8/1/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S15-E04

Duration: 58 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 – 00:03:13 –

Automate Create – 00:41:48 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Sometimes a pause is necessary to give time for attachments to process

Air Chefs – 00:54:44 –

Watch as Alli Alosa takes on Kamille Parks to improve the base Mouse Colony from the Airtable Universe, and make it even better with automations, different field types, and apps from the marketplace.

An App a Day – 00:51:33 –

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Web Clipper App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Save text, links, images, and more directly to an Airtable base with just a few clicks. With a web clipper app and the official Chrome browser extension, you can create new Airtable records from content on any web page—without needing to leave your current browser window.”.

View App

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:13

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

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:41:48

Airtable Automations – Pause in Automations

Watch as we review and work through automations. Sometimes a pause is necessary to give time for attachments to process

Segment: Air Chefs

Start Time: 00:54:44

Alli Alosa vs Kamille Parks improve the Airtable base, Mouse Colony

Watch as Alli Alosa takes on Kamille Parks to improve the base Mouse Colony from the Airtable Universe, and make it even better with automations, different field types, and apps from the marketplace.

Segment: An App a Day

Start Time: 00:51:33

Airtable App Showcase – Web Clipper – Save text, links, images, and more directly to an Airtable base with just a few clicks. With a web clipper app and the official Chrome browser extension, you can create new Airtable records from content on any web page—without needing to leave your current browser window.

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the Web Clipper App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “Save text, links, images, and more directly to an Airtable base with just a few clicks. With a web clipper app and the official Chrome browser extension, you can create new Airtable records from content on any web page—without needing to leave your current browser window.”.

View App

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:44] This is episode four of season 15.
[00:01:47] Good to be with you.
[00:01:48] We've got the,
[00:01:51] the original gang with us today,
[00:01:53] Dan myself, Alli and
[00:01:55] Kamille back as always.
[00:01:56] Good to have you.
[00:01:58] Hello.
[00:01:59] So we like when
[00:02:00] we don't have a guest,
[00:02:01] we like to have some fun.
[00:02:02] We're gonna have some fun
[00:02:04] today going through a
[00:02:05] couple different things and keep
[00:02:06] you up to date.
[00:02:07] I'll walk through what
[00:02:08] we're gonna be doing today.
[00:02:09] We always start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:11] to get you up to date on everything
[00:02:13] Airtable and what people
[00:02:14] are chatting about
[00:02:16] and then we'll talk about On2Air.
[00:02:18] We have some updates for you today on that
[00:02:20] and then we're gonna talk about
[00:02:22] automations, how to put a pause in your
[00:02:25] automation if needed and
[00:02:27] we'll talk about that use case
[00:02:29] and we're gonna revisit web clipper.
[00:02:32] I think we, I did this a while back,
[00:02:34] but it wasn't working.
[00:02:35] And so I've always wanted to revisit it.
[00:02:37] This is my favorite app that I use
[00:02:39] and so it's worth talking about again
[00:02:42] and then a shout out to our community
[00:02:44] and then we're gonna end with something we
[00:02:46] don't do very often, but it's always fun.
[00:02:49] Air chefs, Alli and Kamille
[00:02:51] are gonna go head to head,
[00:02:53] I'm gonna give them a challenge,
[00:02:55] actually, just gave it
[00:02:56] to them and they'll be
[00:02:57] working on it throughout the show
[00:02:59] and then we'll come together
[00:03:00] at the end and
[00:03:01] they're gonna show off
[00:03:02] what they built in just a few minutes.
[00:03:04] So that will be fun.
[00:03:07] All right,
[00:03:08] with Round the Bases.
[00:03:10] Let's see what we've got going on.
[00:03:12] Saw on X or Twitter Airtable
[00:03:15] announced a new feature alert
[00:03:18] and list views in your interfaces.
[00:03:22] And I believe there's also a link to
[00:03:26] them talking about it,
[00:03:28] but I'll show this quick little
[00:03:30] video so you can kind of see it in action.
[00:03:35] So if you're using the list view,
[00:03:38] you can now add groupings.
[00:03:41] That's really nice. I
[00:03:44] that was something I think
[00:03:45] that was sorely missed
[00:03:47] when it first came out.
[00:03:49] Seemed to be replaced by the hierarchy
[00:03:52] option which now you can do both,
[00:03:54] which is really nice. The hierarchy
[00:03:56] required there to be a
[00:03:57] linked record between
[00:03:59] the two groups of information. And
[00:04:03] that's also really nice because
[00:04:04] you can display data
[00:04:05] from two different tables.
[00:04:07] But now you can simply just group
[00:04:10] the records on the same table, which is
[00:04:12] what you could do with every other
[00:04:14] grid view. So
[00:04:16] really nice.
[00:04:18] Can you, you can do this in the,
[00:04:21] in the data layer with list views?
[00:04:25] Can
[00:04:26] I feel like, I don't know,
[00:04:27] it'd be weird if you couldn't. Let's test.
[00:04:30] Yeah, let's try it.
[00:04:31] I hope so. I,
[00:04:34] I, I really, I love Airtable's
[00:04:36] consistent about their rollouts,
[00:04:38] but we all know
[00:04:39] that that doesn't always happen.
[00:04:41] You can, you can, I just test it
[00:04:43] great.
[00:04:45] It's been really weird if you couldn't.
[00:04:48] Yeah.
[00:04:49] Yeah.
[00:04:50] So it's
[00:04:51] my comment there, I asked
[00:04:53] if you were if they were
[00:04:55] planning on allowing
[00:04:57] you to expand all
[00:04:58] and collapse all
[00:04:59] the groups
[00:04:59] because right now if you right
[00:05:00] click it
[00:05:01] sort of nothing happens
[00:05:03] and they're saying
[00:05:03] that there's something that
[00:05:04] they're working on. So
[00:05:06] that's nice because
[00:05:07] you could do that with
[00:05:09] grid views. And so it just,
[00:05:11] you know, I have a lot of,
[00:05:13] I'm working with a lot of data nowadays.
[00:05:15] Great that I can group
[00:05:17] and soon I'll be able to sort of
[00:05:19] lapse everything down, which is
[00:05:21] awesome.
[00:05:22] Very nice.
[00:05:24] Yeah.
[00:05:24] Good stuff.
[00:05:26] So yeah, that's
[00:05:30] oh, go ahead.
[00:05:31] No, no, my bad.
[00:05:32] I, I was just gonna say something,
[00:05:34] a client pointed out to me
[00:05:35] the other day
[00:05:36] that I actually hadn't realized
[00:05:38] is
[00:05:39] and maybe it's not in the list view
[00:05:41] that is an issue, but in the grid view on
[00:05:43] interfaces, it doesn't
[00:05:45] freeze the pains
[00:05:47] like it does in the database.
[00:05:49] So when you scroll up
[00:05:51] and down on the list or on a
[00:05:52] grid,
[00:05:54] you still see the header
[00:05:56] at the very top
[00:05:57] but in interfaces that does not happen.
[00:06:00] Oh wow.
[00:06:02] Which
[00:06:03] is a little frustrating
[00:06:04] because people are like,
[00:06:06] wait, what am I looking at?
[00:06:08] Yeah.
[00:06:08] Right now my number one
[00:06:10] sort of complaint with
[00:06:12] interfaces and this includes
[00:06:13] the new
[00:06:15] detail pages is being able
[00:06:18] to see enough stuff at a single moment
[00:06:21] and not having
[00:06:23] freezing of the
[00:06:25] you know what the column names are.
[00:06:28] That's a problem. If you have a grid
[00:06:31] on a newer detail page,
[00:06:33] you can't freeze additional columns
[00:06:35] because it thinks
[00:06:36] you want to drag the whole
[00:06:37] section.
[00:06:39] And then like
[00:06:40] just not,
[00:06:42] it takes up such a small amount
[00:06:44] of space on the screen
[00:06:45] whereas that you want
[00:06:46] a larger amount of data
[00:06:48] so that it's all interconnected to the
[00:06:51] inability to sort of see what you
[00:06:54] want to see. Whereas in the data view,
[00:06:57] I think all of those that I just
[00:06:59] listed are sort of already taken care of.
[00:07:01] So disappointing.
[00:07:03] Absolutely.
[00:07:04] Another thing that bothers me
[00:07:06] with the list is you can't like
[00:07:07] copy a value and drag it down
[00:07:10] the whole column
[00:07:13] or like select more than one at a time
[00:07:16] to copy it.
[00:07:18] Yeah.
[00:07:19] Yeah, I actually I just
[00:07:20] ran into that the other day.
[00:07:23] Yeah.
[00:07:24] Right, because you can
[00:07:26] do it on the normal grid.
[00:07:27] But
[00:07:29] yeah,
[00:07:30] it's like list view looks pretty.
[00:07:33] Yeah, but if I want to get stuff done,
[00:07:36] I wanna use a grid.
[00:07:37] But if I wanna see more if to
[00:07:39] your point Alli,
[00:07:41] if I wanna see info from table A
[00:07:42] and table B at the same time, a
[00:07:45] list view will let me do that
[00:07:47] but a grid view won't.
[00:07:49] So I, I want a perfect
[00:07:50] middle man between the two.
[00:07:52] Yes, like I want, I want grid
[00:07:54] to look exactly how
[00:07:55] it works with the addition of
[00:07:57] hierarchy.
[00:07:58] But I realize that might be
[00:08:00] difficult to accomplish,
[00:08:01] which is why they probably
[00:08:02] haven't done it yet. However,
[00:08:05] there's
[00:08:05] aside from adding grouping,
[00:08:07] which is great, glad that they did it.
[00:08:08] There's a couple of things
[00:08:10] about list view
[00:08:11] that I think can continue to be
[00:08:12] worked on.
[00:08:13] I know,
[00:08:14] I think my favorite thing about list view
[00:08:16] is besides how nice it looks is
[00:08:18] that you can hide the primary field.
[00:08:21] Yeah.
[00:08:22] Great,
[00:08:22] wonderful, very useful.
[00:08:24] Even the prefix field,
[00:08:26] I don't use it a whole lot.
[00:08:27] But every now and again,
[00:08:28] if I have a check box,
[00:08:30] that's very useful
[00:08:31] for my end users to see this one is
[00:08:33] done, I can ignore it and
[00:08:35] all that kind of stuff. So
[00:08:36] again, a perfect middle man
[00:08:40] just
[00:08:40] every now and again, I want
[00:08:42] both.
[00:08:44] Yeah.
[00:08:45] Yeah.
[00:08:45] So close, so close.
[00:08:48] All right, we'll move on.
[00:08:50] Next one also comes from
[00:08:51] the Airtable community.
[00:08:52] Friend of the show
[00:08:54] Kuovonne posted this,
[00:08:55] this is just kind of informational.
[00:08:57] I thought it was good. We're sharing if
[00:08:59] you're using
[00:09:00] Airtable as a digital
[00:09:02] asset management tool.
[00:09:04] They have a blog post.
[00:09:06] I don't know if this is a recent one.
[00:09:08] I think it's been around for a while.
[00:09:10] Oh, no, it is new. OK.
[00:09:12] So,
[00:09:14] yeah.
[00:09:14] Yeah.
[00:09:15] Yeah. So a blog post on how to use,
[00:09:18] how to use Airtable as a DAM stands for
[00:09:21] Digital Asset Management.
[00:09:24] And so it kind of talks about
[00:09:26] how to use it. She kind of
[00:09:28] critiques it or gives feedback on
[00:09:31] on shortcomings of using Airtable
[00:09:35] as a as a DAM and
[00:09:37] give some insights into how
[00:09:38] you might think about it.
[00:09:40] So if you are using Airtable
[00:09:41] as a digital asset management tool,
[00:09:43] read the blog post but also read
[00:09:46] Kuovonne's
[00:09:46] extension to get more insights into how
[00:09:50] it works in the real world.
[00:09:52] She has experienced.
[00:09:55] You
[00:09:57] love
[00:09:57] it. All right, moving on to reddit a
[00:10:00] question that somebody posed
[00:10:02] when is Airtable A I dropping?
[00:10:07] And so this is interesting,
[00:10:09] somebody does say late
[00:10:10] August is what they've heard.
[00:10:12] I, yeah, I haven't heard a specific date
[00:10:16] but excited for that as well.
[00:10:20] So if you're looking
[00:10:22] or waiting for Airtable A I,
[00:10:24] apparently according to meme
[00:10:27] two, which is definitely credible.
[00:10:30] Late August is when it's out there.
[00:10:35] Next one.
[00:10:37] Just a shout out to Chris Dancy
[00:10:39] who's also a friend of the show run,
[00:10:42] helps run with Ben Green,
[00:10:44] the Facebook community
[00:10:46] looks like he's putting on an event
[00:10:48] and he's looking for speakers.
[00:10:50] So if you
[00:10:51] have a cool thing that you can share,
[00:10:55] he's doing a no code and A I developer
[00:10:57] conference that looks pretty interesting
[00:11:00] and they're looking for paid
[00:11:02] speakers for that. So,
[00:11:04] Alli, Kamille, there you go.
[00:11:05] Another conference you can go to.
[00:11:07] I'm just not an A I person.
[00:11:10] I have nothing of value to say.
[00:11:13] When is this?
[00:11:18] If you could read more. Yeah,
[00:11:20] October 19th and 20th in Menlo Park.
[00:11:24] I think I will be a
[00:11:26] little bit busy at that. Yeah.
[00:11:28] Oh, yeah,
[00:11:32] I
[00:11:32] know.
[00:11:33] Yeah,
[00:11:34] I, for anybody that has not heard
[00:11:36] already, I guess I'll use that as an
[00:11:38] announcement time real quick.
[00:11:40] I am expecting my first child in October.
[00:11:43] So.
[00:11:45] Right.
[00:11:46] Yeah.
[00:11:47] So won't be able to speak
[00:11:49] at the conference, but I wish everybody
[00:11:51] the best of luck
[00:11:52] and hope they have a great time.
[00:11:54] Yep. Yep. So
[00:11:56] it makes your decision easy.
[00:12:00] All right. Next one.
[00:12:02] ok. This is on the TableForums,
[00:12:05] air.tableforums.com
[00:12:07] good conversation there.
[00:12:09] It always worth bringing up, I think.
[00:12:12] You know, obviously we're,
[00:12:13] we're Airtable fans, but there's,
[00:12:15] there's definitely other options,
[00:12:17] other solutions out there
[00:12:19] and I think it's good to be aware of,
[00:12:21] of what the alternatives are.
[00:12:23] This is a really good thread on the
[00:12:26] Table forums site about smart Suite,
[00:12:29] which is a pretty probably
[00:12:31] as close of a direct competitor
[00:12:33] as there is out there
[00:12:34] to Airtable
[00:12:36] in my perspective,
[00:12:37] and this is actually somebody avi
[00:12:40] who I've actually met
[00:12:43] is is just kind of, you know,
[00:12:45] making it aware to the community.
[00:12:47] I think he got Scott's permission
[00:12:49] to share this but good,
[00:12:51] good conversation of,
[00:12:52] of the good and bad
[00:12:54] of Airtable and how it
[00:12:55] compares to Smart Suite.
[00:12:57] So
[00:12:59] if you're looking for an alternative
[00:13:00] or you wanna see what else is out there,
[00:13:02] this is a good thread to,
[00:13:04] to read up on and
[00:13:05] see if it's worth and it looks like
[00:13:07] they have like an import tool or they're
[00:13:10] coming out with an
[00:13:11] import tool from Airtable.
[00:13:13] So that's out there.
[00:13:15] My personal, I've,
[00:13:17] I've played with it. It's good.
[00:13:19] It definitely has some things
[00:13:21] that I wish Airtable had
[00:13:23] but vice versa. There's some things
[00:13:25] in Airtable that, that smart suite doesn't
[00:13:28] have. So
[00:13:29] fortunately there's just no
[00:13:31] perfect tool out there.
[00:13:32] So you gotta kinda play with
[00:13:33] the give and take of each
[00:13:35] but it's,
[00:13:35] it's definitely worth trying out if,
[00:13:37] if you're not happy with Airtable.
[00:13:42] Yeah. And
[00:13:45] Melanie says it's a bit laggy.
[00:13:48] I don't know if she's talking
[00:13:50] about smart suite or, or our feed.
[00:13:51] I don't know.
[00:13:53] I would hope smart suite. But,
[00:13:55] yeah, I, I do wonder, you know,
[00:13:57] we talked about,
[00:13:58] I think it was last episode,
[00:13:59] Airtable as outages every now
[00:14:02] and again and it's down for
[00:14:04] like 10 minutes, 30 minutes
[00:14:06] or something for a,
[00:14:08] a particularly big one,
[00:14:09] but that happens
[00:14:11] not necessarily frequently.
[00:14:14] Yes, she clarifies that she's talking
[00:14:16] about smart suite being laggy.
[00:14:17] I wonder if, for smarts suite,
[00:14:19] I haven't used it
[00:14:20] with
[00:14:21] a,
[00:14:22] you know, for a long
[00:14:23] extended period of time
[00:14:25] for me to notice if you
[00:14:26] wonder is it like
[00:14:28] every day it feels laggy
[00:14:30] or is it like Airtable where it has,
[00:14:32] you know, some downtime
[00:14:34] where ideally it would have none.
[00:14:36] But I do wonder like how laggy is it?
[00:14:38] Because that would annoy me,
[00:14:40] especially if I'm rebuilding
[00:14:42] a bunch of systems and
[00:14:42] I'm in it
[00:14:44] and doing a lot of constructing work.
[00:14:46] The lag isn't necessarily great
[00:14:49] but I do know from here in front
[00:14:51] of
[00:14:51] us, he really likes the pricing structure
[00:14:53] of smart suite as compared to
[00:14:55] Airtable.
[00:14:56] So, you know, you're charged
[00:14:58] more for the amount of data
[00:14:59] you have versus the
[00:15:00] number of users. So
[00:15:02] it feels more,
[00:15:04] you know, in line with.
[00:15:06] All right, let me bring my team in
[00:15:08] and if I need to store more stuff,
[00:15:09] then I have to pay for more stuff.
[00:15:11] Not necessarily more people
[00:15:13] working with the same amount of data.
[00:15:15] Yeah.
[00:15:16] Yeah, that's fair.
[00:15:18] Yeah. And I think it's good to,
[00:15:20] to talk about it because
[00:15:21] it's only gonna make
[00:15:22] Airtable better because if they feel
[00:15:24] the heat of people leaving their product
[00:15:27] for, for smart suite,
[00:15:29] then they'll address the reasons,
[00:15:30] hopefully they'll address
[00:15:32] the reasons that people are leaving.
[00:15:33] So
[00:15:34] competition is good.
[00:15:38] But it is crazy to think that
[00:15:40] they started in 2022.
[00:15:41] So they've only been around
[00:15:43] a year and a half or so.
[00:15:45] And
[00:15:47] they, they have definitely
[00:15:48] cranked out a ton of features.
[00:15:51] So yeah, they are
[00:15:53] pushing out stuff.
[00:15:55] All right, there's smart suite.
[00:15:57] What else we got
[00:15:58] also from the table forums.
[00:16:01] This was kind of a question,
[00:16:03] I think we've talked
[00:16:05] about this in the past
[00:16:06] Airtable is planning to remove
[00:16:08] element based interfaces.
[00:16:10] So there's on the docs page.
[00:16:12] I was hoping it it linked to it.
[00:16:14] But
[00:16:15] it says
[00:16:16] while inter element based interface
[00:16:18] layouts are still currently available,
[00:16:20] we invite you to try the
[00:16:22] newer table based interfaces.
[00:16:24] Can one of you explain that?
[00:16:26] That's, I don't know.
[00:16:29] Hold on, go ahead Alli,
[00:16:30] I'll, I'll pull up the screen
[00:16:32] and then start sharing.
[00:16:34] Yeah, perfect.
[00:16:36] So when you first go to
[00:16:37] make an interface, there's
[00:16:39] two groupings of the layouts
[00:16:41] that they allow you to
[00:16:42] choose from to begin with.
[00:16:43] The very top is like
[00:16:45] it gives you, you know,
[00:16:46] choose from a list layout,
[00:16:48] a grid layout kanban
[00:16:49] gallery or sorry, there's no grid
[00:16:51] but exactly what
[00:16:52] co
[00:16:53] I must just called you
[00:16:54] Kuovonne
[00:16:55] it.
[00:16:57] Yeah,
[00:16:59] what Kamille was just pointing out there
[00:17:01] those are the table base layouts.
[00:17:03] So when you pick one of those,
[00:17:05] you can't actually drag
[00:17:07] additional elements onto
[00:17:08] the page, which is something
[00:17:10] that drives me absolutely insane.
[00:17:12] So
[00:17:12] this update does not sound like
[00:17:15] something I am happy about.
[00:17:17] Whereas the bottom
[00:17:18] that Kamille is pointing out now,
[00:17:19] those are all the element
[00:17:21] based layouts and
[00:17:21] they're very customizable.
[00:17:23] You can drag lists, galleries, calendars,
[00:17:25] timelines on to those pages
[00:17:28] in addition to other elements
[00:17:30] like custom text,
[00:17:32] divider lines, numbers,
[00:17:34] all sorts of things
[00:17:35] to summarize your data and make
[00:17:37] it look pretty.
[00:17:39] Which in my opinion is far superior to the
[00:17:43] table based layouts.
[00:17:45] However, there are things you can
[00:17:46] do in the table base layouts
[00:17:48] that you can't
[00:17:48] do
[00:17:49] in the element based layouts.
[00:17:51] A lot of which Kamille
[00:17:53] pointed out during her
[00:17:54] review on the detail pages last week.
[00:17:59] You can now do some of those
[00:18:00] things in the detail pages,
[00:18:01] like have action
[00:18:02] buttons and different tab layouts.
[00:18:06] Yeah,
[00:18:07] so this is another example of like
[00:18:10] I want a a happy medium, like I I use the
[00:18:13] full screen calendar,
[00:18:16] timeline, and list.
[00:18:18] Grid isn't an option,
[00:18:20] but I use the full screen
[00:18:21] like list all the time is
[00:18:23] like one of the first interface pages
[00:18:26] that my team sees because it's like here's
[00:18:29] all of your projects, click into
[00:18:30] a project to get more information,
[00:18:32] right?
[00:18:34] I like that I can see a
[00:18:36] bunch of stuff at once. However,
[00:18:38] sometimes like for it,
[00:18:40] given this example, right,
[00:18:42] you have a video tracker,
[00:18:43] all of your list of videos.
[00:18:45] What if I just want
[00:18:46] a little description that says
[00:18:48] this thing is filtered by XY and Z
[00:18:51] or make sure that you fill out this
[00:18:54] information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:18:55] You can't
[00:18:56] put a description anywhere
[00:18:58] on this page to Alli's Point,
[00:19:00] which would be real
[00:19:01] easy
[00:19:02] in something like
[00:19:03] any of these premade
[00:19:05] old views or blank, right?
[00:19:07] You just design it from scratch.
[00:19:09] But I'd be able to bring in a text
[00:19:11] component that says here's what you got to
[00:19:14] do to fill it off.
[00:19:16] Um
[00:19:18] I just want,
[00:19:19] I want a happy medium.
[00:19:21] I wanna see a bunch of stuff
[00:19:23] at once and sometimes I
[00:19:25] bring this up a lot but like
[00:19:28] the,
[00:19:28] you can't take away charts like
[00:19:32] I know that they're very rudiment.
[00:19:34] They don't do a lot of
[00:19:36] what I want them to do now.
[00:19:38] And I believe we've, we've gone
[00:19:40] at length about how charts
[00:19:42] in Airtable are pretty like
[00:19:44] bare bones, basic,
[00:19:46] but you can't take them away.
[00:19:49] Like I can't imagine
[00:19:51] having
[00:19:53] interfaces be originally
[00:19:56] a replacement of dashboards
[00:19:58] in the data view.
[00:20:00] And then now it's just sort of
[00:20:03] a pretty way to look at
[00:20:06] stuff. Right? But not
[00:20:08] getting
[00:20:09] any sort of detail.
[00:20:11] I think you'd be losing that entirely
[00:20:14] if you go with, just be as they're
[00:20:16] presented today.
[00:20:18] If you keep this and then add
[00:20:20] a section on it that I can add a chart,
[00:20:23] add description, add numbers
[00:20:25] or any of the other element
[00:20:27] types that are not
[00:20:28] currently available for them.
[00:20:30] Then that would feel like a
[00:20:32] happy medium but like as it is,
[00:20:35] no, I I want both.
[00:20:39] They have, they have different
[00:20:41] use cases entirely and
[00:20:43] I'm not gonna miss the drag and drop
[00:20:46] system that is currently in place now.
[00:20:48] I think it's finicky and weird.
[00:20:50] A lot of people
[00:20:51] have troubled if you have essential
[00:20:53] trends in your hands. Good luck.
[00:20:55] I'm sorry.
[00:20:56] But it's not, it's not
[00:20:58] a good system for
[00:21:00] moving stuff on the page.
[00:21:01] It's the ability to have that
[00:21:03] stuff on the page I think is
[00:21:05] the critical piece that would be missing.
[00:21:08] I don't care how you let me do it,
[00:21:09] but I need to be able to do this.
[00:21:12] Yeah,
[00:21:12] exactly. I need a combination.
[00:21:14] I need to be able to like what if I want a
[00:21:16] summary
[00:21:18] at the top of the numbers?
[00:21:20] Yeah,
[00:21:21] like or a description like you said, it's
[00:21:25] we want a happy medium. I totally agree.
[00:21:28] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:29] Yeah. All of them should just be
[00:21:31] templates, starting templates,
[00:21:32] you know, and then
[00:21:34] you go from there
[00:21:36] and before I forget
[00:21:38] this thing with the record review,
[00:21:41] this element type that only exists in this
[00:21:43] template and it has never made
[00:21:45] its way into anything else.
[00:21:48] You can't take that away
[00:21:50] because no,
[00:21:51] no other element
[00:21:53] meets this criteria.
[00:21:57] Everything on like this right hand
[00:21:59] page is it feels like it's a detail page
[00:22:02] right before detail pages
[00:22:03] were a thing.
[00:22:05] This was all you had, you had,
[00:22:07] you select one
[00:22:09] project
[00:22:10] and then you place individual elements
[00:22:12] that are details of that project you had.
[00:22:15] But
[00:22:15] for all other things including this one,
[00:22:18] what if I don't wanna see a whole bunch
[00:22:20] of stuff? I only need
[00:22:22] the name of the project
[00:22:23] and all of the details I want pulled up
[00:22:26] on a detail page right now.
[00:22:27] It's not,
[00:22:29] there's not a good parallel for that
[00:22:31] because it takes up only a
[00:22:33] little bit of your space
[00:22:34] or the entire screen
[00:22:36] where you wanna flip through
[00:22:37] multiple projects. So losing
[00:22:40] record review in particular,
[00:22:42] I would be
[00:22:44] extraordinarily upset about.
[00:22:46] So
[00:22:47] that's probably the one I
[00:22:50] it's great. It's the only,
[00:22:52] it is bizarre to me that it's like
[00:22:55] they, they, this was there
[00:22:57] when interfaces launched. If I'm
[00:22:59] remembering correctly, they built
[00:23:01] like a pretty damn useful component
[00:23:04] and then never used it again.
[00:23:06] I think that's so bizarre.
[00:23:09] So the decision making
[00:23:11] is, is odd sometimes.
[00:23:14] Absolutely.
[00:23:18] Yeah.
[00:23:19] So yeah, that, so according to this,
[00:23:24] it says
[00:23:25] while they are still
[00:23:27] currently available, which
[00:23:31] you could imply means
[00:23:32] they may not be in the future.
[00:23:35] We invite you to try the new ones.
[00:23:38] So we need an answer Airtable,
[00:23:40] what does this mean?
[00:23:41] Yeah. If I were to
[00:23:42] interpret that sentence,
[00:23:44] it sounds like they're going to
[00:23:45] remove them as selectable options
[00:23:47] when you create a new one at some point.
[00:23:50] I don't necessarily know
[00:23:52] if they're like,
[00:23:53] it's gonna delete or convert any
[00:23:54] page
[00:23:54] you already built,
[00:23:56] but it seems like they're taking,
[00:23:57] they're planning to take
[00:23:59] away the ability to create new ones.
[00:24:01] However, if that's the case,
[00:24:03] you gotta bring that functionality,
[00:24:05] I don't wanna lose that functionality.
[00:24:08] Yeah,
[00:24:09] I really don't.
[00:24:12] Yeah. Let's hope not.
[00:24:13] All right. Moving on going to the
[00:24:16] BuiltOnAir Slack community
[00:24:19] refresh here.
[00:24:21] Let's see what we got.
[00:24:25] OK. This is a good question.
[00:24:28] So Heather is asking,
[00:24:30] this filter is not working.
[00:24:31] I wanna see records
[00:24:33] where a formula field contains
[00:24:34] error or any part of the word error,
[00:24:36] but the filter doesn't
[00:24:37] seem to be reading that.
[00:24:39] So this is a good reminder of
[00:24:42] if your formula is saying error
[00:24:45] it, it's not the actual output
[00:24:48] of the formula itself. Like that's
[00:24:51] so you can't use that for
[00:24:53] filtering or formulas or something.
[00:24:55] So it behaves differently.
[00:24:57] The error message.
[00:25:00] Yeah.
[00:25:02] Yeah. And Mecca Mecca answers that.
[00:25:08] Yeah. The real question is, yeah
[00:25:10] what, what is actually causing it?
[00:25:11] But I think that's interesting
[00:25:13] to point out
[00:25:14] she was trying to filter and show
[00:25:16] only ones.
[00:25:17] So you could use the is error,
[00:25:19] I guess you could use is error if you
[00:25:21] wanted to
[00:25:22] figure out a way to,
[00:25:24] to filter
[00:25:25] ones that have an error.
[00:25:27] Absolutely.
[00:25:29] Yeah. My, my preference
[00:25:30] is to always make sure that
[00:25:32] there are no errors.
[00:25:34] So I, I just have it be blank
[00:25:35] if it's gonna be an error,
[00:25:36] just
[00:25:37] use an if statement to and we,
[00:25:39] I went over this in a segment.
[00:25:42] I think earlier this season
[00:25:43] or at the end of last,
[00:25:44] like with best practices with
[00:25:45] formula writing, just
[00:25:47] if you have a date field,
[00:25:48] make sure you're wrapping it
[00:25:50] in an if statement before
[00:25:50] you format it stuff like that
[00:25:52] so that you don't get the error
[00:25:54] as a result.
[00:25:56] And
[00:25:57] so a good reminder there, next one,
[00:26:00] let's refresh.
[00:26:05] OK.
[00:26:06] This is a, a show and tell
[00:26:09] re triggering automations
[00:26:11] for when record enters view.
[00:26:14] So I often use a view to fire
[00:26:16] off automations. This is from Russell.
[00:26:18] It means I can open that view
[00:26:19] and monitor as the records
[00:26:21] are processed and then
[00:26:22] leave the view when they're done.
[00:26:24] Sometimes this data changes quickly
[00:26:26] and automation
[00:26:27] actually needs to fire again.
[00:26:28] But because it didn't leave
[00:26:30] the view after the first run,
[00:26:31] it's stuck there.
[00:26:32] So these types of view triggered
[00:26:34] automation at a field
[00:26:36] to decide whether they
[00:26:37] should fire right now or wait.
[00:26:39] So there's this is good,
[00:26:42] good discussion and, and I knew
[00:26:44] Kuovonne would jump in.
[00:26:46] I know she has strong opinions
[00:26:48] on the now functionality.
[00:26:52] Yeah. So this is a good thread to just,
[00:26:55] I, I, in theory it's a good idea.
[00:26:58] just be careful
[00:26:59] about doing things like this.
[00:27:01] You wanna talk about that?
[00:27:03] Yeah. Now is a very,
[00:27:05] very expensive formula
[00:27:07] in that, if you have a lot of data
[00:27:09] it's gonna slow down your database
[00:27:11] significantly.
[00:27:13] It has to reevaluate itself.
[00:27:15] It doesn't actually happen instantly.
[00:27:18] It happens. I think every
[00:27:20] what? 10 to 15 minutes or so,
[00:27:22] maybe every five minutes.
[00:27:25] But every time that happens,
[00:27:27] it needs to go through
[00:27:28] every single record in that
[00:27:29] table and
[00:27:31] reevaluate and then any formulas
[00:27:32] that are driven off of that
[00:27:34] also need to reevaluate.
[00:27:36] So it can cause
[00:27:37] a significant amount of lag.
[00:27:41] My other thing is
[00:27:43] I get
[00:27:44] like the triggering off
[00:27:46] of a record in a view
[00:27:47] I find
[00:27:48] a lot less secure because you can
[00:27:52] really easily
[00:27:54] accidentally forget you're on
[00:27:56] that view and change the filters.
[00:27:58] So what I like to do is
[00:27:59] I always use when a record matches
[00:28:01] conditions because
[00:28:02] that's far less likely for somebody
[00:28:04] to mess with and accidentally change.
[00:28:05] You can still create a view
[00:28:07] with the conditions that match.
[00:28:09] So you can still watch them
[00:28:11] as they trigger and leave and enter.
[00:28:13] But you're not relying
[00:28:14] on those filters staying the same,
[00:28:16] especially if you're sharing
[00:28:18] a database with other people
[00:28:19] or if you're very forgetful
[00:28:21] like me and forget
[00:28:22] that that's the view that
[00:28:23] your automation is watching.
[00:28:26] Those are my two cents.
[00:28:28] Yeah,
[00:28:29] I
[00:28:29] just,
[00:28:31] sorry,
[00:28:31] just yesterday I was dealing
[00:28:34] with an automation that,
[00:28:36] you know, end user said
[00:28:38] it's not working because it's
[00:28:40] it's a daily digest.
[00:28:41] It gives them the same
[00:28:42] information every time.
[00:28:43] And the
[00:28:44] automation that created
[00:28:45] the information that goes
[00:28:47] into the digest was working
[00:28:48] perfectly fine. But
[00:28:49] the
[00:28:50] automation that sent out the digest
[00:28:53] was looking at a view who had its filters
[00:28:55] changed. So it was basically
[00:28:57] every record in the table
[00:28:59] got sent every single day
[00:29:00] and that's why it didn't seem like
[00:29:02] anything was working. So,
[00:29:04] yeah,
[00:29:06] exactly. Especially
[00:29:07] reminded that sometimes
[00:29:09] using a view is not
[00:29:11] stable.
[00:29:13] And if you do need to use a view,
[00:29:15] like sometimes if you're looking
[00:29:17] like that exact automation that Kamille is
[00:29:19] talking about where you have
[00:29:20] to find the records in a view,
[00:29:21] which is the only
[00:29:22] way to have them sorted the way that
[00:29:24] you want them sorted. Unfortunately,
[00:29:27] best practice is to lock it down,
[00:29:29] make sure it's locked
[00:29:30] and put a little description saying,
[00:29:32] an automation is
[00:29:33] watching this view to deter
[00:29:35] yourself and other people
[00:29:36] from accidentally changing
[00:29:37] the filters
[00:29:40] or if you trust yourself
[00:29:41] and no one else
[00:29:42] make it your personal view.
[00:29:43] So it hides from everyone else. Yes.
[00:29:47] But to
[00:29:50] Russell's point
[00:29:51] this is a good way to solve for
[00:29:54] those odd times where sometimes
[00:29:56] an automation triggers so fast,
[00:29:59] it does end up, you know,
[00:30:01] staying there
[00:30:02] and not allowing itself to retrigger.
[00:30:05] Another option would be maybe
[00:30:07] to use a Cron job.
[00:30:08] I have certain things that
[00:30:09] does involve having two different
[00:30:11] automations,
[00:30:11] but I have like one set up when
[00:30:13] the conditions are met
[00:30:14] and then I have another one
[00:30:15] that runs every 15 minutes
[00:30:17] to check for any that
[00:30:18] have lagged or errored
[00:30:20] and runs a script to
[00:30:22] recalculate or re address those.
[00:30:26] OK.
[00:30:27] There's a question from Alicia,
[00:30:29] would there be a way to easily find out if
[00:30:31] now is being used
[00:30:32] in any formulas in a base?
[00:30:35] Great question. I think Airtable
[00:30:37] can tell you if you pester
[00:30:39] them enough that
[00:30:40] happened for me with an enterprise client.
[00:30:42] But other than that,
[00:30:43] I don't think so,
[00:30:45] I feel like there was one scripting
[00:30:48] environment that gave you formula text,
[00:30:51] but I'm not sure that's the case.
[00:30:54] I don't think
[00:30:56] there, there is a secret,
[00:30:59] there's a backdoor secret
[00:31:02] if you build a, a custom extension,
[00:31:06] but that would be the only
[00:31:08] way that I'm aware of.
[00:31:11] OK.
[00:31:12] So
[00:31:12] there's
[00:31:12] no
[00:31:15] OK. That sounds weird.
[00:31:16] It's not, not even the meta
[00:31:17] data.
[00:31:18] APR
[00:31:19] No,
[00:31:21] I don't think so.
[00:31:22] It just tells you what fields
[00:31:23] it references not,
[00:31:25] well, that's useful
[00:31:26] but not you know what the formula is next.
[00:31:28] Yeah.
[00:31:29] Feels like that'd be easier to do.
[00:31:31] Just give me the text of the formula,
[00:31:33] right? Whatever.
[00:31:35] Yeah. So I guess the answer
[00:31:37] is not really unless you wanna
[00:31:40] get
[00:31:41] into coding and react.
[00:31:43] Yeah.
[00:31:44] Feel
[00:31:45] like overkill.
[00:31:46] Yeah, real quick before we move on.
[00:31:49] Alli your, your idea of using the match on
[00:31:52] conditions that essentially,
[00:31:54] if I remember correctly,
[00:31:56] that essentially almost
[00:31:57] works like a hidden view, right?
[00:32:00] So if it matches the conditions,
[00:32:01] it'll trigger it and then if it un matches
[00:32:04] and then matches again, it'll retrigger.
[00:32:07] Exactly.
[00:32:08] Yeah,
[00:32:09] you, you do have a little
[00:32:11] bit less control over like compound
[00:32:15] comparisons like in a view
[00:32:17] you can say and,
[00:32:19] or, and, or in conditional groups
[00:32:21] and whatnot with matches conditions,
[00:32:24] you're limited to either and,
[00:32:26] or, or, and you can't mix
[00:32:27] and match. But if you have very
[00:32:29] full conditions
[00:32:31] then,
[00:32:31] you know, use that one probably
[00:32:34] and sometimes I'll just put them
[00:32:36] all into a formula and then just have my
[00:32:37] conditions be if,
[00:32:39] if this formula is not empty,
[00:32:41] then trigger.
[00:32:42] So
[00:32:43] yeah.
[00:32:45] All right. Very good move on
[00:32:47] a
[00:32:47] little comedy break
[00:32:49] just because this is too real.
[00:32:51] Now, we'll see who wrote
[00:32:54] this terrible code. It was myself.
[00:32:57] I love Ben Bailey's comment.
[00:32:59] I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
[00:33:03] I think we can all relate.
[00:33:05] That's funny. Yes.
[00:33:06] Yes, we can.
[00:33:08] Thank you Justin for the comedy relief.
[00:33:13] All right. Ok.
[00:33:14] Kamille, you found something.
[00:33:17] Now seeing the ability
[00:33:19] to insert the URL for a record,
[00:33:21] explain yourself. So
[00:33:23] I can't
[00:33:25] II I sometimes this happens
[00:33:27] with Airtable,
[00:33:28] they'll release a feature and it
[00:33:29] will slowly roll out like everywhere.
[00:33:32] Rarely is like a feature available for
[00:33:34] everyone. Every single base, all at once.
[00:33:37] At the time I wrote this,
[00:33:39] I saw it in one base
[00:33:40] and then went to a different base
[00:33:42] in, in the same workspace,
[00:33:43] I think. So, same plan level and,
[00:33:45] and everything
[00:33:46] and didn't see it.
[00:33:47] But what I did see was
[00:33:49] in an automation, you have the ability to
[00:33:53] for whatever record triggered a
[00:33:56] your automation
[00:33:57] or if you're using a reoccurring
[00:34:00] list
[00:34:01] pulled off a list of records,
[00:34:04] it would originally give you
[00:34:06] the option to insert
[00:34:08] the record URL which would
[00:34:10] bring you to some view
[00:34:12] in the base data view.
[00:34:14] And what I saw was you now
[00:34:16] had two options
[00:34:18] that or a specific detail page in
[00:34:20] interfaces. So it gave you
[00:34:24] a list of the detail pages for that table,
[00:34:28] the record originates from
[00:34:30] and you would be able to select
[00:34:32] between them. So that's useful if you
[00:34:34] are sending like a digest
[00:34:36] email for instance. And
[00:34:37] the people who have access to those
[00:34:39] records are only invited to the interface
[00:34:42] and not the base. Now, you can,
[00:34:44] you know, just send them directly
[00:34:46] to the record and the interface.
[00:34:47] So
[00:34:48] they can actually look at things
[00:34:50] rather than
[00:34:50] creating a formula field
[00:34:52] that inserts the record ID, et cetera.
[00:34:55] So,
[00:34:56] I'm not sure if the rollout
[00:34:58] has progressed since I saw it then.
[00:35:03] But yeah, it's useful.
[00:35:05] Yeah.
[00:35:06] Ok.
[00:35:06] Very good.
[00:35:08] All right.
[00:35:10] Just last one,
[00:35:13] this one's just kind of more
[00:35:15] a cool thing. Justin posted that,
[00:35:18] that the I OS app broke
[00:35:22] with an update and
[00:35:25] then at the end mark who
[00:35:27] works at Airtable
[00:35:28] mentions that they just put out a
[00:35:31] new
[00:35:31] release that fixed that issue. So
[00:35:35] I'd like to think that it was because
[00:35:37] of the BuiltOnAirs influence,
[00:35:38] BuiltOnAir community's influence. So
[00:35:41] they got that fixed. Hopefully,
[00:35:43] maybe I'm sure they,
[00:35:44] they noticed it as well,
[00:35:45] but
[00:35:46] good to see that people
[00:35:48] at Airtable are listening
[00:35:49] to our community and
[00:35:50] updating us when changes are happening.
[00:35:53] Yeah, because it,
[00:35:54] from the sound of it, it was like
[00:35:56] broken, broken like you couldn't,
[00:35:58] you couldn't open a linked record
[00:36:01] which is fairly substantial.
[00:36:02] So glad that was fixed.
[00:36:06] All right. That concludes
[00:36:07] our Round the Bases at this point.
[00:36:09] Kamille and Alli are gonna
[00:36:11] get busy working.
[00:36:12] I'm gonna take over the show for a
[00:36:14] bit while they are busily working on their
[00:36:18] perspective. And so I gave them
[00:36:20] a base and they're gonna review it.
[00:36:23] I forgot to mention this but
[00:36:25] bonus points for interface
[00:36:28] improvements that you make to it.
[00:36:31] Unless you, unless you wanna go
[00:36:32] that route, you go a
[00:36:34] different route, that's fine.
[00:36:35] But, if you, if you have other ideas,
[00:36:38] that's cool as well.
[00:36:40] So they're gonna be working on that
[00:36:41] and then I'm gonna be walking through
[00:36:43] the next,
[00:36:44] so next we're gonna talk about On2Air
[00:36:48] and On2Air
[00:36:50] had some interesting news this last week.
[00:36:53] Um,
[00:36:55] so
[00:36:56] if you are on our mailing list,
[00:36:58] if you're a customer
[00:37:00] or ever once signed up,
[00:37:01] for On2Air
[00:37:02] you likely got an email from me
[00:37:05] last week talking about some changes that
[00:37:07] are happening with On2Air
[00:37:08] so I thought I'd address those
[00:37:10] for a second on the on the air
[00:37:14] as On2Air
[00:37:15] is our primary sponsor.
[00:37:17] So On2Air
[00:37:19] started
[00:37:20] two
[00:37:22] maybe four years ago.
[00:37:24] It started inside a Zapier
[00:37:27] actually is where On2Air
[00:37:28] started. We had
[00:37:31] products that well, we had a,
[00:37:32] a connector for Airtable
[00:37:34] that was better than the
[00:37:35] Zapier
[00:37:35] connector and this was before interfaces
[00:37:39] and it's evolved a ton over the years
[00:37:41] we've launched six or seven different
[00:37:43] apps. Some of those apps
[00:37:45] have already been sunsetted
[00:37:47] because they weren't getting used.
[00:37:50] But we did have several
[00:37:51] apps that, that were getting
[00:37:52] that we had very,
[00:37:54] very strong customers.
[00:37:56] But for a variety of reasons,
[00:37:59] we, we made
[00:38:00] you know, fairly difficult decision
[00:38:02] we did not take this lightly but
[00:38:04] decided that we needed to focus. We had
[00:38:07] just too many different
[00:38:09] strategies and apps
[00:38:11] pulling us in different
[00:38:12] directions.
[00:38:13] Each of those really required,
[00:38:16] dedicated staff that we just could not,
[00:38:18] finance with where we were at
[00:38:21] in our company.
[00:38:22] And so we, we made the difficult decision
[00:38:26] to sunset all of our apps except for
[00:38:28] backups
[00:38:29] and going forward On2Air
[00:38:31] is gonna focus on backups.
[00:38:34] We'll expand backups to do more
[00:38:37] actually that I,
[00:38:38] we talked briefly earlier about
[00:38:40] digital asset management.
[00:38:42] that's likely where
[00:38:44] we're going to address
[00:38:46] some of the, some of the issues
[00:38:48] of Airtable and, and, and make some
[00:38:50] improvements on that front.
[00:38:52] But backups is, is core to that
[00:38:54] managing your assets,
[00:38:54] making sure that they're backed up
[00:38:57] and kind of solving issues around,
[00:38:59] around your, your data
[00:39:01] and your assets and, and how to,
[00:39:04] better utilize them in Airtable. So
[00:39:07] going forward
[00:39:08] that is going to be our focus.
[00:39:10] If you remember the last four weeks,
[00:39:12] I only addressed backups just because I
[00:39:14] knew that this change was coming
[00:39:17] and didn't want to be promoting
[00:39:19] our other apps. We'd actually shut off new
[00:39:21] customers from using it
[00:39:23] about a month ago using any of the apps.
[00:39:26] And just wanna say thank you
[00:39:28] to all the customers that,
[00:39:30] that were using
[00:39:31] On2Air
[00:39:32] I've gotten very positive feedback.
[00:39:34] I was very worried about,
[00:39:36] you know,
[00:39:37] upsetting people's workflows.
[00:39:39] We have companies that rely on it pretty
[00:39:42] extensively to run their business.
[00:39:44] And they've been understanding,
[00:39:46] I know it's
[00:39:47] a difficult
[00:39:48] process to have to change your,
[00:39:50] your work flows and things like that.
[00:39:53] But I just wanna say thank you to
[00:39:55] those that have supported us to this point
[00:39:58] and really have appreciated the,
[00:40:01] the response that I've gotten from,
[00:40:02] from most people.
[00:40:04] I, I can't say
[00:40:05] 100% but most people have been,
[00:40:07] have been very supportive.
[00:40:09] And so thank you and going forward,
[00:40:11] we'll, we'll focus on solving
[00:40:13] that backup solution. That's always been
[00:40:16] our top producing app, our,
[00:40:18] our most popular app
[00:40:20] and kind of solves a need
[00:40:22] that I think we can address
[00:40:23] with the resources that we have and,
[00:40:25] and availability
[00:40:26] that we have going forward. So
[00:40:28] that is the update on On2Air
[00:40:30] if you have any questions
[00:40:31] or concerns or if this
[00:40:32] is news to you, you didn't get my email
[00:40:35] feel free. I am available to,
[00:40:37] to speak through and,
[00:40:39] and help people through that transition.
[00:40:41] So
[00:40:42] if you're using forms,
[00:40:43] we highly recommend fill out
[00:40:45] that's where we're sending
[00:40:46] people.
[00:40:47] Check your email.
[00:40:48] There's a coupon code to for On2Air
[00:40:50] customers to or users to,
[00:40:53] to take advantage
[00:40:55] of a discount. If you're using
[00:40:57] our
[00:40:57] documents,
[00:40:58] we're working, we were, we've partnered
[00:41:01] with documint as well as Docs
[00:41:03] automater
[00:41:04] to document management solutions.
[00:41:07] Both very solid.
[00:41:08] So similarly, there's, there's
[00:41:11] transition plans for both of those.
[00:41:13] So check the email or reach out
[00:41:15] to us and we'll help you
[00:41:17] with those transitions.
[00:41:18] But both, all three of those partners are,
[00:41:21] are are providing transition packages
[00:41:24] and, and support to help with that
[00:41:27] transition. So thank you to those partners
[00:41:30] and for, for your support on
[00:41:32] on helping out the On2Air customers.
[00:41:34] So,
[00:41:35] and Scott, I agree it's never a bad idea
[00:41:38] to focus in one direction.
[00:41:39] So
[00:41:40] that is what we're doing.
[00:41:43] All right, for my first spotlight,
[00:41:47] we're gonna talk about Automate Create.
[00:41:49] So this comes from
[00:41:52] actually the, the BuiltOnAir community
[00:41:55] Jackie money says needs some help
[00:41:58] and she puts a,
[00:41:59] a loom together and this isn't
[00:42:01] so much about, you know,
[00:42:02] what her specific issue is,
[00:42:04] but it looks like it's related to
[00:42:09] this issue with attachments
[00:42:12] or if you're doing any kind of like
[00:42:15] document creation.
[00:42:17] So like if you're using the,
[00:42:19] the doc, the Google doc integration within
[00:42:22] automations,
[00:42:23] sometimes you need your automation
[00:42:26] to just wait a minute
[00:42:28] for us or a second for
[00:42:30] for the process to end.
[00:42:32] So if you've ever uploaded an attachment,
[00:42:34] you know, you have to wait a couple
[00:42:36] of seconds for the attachment
[00:42:38] to actually be
[00:42:38] ready.
[00:42:39] I've used that and so I'm
[00:42:41] gonna walk through how you can
[00:42:43] insert a pause into your automation
[00:42:47] so you can wait
[00:42:48] and give something time to,
[00:42:50] to process or,
[00:42:51] or be ready before you're gonna
[00:42:53] move on to do something with it.
[00:42:56] And so they don't have a built in,
[00:43:00] they don't have a built
[00:43:01] in pause step.
[00:43:04] So what we're gonna do here is,
[00:43:07] oops,
[00:43:08] we have our people table.
[00:43:10] So this is just a basic example
[00:43:13] and we're gonna have a form
[00:43:15] where you're just creating a new person
[00:43:17] and you're gonna upload a,
[00:43:19] a headshot of that person
[00:43:21] and we want to know
[00:43:22] the status of, of that headshot.
[00:43:25] And
[00:43:26] there's a couple ways to do this.
[00:43:28] I used to do this a little bit different.
[00:43:29] There was more
[00:43:30] exact, but something changed in
[00:43:33] Airt`able that didn't allow it.
[00:43:34] So I
[00:43:35] actually changed to, I think
[00:43:37] Kuovonne
[00:43:38] suggested to, to put a wait
[00:43:41] in the automation. So
[00:43:43] what we're gonna do is on this form
[00:43:46] when you upload an attachment
[00:43:49] or submit the form,
[00:43:51] we're going to update the status.
[00:43:54] So this won't be on the form
[00:43:56] and we actually
[00:43:57] don't need any of this stuff.
[00:44:00] So we'll just give a name
[00:44:01] and a headshot. And then
[00:44:02] we're gonna have an automation
[00:44:04] that when this form is submitted,
[00:44:07] we want to update the,
[00:44:09] the status of the head of the headshot
[00:44:12] via the automation. And so by default,
[00:44:17] it will be
[00:44:18] the status will be initial
[00:44:20] and then we're gonna set it to processing
[00:44:23] when we start the process
[00:44:25] and then done once the,
[00:44:27] once the delay is over.
[00:44:28] So then we know that,
[00:44:29] that the headshot is ready to be used.
[00:44:31] So if you have another automation
[00:44:33] that uses that headshot in some way,
[00:44:36] you can wait until the status is done
[00:44:39] instead of when it's created.
[00:44:42] So you can wait for,
[00:44:43] for this status to get to them. So this,
[00:44:45] that would require two automations.
[00:44:47] So let's set up our automation.
[00:44:51] I'm gonna call it sleep
[00:44:52] because we're gonna sleep for a second.
[00:44:54] So basically, what we're gonna
[00:44:56] say is on the people table.
[00:44:59] Actually, we'll just do created.
[00:45:02] So this one is gonna
[00:45:03] run once the record is
[00:45:05] created.
[00:45:08] And
[00:45:09] on the people table,
[00:45:12] let me just do that.
[00:45:14] And then now we're gonna add here.
[00:45:17] So in order to implement a pause,
[00:45:19] first of all, what we're gonna do is um
[00:45:22] we're gonna update
[00:45:24] the record and we're gonna set
[00:45:26] the
[00:45:29] we're gonna set the
[00:45:31] the status to,
[00:45:34] oops,
[00:45:37] we're gonna set the status to
[00:45:43] to processing.
[00:45:44] So now we know that
[00:45:46] we're in the middle of waiting.
[00:45:48] So it kind of gives us a us a visual
[00:45:50] if you happen to be looking at the data
[00:45:53] and
[00:45:54] go on there.
[00:45:56] So that's
[00:45:57] now processing from initial
[00:46:00] and then now we're gonna,
[00:46:01] we're gonna put a pause in here.
[00:46:02] So in order to do a
[00:46:03] pause, we do need to implement a script.
[00:46:06] So you gotta do the run script logic
[00:46:10] and I'm gonna
[00:46:12] over
[00:46:13] my sleep function
[00:46:16] and I'll explain what this does.
[00:46:18] So it's a fairly simple sleep.
[00:46:21] So this function right here
[00:46:25] is because you can't
[00:46:30] this, this basically actually does
[00:46:36] I can't remember why I didn't use a sync
[00:46:38] or a wait, maybe those
[00:46:39] didn't work in here.
[00:46:41] But there's a couple ways in javascript,
[00:46:44] like if you've ever done javascript in
[00:46:45] a browser, there's a set time out,
[00:46:47] but you can't use that function inside of
[00:46:49] here.
[00:46:50] So I went with this approach
[00:46:53] and now I can't remember why
[00:46:55] I didn't use there.
[00:46:56] There's another way you could
[00:46:57] do it using promises
[00:46:59] in javascript.
[00:47:01] But maybe that didn't work
[00:47:03] and that's why I needed to do this.
[00:47:04] So basically, this is
[00:47:06] not good like this is not best practice,
[00:47:09] but I think this is what,
[00:47:10] what works.
[00:47:12] because this basically this wild loop,
[00:47:15] it runs continually.
[00:47:17] And so it's actually a do while.
[00:47:20] So what this means is
[00:47:22] it's going to update the current date
[00:47:25] with, with what the time stamp is now.
[00:47:27] And if
[00:47:30] the current date
[00:47:32] minus the, the date of
[00:47:34] when we started is less than
[00:47:37] the milliseconds,
[00:47:38] then keep doing this loop.
[00:47:40] So it basically will sleep.
[00:47:42] It'll basically be processing
[00:47:45] for the amount of milliseconds
[00:47:47] that you pass in
[00:47:48] to this function.
[00:47:50] And so milliseconds is 1, 1000
[00:47:53] milliseconds is one second.
[00:47:55] So this right here means
[00:47:57] we're gonna sleep for 10 seconds
[00:47:59] because it's 10,000 milliseconds.
[00:48:04] So this will basically
[00:48:06] just continually be processing inside
[00:48:09] of here over and over and over until
[00:48:12] the 10 seconds have passed
[00:48:15] and then it will continue
[00:48:17] and it will end this function
[00:48:19] and then move on.
[00:48:20] So we're gonna just put an output
[00:48:22] of when we start and then when we end,
[00:48:24] just to kind of see that it took
[00:48:27] 10 seconds to process.
[00:48:28] So if I test that this will take
[00:48:30] 10 seconds, this is gonna run.
[00:48:32] And the one thing that I'll say is
[00:48:35] automation scripts
[00:48:37] can only run for 30 seconds.
[00:48:40] So you can't sleep for more
[00:48:42] than 30 seconds.
[00:48:43] Otherwise, the automation will,
[00:48:45] will
[00:48:46] stop. And so now you
[00:48:48] see that took 10 seconds
[00:48:50] and we have our start time at 43 seconds
[00:48:53] and then our end time at 53 seconds.
[00:48:55] So
[00:48:56] it worked. So it took
[00:48:58] 10 seconds for this to
[00:49:00] to run.
[00:49:01] And so
[00:49:02] now that step is now we're gonna
[00:49:05] add one more step to update the record
[00:49:10] and update the same record ID.
[00:49:14] And then we're gonna just update the
[00:49:17] the status to done
[00:49:21] and now that's going to work. So
[00:49:24] if we turn this on,
[00:49:27] what we'll see is
[00:49:38] yeah, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna change this
[00:49:43] and we're running out of time,
[00:49:44] so I'm not gonna change it.
[00:49:47] OK. So I'm gonna fill out
[00:49:48] this form real fast
[00:49:53] and we're just gonna do
[00:49:57] my head shots
[00:50:00] on
[00:50:01] that.
[00:50:03] There you go.
[00:50:05] Do web shirts.
[00:50:10] What do I feel like today?
[00:50:12] I feel like Tom Cruise.
[00:50:19] Ok.
[00:50:21] And now when I submit this
[00:50:23] and if I go back to the data,
[00:50:25] let's look at the data.
[00:50:27] So now it's processing,
[00:50:28] so this should be processing
[00:50:30] for 10 seconds
[00:50:31] and then it should switch
[00:50:33] to done after 10 seconds.
[00:50:35] So that gives enough time
[00:50:37] for that image to do the conversion
[00:50:39] and then there it
[00:50:40] goes after 10 seconds. So
[00:50:42] that's how you implement
[00:50:44] a pause in your automation. So
[00:50:48] just a little bit of code
[00:50:49] we'll make that available.
[00:50:52] And Scott your question,
[00:50:54] it's each script is my understanding.
[00:50:56] So each step is 30 seconds.
[00:50:58] So you could have multiple steps
[00:51:01] that each ran 30
[00:51:01] seconds. So yeah, so you could
[00:51:04] add multiple steps
[00:51:05] if you needed to sleep to wait
[00:51:07] longer, I guess.
[00:51:10] All right. That concludes that one.
[00:51:13] How are we doing?
[00:51:14] Are we ready or you need more time?
[00:51:18] I can do it.
[00:51:21] I can go on, I could get,
[00:51:23] I could take a a minute
[00:51:24] talk real briefly on web
[00:51:25] clipping. Unless you're ready to go.
[00:51:28] You want a minute,
[00:51:30] maybe one minute?
[00:51:31] OK,
[00:51:32] let's talk about web clipper
[00:51:34] OK, while they're finishing
[00:51:36] up Web clipper
[00:51:38] is the top
[00:51:41] is it's the, it's the extension
[00:51:43] that I use the most I use it for this,
[00:51:46] this show. I'll show you how I do that.
[00:51:49] So basically what it is you
[00:51:52] have to install it into your base
[00:51:54] and then there's a chrome extension
[00:51:56] and it'll provide you the link
[00:51:58] to install the chrome extension.
[00:52:01] This is what the chrome
[00:52:03] extension looks like,
[00:52:04] it brings up the sidebar
[00:52:06] and then you can have multiple
[00:52:09] clippings that will
[00:52:11] basically allow you to,
[00:52:13] it's almost like a mini
[00:52:14] form inside your Chrome browser
[00:52:17] that allows you to fill out a form
[00:52:19] and then submit and create a new record.
[00:52:23] And so this is how I use,
[00:52:26] this is how I use the BuiltOnAir links
[00:52:28] that we're talking about.
[00:52:30] So the Round the Bases,
[00:52:32] it does some cool stuff.
[00:52:34] So if I'm on any website,
[00:52:36] it automatically puts the URL
[00:52:38] into this field and then it has a dropdown
[00:52:41] of where I'm pulling it from.
[00:52:43] And then there's more
[00:52:44] information I can put on it
[00:52:46] and then this just automatically
[00:52:49] creates a new record inside of my table.
[00:52:53] So how it works is
[00:52:55] it go over to extensions,
[00:52:57] so you install it
[00:52:58] and then it shows up in here
[00:53:00] and then you just configure
[00:53:02] what fields you want on
[00:53:03] that pop-up
[00:53:05] and they link to fields in your base.
[00:53:08] And then it also has
[00:53:10] some information where
[00:53:12] the default value can be
[00:53:14] the page URL, the page title
[00:53:17] or your selected text
[00:53:19] or you can even use CS S
[00:53:22] if you're familiar with CS S.
[00:53:26] oh, that didn't show,
[00:53:28] it's interesting. It doesn't show
[00:53:30] on the video,
[00:53:31] but I'm actually clicking the
[00:53:32] drop down and there's a list
[00:53:33] of options in for this default value.
[00:53:37] and, so if you're familiar with CS S
[00:53:40] and how to like, select an html element,
[00:53:43] you can use that so you can actually
[00:53:45] use it almost as like a scraper,
[00:53:47] a manual scraper.
[00:53:48] I've seen people do it like on
[00:53:50] linkedin, you could scrape the,
[00:53:52] the person's information
[00:53:53] that you're looking at things like that
[00:53:55] are pretty cool.
[00:53:57] So, it's tied to the user that
[00:54:00] you're logged in with and so that kind of
[00:54:03] can be confusing,
[00:54:05] but it's very useful to get data into
[00:54:09] Airtable that you're browsing
[00:54:11] the internet for. So highly recommend web
[00:54:14] clipper
[00:54:15] and
[00:54:16] installing that and using it.
[00:54:19] So with that, we've got a few minutes.
[00:54:21] Quick shout out, join our community
[00:54:24] builtonair.com/join
[00:54:25] we just passed 1500 users
[00:54:27] in our slack community.
[00:54:29] So now we're going for 2000.
[00:54:31] So tell your friends to join us
[00:54:34] in the in the Slack community
[00:54:36] on the podcast.
[00:54:36] Subscribe to the youtube channel.
[00:54:38] We'd love to have you join.
[00:54:40] All right, we're ready for a competition.
[00:54:43] Alli and Kamille who wants to go first?
[00:54:47] I can go.
[00:54:48] Ok.
[00:54:50] I didn't do much.
[00:54:51] So
[00:54:53] I'll first tell you that
[00:54:56] I gave them a mouse colony
[00:54:58] template from the universe. So,
[00:55:00] dealing with mice in a university setting,
[00:55:04] that's what they get to play with
[00:55:07] ya.
[00:55:08] All right,
[00:55:08] Alli, you're up.
[00:55:10] All right.
[00:55:12] So, yeah, I like Kamille.
[00:55:14] I also did not do much but I discovered
[00:55:16] something that I was annoyed
[00:55:18] with about interface charts,
[00:55:20] which was, so did I Alli.
[00:55:23] That's where all my time went.
[00:55:25] I know. Right. I'm like, oh no.
[00:55:28] So one thing I did
[00:55:30] when I came in and I noticed
[00:55:32] basically the originally this column,
[00:55:37] the primary field in both this table
[00:55:39] was originally named weight tracker
[00:55:42] and the primary field
[00:55:44] was just a date which was not
[00:55:46] unique. So you can see that they've
[00:55:49] got 6 24 several times
[00:55:51] 7 1 several times and
[00:55:52] that was the primary field.
[00:55:53] So I duplicated that date field
[00:55:56] moved it over
[00:55:57] and wrote a formula to concatenate
[00:55:59] the mouse number with the date.
[00:56:02] So that way everything is unique on this
[00:56:04] table.
[00:56:05] Because that is best practice
[00:56:08] when using primary fields and Airtable.
[00:56:11] Another thing I noticed is that
[00:56:13] they had two tables,
[00:56:15] they had weight tracker
[00:56:16] and this fed blood glucose table,
[00:56:18] which essentially had exactly
[00:56:20] the same fields.
[00:56:21] With the exception of this one
[00:56:23] had a
[00:56:23] place for glucose numbers
[00:56:26] and the weight tracker
[00:56:28] had a place for weight numbers.
[00:56:30] So I combined those into one table
[00:56:33] and added a field
[00:56:34] called data type where I've
[00:56:36] got the weight tracker and then
[00:56:38] the fed blood glucose data
[00:56:39] as something separate.
[00:56:41] And the reason I did that is so that
[00:56:43] you can use an interface page.
[00:56:46] Not only is it like, you know,
[00:56:48] you've got the same fields on every table.
[00:56:50] So if I wanted to start adding
[00:56:51] something to this one,
[00:56:52] I'd have to go to the
[00:56:52] other one and add it too.
[00:56:56] But in an interface,
[00:56:57] this allows you to
[00:56:59] actually filter all of it
[00:57:01] by if I wanna see just
[00:57:03] the data for the male mice,
[00:57:06] then that will let me see
[00:57:08] the weight data and charts
[00:57:09] and the glucose data
[00:57:11] and charts filtered at the same
[00:57:12] time. Whereas if they're on
[00:57:14] two different tables,
[00:57:15] you would need to have
[00:57:15] two different filters,
[00:57:17] one for the glucose,
[00:57:18] one for the weight.
[00:57:20] But what I noticed and I'm sure
[00:57:22] that this is what Kamille noticed as well
[00:57:24] is in the base,
[00:57:26] they have these lovely scatter plots
[00:57:28] which look awesome.
[00:57:32] And they're grouped
[00:57:34] by the genotype of the mice.
[00:57:38] But in the interface,
[00:57:40] you cannot group a scatter plot
[00:57:43] and that
[00:57:44] is a huge bummer.
[00:57:46] Another thing that they have is
[00:57:49] on the glucose ones, they've got
[00:57:53] um
[00:57:56] uh the average is the mean of the
[00:57:58] group.
[00:57:59] So this would be the average
[00:58:01] glucose levels per genotype.
[00:58:03] You can't group a chart that has averages
[00:58:08] either.
[00:58:09] So this looks really nice
[00:58:11] with the pretty colors.
[00:58:12] But if you want something
[00:58:14] by the average,
[00:58:15] you lose the ability to group and
[00:58:17] everything has to be the same color.
[00:58:21] So that's where I found my annoyances,
[00:58:23] but I do like that. You can now filter it
[00:58:24] all at the same time and
[00:58:26] all the data will change accordingly.
[00:58:30] That's what I got.
[00:58:32] Nice. Get inside there.
[00:58:35] Right. Kamille.
[00:58:38] So really quickly,
[00:58:39] something I noticed there was a,
[00:58:42] a check box.
[00:58:42] That's just are they
[00:58:45] diabetic in the mice table?
[00:58:48] And then I didn't combine the tables,
[00:58:51] but you probably should based on
[00:58:54] Alli's observations that they're
[00:58:56] effectively the same table.
[00:58:57] I added a couple of
[00:58:59] different fields uh to get
[00:59:02] the
[00:59:04] roll up of the latest date
[00:59:06] for any particular mouse.
[00:59:09] And then a formula that
[00:59:11] says
[00:59:12] is this
[00:59:14] log the latest output
[00:59:16] for that particular mouse.
[00:59:19] And then back in the mice table,
[00:59:21] I was able to get another field that's
[00:59:23] saying whether or not based
[00:59:25] on the latest data
[00:59:27] we have available for that mouse,
[00:59:28] is that mouse diabetic
[00:59:30] rather than it just being
[00:59:31] a regular check mark.
[00:59:32] And then with more time,
[00:59:34] you might have an automation
[00:59:36] that says when this
[00:59:37] becomes goes from normal
[00:59:39] to diabetic,
[00:59:40] then click this check and vice versa.
[00:59:43] So keeping those automated
[00:59:45] while giving you the ability
[00:59:47] to check for ones that
[00:59:49] don't have any logs yet
[00:59:50] and then really quickly
[00:59:53] I built a
[00:59:56] you know, using the full screen
[00:59:59] interface, they don't have a record name
[01:00:02] for mouse. So I chose people
[01:00:06] that was fun.
[01:00:08] And then something that one might do
[01:00:14] laying out all of, you know,
[01:00:16] the information
[01:00:17] for a particular mouse at a
[01:00:18] particular time and then
[01:00:20] using the linked records for
[01:00:24] both the glucose and the weight
[01:00:26] tracker as this is the list view.
[01:00:27] So it just, you know,
[01:00:29] like we said earlier, it looks pretty,
[01:00:31] it's nice and clean. You'd be able to
[01:00:33] filter and and all that
[01:00:35] if I had those enabled.
[01:00:36] But if you combine the tables
[01:00:38] like Alli did, you would now be
[01:00:40] able to group by record type using that
[01:00:43] field that Alli added.
[01:00:44] So you'd still be able
[01:00:46] to do the same thing
[01:00:47] with slightly less.
[01:00:49] So
[01:00:50] that's all I've got
[01:00:52] very good, good stuff.
[01:00:55] I love it. You can 10,
[01:00:57] 10, 15 minutes,
[01:00:58] you can improve upon a base and get
[01:01:01] some insight on
[01:01:02] how the experts work.
[01:01:04] So, thank you Alli and Kamille
[01:01:07] and that
[01:01:08] is a wrap for today.
[01:01:10] Thank you for joining us
[01:01:11] on the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[01:01:12] We will see you next week.
[01:01:15] Ya. Thank you.