search evolved over
[00:14:16] the years and databases
[00:14:20] love it.
[00:14:22] Yeah.
[00:14:23] OK. Next one,
[00:14:24] this one I thought was
[00:14:26] was worth discussion.
[00:14:27] Karlsten asked I wish comments
[00:14:29] was its own field type so a record could
[00:14:31] essentially have multiple comment fields.
[00:14:35] So thoughts on that as well
[00:14:37] as ideas or strategies
[00:14:38] and dealing with comments,
[00:14:40] maybe outside of just the
[00:14:42] the normal comment section?
[00:14:45] And you could use, I mean, as
[00:14:46] Kuovonne says, you could have
[00:14:48] a long text field because
[00:14:49] that does, you can still at
[00:14:50] people in a long text field
[00:14:52] and it'll still notify them.
[00:14:55] I prefer to,
[00:14:57] I mean, depending on, you know,
[00:14:58] how in depth the use case is,
[00:14:59] I might actually have
[00:15:01] a whole table of comments
[00:15:02] where each comment is a new record.
[00:15:04] So that way they're all
[00:15:05] time stamped and you
[00:15:06] have a created by field
[00:15:08] and stuff like that because then
[00:15:09] you have a lot more flexibility on how to
[00:15:11] display those and which ones to display
[00:15:13] on the record that you're looking at.
[00:15:16] Yeah, there's a lot of little
[00:15:17] workarounds and tricks
[00:15:19] that
[00:15:19] that's probably my preferred workaround,
[00:15:23] especially
[00:15:24] inside an interface. I think it works
[00:15:26] that that approach works nicely in
[00:15:28] interfaces.
[00:15:30] Yeah, go ahead.
[00:15:31] I had a situation this week actually
[00:15:34] with this specifically changing comments
[00:15:36] to a long text field, but I had
[00:15:39] a trigger, an Airtable
[00:15:41] triggering an automation
[00:15:43] based on when fields were updated.
[00:15:46] So essentially when someone
[00:15:48] updated uh a comment,
[00:15:51] I noticed that it was updating
[00:15:53] like every single character
[00:15:55] that they were,
[00:15:55] they were typing
[00:15:57] as opposed to just when
[00:15:58] they've submitted their comments.
[00:16:00] So if anyone does that
[00:16:01] do not put an automation
[00:16:04] that runs on when that
[00:16:06] comment field gets updated
[00:16:08] because you will be getting
[00:16:09] a
[00:16:10] lot of Yeah.
[00:16:11] And
[00:16:12] the, the hack for that would
[00:16:14] be to have like the comments'
[00:16:16] long text field that
[00:16:17] is locked and that can only be
[00:16:19] modified via automation
[00:16:20] and then a separate one
[00:16:21] that's like
[00:16:22] your prompt or like it looking
[00:16:24] at slack where that reply box is,
[00:16:27] that's a separate long text field.
[00:16:29] And then there's a button that says,
[00:16:31] you know, post comment or whatever
[00:16:34] and it appends it.
[00:16:35] But that now you have three fields
[00:16:38] or two fields in a button depending on how
[00:16:40] you set it up. So it's like,
[00:16:42] you know,
[00:16:44] there's pros and cons back
[00:16:46] before the comment API was a thing
[00:16:49] you would have had to do one
[00:16:51] of these types of workarounds.
[00:16:53] I still don't know
[00:16:54] how good the comment API is,
[00:16:56] but at least it's, it's something
[00:16:58] but Dan
[00:16:59] he had no. So to me that says,
[00:17:02] you know, it's not, it doesn't give you
[00:17:03] the level of detail that you would need
[00:17:05] to like
[00:17:05] really use it anywhere
[00:17:07] outside of Airtable.
[00:17:09] Yeah, I
[00:17:09] mean, it's OK.
[00:17:10] My biggest frustration is that
[00:17:13] you, you can only get the
[00:17:15] comments by querying a record.
[00:17:17] They don't have like a comments
[00:17:19] endpoint that gives you
[00:17:20] like all the comments of
[00:17:21] the table.
[00:17:22] So depending on what you're doing,
[00:17:25] it might be OK but you, you,
[00:17:26] you need to
[00:17:27] check each record for its comments.
[00:17:31] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:32] I had a discussion the other day.
[00:17:34] I can't remember it was with a colleague
[00:17:36] that was used to an older
[00:17:38] database platform
[00:17:39] and I can't remember exactly which
[00:17:41] data database platform it was.
[00:17:43] But I was explaining and explaining
[00:17:45] to him why we couldn't use a particular
[00:17:47] automation to do what
[00:17:48] he wanted to do because
[00:17:49] Airtable commits values on keystroke
[00:17:51] as Rob was just talking about.
[00:17:53] And he was like, well in this older
[00:17:56] database program, I had it didn't commit
[00:17:58] values until you had a carriage return.
[00:18:00] And I was like, well, that would be
[00:18:02] kind of interesting if you had the ability
[00:18:03] to like toggle which one actually did it.
[00:18:08] because that would
[00:18:09] save a lot of hassle, I think.
[00:18:13] you wouldn't have to do what
[00:18:14] saying
[00:18:16] yeah, it,
[00:18:17] that's
[00:18:18] a
[00:18:18] long wish
[00:18:18] list.
[00:18:19] Yeah. Yeah. What my workaround
[00:18:21] has been a, like a helper field.
[00:18:22] So, I,
[00:18:23] fields that's a
[00:18:25] last modified time field.
[00:18:26] That's essentially
[00:18:28] like a helper field that
[00:18:29] conditionally filters out
[00:18:31] those update triggers. So, it just says
[00:18:34] if it's more than a minute
[00:18:36] or if more than a minute's gone by,
[00:18:39] on that, on that field,
[00:18:42] then send it as opposed to,
[00:18:44] if it's less than a minute from
[00:18:45] the last update or from the last modified,
[00:18:48] don't do anything.
[00:18:51] Yeah. Very good.
[00:18:53] All right. Let's move on
[00:18:55] going to Reddit.
[00:18:57] This is our obligatory
[00:18:59] every quarter or so,
[00:19:01] we highlight somebody frustrated
[00:19:03] with the outages.
[00:19:05] We had an outage, I think.
[00:19:06] Was it? I think it was Tuesday.
[00:19:08] So, right after the,
[00:19:09] the show that afternoon, I think
[00:19:11] maybe it was Wednesday,
[00:19:14] I think.
[00:19:15] Yeah. Was there two?
[00:19:17] Yeah.
[00:19:18] Yeah, I think one was
[00:19:20] a sort of a more system wide
[00:19:22] one and one was specifically
[00:19:25] an Airtable outage.
[00:19:26] And it's like
[00:19:27] either way they're deeply annoying
[00:19:29] because you got to explain to your client
[00:19:30] like,
[00:19:31] sorry, we, we can do literally
[00:19:33] nothing right now for the next 10 minutes
[00:19:36] an hour. Who knows?
[00:19:39] Yeah.
[00:19:39] So
[00:19:40] it happens. Yeah, it's frustrating.
[00:19:46] So yeah,
[00:19:47] people
[00:19:48] frustrated about that, but
[00:19:51] it's getting better.
[00:19:52] Those of us that have been around
[00:19:54] a few years used to feel
[00:19:54] a lot worse.
[00:19:56] It
[00:19:56] is getting better. I do wish you,
[00:19:58] you know, the,
[00:19:59] the top comment is Airtable is
[00:20:00] powerful and outages are rare
[00:20:02] end of story.
[00:20:03] They are relatively rare.
[00:20:04] I would say they're not like constant.
[00:20:06] However, there's things like
[00:20:09] when your automation fail,
[00:20:11] there's not a great way to sort of
[00:20:13] go back to the period of when there was an
[00:20:16] outage and sort of redo
[00:20:17] the stuff that messed up.
[00:20:19] So it's,
[00:20:20] there's some, there's some work
[00:20:22] that could be done that would make
[00:20:23] feeling these outages less,
[00:20:25] you know, cumbersome,
[00:20:27] especially if you're new
[00:20:29] to Airtable because you don't
[00:20:30] know how, how often
[00:20:32] this is gonna be your life. So
[00:20:34] just sort of, you know,
[00:20:36] I can empathize with someone brand new and
[00:20:38] very suddenly things stop working.
[00:20:41] Yeah,
[00:20:41] absolutely. I have noticed, I feel like
[00:20:44] they're getting faster on actually
[00:20:45] publishing on their status updates.
[00:20:48] Like if you go to status.airtable.com
[00:20:51] it used to be like
[00:20:52] 20 minutes would go by
[00:20:54] with service unavailable before
[00:20:56] you'd see an incident actually posted.
[00:20:57] But now I'm seeing that happen pretty
[00:20:59] quickly.
[00:21:01] I also subscribe to them in a Slack
[00:21:03] channel, which is really helpful.
[00:21:06] I would highly recommend
[00:21:07] that if you're using Airtable
[00:21:08] a lot or have clients
[00:21:09] with it.
[00:21:10] Yeah.
[00:21:12] Yeah, that's good.
[00:21:14] All right. One more from Reddit. This is
[00:21:18] this is highlighting another low code,
[00:21:21] no cold builder on top of Airtable.
[00:21:24] So if you're looking for
[00:21:26] another place for building a portal,
[00:21:29] this is one that,
[00:21:30] that I hadn't seen before.
[00:21:32] Let me click on it.
[00:21:33] Blaze.
[00:21:34] Blaze dot Tech is the site
[00:21:38] and they support Airtable
[00:21:42] and so I haven't tried it
[00:21:43] just throwing it out there.
[00:21:45] If anybody's tried this
[00:21:46] and wants to do a demo of it,
[00:21:47] we'd love to see it.
[00:21:49] We like to explore these
[00:21:50] different tools built onAirtable.
[00:21:52] But this is one that's been around,
[00:21:55] not, not too long ago,
[00:21:56] but company is based in LA I believe.
[00:22:01] And
[00:22:05] it's interesting
[00:22:07] and it says it's
[00:22:07] HIPA compliance. So that might be,
[00:22:09] that might be a selling point for people.
[00:22:13] Yeah, that's pretty cool.
[00:22:15] Yeah.
[00:22:17] So
[00:22:19] they've already got AI built into it
[00:22:22] for a visual creator.
[00:22:25] A I is the new Seo keyword.
[00:22:27] You do not have A I on your website.
[00:22:30] Yeah,
[00:22:31] it is. It has now, like,
[00:22:34] I associate it with the, like, web 2.0
[00:22:37] back when like everything had to describe
[00:22:40] itself as web 2.0 I just filtered it out
[00:22:42] of my brain whenever I saw it now.
[00:22:45] Unless you're like changing
[00:22:46] the world with your A I, I just,
[00:22:48] I stopped.
[00:22:49] It's, I don't care anymore.
[00:22:54] I do love those tools that have been
[00:22:56] like,
[00:22:57] doing something for the last
[00:22:59] I don't know, five years
[00:23:00] that has been like some,
[00:23:02] I'm trying to think of
[00:23:03] an example, but they,
[00:23:03] you know, doing some
[00:23:04] great feature that is like
[00:23:06] a core part of their product
[00:23:07] and they literally just rename it
[00:23:09] A I now it's
[00:23:12] like, well, nothing has changed
[00:23:14] at all. You just, you know, you're just,
[00:23:16] you've literally just renamed it.
[00:23:18] Yeah, there's there's a couple
[00:23:21] of different
[00:23:22] companies that I follow that make
[00:23:24] technology for architecture
[00:23:25] and urban planning.
[00:23:26] That sort of
[00:23:27] the general concept is generative
[00:23:29] design where you feed
[00:23:31] it a couple of inputs
[00:23:31] and it will
[00:23:32] programmatically build a 3d model
[00:23:34] of a building or a series of buildings.
[00:23:36] And that's A I
[00:23:38] and it's, you know, a field that's
[00:23:40] been there for many, many years now,
[00:23:42] but now when I look at it,
[00:23:45] it's everywhere.
[00:23:48] Yeah.
[00:23:50] Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So somebody
[00:23:52] check it out
[00:23:53] and let us know what you think.
[00:23:54] It, it connects with a lot of
[00:23:56] different data sources. So it's,
[00:23:57] it's got a pretty big
[00:23:59] integration. So if you're using
[00:24:01] data from different systems,
[00:24:03] this might be a good tool
[00:24:04] to bring them all together.
[00:24:07] All right.
[00:24:08] Moving on to TableForums.
[00:24:10] This is was a good discussion
[00:24:13] from Mecca talking about keeping
[00:24:16] sync tables updated in the background.
[00:24:19] So he says he has a, a base
[00:24:20] that he uses for reporting
[00:24:22] it syncs tables from
[00:24:23] other bases
[00:24:25] and automations run. It appears that the
[00:24:27] data syncs are not triggered before
[00:24:29] the reporting automations are triggered.
[00:24:31] So the reports are sending out stale
[00:24:32] data.
[00:24:33] Believe Airtable pushes the syncs
[00:24:35] when a base is used regularly by humans.
[00:24:37] But not sure if the same
[00:24:39] is true for automations.
[00:24:40] How to keep sync tables
[00:24:42] updated in the background.
[00:24:45] So this is true, right?
[00:24:46] You want to talk about it Alli?
[00:24:48] Yeah, this is actually something
[00:24:50] I had discovered a while back and I posted
[00:24:52] about it in the
[00:24:53] Airtable community and Scott
[00:24:55] and I kind of had a back and forth.
[00:24:58] And then Airtable actually updated their
[00:25:01] support documentation
[00:25:02] based on that conversation
[00:25:04] because
[00:25:05] previously, it just said it
[00:25:06] updated every five minutes,
[00:25:08] nothing like no ifs ands
[00:25:09] or buts it was like every five minutes,
[00:25:11] it it gets updated.
[00:25:13] But similar to
[00:25:14] what this user was saying
[00:25:16] Parkwest digital,
[00:25:17] I had a report set up in a sync
[00:25:19] base
[00:25:20] and it was going out with
[00:25:21] incomplete data every night.
[00:25:24] So I noticed after putting
[00:25:26] like the last updated
[00:25:28] or created time field in the
[00:25:29] base, I was able to deduce that
[00:25:31] it was getting everything was
[00:25:33] getting added after that report ran.
[00:25:35] So like the report would run
[00:25:37] and then the new records
[00:25:38] would come in because that
[00:25:39] automation woke up the base,
[00:25:41] essentially it to get it to sync again.
[00:25:44] So my workaround for this has
[00:25:46] been I put in an automation
[00:25:48] that
[00:25:48] runs at a scheduled time
[00:25:50] so, every 15 minutes
[00:25:52] so that it just finds a record,
[00:25:54] doesn't do anything with it.
[00:25:56] It just
[00:25:58] on a scheduled time
[00:25:59] it goes and finds a record on a table
[00:26:01] and that actually helps it to keep
[00:26:04] syncing. So now it's not every
[00:26:05] five minutes but it is every 15 minutes.
[00:26:08] And I just make sure that
[00:26:10] my report that gets sent out is
[00:26:12] after that,
[00:26:14] intervals.
[00:26:15] Yeah.
[00:26:17] Yeah.
[00:26:18] Yeah.
[00:26:19] Yeah. And even with the,
[00:26:20] they did make it more, they improve the,
[00:26:22] the syncing functionality right now
[00:26:24] to it's where it's almost instant or
[00:26:26] supposed to be, but that's
[00:26:27] that this still holds even
[00:26:29] like it has to be
[00:26:30] touched.
[00:26:31] Yeah, you have to go into the base.
[00:26:33] If you're not opening the base or an
[00:26:35] automation is not running
[00:26:37] on a schedule, then
[00:26:38] nothing's gonna get updated.
[00:26:40] And if you can tell that if you
[00:26:42] have the dependencies on,
[00:26:45] which is easier for enterprise. But like
[00:26:47] if you look at a field that's being
[00:26:49] synced to another base, it'll say when the
[00:26:50] last time it was synced was.
[00:26:52] And in many cases I can see
[00:26:54] something that's like
[00:26:56] last synced 365 days ago
[00:26:57] because nothing's actually
[00:26:58] been going into that base to open it.
[00:27:02] Yeah. So,
[00:27:04] yeah, be aware of that. If you're doing
[00:27:06] any kind of syncing,
[00:27:08] something you need to account for.
[00:27:11] Right.
[00:27:14] All right. Last one, then we'll move on.
[00:27:17] We'll go to, apparently we have a new
[00:27:19] social media platform called X
[00:27:22] it says Twitter in the domain.
[00:27:25] It says Twitter in the search bar.
[00:27:28] It still says tweet at the back button.
[00:27:31] I refuse Elon Musk.
[00:27:33] You can't make me
[00:27:36] Yeah,
[00:27:36] I don't know what's going on there, but
[00:27:40] there's still people talking.
[00:27:42] So if there's valuable stuff there,
[00:27:43] we'll share it.
[00:27:45] So this comes from Mark Cardona,
[00:27:48] who, who puts out a lot of good stuff
[00:27:51] and if you're looking for a script
[00:27:55] that helps look at your database,
[00:27:57] he provides a, a free script,
[00:27:59] you, you simply copy this and,
[00:28:01] and paste it into a script
[00:28:03] and it will give you details on
[00:28:06] all of the tables, all of the fields,
[00:28:08] the descriptions there.
[00:28:10] So if you just want a way to just
[00:28:11] display everything
[00:28:13] in
[00:28:15] in there, it will, it will
[00:28:17] do that for you.
[00:28:18] It looks like it also gets into some
[00:28:19] of the records and,
[00:28:21] and
[00:28:22] displays all the record
[00:28:24] information as well.
[00:28:26] Great.
[00:28:27] So
[00:28:29] what is actually I'm not familiar
[00:28:31] with this one? output.inspect.
[00:28:34] It's just another way of
[00:28:35] it's console dot log but looks prettier.
[00:28:38] Yeah. OK. It, it's, it's better
[00:28:40] for formatting things
[00:28:41] that are like objects or
[00:28:43] arrays. It'll allow you to expand
[00:28:45] things out a little bit differently.
[00:28:48] Right. Right.
[00:28:49] OK. But for a string like this
[00:28:51] is probably not any different.
[00:28:53] No,
[00:28:54] I, I think that's just
[00:28:55] a formatting preference.
[00:28:56] Yeah.
[00:28:57] Yeah.
[00:28:58] OK. Yeah. II I haven't
[00:28:59] been using that one.
[00:29:01] Have to use that. But
[00:29:02] yeah, anyway, so here it shows a,
[00:29:04] a quick video of what
[00:29:05] it would look like and help you. So
[00:29:07] if you watch something like that,
[00:29:09] there's a, there is a free script there on
[00:29:11] Twitter to find or on X excuse me.
[00:29:14] No, no, you got it right.
[00:29:16] Yeah.
[00:29:19] OK. Let's move on.
[00:29:22] That wraps up our Round the Bases.
[00:29:24] Next will give a quick highlight on On2Air
[00:29:29] the all in one tool kit
[00:29:30] to run your business on Airtable.
[00:29:32] If your business is dependent on Airtable,
[00:29:34] you should check out On2Air
[00:29:36] and we are continuing
[00:29:38] our spotlight on backups
[00:29:40] this month. Well, last month
[00:29:42] was backup awareness since
[00:29:43] we were off last month,
[00:29:45] we're doing it this month. So
[00:29:47] make sure you are backing up
[00:29:49] your data.
[00:29:49] Best practice says to have your data
[00:29:51] backed up in
[00:29:52] more than one location.
[00:29:54] So Airtable does back up
[00:29:56] your data internally.
[00:29:57] But for best practices,
[00:29:59] it's recommended to also have
[00:30:01] it stored somewhere else.
[00:30:02] That's where On2Air Backups comes in.
[00:30:04] It helps you save it to your own
[00:30:06] storage within your own Google Drive
[00:30:08] accounts, your own dropbox or your own box
[00:30:11] account. So
[00:30:12] check it out on2air.com/backups.
[00:30:15] Gives you all the information and
[00:30:17] use cases and highlights
[00:30:19] on happy customers using backups.
[00:30:23] Ok,
[00:30:25] Rob,
[00:30:27] let's meet Rob. Go for a Kamille.
[00:30:31] Hi, Rob.
[00:30:32] Hello Kamille.
[00:30:34] So I could be misremembering
[00:30:36] but I believe this is
[00:30:37] technically your second time
[00:30:38] on the podcast because at
[00:30:41] DareTable, we had a mini
[00:30:43] session where we brought in
[00:30:45] multiple people in from the floor
[00:30:47] and you were also in
[00:30:49] attendance at Daretable
[00:30:50] earlier this year. And
[00:30:53] that is correct. That is correct.
[00:30:54] So, this is, that was my mini appearance.
[00:30:56] This is my first.
[00:30:59] So for the people
[00:31:00] who haven't seen that episode,
[00:31:03] why don't you tell us how
[00:31:04] you got started in Airtable
[00:31:06] and
[00:31:08] you know, maybe throw in
[00:31:09] why you went to Daretable?
[00:31:10] Yeah, for sure.
[00:31:12] so I,
[00:31:16] kind of going back to 2014.
[00:31:19] I had moved to South Africa from Chicago.
[00:31:23] I'd been there before for work
[00:31:26] and then made the decision to move there,
[00:31:28] for work and lifestyle reasons.
[00:31:30] At the time I was working in the film
[00:31:32] industry as a cinematographer.
[00:31:35] And so,
[00:31:37] the industry there
[00:31:38] is very seasonal in that
[00:31:40] it's, there's a lot of work
[00:31:41] in the summer
[00:31:42] and then in the winter there's
[00:31:43] basically no work.
[00:31:44] So I first got there,
[00:31:46] in the middle of summer,
[00:31:47] got on a, a project
[00:31:49] and then, it was great
[00:31:51] to get on that project,
[00:31:52] but I basically meant that I
[00:31:53] didn't
[00:31:54] network with anyone,
[00:31:56] for the majority of the time
[00:31:58] that people were working.
[00:31:59] So then it quickly got to winter time
[00:32:02] and I didn't have anything to do.
[00:32:04] And I wasn't really ready for that. So
[00:32:07] I,
[00:32:09] knew that, I had a, I have a computer
[00:32:11] science background actually,
[00:32:12] educational background. And so
[00:32:15] I,
[00:32:16] was looking to buy some equipment
[00:32:19] for myself and I was kind of asking around
[00:32:22] to figure out,
[00:32:23] where I could buy equipment from
[00:32:27] at the time 2014, you know,
[00:32:30] Amazon was very much at its prime
[00:32:32] of e-commerce in America
[00:32:35] and there were some other
[00:32:38] websites for the film industry
[00:32:40] or for the professional film
[00:32:42] and photography
[00:32:43] industry
[00:32:44] here in America,
[00:32:45] that was kind of a big marketplace
[00:32:47] for a whole bunch of equipments.
[00:32:48] But
[00:32:49] in South Africa,
[00:32:50] there was nothing like that.
[00:32:52] And so it's very much you kind
[00:32:54] of had to know someone who had
[00:32:56] some stuff
[00:32:56] and I need to know someone else who
[00:32:58] had some stuff. And so
[00:32:59] it meant that you were just
[00:33:01] spending days
[00:33:01] just trying to buy three or four
[00:33:03] things because they were very,
[00:33:05] very specialized
[00:33:06] and very expensive things.
[00:33:08] So,
[00:33:08] that winter was kind of
[00:33:12] I decided, well,
[00:33:13] no one else has made a better solution.
[00:33:16] Maybe I can make a better solution
[00:33:18] here. So,
[00:33:19] that was the birth of
[00:33:21] Film Gear, South Africa.
[00:33:23] Someone else had the
[00:33:25] domain name at the time and
[00:33:27] I went and did some digging
[00:33:29] to figure out who had the domain name.
[00:33:31] No one did.
[00:33:32] I didn't have any money
[00:33:33] for seo or anything like that.
[00:33:34] So Film Gear seemed like a good
[00:33:37] domain name to get.
[00:33:39] And so I basically said I'll figure out
[00:33:42] a way to get you some batteries at a
[00:33:44] good deal if you give me
[00:33:45] the domain name. And so I
[00:33:47] think I did and
[00:33:49] so Film Gear was born.
[00:33:51] So I basically just used my relationships
[00:33:53] that I already had in the film
[00:33:55] industry with manufacturers
[00:33:57] and different brands
[00:33:59] and said, hey, I'd love to represent
[00:34:01] and get your, your products into
[00:34:03] Africa, essentially more easily.
[00:34:06] And avoid this whole kind of know a guy,
[00:34:09] know a guy, know a guy situation.
[00:34:12] And so,
[00:34:15] it was a very simple concept of
[00:34:17] I'll just sell stuff online
[00:34:19] and that'll be a
[00:34:19] good way to,
[00:34:21] to kind of supplement my,
[00:34:23] my work and it turned out to be
[00:34:25] a behemoth that is
[00:34:26] still in existence today. So,
[00:34:29] the way it goes.
[00:34:31] Yeah, exactly. That's a simple idea.
[00:34:34] Yeah, and just sell some stuff.
[00:34:36] Yeah, that's been an incredible
[00:34:38] journey so far. But that,
[00:34:39] that was kind of my,
[00:34:40] my where I started in
[00:34:42] Airtable and automations,
[00:34:46] et cetera. I kind of said,
[00:34:47] oh, I've got a computer
[00:34:49] science background and
[00:34:50] I can surely I can figure this one out.
[00:34:53] So, yeah, so I can kinda run
[00:34:55] you guys through a little bit
[00:34:58] of the store and
[00:34:59] some of the, the inner workings
[00:35:01] and the trials and tribulations of
[00:35:03] how film your South Africa works.
[00:35:06] Yeah, sure. Because that's a very
[00:35:08] specialized,
[00:35:10] you know,
[00:35:11] field just in general
[00:35:13] and the types of equipment,
[00:35:15] you know, stores are typically
[00:35:17] built in similar ways
[00:35:18] no matter what the product
[00:35:20] is. However,
[00:35:21] there are certain particulars
[00:35:23] depending on,
[00:35:24] you know, the field that you're in.
[00:35:26] Maybe you're, you're selling bundles of
[00:35:27] products that are all related
[00:35:29] or maybe you need to display
[00:35:31] what parts go along
[00:35:32] with certain equipment. Like
[00:35:34] I imagine with cameras,
[00:35:35] you might wanna have different
[00:35:37] options for like the lens
[00:35:38] type that might come with it.
[00:35:40] So, you know, I can see how,
[00:35:42] although building
[00:35:43] an e-commerce commerce store
[00:35:45] isn't,
[00:35:46] you know, it, a lot of people make them
[00:35:48] when you start off with one
[00:35:51] that is so specialized for a very specific
[00:35:54] sort of use case,
[00:35:55] I can see how that might
[00:35:58] run into a couple of,
[00:35:59] you know, I'll say issues
[00:36:01] that most people
[00:36:02] will get to eventually but you
[00:36:04] haven't gotten there
[00:36:06] a little bit earlier.
[00:36:07] Yeah.
[00:36:08] Yeah, there's, there's in
[00:36:10] the e-commerce space,
[00:36:11] there's kind of three different
[00:36:13] types of e-commerce
[00:36:14] stores that they talk about.
[00:36:15] There's like a Landing Page
[00:36:17] store which is, you sell
[00:36:18] one thing and that's what you sell and,
[00:36:21] and everything drives to that one product.
[00:36:23] And then there's,
[00:36:24] you know, a specific manufacturer
[00:36:26] and you know,
[00:36:27] that manufacturer represents all
[00:36:28] the items that they
[00:36:29] that they buy,
[00:36:30] but it's very specific to one specific
[00:36:33] thing and then there's
[00:36:34] the marketplaces. And
[00:36:35] so I
[00:36:37] it would have been nice
[00:36:38] to sell one thing. But instead I went,
[00:36:40] went about it and didn't realize
[00:36:42] what I was getting myself into,
[00:36:43] but the value comes from marketplaces
[00:36:46] when you have as many things as possible
[00:36:49] in that marketplace.
[00:36:50] So it, it quickly what started
[00:36:53] as just one or two brands
[00:36:55] definitely realized
[00:36:56] that the value is having,
[00:36:58] as you were saying,
[00:36:59] more brands to complement
[00:37:00] things because if you were to look
[00:37:01] at like a traditional film camera
[00:37:04] and look at its behind
[00:37:05] the scenes and see what it looks like,
[00:37:07] it's got,
[00:37:08] you know, so many cables
[00:37:10] and monitors and lenses and
[00:37:11] accessories on it.
[00:37:14] And it's all very personal
[00:37:16] to personal, personal preferences
[00:37:18] and all that stuff.
[00:37:19] So,
[00:37:20] yeah,
[00:37:22] well, let's, let's take a look.
[00:37:26] Cool.
[00:37:33] I
[00:37:33] see.
[00:37:36] Ok,
[00:37:37] there we go. All right.
[00:37:39] So yeah, so this is essentially
[00:37:41] this is Film Gear South Africa right now.
[00:37:43] So
[00:37:45] we sell everything from drones
[00:37:48] to lights, cameras, et cetera.
[00:37:53] The kind of
[00:37:55] store that I was talking about
[00:37:56] that sells a lot of similar things
[00:37:58] is BNH photo
[00:37:59] in New York.
[00:38:01] And they were originally
[00:38:02] a catalog store.
[00:38:04] So, you know, you would
[00:38:05] you would get a, an actual mail
[00:38:07] order catalog with all these things,
[00:38:09] it was hundreds of pages long
[00:38:11] and then you'd phone
[00:38:13] in the order to a warehouse
[00:38:14] in New York.
[00:38:15] They then evolved into
[00:38:16] an e-commerce store as well.
[00:38:19] So this has kind of always been our,
[00:38:21] our, you know,
[00:38:22] let's see how we can make it
[00:38:23] look like BNH without copying
[00:38:26] or anything like that.
[00:38:27] So,
[00:38:28] we feel like we do a pretty good job.
[00:38:31] And one of the big issues that we,
[00:38:34] realized was
[00:38:35] everything that we were selling,
[00:38:37] is essentially in
[00:38:39] the South African rand price. Not
[00:38:43] any sort of US dollar price. So
[00:38:46] that very quickly, was one of the main
[00:38:50] reasons why
[00:38:52] I needed to have
[00:38:53] a repository of information
[00:38:55] of all these different products and,
[00:38:59] information about how much it weighs
[00:39:02] what the shipping costs are.
[00:39:03] Because as you can see here,
[00:39:06] this is an all in including vat duties,
[00:39:10] cost. So another one of the issues
[00:39:13] that people were experiencing with
[00:39:15] going to the mom and pop
[00:39:17] or the, you know, not mom and pop, but,
[00:39:19] kind of getting products from all over
[00:39:22] the place is sometimes those prices
[00:39:25] included tax, sometimes they didn't
[00:39:27] include tax, sometimes they didn't include
[00:39:28] duties. And so you would order something,
[00:39:32] and you'd spend a certain amount
[00:39:34] of money and then you'd get a bill from,
[00:39:37] customs and they would say,
[00:39:39] hey, you need to pay us this much more.
[00:39:41] And so at that point,
[00:39:42] you've already bought it,
[00:39:43] you can't just say I don't want
[00:39:45] to pay that much more.
[00:39:46] So we calculate all those things
[00:39:49] in the background.
[00:39:50] And
[00:39:51] so what originally happened
[00:39:54] we, you know the
[00:39:56] talking about the, the cameras
[00:39:58] specifically that we that we use,
[00:40:00] this is one example of a brand
[00:40:01] of cameras that we use. And
[00:40:03] as you can see the starting price
[00:40:05] for some of these cameras
[00:40:06] is in the $40,000
[00:40:07] range and that doesn't include
[00:40:09] batteries that doesn't include
[00:40:10] there's $50,000 just
[00:40:12] to get three batteries for it.
[00:40:15] So
[00:40:15] it gets to be very expensive very quickly.
[00:40:19] And one of the issues with that
[00:40:21] is the, this is the exchange exchange rate
[00:40:24] charts for South African Rand dollar.
[00:40:27] Just looking at this past month,
[00:40:29] there's been a negative,
[00:40:30] almost 6% fluctuation in it
[00:40:32] and if we look at or sorry,
[00:40:34] not fluctuation.
[00:40:35] But that's it's gone down
[00:40:36] in the last year, it's gone up 5%
[00:40:39] in the last two years.
[00:40:40] It's gone up eightteen
[00:40:41] percent.
[00:40:42] But sometimes with very unstable
[00:40:47] economies in this one week mark,
[00:40:51] you can see the delta of
[00:40:53] the currency in a week
[00:40:56] can be close to 10 to 15%.
[00:40:58] And sometimes it can swing
[00:41:01] upwards of 5 5% in a specific day.
[00:41:04] So
[00:41:05] the reason why I say
[00:41:07] that is because when you have
[00:41:08] a $50,000 item that essentially
[00:41:12] we buy on behalf of our customers,
[00:41:15] we need to be able to offer them a price
[00:41:18] for this $50,000 camera,
[00:41:20] at the time that they want to buy it.
[00:41:22] But then when you have things like
[00:41:24] credit card processing, time frames
[00:41:27] and payouts and everything,
[00:41:30] it becomes a little bit risky
[00:41:33] to hold so much liability
[00:41:35] in like a a limbo escrow kind of thing.
[00:41:38] So we do a little bit of calculation
[00:41:41] to mitigate that against that.
[00:41:43] But one of the big things
[00:41:45] that we had always said was
[00:41:46] we don't want to hold any stock because
[00:41:49] similarly to, if we had a $50,000 camera
[00:41:51] and in a matter of a week
[00:41:53] that $50,000 camera can be
[00:41:55] $45,000. But the people who are
[00:41:58] buying it still want to buy it for $50,000
[00:42:02] or vice versa. So
[00:42:03] there's always a someone's
[00:42:05] always gonna win,
[00:42:06] someone's always gonna lose when
[00:42:08] it comes to currency exchange. But
[00:42:11] we
[00:42:12] because we were able to get
[00:42:14] all of our data in one place
[00:42:16] thanks to Airtable
[00:42:17] and in a place that was online
[00:42:19] and essentially in the
[00:42:20] one source of truth fashion,
[00:42:22] we were then able to
[00:42:24] essentially just mitigate
[00:42:26] against
[00:42:28] those currency fluctuations. And
[00:42:31] we rely heavily on automations to
[00:42:34] to fight against these
[00:42:36] these exchange rates. So
[00:42:39] another key part
[00:42:42] of our of what we were trying to do
[00:42:44] was trying to figure out how do we get,
[00:42:47] let's just if we look at some
[00:42:49] of these other brands,
[00:42:51] I mean, they have hundreds
[00:42:53] of skews for a specific brand.
[00:42:55] And again, the value of the marketplace
[00:42:57] is that essentially list all of the
[00:42:59] products from a brand, not just
[00:43:02] the main products because
[00:43:04] you might need the monitor. But then
[00:43:06] as you were saying, you might
[00:43:08] also need a whole bunch
[00:43:09] of accessories as well.
[00:43:10] And you can see here,
[00:43:11] there's almost a, you know,
[00:43:12] thousands of dollars worth of
[00:43:13] accessories that you would need
[00:43:15] for your
[00:43:16] $5000 13 inch monitor there.
[00:43:21] So a
[00:43:22] lot of people that were doing things,
[00:43:24] our competitors were just essentially
[00:43:27] putting the big ticket items online
[00:43:29] and then when someone would buy
[00:43:30] a big ticket item,
[00:43:31] they would reach out and say,
[00:43:32] hey, maybe you want these
[00:43:34] things as well.
[00:43:35] Here's a quote on these things.
[00:43:37] And that just takes a lot of time
[00:43:39] to get back and forth. And so part of the
[00:43:41] budget as well, I imagine.
[00:43:44] Yeah, exactly. Yeah, harder to budget.
[00:43:47] Exactly, because
[00:43:48] some people have things
[00:43:49] that they've already
[00:43:50] brought into the country.
[00:43:51] So even though
[00:43:53] it's a $6000 monitor,
[00:43:55] if they brought it in a month ago,
[00:43:58] that $6000 monitor to them
[00:44:01] might be a $6500 monitor and because they
[00:44:04] brought it in at a different
[00:44:06] currency exchange rate,
[00:44:08] And so
[00:44:08] they either have a choice of selling it
[00:44:11] at the current rate value and
[00:44:12] essentially losing the majority of their
[00:44:15] markup that they put on these things,
[00:44:17] marking it up more than
[00:44:19] what it actually should be worth to
[00:44:22] to mitigate against that,
[00:44:23] which we don't really believe in at all.
[00:44:25] So we don't mark up any of our products
[00:44:27] at all. We just take our margin from the
[00:44:28] from the brands. So we just wanted
[00:44:31] to make it as transparent and as open
[00:44:33] as possible.
[00:44:35] And so
[00:44:37] the reason why I was saying
[00:44:38] it's very complicated
[00:44:39] to get all these products up
[00:44:40] is you can go one by one
[00:44:42] and copy and paste
[00:44:44] descriptions and all that stuff.
[00:44:46] But
[00:44:46] one of the things that we've
[00:44:49] kept in our back pocket
[00:44:50] is we use various web
[00:44:52] scraping tools. So we scrape
[00:44:57] the manufacturer's websites, we scrape
[00:45:00] other marketplaces' websites
[00:45:04] to get things like best selling
[00:45:06] orders to get things like to,
[00:45:08] to see if other people are running
[00:45:10] any sort of specials.
[00:45:12] All of that gets pulled
[00:45:13] into our Airtable database
[00:45:15] as well, so that
[00:45:16] if something else is essentially
[00:45:18] a best selling item
[00:45:20] or maybe on sale in America
[00:45:21] here,
[00:45:23] that means that we can target
[00:45:25] and you know, market those items
[00:45:28] as well on our on our site to be able
[00:45:31] to kind of match without having
[00:45:33] the actual sales data ourselves,
[00:45:36] we can kind of use the sales data
[00:45:37] from some of these larger companies
[00:45:39] to make decisions for ourselves.
[00:45:44] So, as I said, we build everything
[00:45:46] on Shopify and we have since day one,
[00:45:49] which is pretty great and Shopify
[00:45:51] has changed a lot.
[00:45:52] It's interesting to see how
[00:45:53] Shopify has changed
[00:45:55] alongside how Airtables changed.
[00:45:57] Two very different, you know,
[00:45:58] organizations and entities but
[00:46:01] very similar.
[00:46:02] One of the big changes
[00:46:03] that Airtable has actually
[00:46:05] implemented is
[00:46:07] meta fields. So meta fields
[00:46:09] are pretty great now that we have them,
[00:46:12] but we didn't necessarily
[00:46:14] have them before.
[00:46:15] And so,
[00:46:17] I wasn't able to put in,
[00:46:20] say like a US dollar price
[00:46:22] into Shopify
[00:46:23] and then just show the conversion
[00:46:25] because the base currency
[00:46:28] of our store is in South African Rand.
[00:46:31] And so
[00:46:32] the idea of doing a simple currency
[00:46:35] conversion app on Shopify
[00:46:37] wouldn't necessarily work for us as well.
[00:46:39] Because that would just show
[00:46:42] a different currency,
[00:46:43] but the base currency
[00:46:44] would still be in US. Dollar.
[00:46:46] And in South Africa,
[00:46:48] you have to legally,
[00:46:50] you have to sell in South African Rand.
[00:46:53] So we couldn't sell in US dollars
[00:46:55] because we are a South African Rand store.
[00:46:57] So
[00:46:59] that led to
[00:47:00] reaching out to fiber to try
[00:47:02] and get people to build us macros
[00:47:04] with Excel and add-ons for
[00:47:06] Google Sheets
[00:47:07] to try and have that source of truth.
[00:47:10] But then
[00:47:12] at the time that was when
[00:47:14] I met my now business partner core,
[00:47:16] and he had reached out
[00:47:18] he had kind of said, hey,
[00:47:19] maybe you should check out Airtable.
[00:47:20] We were working
[00:47:22] in the same place together.
[00:47:24] And it was right when Airtable
[00:47:26] went public
[00:47:27] available to the public in 2015,
[00:47:29] checked it out and I was like,
[00:47:31] wow, all of a sudden I have
[00:47:32] all of this information available to me.
[00:47:36] And I can sort things, I can, you know,
[00:47:39] all the value that we see in Airtable
[00:47:40] now, I can bring an Airtable and
[00:47:43] I don't have to do complicated V
[00:47:45] lookups. I don't have to do,
[00:47:48] to
[00:47:48] worry about field types not being,
[00:47:51] you know, numbers or URL S and formulas
[00:47:54] and everything or doing a formula
[00:47:56] for a whole bunch of cells and then doing,
[00:47:59] you know, getting one more cell
[00:48:00] or one more record that doesn't get caught
[00:48:02] by that formula.
[00:48:04] So, that's where Airtable's
[00:48:05] really come in handy.
[00:48:06] So I've kind of
[00:48:08] mimicked our entire
[00:48:10] Shopify store in Airtable.
[00:48:12] But then,
[00:48:13] I do things like all of our foreign
[00:48:16] exchange rates in Airtable.
[00:48:19] And so, we can see that,
[00:48:22] earlier this morning,
[00:48:25] my actual South African Rands
[00:48:28] to dollar rates changes.
[00:48:31] We add 20 cents to just do
[00:48:32] a little bit of mitigation against that.
[00:48:35] And then,
[00:48:36] all of our products
[00:48:39] we have products in different currencies,
[00:48:41] so we're able to do multi
[00:48:43] currency conversions all within,
[00:48:45] Airtable. And then as soon
[00:48:46] as all that data changes
[00:48:48] in Airtable,
[00:48:49] it automatically gets pushed
[00:48:51] over to Shopify.
[00:48:53] How do we do that started with
[00:48:55] Zapier
[00:48:55] way back when
[00:48:57] that was a disaster back in 2015.
[00:48:59] And it turned out to be very expensive
[00:49:02] as well. And so that was also
[00:49:05] when we got on make, you know,
[00:49:07] Integromat at the time.
[00:49:09] So we've been using Integromat
[00:49:11] for about 7, 8 years now
[00:49:13] as well since it started.
[00:49:16] And one of the great things
[00:49:18] is that it still cost me $9 a month to,
[00:49:21] to do a lot.
[00:49:23] A lot on Integromat.
[00:49:25] But as you can see here, there's,
[00:49:28] there's, there's quite a lot of
[00:49:30] not a lot, I guess, but there's
[00:49:32] a handful of automations that run.
[00:49:33] And I remember,
[00:49:35] my, my main frustration was that
[00:49:37] I didn't have a whiteboard
[00:49:39] big enough to be able to like,
[00:49:41] you know, show how the data
[00:49:43] went from one place
[00:49:44] to ultimately get into the store.
[00:49:46] And that was really when things
[00:49:48] became an aha moment was like,
[00:49:50] wow, this is like having a massive
[00:49:52] infinite whiteboard for me.
[00:49:56] So,
[00:49:56] one of the other fun facts
[00:49:59] or little fun things that I had was,
[00:50:01] I actually one of our biggest runs,
[00:50:05] or our biggest scenario that we,
[00:50:08] we do is,
[00:50:10] let me find one of the big ones.
[00:50:13] Yeah. So there's like a pretty
[00:50:15] significant scenario
[00:50:16] there,
[00:50:18] pretty significant scenario there,
[00:50:20] but it basically takes, you know,
[00:50:21] it takes scraped data.
[00:50:23] I then keep track of all my my runs
[00:50:26] as well. And I do things like getting
[00:50:29] bread crumbs to auto add tags
[00:50:31] to all of our products. So
[00:50:33] see what's in the in the box
[00:50:36] to see what accessories come with.
[00:50:40] Highlights, get all the images of things.
[00:50:45] And then if things are available
[00:50:47] or not available on preorder set,
[00:50:49] all my variables up and then
[00:50:53] and then it goes into Shopify
[00:50:56] and updates that creating a meta field
[00:51:00] was not a thing before.
[00:51:02] So I had to figure out workarounds
[00:51:04] for that with tags,
[00:51:06] but now I have meta fields
[00:51:07] which is a great way
[00:51:08] to keep things organized.
[00:51:09] So what I was gonna say is this
[00:51:12] essentially this scenario here
[00:51:14] was a big kind of core part
[00:51:16] to how we were able
[00:51:17] to get products up online
[00:51:19] as fast as we could. And so essentially,
[00:51:22] I would
[00:51:23] be on a call with a new vendor
[00:51:25] or a new manufacturer and say,
[00:51:27] listen, like by the time we're done
[00:51:28] with this phone call,
[00:51:30] I can have all of your
[00:51:30] products with all of the information
[00:51:32] about your products up on our website
[00:51:34] available for sale.
[00:51:36] And of course, they wouldn't
[00:51:37] believe me because they
[00:51:38] just thought that we were
[00:51:39] copying and pasting things from
[00:51:41] their websites
[00:51:42] or we were using data that they
[00:51:44] were gonna send to us.
[00:51:45] But everyone's data was structured
[00:51:47] in different ways or they didn't actually
[00:51:49] have any sort of structured
[00:51:51] data at all, which I was like
[00:51:52] blown away by when I was like,
[00:51:54] send me a product list
[00:51:55] with descriptions and
[00:51:56] photos and this and that and
[00:51:58] it was all just so many different
[00:52:00] ways they were doing it. And so
[00:52:01] I found that just scraping their actual
[00:52:03] website was significantly faster to get
[00:52:05] all the information I needed.
[00:52:08] So this,
[00:52:09] these vendors don't have a public
[00:52:11] api that's like, yeah, let me
[00:52:13] make a, make a pull request for
[00:52:16] the information that I need.
[00:52:18] No, you, you do have to do, as you said,
[00:52:20] either one by one going to these
[00:52:22] product pages
[00:52:23] and copying what you need and
[00:52:24] downloading the images,
[00:52:25] uploading them somewhere else
[00:52:27] or you use a web scraper
[00:52:28] and a series of make automations.
[00:52:32] Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:35] And
[00:52:35] I just before I forget I have
[00:52:38] noticed for both Airtable and for make
[00:52:42] you have
[00:52:43] a floating blue documentation button.
[00:52:47] I've seen that product before.
[00:52:49] I forget what it's called. Can you please
[00:52:51] for the audience?
[00:52:53] Of course. So n NC scale, right? NC scale
[00:52:59] is an interesting way,
[00:53:00] I'm actually just only now
[00:53:02] starting to play around
[00:53:04] with it. So it hasn't been a part
[00:53:06] of my tech stack for a while.
[00:53:07] But what's incredible is that
[00:53:10] I can load up different organizations.
[00:53:13] And then I can connect in
[00:53:15] my Airtable my make.
[00:53:16] There's a whole bunch of
[00:53:17] tools you can connect up
[00:53:20] that all kind of relate to whatever
[00:53:23] you want it to relate to and then you can
[00:53:25] monitor
[00:53:26] you can monitor things.
[00:53:27] So if I were to essentially go into
[00:53:29] my etl
[00:53:32] I can see previous runs,
[00:53:34] I can see um they're all running
[00:53:36] at the moment,
[00:53:37] which is great.
[00:53:38] So I can the screen here
[00:53:40] shows me that it's running
[00:53:42] as well as
[00:53:44] a pretty incredible thing, which is
[00:53:47] you can see who and what
[00:53:50] fields actually change. So for instance,
[00:53:54] in Airtable, if I were to,
[00:53:56] I'll do it right now actually,
[00:53:57] if I were to
[00:54:00] let me just see if I can add a new,
[00:54:03] let me add a new thing
[00:54:05] and then just put it on air.
[00:54:08] Oh We are locked. This is
[00:54:14] I need to be a different user
[00:54:16] to be able to add that.
[00:54:18] But let's see if that
[00:54:19] works.
[00:54:20] So force updates, updates
[00:54:22] every 30 30 minutes, right? 30 minutes.
[00:54:24] Yeah.
[00:54:25] So it'll scan my the whole
[00:54:27] the whole structure. And
[00:54:32] that is in my forex table
[00:54:35] and
[00:54:36] after this is done,
[00:54:38] it'll basically say
[00:54:40] that my user has added a new record in
[00:54:42] this table or if I were to actually go
[00:54:45] through and change, for instance,
[00:54:48] this markup. If I were to change that,
[00:54:51] those changes would get recorded
[00:54:54] here as well as you can kind of write your
[00:54:57] documentation or write your read me's
[00:55:01] for tables for
[00:55:03] different scenarios and make or Zapier
[00:55:05] or. So yeah, it's kind of a really
[00:55:07] incredible tool actually.
[00:55:09] And then you can,
[00:55:10] there's a couple, yeah, these,
[00:55:12] these monitoring tabs as well.
[00:55:14] Let's see. OK, here's some
[00:55:16] of those logs I was talking about.
[00:55:19] Yeah, so you can see all these different
[00:55:21] all these different scenarios
[00:55:23] that were triggered.
[00:55:24] So it's kind of similar to having
[00:55:26] essentially your like home
[00:55:28] dashboard here in make.
[00:55:30] But you can have from
[00:55:31] different sources all in one place.
[00:55:34] So it's pretty cool. The guys are
[00:55:36] the guy who built it
[00:55:38] is ridiculously smart and very, and
[00:55:40] it's very good and very stable. So
[00:55:43] that's really cool.
[00:55:46] Yeah, I had seen it just sort of
[00:55:48] around and I hadn't used it because like
[00:55:51] for this perfect use case
[00:55:54] example where you have
[00:55:56] a product that you're delivering
[00:55:58] to the world, an e-commerce site for film
[00:56:00] gear and it is
[00:56:02] using multiple different services
[00:56:05] in order to provide film gear,
[00:56:07] right? So Airtable's involved
[00:56:09] make's involved Shopify is involved.
[00:56:11] You have a web scraper
[00:56:13] and probably not all of the tools
[00:56:15] that you're using are,
[00:56:17] you know, available in NC scale,
[00:56:19] but you would be able to sort of
[00:56:21] write little notes about
[00:56:22] what's connected to what and why
[00:56:25] this documentation is very difficult for
[00:56:28] large builds like this because
[00:56:30] you know, where do you put it?
[00:56:32] You could do a mirror board
[00:56:33] and those are great
[00:56:34] for visual.
[00:56:35] But in terms of keeping track of,
[00:56:37] you know, we, we need a whole
[00:56:39] new table right now,
[00:56:40] I gotta go update my board
[00:56:42] something like that seems
[00:56:43] like it'd be useful to be
[00:56:45] you know, just to do it for you
[00:56:47] for any time you make a new make scenario.
[00:56:50] I imagine it would show up
[00:56:52] eventually in there after it's. Yeah.
[00:56:54] Yeah, exactly. And it's just a simple
[00:56:56] chrome plug, plug in as well.
[00:56:58] So you can essentially just make
[00:57:00] sure that your stakeholders
[00:57:01] have that chrome
[00:57:02] plug in installed
[00:57:03] and then it gives them this button
[00:57:05] automatically on Airtable
[00:57:07] on make. And so you can kind of
[00:57:09] just confidently know that if you,
[00:57:12] if they have, if they can see that button,
[00:57:14] or you can ask your stakeholder.
[00:57:16] It's like can you see
[00:57:17] the documentation button?
[00:57:18] And if they can't
[00:57:19] make sure they have the chrome extension,
[00:57:22] if they can, then you can kind of
[00:57:24] just say well then click
[00:57:25] the documentation button
[00:57:28] and
[00:57:30] so very cool, Rob.
[00:57:31] I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump
[00:57:33] in here just so we have time for
[00:57:34] Alli but like over this, this is awesome.
[00:57:38] So now you are partnered,
[00:57:39] you mentioned you're partnered with core?
[00:57:42] 
[00:57:42] And they
[00:57:43] can find you at Pretty Sim
[00:57:45] dot pl.
[00:57:46] Yeah. Pretty Sim dot pl. Yeah.
[00:57:49] Yeah. So
[00:57:50] way back in my origin story
[00:57:52] of getting involved
[00:57:53] yeah, he was he and I were
[00:57:55] always throwing ideas back and forth and
[00:57:57] everything and I've since taken a break
[00:57:58] and taking a step back from the the film
[00:58:00] industry and gone
[00:58:02] kind of no code consulting
[00:58:04] full time. So yeah,
[00:58:05] and I work together and
[00:58:06] very cool.
[00:58:07] So yeah, check him
[00:58:08] out pretty simple and
[00:58:09] I
[00:58:10] don't know if we've had core
[00:58:12] on the show but, but we know core.
[00:58:13] He's a friend
[00:58:14] of the community of the show.
[00:58:17] He is a friend.
[00:58:18] We need to have him on he's,
[00:58:19] he, he's still in South Africa.
[00:58:21] You're, you're here in Houston.
[00:58:23] So different times
[00:58:23] the timing never worked.
[00:58:25] I think we asked him
[00:58:26] and it it's a very different time
[00:58:28] for him right now.
[00:58:30] Yeah. we can peer pressure him.
[00:58:31] He'll be he's, he's definitely
[00:58:32] malleable. Yeah.
[00:58:34] So
[00:58:35] thank you. I appreciate you showing that.
[00:58:37] That's awesome. It's so cool to see
[00:58:39] how Airtable runs a business like that
[00:58:42] and keeps it going so
[00:58:44] real quick before we
[00:58:45] finish out with our last segment. Just a,
[00:58:47] just a way to join the
[00:58:48] community. Go to
[00:58:49] builtonair.com/join
[00:58:51] that will get you into the slack
[00:58:53] community and meet
[00:58:54] amazing great people all
[00:58:55] doing things with Airtable.
[00:58:58] OK.
[00:58:58] Alli, finish this off
[00:59:00] with sync field types.
[00:59:03] Awesome.
[00:59:04] All right. So this is just
[00:59:06] a really quick little demo
[00:59:09] on a feature that I don't think
[00:59:11] is used super often,
[00:59:13] but I've been using it more
[00:59:14] and more, which is pretty cool.
[00:59:16] So this is a base,
[00:59:18] it's all fake data in here.
[00:59:21] I haven't actually touched this in
[00:59:23] a while but I'm using it as an example.
[00:59:25] So I've got two tables in here
[00:59:27] that are linked together
[00:59:29] expenses
[00:59:31] and
[00:59:31] I'm linking each
[00:59:33] of those expense records to a
[00:59:35] record on my table called monthly.
[00:59:37] So each of these represents one month of
[00:59:40] the calendar year.
[00:59:43] If for whatever reason I need to sync
[00:59:45] these out to a different base to like
[00:59:48] maybe do some reporting
[00:59:51] create some dashboards or for,
[00:59:53] you know, there might
[00:59:54] be a million different
[00:59:55] reasons why you sync these
[00:59:58] out somewhere else.
[01:00:00] There is some cool little tricks
[01:00:02] that you can actually
[01:00:03] do once you have that
[01:00:04] table as a synced table.
[01:00:06] So here I've synced over both
[01:00:09] the expenses table and the month table
[01:00:12] and everything just by default
[01:00:14] comes in as single line text.
[01:00:16] Most of them.
[01:00:17] Some of the field types do hold out
[01:00:21] like the dates and currencies.
[01:00:23] But what's really, really cool is
[01:00:26] I can actually now change
[01:00:28] these field types
[01:00:29] to whatever I want.
[01:00:30] Now
[01:00:31] you might not need to do this. But
[01:00:34] there's some little tricks
[01:00:35] that you can actually
[01:00:36] take advantage of once you have
[01:00:38] these synced out to a new base.
[01:00:40] So for example, in my
[01:00:42] expenses table, I have this big
[01:00:44] complicated formula here that's like
[01:00:47] is it paid? Did it pay it on time?
[01:00:49] Did I pay it?
[01:00:51] Did I not pay it? Is it overdue?
[01:00:53] Is it an upcoming thing,
[01:00:54] all that kind of stuff
[01:00:56] and I've got little emojis to kind of,
[01:00:57] you know,
[01:00:58] call out whether it's important or not.
[01:01:01] But
[01:01:02] in my synced base,
[01:01:04] I can actually change this
[01:01:06] to
[01:01:08] a single select.
[01:01:10] So if I have
[01:01:13] you know, charts that I'm pulling
[01:01:15] off of this in an interface,
[01:01:16] I went over once upon a time
[01:01:18] on an episode,
[01:01:19] how to have a single select driven
[01:01:21] by a formula field using automations.
[01:01:24] So that way you can set up
[01:01:25] the colors that you want
[01:01:27] and have your interface
[01:01:28] charts look really pretty.
[01:01:30] But this is actually just a
[01:01:32] shortcut way of doing it. So here,
[01:01:33] I can actually go and now change my
[01:01:36] colors
[01:01:38] to whatever I want
[01:01:41] and that
[01:01:42] will change as the formula
[01:01:44] is updated in the other base.
[01:01:46] So if I go and say,
[01:01:47] say I paid this one now
[01:01:49] for Comcast, right?
[01:01:52] Just put in, I paid it way over
[01:01:55] three years late.
[01:01:58] But now
[01:01:59] that actually updated
[01:02:01] to pay as well, so that'll stay
[01:02:03] up to date,
[01:02:04] but I can have pretty colors.
[01:02:07] So that's a little trick
[01:02:09] that I use pretty
[01:02:10] often if I'm syncing over a table
[01:02:11] to a new base. This is a really cool trick
[01:02:14] to get pretty colors in your
[01:02:16] reporting dashboards.
[01:02:18] It also makes filtering a lot easier
[01:02:19] with single select because it's defined
[01:02:21] values rather than a loose formula
[01:02:24] output, which could be anything.
[01:02:26] Yeah. So now you'd be able to do
[01:02:28] Yeah.
[01:02:28] Absolutely. Very, very, very useful,
[01:02:31] very useful. As opposed to previously,
[01:02:34] I would have need to write,
[01:02:36] you know, contains paid or whatever.
[01:02:39] obviously not for that field, but
[01:02:41] Absolutely Kamille. Yeah,
[01:02:43] that's a hugely beneficial
[01:02:45] output is that as well.
[01:02:48] The second thing just for the
[01:02:50] sake of time, I could keep going forever.
[01:02:52] But
[01:02:53] now because I have these
[01:02:55] two tables synced over
[01:02:57] and in the other base,
[01:02:58] the source base,
[01:02:59] these records are actually linked
[01:03:00] together right?
[01:03:02] Now, I've also gone over
[01:03:04] in a previous episode
[01:03:05] how to keep two tables linked
[01:03:06] together when once you sync
[01:03:09] them over to a new base.
[01:03:11] And if there's records like
[01:03:14] where, you know, maybe you've
[01:03:15] got people and interactions
[01:03:17] or something like that,
[01:03:18] I would still recommend going about
[01:03:20] it in a different manner with an
[01:03:22] automation and finding record I DS
[01:03:24] and stuff
[01:03:25] like that, which I can get
[01:03:26] into another time.
[01:03:27] But because this is a
[01:03:29] very simple relationship,
[01:03:30] like I know on my month's table,
[01:03:32] I'm not gonna have duplicates.
[01:03:33] I, I only have 1 January 2020
[01:03:36] I can trust myself to know that
[01:03:38] I'm not gonna end up with two
[01:03:40] versions of that,
[01:03:42] I can actually now go and
[01:03:44] change this to a linked record field
[01:03:49] and link it up to the month table
[01:03:53] and this will keep up to date.
[01:03:56] I don't have
[01:03:58] July 2025 2023 in here.
[01:04:04] And I haven't actually played with what
[01:04:06] that does, but
[01:04:08] if I did,
[01:04:13] I don't have really a ton of time,
[01:04:15] I know we're over here,
[01:04:16] but
[01:04:18] basically that'll keep it up to date.
[01:04:21] So if I went into my expenses and I
[01:04:23] changed this to
[01:04:26] not January, but
[01:04:28] let's say February
[01:04:32] this first record here
[01:04:36] should
[01:04:39] change.
[01:04:44] Come on.
[01:04:49] There we go. There we go.
[01:04:52] So that does stay up to date
[01:04:54] as you make changes in your other base.
[01:04:58] Lots of really cool things
[01:04:59] so that saves you on automations.
[01:05:02] So you don't need to,
[01:05:03] you know, have something running
[01:05:05] to check this field
[01:05:06] to link it up to another
[01:05:07] one and
[01:05:08] all that kind of stuff.
[01:05:11] So really cool tricks
[01:05:13] that you can use when
[01:05:14] changing the field type.
[01:05:16] Last thing I'll show is actually
[01:05:18] you can do that same thing,
[01:05:20] even if you don't have two synced
[01:05:21] tables,
[01:05:23] I've got year here.
[01:05:25] But if I want to actually create
[01:05:28] a table of years,
[01:05:29] then I can do the same thing
[01:05:31] and create a new table
[01:05:34] and now I have a new table of
[01:05:36] my year values
[01:05:39] and that'll stay up to date as well. So,
[01:05:42] really cool little tricks
[01:05:44] you can use there.
[01:05:49] Good stuff. Thank you, Alli.
[01:05:53] Yeah.
[01:05:53] Yeah, those are good tricks.
[01:05:56] Awesome. Thank you all
[01:05:57] for coming on the show and
[01:06:00] we will see everybody next week
[01:06:02] until then for in honor
[01:06:03] of Rob for the film
[01:06:04] industry. We'll say that
[01:06:06] that's a wrap for today. Hey,
[01:06:10] awesome,
[01:06:11] cool. Thanks guys.