10/3/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S16-E01

Duration: 60 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 – 00:04:15 –

Meet the Creators – 00:33:30 –

Meet Garrett Loughran.

Base Showcase – 00:39:51 –

We dive into a full working base that will Garrett will share how he uses Airtable to manage public works contracts that are extremely competitive.

Automate Create – 00:52:27 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille will share part 1 of a 2 part series on using n8n with Airtable to manage webhooks and refreshing them.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:04:15

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:33:30

Garrett Loughran – Grew up in a family construction business just like my dad and his dad (grandpa). Now working elsewhere where I guess my official job title would be chief estimator/project manager for a general civil engineering contractor. We focus on public works contracts (stuff for cities and counties and government agencies. Not Joe Developers) where projects are competitively bid (meaning 2:00 p.m. on a Thursday you submit a bid and our bid is $1 more than the lowest bid and we are a 'better' company, They have to take the lowest bid because it's public funding)

Meet Garrett Loughran.

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:39:51

Project Bids for Public Works Projects

We dive into a full working base that will Garrett will share how he uses Airtable to manage public works contracts that are extremely competitive.

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:52:27

Airtable Automations – Airtable Webhook Refreshes using n8n

Watch as we review and work through automations. Kamille will share part 1 of a 2 part series on using n8n with Airtable to manage webhooks and refreshing them.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to the BuiltOnAir Podcast.
[00:01:44] It's good to be back with you after a
[00:01:46] month off. We are now starting
[00:01:49] season 16, episode one
[00:01:51] of the BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:53] Dan Fellars here with
[00:01:55] regular host Kamille Parks
[00:01:57] and
[00:01:57] Alli Alosa. Good to see both of you back.
[00:02:01] Hello,
[00:02:03] had eventful last September, I assume.
[00:02:07] Oh, yeah.
[00:02:08] Yeah.
[00:02:11] Yes, I have
[00:02:14] and
[00:02:15] Alli will have an eventful October
[00:02:18] with us.
[00:02:19] I will, I'll be here as
[00:02:21] long as I can be here.
[00:02:23] But I am due on Halloween
[00:02:25] with my first baby. So
[00:02:27] exciting stuff.
[00:02:29] So we may get a few
[00:02:31] more episodes, with Alli
[00:02:34] assume you'll take some time off.
[00:02:35] I don't know,
[00:02:36] maybe you'll be back the week
[00:02:37] after.
[00:02:39] We'll see. I might not
[00:02:40] be able to stay away.
[00:02:42] Yeah, we'll see how that goes.
[00:02:43] But good to have you
[00:02:45] both back and we have a
[00:02:46] special guest with us, Garrett.
[00:02:48] Good to have you, Garrett.
[00:02:49] Thank you.
[00:02:51] Good. Good to have you on the show.
[00:02:53] We'll, we'll learn more about Garrett and
[00:02:55] his story later in the show.
[00:02:56] But, I'll walk you through
[00:02:58] what we're gonna be
[00:02:59] talking about today.
[00:03:00] As always, we will continue our,
[00:03:02] our normal format.
[00:03:03] We'll start with our Round
[00:03:05] the Bases
[00:03:05] of what's going on in Airtable.
[00:03:08] This month has been, very active.
[00:03:10] Lots of stuff going on
[00:03:11] that we've got to talk about
[00:03:13] and then we'll do a spotlight on
[00:03:15] On2Air backups. On2Air is now focused
[00:03:18] entirely on backups.
[00:03:20] We have a new screen for this season
[00:03:23] and we'll talk about backups
[00:03:24] and then we'll learn
[00:03:26] more about the Garrett
[00:03:27] Loughran
[00:03:28] is that how you say your last name?
[00:03:31] It's close enough. Loughran
[00:03:33] is how
[00:03:35] to pronounce it, but I'm not
[00:03:36] quite sure where that came from.
[00:03:38] All right, we'll visit with Garrett,
[00:03:40] learn his story and how he found Airtable.
[00:03:42] Then Garret's gonna be walking us
[00:03:45] through a live example of how he
[00:03:47] uses Airtable in his
[00:03:49] day to day business and work
[00:03:51] and then a shout out to
[00:03:53] join our community.
[00:03:54] And then finally Kamille is gonna
[00:03:55] walk through
[00:03:56] using Airtable with n8n.
[00:03:59] If you've heard of that tool,
[00:04:01] n8n.io I believe is the website
[00:04:04] and we'll do that. So
[00:04:07] let's kick off
[00:04:09] with our Round the Bases
[00:04:12] all right.
[00:04:14] There was a
[00:04:15] somewhat
[00:04:19] interesting
[00:04:21] incident that happened.
[00:04:24] Middle of September,
[00:04:26] we got a message from the CEO of Airtable.
[00:04:29] I think it, this first hit Forbes,
[00:04:31] I think was where it first hit
[00:04:33] massive layoffs at Airtable
[00:04:37] 237 people out of what, close to 1000.
[00:04:43] So I think it was
[00:04:45] 27% or something like that. Something
[00:04:48] percent.
[00:04:50] Yeah. So massive massive layoffs,
[00:04:53] mostly impacting
[00:04:55] in implementation specialists,
[00:04:58] sales people
[00:04:59] and really just doubling down focusing
[00:05:02] on Airtable. Howie makes it very
[00:05:04] clear of what their focus is
[00:05:07] going forward and focusing on enterprise
[00:05:11] customers.
[00:05:13] So,
[00:05:15] yeah, very, very unfortunate,
[00:05:17] sad to hear for those that,
[00:05:19] that were let go.
[00:05:21] And there is lots of reaction,
[00:05:23] I'll just quickly go through.
[00:05:25] We won't talk about all of them,
[00:05:27] but lots of reaction
[00:05:29] about that. Lots of discussion
[00:05:31] on the BuiltOnAir community.
[00:05:33] There was
[00:05:35] oh, that's not live anymore.
[00:05:38] Ben and Chris did a live show
[00:05:41] talking about it on
[00:05:42] the Facebook community.
[00:05:46] It was discussed on the Airtable forums.
[00:05:48] We'll talk a little bit about this
[00:05:50] later. But anyways, lots of
[00:05:52] discussion obviously everywhere.
[00:05:54] Thoughts, reaction
[00:05:56] when you heard this news?
[00:05:58] Since the links not live anymore,
[00:06:01] I can, I watched it and I might be able to
[00:06:03] paraphrase a little bit of what the
[00:06:05] Ben and Chris live stream was.
[00:06:07] I don't want to put words in their mouth,
[00:06:09] but what I recall from their sort of
[00:06:11] analysis is that
[00:06:13] one, this isn't the first time Airtable
[00:06:15] has said we're gonna focus on
[00:06:16] enterprise. They said it last year
[00:06:18] and I think it was also coupled with some
[00:06:19] layoffs and this
[00:06:20] was coupled with even more layoffs
[00:06:22] and we're gonna even more focus on
[00:06:25] enterprise. And so Chris was saying,
[00:06:27] he wasn't really surprised and that,
[00:06:29] you know, he's been saying it
[00:06:31] for a while now they're gonna gung
[00:06:32] ho on enterprise. And Ben was saying
[00:06:35] this might end up being a blessing
[00:06:37] in disguise
[00:06:38] for the people on the consulting
[00:06:39] side and Airtable, meaning that,
[00:06:42] you know,
[00:06:43] you can't get support from Airtable
[00:06:45] now, if you're on the team's plan,
[00:06:46] formerly known as the pro plan,
[00:06:48] so who are you gonna come to?
[00:06:50] The Airtable consultants. And so
[00:06:52] it's gonna shift a lot of people
[00:06:54] to be more focused on that.
[00:06:56] They also sort of
[00:06:57] quelled some fears about the
[00:06:59] api limitations that were put on it.
[00:07:01] It was really kind of
[00:07:04] no, it's their opinion
[00:07:06] and opinion of many people that
[00:07:08] there's certain types of businesses
[00:07:10] that are going to be hit by the API limit.
[00:07:12] And
[00:07:13] the a good majority of Airtable users
[00:07:16] your day to day kind of folks and the
[00:07:18] smaller sort of businesses
[00:07:20] that don't have a lot of third party
[00:07:22] integrations are
[00:07:23] probably going to be fine
[00:07:25] with regard to the new api limitations.
[00:07:27] And so those were some of the
[00:07:29] sentiments thrown around and of course,
[00:07:31] you know, from a more negative side,
[00:07:33] it sucks when people lose their job.
[00:07:35] It, you know, it's just not great that
[00:07:38] it was a considerable amount of people.
[00:07:40] There was,
[00:07:42] you know, talk on linkedin every,
[00:07:44] you know, all of the people
[00:07:46] who were recently
[00:07:46] laid off, but there's some good
[00:07:49] camaraderie in like the
[00:07:51] Post Airtable Alumni
[00:07:53] program. I'm just gonna call it
[00:07:55] because they all sort of are grouping
[00:07:57] together and trying to help each other
[00:07:59] refocus. So.
[00:08:05] Any other feedback?
[00:08:08] Super sad.
[00:08:11] I know a lot of clients that this,
[00:08:13] this made them pretty nervous to see,
[00:08:15] especially on top of the layoffs,
[00:08:17] layoffs that happened in December.
[00:08:20] I can only hope that
[00:08:23] we had to see some positives
[00:08:25] out of it somehow.
[00:08:27] But
[00:08:28] yeah, I feel for everybody
[00:08:30] that was laid off,
[00:08:32] it feels like the positives are going
[00:08:34] to be on the side of, you know,
[00:08:36] the, the enterprise level customers
[00:08:38] because that's,
[00:08:38] that's where they're saying
[00:08:39] they're gonna put a lot of focus
[00:08:41] and effort into.
[00:08:42] There's gotta be a lot of,
[00:08:44] in my opinion, improvements for
[00:08:46] Airtable as an enterprise product
[00:08:48] for me to take this with,
[00:08:50] you know,
[00:08:51] the seriousness it might
[00:08:53] deserve in that
[00:08:55] they've made improvements this year
[00:08:57] with enterprise hub and things like that
[00:08:59] for bulk user management.
[00:09:01] But as an enterprise product,
[00:09:03] there are several
[00:09:04] elements that are still lacking
[00:09:06] and I feel like this move,
[00:09:08] feels immature had
[00:09:09] been made
[00:09:10] more not immature.
[00:09:12] What is it premature,
[00:09:14] sorry, premature.
[00:09:18] Had they made some of those more
[00:09:20] improvements,
[00:09:21] improving it as a product for
[00:09:22] enterprise. This would have it made
[00:09:24] more sense to me now. It just feels like,
[00:09:27] oh, we're gonna focus
[00:09:28] on enterprise eventually. Well,
[00:09:31] it's, there's some of the language in,
[00:09:34] there was a Forbes article where they
[00:09:36] had some quotes from Howie where
[00:09:38] it was a little like, ok, like,
[00:09:40] they basically were like,
[00:09:42] we're not interested
[00:09:42] in the tens of thousands a year clients,
[00:09:44] we're interested in the million dollar
[00:09:46] a year clients.
[00:09:47] It's like, ok, well,
[00:09:49] I can understand that to a point, but
[00:09:51] to Kamille's point,
[00:09:53] they're, they're not quite,
[00:09:55] there's a lot missing for them
[00:09:57] to be a true
[00:09:58] million dollar a year enterprise
[00:10:00] product, like a lot of security
[00:10:02] compliance and record limits.
[00:10:04] That's like huge.
[00:10:07] But hopefully we see those
[00:10:09] things start to change.
[00:10:11] Yeah.
[00:10:12] What,
[00:10:13] what would you say to SNB
[00:10:16] business owners that are
[00:10:19] considering Airtable or on Airtable?
[00:10:22] How do, how, what, what advice would
[00:10:24] you have to people in that kind of bucket
[00:10:26] as far as like using Airtable? And
[00:10:28] Garrett maybe this is a question for you
[00:10:31] as a, somebody in that space?
[00:10:32] How does this make you
[00:10:34] feel long term stability wise?
[00:10:37] Comfort level,
[00:10:40] I think with any software,
[00:10:43] any, you know,
[00:10:45] service as a software, if you will.
[00:10:49] I get kind of nervous
[00:10:51] like I just assume it's not gonna last,
[00:10:53] like my entire career. So
[00:10:58] I
[00:10:58] expect it
[00:10:59] Yeah,
[00:11:00] it, it, it's,
[00:11:02] it's in a weird place for me
[00:11:04] because it's not like Airtable
[00:11:06] is a poor product.
[00:11:07] It does a lot of things very well
[00:11:10] and I think it's better suited for small
[00:11:12] business, even if that's not
[00:11:14] who their target customer is anymore.
[00:11:17] I think it is still a good product for,
[00:11:20] launching and prototyping
[00:11:22] businesses and, and
[00:11:24] different workflows
[00:11:25] and things using Airtable.
[00:11:27] But it is unwise to put all your eggs
[00:11:30] in one basket. Because,
[00:11:32] you know, in the world of tech,
[00:11:35] sometimes companies just disappear.
[00:11:36] I see we have some tabs lined up
[00:11:39] for the artist, formerly
[00:11:40] known as Twitter and
[00:11:41] sometimes companies
[00:11:43] make odd decisions. And so,
[00:11:45] you know,
[00:11:46] if you're starting, you know,
[00:11:48] if you don't already use
[00:11:49] Airtable and you're
[00:11:50] starting,
[00:11:51] I wouldn't discourage you
[00:11:53] from learning, but I would,
[00:11:54] you know, advice from Bill French
[00:11:56] who's a friend of the show
[00:11:58] is to really think
[00:11:59] critically about what your
[00:12:01] business requirements are.
[00:12:02] What do you need for your business
[00:12:04] and try to find the
[00:12:06] best tool or tools that
[00:12:07] get you to that point.
[00:12:08] A lot of the time is gonna be Airtable.
[00:12:11] Sometimes it's not gonna be Airtable
[00:12:14] and whatever you decide upon,
[00:12:15] make sure you got some contingencies
[00:12:18] in place in case they start
[00:12:20] saying things like this,
[00:12:21] we're not your target customer anymore.
[00:12:24] You know,
[00:12:25] you wanna be mobile agile
[00:12:28] and other quotes from
[00:12:30] I believe
[00:12:31] I'm thinking of.
[00:12:33] Remember the Titans.
[00:12:37] Very good.
[00:12:38] Scott mentioned Steve Job knew the way
[00:12:41] to take over an industry was to focus
[00:12:43] on small businesses and individuals
[00:12:44] iphone took over enterprise
[00:12:46] from the bottom
[00:12:46] up.
[00:12:49] So, yeah, so anyways,
[00:12:52] lots of, lots of reaction.
[00:12:54] I know, I know Chris, I also listened to,
[00:12:57] to the episode and Chris had,
[00:12:59] Chris kind of like settled down fears.
[00:13:02] He was like,
[00:13:03] you know, I, I wouldn't worry
[00:13:05] too much. I think there will be clarity
[00:13:09] going forward hopefully.
[00:13:11] So the next thing I first saw this on,
[00:13:15] shout out to Table Forums,
[00:13:17] a great online source
[00:13:19] to see conversations about Airtable.
[00:13:22] And Bill French,
[00:13:24] who you talked about Kamille,
[00:13:26] he likes to pontificate often
[00:13:29] and shout out to his,
[00:13:31] his blog and newsletter. If you want to
[00:13:36] get the latest from, from his brain,
[00:13:38] you should, you should subscribe to that.
[00:13:40] But
[00:13:41] this, this kind of was an interesting take
[00:13:43] and it led me down kind of a rabbit
[00:13:45] hole and we'll talk a little bit
[00:13:47] about this.
[00:13:47] So he wrote,
[00:13:49] he wrote a blog post talking about
[00:13:51] the financials
[00:13:52] of what's publicly available
[00:13:54] and what we know and what it might
[00:13:56] mean for Airtable.
[00:13:58] And so he references first the all in
[00:14:01] podcast, which is a very popular tech
[00:14:03] podcast of some venture
[00:14:06] capitalists and entrepreneurs
[00:14:09] in the Silicon Valley world.
[00:14:11] Talking about Airtable specifically and
[00:14:13] referencing a Twitter
[00:14:15] thread or a, an X thread
[00:14:18] from Anand
[00:14:19] who runs CB insights,
[00:14:22] so very, very influential financial
[00:14:26] person that
[00:14:29] that
[00:14:31] is talking about this.
[00:14:32] And he ran an analysis based off
[00:14:35] of a number that he got from somewhere
[00:14:38] that Airtable's ARR was 100 and 50 million
[00:14:43] and based off of that number
[00:14:44] did some analysis
[00:14:46] that basically showed that it may
[00:14:47] not even be worth,
[00:14:49] you know, 1/10 of what it was
[00:14:51] last valued at its last round.
[00:14:53] Last investment round where
[00:14:55] it is valued almost at $12 billion.
[00:14:58] So there is some interesting back
[00:15:00] and forth here.
[00:15:01] If you go through this thread,
[00:15:02] lots of responses. This is somebody that,
[00:15:04] you know, is influential in the world
[00:15:06] of investing. And so he got
[00:15:09] feedback from people.
[00:15:12] One of them was Max who
[00:15:14] is actually on the board of Airtable
[00:15:17] and basically said this
[00:15:18] is wildly inaccurate data
[00:15:20] and sent him a DM to talk about it.
[00:15:24] So then
[00:15:25] Anand responded and based off of
[00:15:28] that gave some more updated information.
[00:15:32] Actually, this is,
[00:15:35] let's see, where's
[00:15:42] shoot. This is not the one.
[00:15:49] Yeah, he gives an updated analysis
[00:15:52] here.
[00:15:54] No, shoot. He did give an update
[00:15:56] analysis using a number
[00:15:58] more around 300 million.
[00:16:00] So, but he doesn't say if he got
[00:16:02] that directly from Max, he says,
[00:16:03] Max couldn't share specifics.
[00:16:05] So
[00:16:06] based off of the feedback that he got,
[00:16:09] I also saw comments in there from
[00:16:11] current Airtable
[00:16:14] employees saying that the
[00:16:16] numbers were wildly wrong.
[00:16:18] And so somewhere there's
[00:16:21] you know, numbers floating out there of,
[00:16:23] of what their numbers might be.
[00:16:24] But
[00:16:25] assuming based off it is updated
[00:16:27] that it might be closer to 300 million
[00:16:29] that still gives a pretty high valuation,
[00:16:32] but not nearly as bad as,
[00:16:33] as the original analysis. So
[00:16:35] anyways, lots of discussion,
[00:16:37] there was another thread
[00:16:38] of somebody else who kind
[00:16:39] of
[00:16:40] gives a counter example based off
[00:16:43] of his understanding of secondary markets
[00:16:46] and
[00:16:46] where things are at. So anyways,
[00:16:48] lots of discussion in the Twitter verse
[00:16:51] verse of
[00:16:53] where things are at, how bad it is.
[00:16:56] You know what the layoffs might be
[00:16:58] indicating as far as the stability of
[00:17:01] Airtable.
[00:17:01] So and, and what their plans are, but
[00:17:04] you know, nobody knows the truth,
[00:17:06] nobody's come out
[00:17:07] definitively of where things
[00:17:08] are at. But
[00:17:09] quite a lot of discussion.
[00:17:14] If you, if you like that stuff,
[00:17:16] you know, feel free to,
[00:17:17] to follow all this on
[00:17:18] Twitter, we'll have the links.
[00:17:21] But also Bill French has a good write up
[00:17:25] if you want to follow his,
[00:17:27] his discussions as well.
[00:17:29] And there's also some
[00:17:31] discussion on TableForums.
[00:17:34] All right.
[00:17:35] Any comments on that, any thoughts there?
[00:17:40] Interested to see what happens next.
[00:17:43] If they're overvalued
[00:17:45] and wanna match that valuation,
[00:17:47] you would probably want to go after
[00:17:50] very large contracts to sort of
[00:17:52] get the revenue and that would
[00:17:54] be enterprise customers. So,
[00:17:56] you know,
[00:17:57] from an outside perspective,
[00:17:59] I can see that logic in terms of,
[00:18:02] I would probably wanna make more money.
[00:18:04] Let's go after enterprise clients,
[00:18:06] which they could have arrived at,
[00:18:07] even if they were valued at what they are,
[00:18:10] you know,
[00:18:11] how much they should be valued at
[00:18:13] or whatever that is, should,
[00:18:15] feels weird in a financial sense.
[00:18:17] But like,
[00:18:18] you know, they probably would have
[00:18:20] went that way eventually anyway,
[00:18:21] but they might have gone
[00:18:23] that way now because,
[00:18:24] you know, maybe they wanna hit
[00:18:26] certain numbers and in order to do that,
[00:18:28] you need larger contracts,
[00:18:31] I think it's also an indicator of just,
[00:18:34] you know,
[00:18:35] when they raised their funding,
[00:18:37] the markets were just crazy hot
[00:18:40] with just tons of cash flow
[00:18:42] being thrown at
[00:18:42] these companies. Notion,
[00:18:44] I know also raised at a crazy valuation
[00:18:47] and it was almost like
[00:18:49] free money to them. But,
[00:18:50] you know, there's no such thing
[00:18:52] as a free lunch.
[00:18:53] Like now it's coming back to
[00:18:54] where now they've got to live up
[00:18:56] to that target
[00:18:57] valuation that they raised that.
[00:18:59] And so they're trying to figure out
[00:19:01] how to, how to live up to that number.
[00:19:03] And
[00:19:04] so that's just the reality of,
[00:19:06] of raising at that, at that high of a,
[00:19:09] you know, price and,
[00:19:11] and the money isn't flowing
[00:19:12] nearly as, as freely now and,
[00:19:14] and
[00:19:14] so the revenue isn't coming,
[00:19:16] I'm sure as easily as it was before.
[00:19:18] And, and so that's what led to
[00:19:21] all the changes.
[00:19:23] And I think we're gonna see more
[00:19:25] of this in venture capital
[00:19:26] world in, in Silicon Valley.
[00:19:31] So,
[00:19:32] all right, let's move on.
[00:19:37] This was actually kind of a follow up.
[00:19:39] There is actually some product,
[00:19:41] updates and this is, this is just kind of
[00:19:44] one follow up to the pricing.
[00:19:46] You kind of alluded to a Kamille that,
[00:19:49] the limits on, on API S
[00:19:52] one question is, is when are they
[00:19:54] gonna start implementing this?
[00:19:55] And this has been asked a lot as far as,
[00:19:59] you know, how do we even track it?
[00:20:01] And basically the consensus is their
[00:20:03] Airtable
[00:20:04] doesn't disclose, doesn't show you
[00:20:06] how many API calls you're actually
[00:20:09] using
[00:20:10] and until they do they're not gonna
[00:20:12] really enforce it.
[00:20:13] So I think these are kind
[00:20:15] of considered soft limits
[00:20:16] unless it's being abused.
[00:20:18] That's kind of the language I've seen
[00:20:20] is if somebody's really abusing it,
[00:20:22] then they might,
[00:20:23] you know, shut it off
[00:20:24] and because they have that clause now,
[00:20:26] but for the most part,
[00:20:28] I think people are safe
[00:20:30] in how they've been using it for,
[00:20:32] for now.
[00:20:34] I wish they would just tell us though,
[00:20:37] even, even if just now for before the
[00:20:39] limit is put in place,
[00:20:41] it's nice to track where your
[00:20:43] API calls are coming from
[00:20:45] too because you might have hooked up
[00:20:47] several different services.
[00:20:48] And I was in a thread with again,
[00:20:51] Bill French and others
[00:20:53] that were speculating if you had
[00:20:56] a, a website powered by Airtable
[00:20:58] using a portal software
[00:21:00] such as like Softr
[00:21:02] or glide or stacker, et cetera.
[00:21:05] That's calling the API.
[00:21:07] How are they calling the API?
[00:21:09] Are they cache
[00:21:10] things? So it's calling less often
[00:21:12] when are they cache?
[00:21:14] Is it on every page load
[00:21:15] or is it just on updates?
[00:21:17] Is there a standard refresh
[00:21:19] time? Some of that is probably
[00:21:21] buried somewhere in their text.
[00:21:22] But it's
[00:21:23] good to just log in and see
[00:21:26] for my Airtable instance, I've done
[00:21:29] 200 calls today and 100 are from stacker
[00:21:32] and 10 are from the different make
[00:21:34] scenarios I have and blah,
[00:21:36] blah, blah, blah. So,
[00:21:38] you know, I would like that sort of
[00:21:41] visibility in the software now.
[00:21:45] Yeah, hopefully,
[00:21:46] hopefully they're thinking
[00:21:48] along those lines.
[00:21:51] Yeah.
[00:21:52] All right.
[00:21:54] OK. A couple feature. This one,
[00:21:57] I don't know if this is a bug or what not,
[00:21:59] but I've never seen this that,
[00:22:01] so this is the
[00:22:02] attachment viewer
[00:22:04] was giving a view limit exceeded.
[00:22:07] I'd never seen a view limit
[00:22:10] on the viewer itself
[00:22:12] and this file was only 18 K.
[00:22:14] So something's weird here that this
[00:22:16] might have been a bug. I don't know,
[00:22:17] Marcus, if you're watching,
[00:22:19] let us know if you're still seeing this.
[00:22:22] I hope that's a bug.
[00:22:24] I've never seen it before.
[00:22:26] I don't know what limit
[00:22:27] it could possibly be
[00:22:28] referencing.
[00:22:30] I, I, I'm baffled at this one.
[00:22:35] Yeah. Maybe this was like a,
[00:22:37] an add on or something like an
[00:22:39] extension because that icon is not
[00:22:41] a Airtable icon. It's weird.
[00:22:46] I like Bill's comment there
[00:22:48] after,
[00:22:49] Marcus said since when
[00:22:51] does this exist and
[00:22:53] since right now, apparently, yeah,
[00:22:57] there's a new limit.
[00:22:58] You'll have to start tracking Kamille
[00:23:01] in your, in your database.
[00:23:03] Well, no, I don't wanna.
[00:23:06] Yeah, nobody else
[00:23:08] has seen it. So it's possible
[00:23:10] maybe it's coming from a
[00:23:12] chrome extension or
[00:23:13] something. I don't know.
[00:23:15] That's interesting.
[00:23:16] Yeah.
[00:23:17] So
[00:23:18] we'll see if that keeps coming.
[00:23:20] All right, some new functionality.
[00:23:22] So this came out
[00:23:23] the ability to change the primary need.
[00:23:27] So this is kind of cool.
[00:23:29] So if you right click
[00:23:31] on the primary field,
[00:23:32] there's now a change primary field option
[00:23:35] and you can switch it
[00:23:36] and it basically just swaps them
[00:23:38] and that sets the new field
[00:23:41] as your first primary one on the left.
[00:23:45] Yes. I think the previous workaround
[00:23:47] would have been to like duplicate the
[00:23:49] column, including the cell values.
[00:23:52] The column being your primary field and
[00:23:55] then change your primary field
[00:23:57] to whatever you wanted it to be.
[00:23:59] And now you can do that,
[00:24:01] it doesn't change the field I DS.
[00:24:03] So
[00:24:04] you're working with the same column,
[00:24:06] they're just visually
[00:24:07] in a different order.
[00:24:09] And in
[00:24:11] Airtable fashion, small seemingly
[00:24:14] random updates are sort of,
[00:24:17] come in conjunction with other
[00:24:19] updates that kind of like rely on
[00:24:21] each other in something that I noticed
[00:24:23] somewhat recently.
[00:24:24] And I don't know if it's been
[00:24:25] pointed out yet,
[00:24:26] you can change an existing table,
[00:24:29] a regular table into a synced table,
[00:24:32] so long as the primary field
[00:24:34] is not a formula
[00:24:35] and it's not already being synced
[00:24:37] somewhere else. So
[00:24:40] in conjunction to this feature,
[00:24:41] if you have a primary field,
[00:24:42] that's a formula,
[00:24:43] you can swap it out with something else
[00:24:46] and then change the whole table into a
[00:24:47] synced table. So
[00:24:49] two of those things somewhat recently
[00:24:51] added that can work together.
[00:24:53] It's pretty, this is a like a
[00:24:54] quality of life improvement.
[00:24:58] Interesting.
[00:25:01] Yeah. So that's definitely helpful though.
[00:25:03] Not quite, Mal, you might be watching.
[00:25:06] Wanted more, wanted it to go deeper as
[00:25:08] far as how you, how it's used
[00:25:11] in link fields and whatnot.
[00:25:14] All right, I think we have one more
[00:25:16] or we have a couple more array slice
[00:25:18] apparently is a new function
[00:25:20] that's now added. And there's, it's,
[00:25:21] there's documentation for it.
[00:25:24] Anybody use that yet?
[00:25:26] I have
[00:25:27] they previously added for look up fields
[00:25:32] include only the first or last
[00:25:35] and then a variable number oftentimes one.
[00:25:38] So you can of all the look up or roll
[00:25:40] up values that you're going to receive,
[00:25:43] you can sort of shorten it down to
[00:25:45] some
[00:25:45] fixed number.
[00:25:48] very useful if you are supposed
[00:25:50] to only see one value.
[00:25:52] But for whatever reason, you're,
[00:25:54] you're seeing multiple,
[00:25:55] you can now say just
[00:25:56] give me the first one or give me
[00:25:58] the last one
[00:25:59] or alternatively give me the first
[00:26:01] six
[00:26:02] if, if six was a valuable number to you,
[00:26:05] so very useful. But to Bill's point
[00:26:07] still, no split function which would
[00:26:09] take a string and turn it into an array.
[00:26:12] We can only turn arrays
[00:26:13] into strings, which is
[00:26:15] unfortunate.
[00:26:17] Yeah,
[00:26:18] and no sorting either
[00:26:19] sorting would make this
[00:26:20] powerful. I, I want there to
[00:26:22] be sorting but there isn't.
[00:26:26] Yeah, I and I wish on top of the,
[00:26:28] I like how you can grab the
[00:26:30] most, you know,
[00:26:31] the last or the first option
[00:26:33] in a look up field.
[00:26:34] But I would love if you could
[00:26:36] like unique-ify
[00:26:37] them and say just give me
[00:26:40] only the unique ones
[00:26:43] because
[00:26:44] you can do array unique
[00:26:46] certainly. But with a look up field,
[00:26:48] I mean, because then you can
[00:26:50] keep the look and feel of the
[00:26:51] like single select
[00:26:53] if you're looking that up.
[00:26:54] For example,
[00:26:55] I feel as though that lookups
[00:26:57] and roll ups should be the same.
[00:26:59] They're really,
[00:27:01] there's not much use to having
[00:27:03] two separate fields. Just you,
[00:27:05] you're just conditionally
[00:27:06] applying a formula.
[00:27:08] So I just,
[00:27:09] I don't know
[00:27:11] But yes, I, I would like to have
[00:27:13] unique lookups
[00:27:14] and for both lookups and roll
[00:27:16] ups, I would like to be able to sort.
[00:27:18] Yeah.
[00:27:19] Yeah.
[00:27:21] All right.
[00:27:22] What else we got? Russell brings up
[00:27:26] preview added to timeline settings.
[00:27:30] So now you can customize,
[00:27:33] is this one that you talked about?
[00:27:35] Kamille? Was this in your updates last
[00:27:38] season?
[00:27:39] Yes. So there were updates to the
[00:27:42] timeline view that they've been slowly
[00:27:45] but surely adding just more and more
[00:27:48] to the timeline view. This was somewhat
[00:27:51] related.
[00:27:53] Previously in an interface,
[00:27:56] you could click on a timeline block
[00:28:01] and if you had
[00:28:02] the timeline set to editable,
[00:28:05] it would show
[00:28:06] a little preview box of certain
[00:28:08] fields
[00:28:10] that were kind of like
[00:28:13] it was, it was difficult to determine
[00:28:15] which fields it showed you
[00:28:18] in that little preview box.
[00:28:19] And if you clicked expand,
[00:28:20] it would open up a side
[00:28:21] sheet if you had that enabled.
[00:28:23] If you turned timeline edit ability off
[00:28:26] the pop-up wouldn't show up and it
[00:28:29] would only open the site sheet,
[00:28:31] which is my preferred method.
[00:28:32] And then this came along that makes it
[00:28:35] easier to select which fields show up
[00:28:37] in the pop up. My question underneath
[00:28:40] Russell's announcement is,
[00:28:41] can you turn it off entirely?
[00:28:43] You can if you set all
[00:28:45] of the fields to hidden.
[00:28:46] So
[00:28:48] it's, it's useful, it just kind of
[00:28:50] happened out of nowhere. And so it kind of
[00:28:52] broke some of my work flows
[00:28:53] until I saw how to turn it off
[00:28:55] because it's not
[00:28:56] really,
[00:28:56] it doesn't tell you that you
[00:28:57] just have to hide them all and,
[00:28:58] and trust the system.
[00:29:01] There you go.
[00:29:03] Good insights learned first here,
[00:29:05] I think we might have one more.
[00:29:12] So this one, Scott brings up searching
[00:29:15] in automations
[00:29:17] and other people brought up
[00:29:18] other things that you could search for.
[00:29:20] Basically Tasha talking about,
[00:29:22] if you're in automation looking for
[00:29:24] data, you can search by the field type.
[00:29:27] So you can type in
[00:29:29] check box or single select
[00:29:32] and it will return all fields
[00:29:35] of that type.
[00:29:37] So I think it's been there
[00:29:38] a while but good refresher.
[00:29:42] Very nice.
[00:29:44] Yep. Yep.
[00:29:46] All right.
[00:29:48] Let's see. Okay, meta API.
[00:29:51] This is one for developers.
[00:29:55] If you, if you use the meta API,
[00:29:58] they now have access to the formula
[00:30:02] information.
[00:30:06] And let's see, this was right
[00:30:08] at the end of August. So the, the
[00:30:14] there we go formula column type.
[00:30:16] So now you can actually
[00:30:18] get the entire formula
[00:30:19] value
[00:30:20] in the met
[00:30:21] API. So that's new
[00:30:24] and it looks like there's
[00:30:25] even a new one. I didn't
[00:30:28] didn't see
[00:30:30] now returns the id
[00:30:31] of the containing workspace. Actually,
[00:30:34] this is very useful.
[00:30:37] So if you're hitting the base,
[00:30:39] it will give you the, the workspace ID.
[00:30:41] That's actually I was looking for that a
[00:30:43] few weeks ago. So that is good to know
[00:30:47] some more meta information.
[00:30:53] All right, I think that ends it.
[00:30:56] Real quick. Are you, this was a survey
[00:30:59] Hannah put together color coded
[00:31:01] options or standard gray?
[00:31:03] So when you're creating like multi
[00:31:05] select, do you just use all the gray
[00:31:08] colors or do you create different colors
[00:31:10] for each option?
[00:31:13] Color
[00:31:14] for sure.
[00:31:15] It depends on how many options.
[00:31:18] If it's like
[00:31:19] seven or more,
[00:31:21] just gray because I, you know,
[00:31:23] because then I want the colors to mean
[00:31:25] something. But if I have two
[00:31:26] very similar reds, what does that mean?
[00:31:29] Gray,
[00:31:30] if it's less or fewer, rather,
[00:31:33] you know, I'll put some color,
[00:31:34] I'll, I'll try to make the colors
[00:31:36] relevant as
[00:31:36] well.
[00:31:38] Yeah.
[00:31:38] Yeah.
[00:31:38] Yeah, I'm with Kamille. If the
[00:31:40] colors indicate what, you know,
[00:31:43] the option is, then colors like
[00:31:45] you to do or done.
[00:31:48] But if it's just random colors, no.
[00:31:52] Yeah,
[00:31:53] very good. Yeah,
[00:31:54] I'm probably the same. It depends.
[00:31:57] All right, let's move on.
[00:31:58] We've got a busy show today,
[00:32:00] so we'll move on but
[00:32:00] definitely lots of updates
[00:32:03] of what's new in the Airtable world.
[00:32:05] That's the latest on Round the Bases.
[00:32:09] We'll move on to On2Air
[00:32:10] Backups.
[00:32:11] It's the premium solution to make sure
[00:32:14] that your data is backed up outside of
[00:32:16] Airtable,
[00:32:17] which is following best practices
[00:32:19] in the backup world.
[00:32:21] So for today, we're gonna highlight
[00:32:23] actually, for the next couple of weeks,
[00:32:24] we'll highlight a new article
[00:32:26] put together by Hannah
[00:32:28] who
[00:32:28] runs our marketing on Airtable
[00:32:30] snapshots and everything you need to know
[00:32:32] about how Airtable uses snapshots.
[00:32:36] And so this is useful if you've never
[00:32:39] had to use snapshots,
[00:32:41] that's probably a good thing.
[00:32:42] Means you didn't
[00:32:44] you know, have bad data enter your,
[00:32:46] your workspace that you need to clean up.
[00:32:48] But this is all the tools and how you can
[00:32:51] use backups and then also how you
[00:32:53] can use On2Air if you want to
[00:32:56] restore from your data
[00:32:58] stored outside of Airtable
[00:33:00] the ways that you can do that as well.
[00:33:02] But typically
[00:33:04] using the snapshots is probably
[00:33:06] the easiest Airtable
[00:33:07] has access to all your
[00:33:08] data.
[00:33:09] And so we actually recommend
[00:33:11] using that as your first
[00:33:13] starting point if you,
[00:33:15] if you need to go back to historical data.
[00:33:19] But yeah, so check out
[00:33:21] On2Air on2air.com
[00:33:22] and make sure you're backing up
[00:33:24] your data using On2Air.
[00:33:28] OK. Now we're gonna learn about Garrett
[00:33:31] and how he came into this world of
[00:33:33] Airtable.
[00:33:36] Awesome. Welcome Garrett.
[00:33:38] Thank you for having me.
[00:33:41] Of course, of course.
[00:33:44] I've seen your name in a couple
[00:33:45] of the communities. I think that you're in
[00:33:47] the BuiltOnAir Slack. Is that correct?
[00:33:50] I, I
[00:33:52] think I'm a member but I don't go on
[00:33:55] there often but I do comment on,
[00:33:57] on the live stream
[00:33:59] quite often.
[00:34:00] All right. That's where
[00:34:01] I've seen your name for sure.
[00:34:03] Awesome. How long have
[00:34:04] you been using Airtable?
[00:34:08] Honestly, I don't even know.
[00:34:11] I think kind of when I 1st 1st started,
[00:34:14] you know, I was using Google Sheets and,
[00:34:18] always kind of love
[00:34:20] software and
[00:34:22] I think I found it on
[00:34:23] product hunt one day and,
[00:34:25] didn't really have a use case for it.
[00:34:28] Just kind of was messing around and
[00:34:30] slowly started
[00:34:32] migrating some of the uses that I was
[00:34:36] you know, using Google Sheets for and
[00:34:39] kind of
[00:34:40] fell in love with it.
[00:34:41] A previous employer,
[00:34:43] I would pay for my own
[00:34:46] pro plan because I like using it
[00:34:48] so much even if it was just for me.
[00:34:50] So
[00:34:52] awesome.
[00:34:53] And what industry is that,
[00:34:54] that you're using it in?
[00:34:56] So we,
[00:34:58] we're a public works general,
[00:35:01] civil engineering contractor.
[00:35:03] So what that means
[00:35:04] is like
[00:35:05] just
[00:35:06] when you see guys out on the road working,
[00:35:09] that's kind of what we do.
[00:35:12] And the public works sector is like,
[00:35:14] you know, your counties,
[00:35:15] your cities,
[00:35:17] government agencies.
[00:35:19] So
[00:35:21] what I mainly use it for
[00:35:23] is to track projects for bidding,
[00:35:25] because we do like competitive bidding. So
[00:35:29] the city or government will advertise
[00:35:32] a project on their website or
[00:35:35] in the newspaper back in the day.
[00:35:37] And
[00:35:39] pretty much if you have a
[00:35:41] contractor's license, you can bid on it.
[00:35:45] And so
[00:35:46] there's really no
[00:35:48] set like place to kind of aggregate.
[00:35:53] there's a couple like plan,
[00:35:55] they're called plan rooms
[00:35:56] where they try to
[00:35:57] aggregate. But
[00:35:58] oftentimes I'm having to,
[00:36:00] you know, supplement that
[00:36:02] by going to the city's
[00:36:03] website and trying to find,
[00:36:06] yeah,
[00:36:08] I used to be an urban planner
[00:36:10] and I distinctly remember
[00:36:12] going after project bids
[00:36:13] and, yeah, some, some of them are
[00:36:16] directly on the city's websites and
[00:36:18] you're based out of California.
[00:36:20] And so am I,
[00:36:20] we have a lot of different cities
[00:36:22] in California. So
[00:36:23] imagine having to check all
[00:36:25] of these different cities.
[00:36:26] And then there are
[00:36:27] certain websites
[00:36:28] that do aggregate, but it's like
[00:36:30] when not in the, the industry,
[00:36:32] it's like if you were to apply to a job,
[00:36:34] some of them are on linkedin
[00:36:35] and some of them are just not
[00:36:37] somewhere.
[00:36:38] And yeah, Airtable
[00:36:39] seems like a good place to
[00:36:41] put them all in.
[00:36:42] Is that something that you
[00:36:44] organized yourself? Or
[00:36:46] was it like you guys kind of had something
[00:36:48] in Google sheets and then,
[00:36:50] you know, you just kind of slowly
[00:36:52] but surely transitioned it to Airtable?
[00:36:54] Yeah, I mean,
[00:36:56] like previous employers,
[00:36:58] some would just have a big whiteboard with
[00:37:01] job bidding. Some,
[00:37:03] you know, there would be a
[00:37:05] person if let's say I found a job,
[00:37:07] just kind of email
[00:37:08] where like the information
[00:37:09] is found and then one person would
[00:37:12] kind of put it in a Google sheet and,
[00:37:14] or, you know, an Excel document,
[00:37:16] print it out daily
[00:37:18] and give it to, you know,
[00:37:20] all the estimators. But
[00:37:23] yeah, just there's kind of some general
[00:37:25] information that's needed
[00:37:27] and just kind of,
[00:37:29] I use those as the fields and
[00:37:31] slowly kind of
[00:37:33] mess around with it to my liking
[00:37:36] and kind of my use case.
[00:37:39] Awesome. And are you sharing that
[00:37:41] like amongst your team?
[00:37:42] So everybody can look
[00:37:43] at it every day or?
[00:37:44] Yeah, I have it synced to
[00:37:47] a calendar. So it's
[00:37:49] in all our
[00:37:50] calendars because some
[00:37:52] of these jobs also require
[00:37:54] like what's called a walk.
[00:37:56] So,
[00:37:57] you know,
[00:37:58] a week or so before the bids due,
[00:38:00] they'll meet at the
[00:38:02] the site and kind of go
[00:38:03] over some specifics and
[00:38:05] some of those are required
[00:38:07] like mandatory
[00:38:08] if you don't have someone attend that
[00:38:10] they can't bid.
[00:38:12] So
[00:38:13] I have both the,
[00:38:14] both the bid date and time and then the
[00:38:18] kind of job
[00:38:19] walk if you will
[00:38:20] and calendars. And then yeah, I have a
[00:38:23] kind of a shared URL that I put in
[00:38:26] a folder at
[00:38:28] our office and
[00:38:31] that's
[00:38:31] super
[00:38:32] cool.
[00:38:33] Yeah, the the sync calendar
[00:38:35] makes it super easy.
[00:38:36] So it just shows right up
[00:38:37] where you
[00:38:38] see
[00:38:38] it.
[00:38:39] Absolutely.
[00:38:41] Super cool. Are there any
[00:38:43] like limitations you ran into that
[00:38:45] you wish Airtable could solve
[00:38:47] or has it checked all the boxes so far?
[00:38:50] So, I mean,
[00:38:52] I'm sure there's some
[00:38:53] things here and there, but
[00:38:55] for the most part,
[00:38:57] it's limited by my time to,
[00:39:00] you know,
[00:39:01] mess around with it and get it to
[00:39:03] its full capability because,
[00:39:06] you know, for a while I had it
[00:39:07] emailing me, you know,
[00:39:10] jobs within the next week
[00:39:12] that are bidding and
[00:39:14] stuff like that
[00:39:15] and,
[00:39:16] you know,
[00:39:17] just got kind of
[00:39:19] hectic and my inbox got,
[00:39:22] you know,
[00:39:24] pretty full, pretty quick.
[00:39:26] So,
[00:39:27] yeah,
[00:39:30] awesome.
[00:39:31] You ready to
[00:39:32] share with us what you've got?
[00:39:34] Yeah. So first I'm gonna share,
[00:39:37] yeah, hold on just one second.
[00:39:40] I'll get us back there.
[00:39:42] So Garrett's gonna walk us through
[00:39:45] his live base on using Airtable to bid on
[00:39:48] public works projects.
[00:39:49] So I think you still need
[00:39:51] to share your screen again.
[00:39:53] So first, I'm gonna share kind of a
[00:39:56] typical cities website of jobs.
[00:40:00] This is city of San Loss
[00:40:03] and they post,
[00:40:05] you know, jobs out of bid here.
[00:40:08] So we'll have to come check and
[00:40:10] you know, this Water Line
[00:40:12] replacement project.
[00:40:16] So it'll take us
[00:40:18] kind of the information,
[00:40:20] job name, how much time is left,
[00:40:22] you know, date and time, just
[00:40:25] all this information. And
[00:40:29] you know,
[00:40:29] I think you might be sharing just the one
[00:40:32] the screen so we might not be seeing
[00:40:34] it opened in a
[00:40:35] new tab. Hold on,
[00:40:41] there we go.
[00:40:42] There we go.
[00:40:43] So yeah, job name
[00:40:45] time left all this where you
[00:40:47] can download the plans
[00:40:49] and the specifications.
[00:40:53] So I'll have to take this
[00:40:57] and I'm gonna present my other.
[00:41:03] So here's the base.
[00:41:06] Now we also we do bid sometimes
[00:41:09] as a sub or to, you know, like developers.
[00:41:14] My previous company was like
[00:41:16] all public works and,
[00:41:18] you know, we never bid
[00:41:20] to developers, but the company
[00:41:22] I'm at now,
[00:41:23] so I've been kind of migrating some
[00:41:24] things and
[00:41:25] adding things. But
[00:41:28] so we got,
[00:41:30] you know, these kind of tabs,
[00:41:33] I call them, stuff we're behind on.
[00:41:35] Usually
[00:41:37] this is
[00:41:38] as a sub because you can call them
[00:41:41] and say, hey,
[00:41:42] I can't get it this Friday can
[00:41:43] I have till Monday?
[00:41:45] But
[00:41:48] as far as public works jobs goes,
[00:41:51] so
[00:41:51] let's see that a typical one would be
[00:41:55] say this job,
[00:41:56] this measure K 14 street rehab.
[00:42:01] So to start,
[00:42:03] I,
[00:42:03] I have a form
[00:42:06] to add bid.
[00:42:11] I'm not gonna open it because it
[00:42:13] will open in a new tab. But
[00:42:17] put in the project,
[00:42:18] the date and time the type,
[00:42:22] who bids to like the agency
[00:42:25] location,
[00:42:27] just any remarks, you know, like,
[00:42:31] I don't know
[00:42:32] the engineer's phone number
[00:42:34] if we have questions,
[00:42:35] ee stands for engineers estimate. So they
[00:42:41] will have internally estimate
[00:42:43] how big the job is.
[00:42:48] And then
[00:42:49] this is if one of those pre bid walks,
[00:42:52] if it's required or not,
[00:42:55] sometimes they have optional ones,
[00:42:58] mandatory
[00:42:59] or none. And then that's conditional
[00:43:03] if there is one, date and time location
[00:43:06] and then the URL I feel like
[00:43:08] this is the most important field.
[00:43:10] So
[00:43:11] back on that one, I was showing you
[00:43:14] put the URL here,
[00:43:15] attachments. If there's, you know,
[00:43:20] sometimes I'll put the plans and specs
[00:43:22] in there, but oftentimes I'll just save
[00:43:24] it to the
[00:43:25] computer
[00:43:26] and from there it goes to,
[00:43:29] it automatically gets scooped
[00:43:32] into this bidding stage.
[00:43:35] So like I was saying this job,
[00:43:37] I don't know is my,
[00:43:40] can you guys see that better?
[00:43:42] Yeah,
[00:43:42] thank you.
[00:43:43] So, date and time
[00:43:45] the city of Grover Beach
[00:43:48] public works job.
[00:43:51] So the engineer's estimate
[00:43:53] on that one is 1.85 million
[00:43:56] no pre bid.
[00:43:58] And then on that remarks,
[00:44:00] that kind of put just the
[00:44:03] what they had as kind of
[00:44:05] the project description.
[00:44:09] And then
[00:44:10] the attachments, the plans,
[00:44:12] the specifications
[00:44:14] and then
[00:44:15] the URL
[00:44:17] I clicked it and it took me
[00:44:23] here.
[00:44:26] So the reason
[00:44:28] it's important to have this
[00:44:30] if there's any addendum. So like
[00:44:32] changes to the project,
[00:44:33] you know, let's say someone
[00:44:35] asks a question like,
[00:44:37] oh,
[00:44:38] the plans are missing the page,
[00:44:41] they'll put an addendum.
[00:44:43] And when the job bids, if you don't,
[00:44:46] you know, acknowledge these
[00:44:48] addendums because
[00:44:49] their actual contract changes,
[00:44:51] then
[00:44:53] your bids thrown out.
[00:44:57] This is where they post those addendum. So
[00:45:00] check the, you know, a day before
[00:45:02] the bid or, you know,
[00:45:03] the day of the bid and
[00:45:04] make sure I got all the addendum and
[00:45:08] stuff like that.
[00:45:10] Man. I'm taken back
[00:45:13] 10 years
[00:45:15] going too fast.
[00:45:17] interestingly enough,
[00:45:19] so this bid date and time, if you're
[00:45:23] 10 seconds late,
[00:45:25] they'll throw your bid in the trash.
[00:45:29] If you're $1
[00:45:31] over
[00:45:32] the,
[00:45:33] you know, low big guy, let's say
[00:45:35] Kamille's bid is $10 and I'm $11. So,
[00:45:39] you know, as long as she's,
[00:45:42] you know, has her license
[00:45:43] and stuff checks out,
[00:45:45] they will award it to her even though
[00:45:48] I've been doing this forever and
[00:45:50] everybody in this town knows me.
[00:45:52] It doesn't matter because it's all public
[00:45:54] funding and
[00:45:56] it's price of right rules.
[00:45:58] Exactly. If they give you a number,
[00:46:00] hit that number or go below it.
[00:46:02] Yeah.
[00:46:04] So
[00:46:05] I, I wanted to go back to what
[00:46:08] you had said before. You talked about the
[00:46:11] difference between if it's an all
[00:46:13] public works job
[00:46:14] or if you're applying as a
[00:46:16] sub
[00:46:16] in the industry, that would mean
[00:46:19] there are for larger projects
[00:46:21] that include things other than
[00:46:24] in public works, you might assemble
[00:46:26] a team of companies. One that focuses on
[00:46:29] public works like yours.
[00:46:30] Another one that's urban planners
[00:46:32] like formerly me,
[00:46:33] one that might be architects,
[00:46:35] blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:46:36] Certain big companies
[00:46:36] might have all of those things in house.
[00:46:39] But if you don't have them in house,
[00:46:41] you might
[00:46:42] go in for a project as a lead
[00:46:44] or you might go in for a project as a sub
[00:46:47] consultant.
[00:46:48] So
[00:46:49] in the instances where you're going
[00:46:52] after a project as a sub consultant or a
[00:46:55] sub,
[00:46:56] is this something that you share
[00:46:58] with your external partners,
[00:47:00] the people who are not in your company,
[00:47:03] but in your co consultants,
[00:47:06] you know, because getting everybody
[00:47:07] an Airtable license would be,
[00:47:09] you know,
[00:47:09] expensive pretty quickly,
[00:47:11] especially if they're only
[00:47:12] going in on one of these
[00:47:14] several projects with you.
[00:47:16] Yeah, so kind of to relate to that.
[00:47:21] So I'm
[00:47:21] what's called the our lead estimator.
[00:47:25] And we have
[00:47:27] another gentleman in our office who
[00:47:30] he kind of gravitates towards,
[00:47:32] we do a lot of concrete,
[00:47:33] you know, sidewalk, curb and gutter.
[00:47:39] So I,
[00:47:41] so his name is Tito. So I
[00:47:44] literally have something that's
[00:47:46] just kind of
[00:47:48] geared towards jobs he needs
[00:47:51] to be on the lookout for.
[00:47:53] Ones, you know, I need his help on.
[00:47:55] So I guess
[00:47:57] he's kind of my
[00:47:59] co,
[00:48:00] you know, consultant.
[00:48:03] So I'll, I'll print this. He's not super
[00:48:07] tech and computer savvy. So,
[00:48:11] you know, twice,
[00:48:12] three times a week, I'll print this
[00:48:15] which it's, it's mostly
[00:48:17] the same in information, but
[00:48:20] little,
[00:48:22] little less I have this extra notes
[00:48:24] one for him if you know there's anything
[00:48:27] specific
[00:48:29] this plan Swift this is our
[00:48:31] kind of estimating takeoff software.
[00:48:34] So
[00:48:35] I'll put the job in plan swift
[00:48:38] for him to be able to do his takeoff.
[00:48:40] So,
[00:48:42] I have quite a few to throw
[00:48:44] in there as you can see.
[00:48:46] But,
[00:48:49] yeah, so that's kind of how
[00:48:51] I would share it, as far as
[00:48:53] other contractors
[00:48:56] no, because we're,
[00:48:58] you know, it'll be just one job
[00:49:00] that we might be working on together.
[00:49:02] There are certain companies
[00:49:04] we do a lot of work with but,
[00:49:07] you know, it's project by project
[00:49:10] basis.
[00:49:14] This is, this is awesome.
[00:49:16] We love seeing real world examples
[00:49:18] of how you're using
[00:49:19] it. Have you explored interfaces
[00:49:21] at all? Or are you still mostly working in
[00:49:23] the grid view? I do,
[00:49:25] I don't know if I wanna even click
[00:49:27] that because it's,
[00:49:28] I, I feel like every base
[00:49:30] I have is a work in progress.
[00:49:33] Um
[00:49:34] It never
[00:49:34] stops it.
[00:49:35] Yeah, I did want if you have another
[00:49:38] like two minutes maybe.
[00:49:40] Sure.
[00:49:41] Ok, real quick because
[00:49:43] this is what I'm working on now
[00:49:45] and it is.
[00:49:48] So
[00:49:49] there's estimating software that costs
[00:49:53] of
[00:49:53] a jillion dollars,
[00:49:56] the sun's kind of coming up.
[00:49:58] So I this is
[00:49:59] my estimating software
[00:50:01] I've been using for about six months now.
[00:50:04] So
[00:50:06] kind of the workflow go from the project
[00:50:09] bid schedules sometimes,
[00:50:11] you know, they'll have
[00:50:12] the base bid like everybody,
[00:50:14] this is what the job's gonna be
[00:50:16] and then they'll add alternatives like,
[00:50:18] you know,
[00:50:19] oh, we, if we have extra money,
[00:50:21] we'll go do this too.
[00:50:23] So if there's multiple bid schedules
[00:50:26] and it goes to bid items. So
[00:50:29] in the bid forms,
[00:50:30] there'll be items you bid against.
[00:50:34] you know,
[00:50:34] typically number one is the mobilization
[00:50:37] getting you there. And then,
[00:50:39] you know,
[00:50:40] this one
[00:50:41] is, for example, this wood fence,
[00:50:45] they'll quantify it.
[00:50:46] So the engineer came up
[00:50:48] with 45 lineal feet of fence to be
[00:50:50] replaced.
[00:50:52] So I'll get that in there.
[00:50:54] And then the bid cost,
[00:50:56] this is the main one.
[00:50:58] I got
[00:50:59] a group by bid items.
[00:51:01] So let's go to that wood fence
[00:51:04] and
[00:51:05] activities. So when you build a fence,
[00:51:08] you need to get the materials.
[00:51:09] So that'll be, you know, materials
[00:51:12] and then
[00:51:14] you know, we need wood,
[00:51:18] right?
[00:51:21] And did I not add that?
[00:51:26] There it goes
[00:51:28] and it's not updating.
[00:51:31] So you
[00:51:31] put
[00:51:31] your
[00:51:32] resources in and then you can apply
[00:51:35] costs and like your market values.
[00:51:37] And this is what I've been using to
[00:51:40] kind of estimate and
[00:51:42] kind of stole,
[00:51:44] you know,
[00:51:46] some ideas from some big
[00:51:49] estimating software
[00:51:53] replaced an expensive piece
[00:51:56] of software with Airtable.
[00:51:59] Nice.
[00:52:01] All right. Thank you,
[00:52:03] Garrett for showcasing that
[00:52:04] and seeing how you're using
[00:52:06] that in the real world.
[00:52:07] I always appreciate that.
[00:52:09] Let's move on.
[00:52:11] Quick, shout out to join our
[00:52:13] community builtonair.com/join
[00:52:15] gets you in.
[00:52:16] Also subscribe to our youtube channel.
[00:52:19] We'd love to see you join our Slack
[00:52:21] community as well. Lots of experts in
[00:52:23] there
[00:52:24] with that Kamille is going to walk us
[00:52:27] through some automation fun.
[00:52:31] Yes.
[00:52:33] I have a pretty long workflow.
[00:52:36] This is just sort of the first part of it.
[00:52:39] And a lot of it is built using n8n,
[00:52:44] which is
[00:52:46] a open source and
[00:52:49] self host-able
[00:52:50] automation builder.
[00:52:52] It's very similar to make or Integromat.
[00:52:55] If you're used to those,
[00:52:56] if you're not used to those,
[00:52:58] it's like a Zapier
[00:52:59] but more sort of visual.
[00:53:00] So on this screen,
[00:53:02] you can kind of see what it looks
[00:53:04] like. It's a sort of linear process.
[00:53:07] And I wanted to try it out.
[00:53:09] And so I built a somewhat complex
[00:53:12] workflow that being
[00:53:14] a concept I've thought of or
[00:53:17] a watch list. So
[00:53:20] Garrett talked about a little bit earlier,
[00:53:22] he had this workflow that he disabled,
[00:53:24] but at one point you
[00:53:26] had a running sort of digest
[00:53:29] of here are the different
[00:53:31] projects that are coming up in a week
[00:53:33] or something like that.
[00:53:34] And what I wanted was a way to create
[00:53:38] watch lists very easily and sort of
[00:53:42] programmatically.
[00:53:43] It's really easy in Airtable
[00:53:46] if I have a base that's
[00:53:49] you know,
[00:53:50] I have one date that I wanna keep track
[00:53:52] of email me any of those dates that's
[00:53:54] coming up in a week.
[00:53:56] It's more difficult if you have like
[00:53:59] 10 different fields
[00:54:00] that you're trying to track,
[00:54:02] it's even more difficult if you know,
[00:54:05] five people need these five fields and
[00:54:07] then these five people need these other
[00:54:10] five fields and some of those overlap
[00:54:12] that's difficult.
[00:54:13] It's even more difficult if each person
[00:54:17] wants one email per day rather than one
[00:54:20] email per project.
[00:54:21] And it's even even more difficult to say,
[00:54:25] here's what the values are now,
[00:54:27] here's what the values used to be
[00:54:29] in the case of
[00:54:30] a field being updated.
[00:54:32] So to solve all of those
[00:54:34] sort of complexities,
[00:54:35] I've created a workflow that is
[00:54:37] sort of based on having
[00:54:39] a meta table.
[00:54:41] This is a base that kind of exists
[00:54:43] by itself
[00:54:44] separate from the tables that
[00:54:46] I'm watching
[00:54:47] where I'm saying,
[00:54:49] I wanna track these
[00:54:50] three different things,
[00:54:51] all dates associated with the project,
[00:54:54] the recording date and the release stage.
[00:54:57] So
[00:54:58] I'm filling in the base I'm watching
[00:55:01] the table and in the fields you can see in
[00:55:04] this case,
[00:55:04] I'm tracking three different date fields.
[00:55:07] This one is just one field
[00:55:08] and this is one of
[00:55:11] this is just another field
[00:55:13] in that think table.
[00:55:14] I have a button that will take me
[00:55:17] to the relevant table based
[00:55:19] on whatever ID I
[00:55:20] put in here.
[00:55:22] You can see I'm using one of
[00:55:24] Airtable's templates for a
[00:55:26] podcast studio.
[00:55:27] And you know, here's all of our
[00:55:29] episodes, here's who's gonna
[00:55:32] be the hosts of that episode,
[00:55:34] the producer and the editor.
[00:55:36] So for a practical example,
[00:55:38] if one of my dates is the recording date,
[00:55:42] right? The hosts are gonna want
[00:55:43] to know when they're recording
[00:55:45] and the editor probably wants to know
[00:55:48] when their, their due date is which
[00:55:51] might be a cut due date, et cetera.
[00:55:53] The producer probably cares about
[00:55:55] all of those dates
[00:55:56] because they're producing
[00:55:57] the episode.
[00:55:59] And the producer and editor might
[00:56:02] care about the stage. It's in whether or
[00:56:04] not it's been released or made,
[00:56:07] just scheduled, the host probably doesn't
[00:56:10] care. They just want to know
[00:56:12] when they need to record
[00:56:14] by if they're not one of
[00:56:15] the editors or producers
[00:56:16] just as a practical example.
[00:56:19] So the first part of this
[00:56:21] sort of overview
[00:56:23] and I can post the very specific
[00:56:25] information about these
[00:56:27] different workflows
[00:56:28] is the part in Airtable that is
[00:56:31] creating a web hook.
[00:56:32] So in order to do this programmatically,
[00:56:34] Airtable has a API that lets you
[00:56:37] create web hooks
[00:56:39] that listen for particular
[00:56:40] events.
[00:56:41] In this case, I care when
[00:56:44] any of those fields have been updated,
[00:56:46] not necessarily when a record is created.
[00:56:49] And so this n8n scenario
[00:56:52] is waiting for a trigger to happen.
[00:56:56] In that case, a web hook being called
[00:56:59] and then it's going through a process of
[00:57:03] looking at this watch list record.
[00:57:06] Let's take the first one as an example
[00:57:09] and I've pointed out here's the base
[00:57:12] and table and the fields I'm watching.
[00:57:16] And it's all sort of triggered
[00:57:18] by one of these two buttons,
[00:57:21] test which will just sort of
[00:57:23] test the workflow
[00:57:24] in n8n and create slash edit,
[00:57:26] which will run the workflow entirely.
[00:57:32] So just sort of talking through
[00:57:35] what this workflow is doing,
[00:57:37] this is going to look somewhat
[00:57:39] similar to make if you're used to it.
[00:57:41] I know Scott is in the audience who's,
[00:57:43] you know, an expert in make.
[00:57:44] So this might look
[00:57:45] somewhat familiar to him.
[00:57:47] If I sort of zoom in
[00:57:50] the first thing it's doing
[00:57:52] is it's checking
[00:57:53] if the web hook ID is empty or not
[00:57:55] and that's stored here in my
[00:57:59] Airtable record. So
[00:58:02] if it's
[00:58:04] not empty,
[00:58:05] just sort of refresh the web hook.
[00:58:08] In Airtable web hooks, expire after seven
[00:58:11] days, you have to continuously,
[00:58:14] you know, refresh them
[00:58:16] in order for them to stay active.
[00:58:18] If it is empty,
[00:58:20] I wanted to search through the watched
[00:58:23] table and see, are there any web hooks
[00:58:26] associated with that table?
[00:58:28] Maybe I just forgot to put in the ID.
[00:58:30] And so I'm splitting apart whatever
[00:58:34] was found into an array
[00:58:36] and then I wanna filter down any
[00:58:39] web hooks associated with that table
[00:58:42] and see if any of them match
[00:58:44] the conditions I've set. So
[00:58:47] when you're setting up a web hook
[00:58:49] in Airtable
[00:58:49] you're telling it what fields do
[00:58:51] you care about. In this case,
[00:58:53] it's this list that I've provided.
[00:58:56] If there are no web hooks for that table
[00:58:59] that are watching just those three
[00:59:01] fields, then I need to
[00:59:03] create a web hook. If not,
[00:59:06] then I need to
[00:59:08] or if there is one already,
[00:59:10] then I need to take that Webhook ID
[00:59:14] and associate it with this Airtable
[00:59:17] record in my meta table
[00:59:18] so I can keep track of it.
[00:59:20] So in the event that it needs
[00:59:23] to create a web hook, what it's doing,
[00:59:26] and there might be, you know,
[00:59:28] a better way to do this.
[00:59:29] What I found works
[00:59:30] best in for this use case
[00:59:33] is just to delete
[00:59:34] existing web hooks that match the
[00:59:40] you know, the conditions I'm looking for.
[00:59:42] In the case of when I was testing all
[00:59:44] of this, I ended up making like 15
[00:59:46] of the same web hook.
[00:59:48] So this was sort of put
[00:59:49] in here to delete all of them
[00:59:51] because I only need one.
[00:59:53] And then
[00:59:54] when I'm done deleting,
[00:59:55] just create the one that I need
[00:59:57] and then
[00:59:58] attach the web hook ID
[01:00:00] to the Airtable record.
[01:00:02] So
[01:00:03] that's what that process is doing.
[01:00:06] This up here is just for testing purposes,
[01:00:10] which is why they're all disabled,
[01:00:12] which is something I like.
[01:00:14] In n8n I am able to sort of
[01:00:17] temporarily turn
[01:00:18] off different
[01:00:21] nodes in a workflow.
[01:00:23] So I don't need to do any
[01:00:25] of this replacing web hook
[01:00:28] business. That's really only for
[01:00:30] the purposes of me testing
[01:00:32] out this scenario.
[01:00:34] So, very quickly I'm going to
[01:00:40] do
[01:00:42] a demo
[01:00:43] and hope it works.
[01:00:46] So I'm gonna delete this webhook ID
[01:00:49] and then I'm gonna do
[01:00:50] create and slash edit.
[01:00:53] It's gonna open up a new tab
[01:00:55] which I don't necessarily need to look at.
[01:00:57] It's gonna return all of this Gobby
[01:01:00] book, which I don't really need
[01:01:03] much like in make or Integromat,
[01:01:07] you can control what that web hook
[01:01:09] response page looks like I didn't need to
[01:01:12] because I'm the only one
[01:01:13] who's gonna see it.
[01:01:14] So I just know to get rid of it.
[01:01:15] If I go to my executions tab,
[01:01:18] I will see that this, just fired
[01:01:22] and, I'll walk through what it did. So
[01:01:27] it was triggered
[01:01:28] when I clicked that button,
[01:01:29] it saw that the web hook ID
[01:01:32] was empty because I deleted it.
[01:01:35] Then it was searching through
[01:01:37] that watch table finding
[01:01:39] all of the different
[01:01:40] webhooks associated with that table.
[01:01:42] There were three items that were,
[01:01:44] hooked into that table.
[01:01:46] All three are those three.
[01:01:49] Then it filtered down which of those
[01:01:52] existing webhooks
[01:01:53] match the fields that I'm
[01:01:55] watching. There's only one
[01:01:57] as there should be
[01:01:58] and because there's only one fill
[01:02:00] in the web hook ID,
[01:02:02] with the one that exists.
[01:02:04] And so you could see it was repopulated
[01:02:06] if it didn't find any,
[01:02:07] it would have just created a new,
[01:02:10] web hook. If it found too many,
[01:02:13] two or more, it would have deleted
[01:02:15] both of those and created just one to
[01:02:18] replace it.
[01:02:19] So that's what this,
[01:02:21] alternate branch is. And the next time,
[01:02:24] I sort of go over this workflow,
[01:02:26] we'll talk about it actually
[01:02:28] logging field changes and sending
[01:02:31] those out via email to the associated
[01:02:34] persons.
[01:02:37] Very cool. This is awesome.
[01:02:39] I haven't.
[01:02:40] I think I tried this out when it
[01:02:41] first came out, but it's come a long ways.
[01:02:44] I it is much better than a lot
[01:02:46] of the promotional material
[01:02:48] shows a lot of the older,
[01:02:50] like a year plus demos
[01:02:52] had like a starch trigger that
[01:02:55] was just always there
[01:02:56] and then whatever trigger
[01:02:58] it should actually be.
[01:02:59] In this case, a web hook
[01:03:00] response as a separate node.
[01:03:02] They got rid of that. So,
[01:03:04] don't be discouraged, I would say
[01:03:06] by some of the things you might find in
[01:03:08] some of the tutorials
[01:03:09] that you might come across,
[01:03:11] I think it is a much better
[01:03:12] product than it used to be. And
[01:03:16] so far I really like it,
[01:03:18] it handles arrays differently than make.
[01:03:20] So there's a little bit of a
[01:03:22] learning curve
[01:03:23] if you're coming from that world,
[01:03:24] but I think it is
[01:03:25] super useful
[01:03:26] and I like a lot of the different
[01:03:29] prebuilt nodes that they have
[01:03:31] and I'll leave it there.
[01:03:34] Awesome. And we'll do
[01:03:35] part two in a future episode.
[01:03:38] So a little cliffhanger
[01:03:39] appetizer for you.
[01:03:42] Thank you, Kamille and Alli
[01:03:43] and Garrett. Thank you for joining.
[01:03:45] Grateful to have you on
[01:03:46] and learn more about yourself
[01:03:48] and your business and how
[01:03:49] you're using Airtable.
[01:03:50] Look forward. We'll get an update
[01:03:52] from you sometime in the future.
[01:03:54] We
[01:03:55] can
[01:03:55] take
[01:03:55] that
[01:03:55] and
[01:03:56] then,
[01:03:57] yeah,
[01:03:58] thanks
[01:03:58] Garrett
[01:03:59] and that's,
[01:04:01] that concludes today's show.
[01:04:02] We'll see you next week for episode two.
[01:04:04] Episode two. Take care everyone.
[01:04:07] Bye.