5/14/2024 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S18-E07

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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.

Todays Hosts

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 – 00:01:40 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] use records from interfaces in find records automation

[TableForums] using Slack for Airtable records

Meet the Creators – –

Meet Shae Redding – Rogers.

I’m an Architectural Photographer that loves every project I work on. I want to take the right project that will help grow the Client’s company. I’m here to help build your companies portfolio so you can use the images for Advertisements, Social Media, Contest/Awards, and selling to clients. Not only do I take your vision, I sense the builds vision and bring it all together in a series of photographs.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:01:41 –

We dive into a full working base that will A base to help with finding your dream home.

A Case for Interface – 00:01:42 –

Explore Interfaces with “Pivot Tables”.

Alli walks through the new Pivot tables within Interfaces.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:01:40

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

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[BuiltOnAir Community] use records from interfaces in find records automation

[TableForums] using Slack for Airtable records

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time:

Shae Redding – Rogers –

Meet Shae Redding – Rogers.

I’m an Architectural Photographer that loves every project I work on. I want to take the right project that will help grow the Client’s company. I’m here to help build your companies portfolio so you can use the images for Advertisements, Social Media, Contest/Awards, and selling to clients. Not only do I take your vision, I sense the builds vision and bring it all together in a series of photographs.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:01:41

Home Searching

We dive into a full working base that will A base to help with finding your dream home.

Segment: A Case for Interface

Start Time: 00:01:42

Pivot Tables

Explore Interfaces with “Pivot Tables”.

Alli walks through the new Pivot tables within Interfaces.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Built On Air Podcast, the variety show for all things Airtable. In each episode, we cover four different segments. It's always fresh and different, and lots of fun. While you get the insider info on all things Airtable, our hosts and guests are some of the most senior experts in the Airtable community.

[00:00:26] Join us live each week on our YouTube channel every Tuesday at 11:00 AM Eastern and join our active [email protected]. Before we begin, a word from our sponsor on. On2Air Backups provides automated Airtable backups to your cloud storage for secure and reliable data protection. Prevent data loss and set up a secure Airtable backup system with On2Air Backups at on2air.

[00:00:49] com. As one customer, Sarah, said, Having automated Airtable backups has freed up hours of my time every other week. And the fear of losing anything. Long time customer [00:01:00] David states, On2Wear backups might be the most critical piece of the puzzle to guard against unforeseeable disaster. It's easy to set up, and it just works.

[00:01:08] Join Sarah, David, and hundreds more Airtable users like you to protect your Airtable data with On2Wear backups. Sign up today with promo code built on air for a 10 percent discount. Check them out at onto air. com. And now let's check out today's episode and see what we built on air.

[00:01:38] Dan Fellars: All right. Welcome back to season 18, episode seven. Good to be back with you on my week off. I was traveling and so grateful to Hannah for, for stepping in. And holding down the fort, but it's good to be back with you. Everybody, myself, Dan Fellars. We've got Kamille parks and Allie Losa and special guests.

[00:01:57] Shea Redding Rogers. Welcome Shea. 

[00:01:59] Shae Redding Rogers: Hi. [00:02:00] 

[00:02:01] Dan Fellars: Good to have you with us. We'll get an update on Shea later in the show. I'll first walk us through. What we're going to be talking about, we always start with our around the bases of everything going on in the air table communities, then a sponsor highlights on onto our backups.

[00:02:19] Then we'll learn more about Shay, what she's got going on, how she found out about this world and everything. And then she's going to show two bases with us as home searching, as well as her relationship database that she has been working on. And then join our community. I'll talk about how you can do that.

[00:02:39] And then finally, we'll talk about pivot tables with Ali. So with that, 

[00:02:44] around the bases, let's see,

[00:02:47] ROUND THE BASES - 00:02:47

[00:02:49] we had last week we had Russell on the show. I don't know if he talked about this, but he did a guide. And so I thought it'd be worth highlighting that [00:03:00] on automated junction tables and copying fields.

[00:03:03] Is this what he talked about last week? No, 

[00:03:06] Alli Alosa: he talked about his, Music is mp3. That's right, mp3 stream. Yes, it's super cool. 

[00:03:13] Kamille Parks: A truly incredible build. 

[00:03:15] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So anyways, a good guide here posted on the, on the Airtable community. So you could check that out for some, automating junction tables and copying fields.

[00:03:29] Okay, moving on to, not that one, into the built on air community. Actually, this is from Allie. New look and feel. Allie was the first to. Spotlight this. What do we got going on? 

[00:03:42] Alli Alosa: Well, actually I'm interested to see if it's still doing it and I don't think it actually is. Maybe. Yeah, no, it's, it's gone now.

[00:03:51] So I think what Russell said might have been correct. It might've been an error. So there was some weird indentation [00:04:00] and gradients added to grouping grid views and It threw me off. At first I thought it was a glitch and I kept refreshing and then I went into other bases and they all looked like that.

[00:04:12] And, but it seems to now be back to the way it was. And Russell even dug into the CSS and said that he thought that somebody misplaced a class. So That's funny. It looks actually nice. I wonder if it's gonna be an upgrade. 

[00:04:29] Kamille Parks: I don't know. I didn't like it. 

[00:04:32] Alli Alosa: I didn't mind the indentation so much as the gradient.

[00:04:34] The gradient really threw me off. 

[00:04:36] Kamille Parks: I was like. 

[00:04:37] Alli Alosa: Too much. We had 

[00:04:38] Kamille Parks: a whole list that was grouped at three different levels. It just, it didn't look very good. The whole page like that, indentation, yeah, it was fine. 

[00:04:50] Dan Fellars: Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So just just a glitch. 

[00:04:54] Alli Alosa: Must've been. 

[00:04:55] Dan Fellars: Okay. There's one more. What about this one, Allie?[00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] Alli Alosa: You can now put charts back on the record detail pages, which is amazing. 

[00:05:06] Dan Fellars: I'm 

[00:05:07] Alli Alosa: very excited about that. 

[00:05:10] Dan Fellars: Okay, what's the history here? 

[00:05:13] Alli Alosa: So it used to be at the inception of interfaces, you could put anything. Start 

[00:05:19] Kamille Parks: from the beginning. Yeah. 

[00:05:21] Alli Alosa: Well, actually at the very beginning, there were no record detail pages.

[00:05:26] Link everything together with like, you know, the URLs and get all fancy with the formulas. Then they added the detail pages and you could put anything you wanted on them, drag the elements around wherever you wanted charts, numbers, everything. Then when they upgraded in air quotes, detail pages, they got rid of the ability to put charts.

[00:05:51] Numbers on the detail pages. They added some other features, which were nice, but got rid of those. And now we have the [00:06:00] ability to add the charts back again. I'm just waiting for the number to be put back. Cause I like the big number field or at least the ability to color. Cause I like how you can put like.

[00:06:12] whatever you want an extra large text if you're displaying like a roll up or a formula. But if you could put some color on that or like that would be great. But this is a step back in the right direction. 

[00:06:26] Kamille Parks: Two things about the charts. It's the same thing as the record review, limitations. So that means while you can put a chart and you can put a chart side by side other fields, which is nice you can't filter the chart.

[00:06:41] Well, the end user can't filter the chart. I should say you could put a filter on the back end. So that's important to note and it differs from the new dashboard layout chart in that there's no drill down. So clicking on a segment of the chart doesn't open up a new list of all of the records that make up that [00:07:00] segment.

[00:07:00] So I don't know if they're going to add that in the future. I should hope so, because it is deeply annoying that they have the same feature in multiple parts of the same part of the product that all do different things. So hopefully those two things get added, filtering and drill down. 

[00:07:19] Alli Alosa: Drives me insane.

[00:07:22] Kamille Parks: It's getting silly. 

[00:07:23] Alli Alosa: It really is. It's like, Oh, I got all excited trying to do something. And then I'm like, Oh wait, maybe I could use this layout. No, actually I can't use that layout. Oh, maybe I could do it over here. No, it just. 

[00:07:38] Dan Fellars: Yeah, 

[00:07:41] Alli Alosa: no words. 

[00:07:43] Dan Fellars: All right, we'll move on. This one is a, tip and tricks.

[00:07:48] Matthew says somebody had mentioned their table doesn't back up record IDs. And it reminded me of something I do to overcome this. Keep two record ID fields. The first is the regular formula. Second one is a [00:08:00] single line text field and then an automation. Copies the first into the second, whenever a record is created this way.

[00:08:07] If I ever do need to restore a record, I know what its original record ID was. My question was, why do you need to copy it over? Cause the formula, wouldn't that come through anytime? 

[00:08:19] Kamille Parks: Well, it would, however, if you, if you open up your snapshot history and. Create a base from a snapshot that that snapshot, the record ID formula is going to update to that new record ID.

[00:08:35] So if you want it to match records, like if you wanted to export a CSV of your snapshot and import it back into the real one, the record IDs are all going to be different, which is not necessarily a bad behavior because it's a new record. It should have its own new record ID, but there should be some way to match it to the original.

[00:08:55] Okay. And that's not added for you. So what Matthew is saying is it allows you to [00:09:00] back up. And it's also same practice in theory. If you have a base, a sync to base B and in base a, you want a link that goes to that record in the child base, base B. You could use the same practice to, in base B, copy the record ID into a field that's synced back to the original, so you can have links going both ways.

[00:09:27] Alli Alosa: Yeah, I always I always bring over the source record ID whenever I'm syncing a table. 

[00:09:32] Shae Redding Rogers: Oh, I need more. I need to know more about that. 

[00:09:35] Kamille Parks: Source ID is, is like critical, but the child ID is something that we don't always sync back up. 

[00:09:42] Dan Fellars: Yeah. 

[00:09:43] Kamille Parks: But you can, you can sync it back up using the same method. 

[00:09:47] Dan Fellars: But it has to be a, a copied single line.

[00:09:50] Yes. Single 

[00:09:51] Kamille Parks: line text field. And what I like to do is turn off Edit permissions so that someone doesn't accidentally like clear it out. [00:10:00] 

[00:10:00] Dan Fellars: Yeah, that's a great, that's a great trick. Kavon talked about, her Airtable script, also including the base ID and the table ID, as well using her script. So then you even have more that you can link back to if needed.

[00:10:17] Alli Alosa: Yep. 

[00:10:19] Dan Fellars: So yeah, definitely comes in handy. 

[00:10:22] Alli Alosa: I actually realized that just reminded me, this is totally random, but You know how you could take a record ID and paste it into a linked record field and have it just match up to the right record. You could do the same thing with the record URL. You can search, if you have the whole URL and you pull up the record picker to find it and you paste that whole entire URL, it will find the right record.

[00:10:44] Dan Fellars: Interesting. So it can parse the URL to get the record ID? 

[00:10:49] Alli Alosa: I don't know why they thought of that, but I'm glad they 

[00:10:52] Kamille Parks: did. 

[00:10:52] Alli Alosa: Yeah, it's come in handy before when I just like, don't feel like. Getting just the record idea. I like just click the little three little dots and say, copy record [00:11:00] URL and then, yeah, 

[00:11:02] Dan Fellars: that's cool.

[00:11:03] There's a nice kick for the day. Here's here's one more from Alex. So it looks like, so I guess he was a fan of I-F-T-T-T-I use that years ago and I didn't know it was still around, but I think it. It's more for like physical devices talking to each other. But I guess you have to pay now for their webhooks.

[00:11:32] So here's an alternative HTTP request shortcut apps that you can get apparently just for Android. So. That's of use to anyone. Okay, Justin says, I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed the workday diff function. Now that I need it, it appears to be broken, or maybe I found an undocumented feature.

[00:11:55] If I use the function to compare two dates from date fields, it works fine. The moment [00:12:00] I try to use now or today as one of the dates to compare, it spits out error. Is this normal? Don't see any reference. And let's see, says in the date field and comparing against, I've turned on the use the same time zone for all collaborator features.

[00:12:20] Apparently workday diff doesn't like this setting. When comparing against the current daytime and just chokes doesn't care, but I need it to specifically track workdays or daytime diff doesn't care, but workday diff does. Interesting. We have not 

[00:12:36] Kamille Parks: noticed this. 

[00:12:38] Alli Alosa: I noticed the other day I was using, I was doing a replacement in a formula, replacing datetime diff with workday diff.

[00:12:46] And the order in which it asks for the two dates 

[00:12:53] Kamille Parks: The other way around. Yeah. 

[00:12:55] Alli Alosa: Yeah. And it drives me crazy. 

[00:12:59] Kamille Parks: There's a [00:13:00] reason why, after all of these years, I never know the order in which I'm supposed to put the two dates in any of the date like calculations, workday diff, date diff, even sometimes date add.

[00:13:13] I always get it backwards because they're different. 

[00:13:16] Alli Alosa: I don't know why. I do it backwards all like every single time. I write a date time. I do it backwards, but yeah, day diff. And also I noticed that the results. I haven't looked further into this, but the result of workday diff was always 1 day less than date time diff.

[00:13:36] Kamille Parks: Yep. It does calculate math differently. The order is backwards and math is different. 

[00:13:44] Alli Alosa: Yeah. 

[00:13:46] Dan Fellars: Oh man, that's frustrating. 

[00:13:48] Kamille Parks: Yeah. 

[00:13:49] Dan Fellars: Maybe they'll, maybe they'll fix a couple bugs. It looks like Airtable attack was able to reproduce a problem, but no indication when it'll be fixed. At least they acknowledge it.

[00:13:58] Maybe they'll go in [00:14:00] there and be like, Oh, there's all sorts of bugs in here. 

[00:14:02] Shae Redding Rogers: See, now I don't feel bad when I mess up. Because I never get it, right? 

[00:14:05] Kamille Parks: There are some things in, like, we talk about interfaces all the time, all the new shiny stuff in Airtable. There's some stuff in old Airtable that's still a little busted.

[00:14:16] Alli Alosa: Yes. 

[00:14:19] Dan Fellars: Yeah. And there, Scott says, documentation and tooltip is wrong. Yeah. 

[00:14:24] Alli Alosa: Yeah. 

[00:14:26] Dan Fellars: Yeah, it's deeply confusing. 

[00:14:28] Alli Alosa: It really is. 

[00:14:30] Dan Fellars: Yeah, yeah. All right, let's go. Speaking of more shortcuts, this is just on the table forums. IOS shortcuts are a great way to enter data into Airtable and iOS without opening a form or Airtable app.

[00:14:46] Here's an example of how it works that you can set up yourself. So for iOS, if you're looking for shortcuts, kind of similar to the, we did Android now we're doing iOS, for tips on mobile [00:15:00] shortcut apps is built in on the iPhone. Okay, going to X or Twitter. Here's an interesting one. Sam, who is a decent following runs an incubator.

[00:15:16] I'm always interested when people are exploring different options, including Airtable to see what other options are out there. So he's looking to build a ops platform, has some requirements here of what they need, kind of considering retool, Trello, Airtable, Monday, or Notion. And then just saw he's interested.

[00:15:36] This one had a lot of conversation. Somebody throws out Salesforce as the option. He was kind of shocked by that. Wow. Wow. Palantir AIP. I did not know Palantir had like an app building solution. So that was new. I'd have to look into that one. Let's see what else we got. [00:16:00] DOS retool. And then other people saying glide apps, super blocks, Palantir, retool.

[00:16:12] Kamille Parks: Retool feels like an odd suggestion based on the, I use Retool, it's fine. But like I was reading the requirements and I was, that's for like the visual layer. They have a in house database to it. But like, to me that they need like a stack and I don't know, Retool will give you a pretty page that won't do anything yet.

[00:16:36] You need to build all the logic that answers like the first three bullet points that were on the list. I don't know. 

[00:16:43] Dan Fellars: I mean, here's somebody stay away from notion trailer table. Use retool. Did they use retool? 

[00:16:50] Kamille Parks: What's your database? 

[00:16:53] Dan Fellars: I mean, I'm going 

[00:16:54] Kamille Parks: crazy. Like, I'm not saying don't use retool as the front end.

[00:16:57] I'm like, where's your data? Go 

[00:16:59] Dan Fellars: doesn't [00:17:00] retool have its own database? It 

[00:17:01] Kamille Parks: does, but it's just plain, 

[00:17:03] Dan Fellars: it's just a postgres. 

[00:17:06] Kamille Parks: And I'm like, well, that's fine. But are you, do you want to build this whole thing? And just postgres? Why ask? 

[00:17:14] Dan Fellars: Yeah, there's even more forest admin. That's a new one. That one, here's a vote for base row, open source.

[00:17:26] What else we got? Parabola. Not quite. These 

[00:17:31] Kamille Parks: are all over the map. Parabola is a competitor to make and Zapier. 

[00:17:36] Dan Fellars: Smartsheet. 

[00:17:38] Kamille Parks: I'm going to come back and look at this thread. Yeah. 

[00:17:43] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Retool for internal apps. So, yeah. And then, yeah, this Palantir one, I'm going to have to look into that one. I'm curious about what Palantir has familiar with it.

[00:17:59] So anyway, [00:18:00] it's always curious. I like to see what's going on side of Airtable. Okay. Next one. Yeah, this is just kind of more for humor. The wife is automating away our daily parenting lives with AI and Airtable automations, setting up reminders of who you have to pick up and things you have to do. So you have an AI agent built inside of Airtable to keep you.

[00:18:28] I probably need this. My wife probably. I do too. Reminds me too much to pick up kids. 

[00:18:34] Alli Alosa: Oh my goodness. 

[00:18:35] Dan Fellars: So, Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see if my wife learns about AI. She's not quite there yet. Okay. Here's a just a snippet looks like how we, co founder and CEO of air table was on a recent broadcast.

[00:18:53] So if you'd like to hear direction directly from the top of what they're thinking about, this is on the viability of product market fit [00:19:00] and how they iterated multiple times to, to continue to find that fit. So there's that. There's also, let me do this one. Another interview with, CMO John Pereira, who I believe is relatively new.

[00:19:20] This interview I think is before he joined Airtable. He was at high spot. And so if you'd like to see how the executives at Airtable think, I always like to show their, their presentations. One more here today. I learned you can use find, replace controls in the Airtable formula field configuration.

[00:19:41] This 

[00:19:45] Kamille Parks: is not necessarily new. It's been there. I want to say at least a year. It is so useful. I don't know if it's like mentioned in the documentation anywhere, but my goodness, just hitting control F. Bulk [00:20:00] replacing stuff in very long formulas. 

[00:20:03] Dan Fellars: Excellent. It says find, replace controls. What does it mean by controls?

[00:20:08] Just the placeholders? Just mean 

[00:20:09] Kamille Parks: the dialogue for two, like the thing I want to find and the thing I want to replace, but it, it works the way you expect. You can do case sensitive or not. You can replace one at a time. You can replace in bulk. It's just really useful if you want, if you're like, you have a similar formula that you need like five copies of and you like duplicate the field over and over, you could just replace the like referenced items in that formula over and over.

[00:20:37] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. Yeah. And this also works inside the scripting block as well. Scripting extension cap. All right, last one. Okay, this was pretty cool. Zapier AI bots now support web browsing, instant actions via chat, interactive testing and behavior setup, significant speed improvements, and full retrieval over Zapier [00:21:00] Tables, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot.

[00:21:01] I think we highlighted this in the past, but I still need to check this out. This is just piqued my interest of how so you can write bots that query across your entire air table, at least base, maybe maybe multiple bases. I don't know if anybody's played with this yet. 

[00:21:21] Shae Redding Rogers: No, but I will now. 

[00:21:23] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So yeah, I definitely it's it's on my my list to review Zapier.

[00:21:30] They seem to be. Pushing pretty aggressively into the AI and being able to kind of communicate across all your apps and almost adding like an AI layer on top of multiple apps, which is really interesting. So 

[00:21:45] Alli Alosa: that's nice. 

[00:21:46] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll need to get somebody to do a demo of that across our table.

[00:21:53] All right. That concludes around the bases of what's going on. Keep you up to date. I don't believe [00:22:00] I'm going to do a quick check. Of the Airtable, what's new in case we missed any feature releases. Nope, nothing new in May. So we're good as far as we found, found a couple of new things, but nothing that they officially released.

[00:22:18] Okay, moving on backups.

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[00:22:23] If you are running your business on air table, it's best practice to back up your data outside of air table. We actually just released a new feature, a new approach that we're taking. In the past we would rely on. So we back up to Google Drive box and Dropbox and each of those has an archiving solution.

[00:22:45] But there's limitations to that. So we just changed how we do our backups. We now do a unique folder for every time our backup runs. So now you can keep a history, and we can keep a much longer history than what the [00:23:00] archiving solutions provided. And so now if you're already onto our customer, you'll see a new layout, should have received an email with that information.

[00:23:09] for your attention. And going forward, that also lays the foundation for restore, which is in the works. So sneak peek on, on being able to restore your, your backup data back into air table. So exciting updates on, onto air, check it out. Onto air. com use promo code built on air for a discount with that.

[00:23:30] MEET THE CREATOR - SHAE REDDING ROGERS - 00:23:37

[00:23:32] Shea Redding Rogers. I believe we talked, was on our show four years ago. Was that the old format? Where is one on one interview? Yeah, you're on. Okay. So first time on the, on the new format. Let me get our, let's do this. Bring you in here. So Shea, give us an update on what you've got going on and anything new in your world.

[00:23:57] Shae Redding Rogers: Oh my goodness. Well, hello, [00:24:00] everyone. And whoever's watching, I'm Shae Redding Rogers. I am an architectural photographer, still do that. It turned out to be 13 years now, which, oof, making me feel old. I technically started using Airtable in 2017, but dabbled in it not really knowing what it was about until 2020, which is where I meet all y'all, and got to understand a little bit more of how to use it.

[00:24:24] So I've been, Now doing it for four years and have improved. Amazing. I'm so proud of myself. I'm still not where you guys are, but I am a lot further than where I was before. I have of course, the very first space that I made, which was network relationship database. Short it's called nerd. And that is where I built all of my meetings that I was having with all these network groups and stuff.

[00:24:52] 2020 the world shut down. We were all online. I needed something to keep track of that. And from there I have built [00:25:00] More of the photography business into Airtable. And then for a quick little side thing, I have a couple of people that are still in my circle that have no idea what Airtable is about, even though I tell them that I'm doing this and how I'm doing it, I do forget that I could talk science and they are still not understanding what I'm saying.

[00:25:21] So I kind of wanted to come back on here and give you guys an update of what the nerd looks like. And then also just. Help me remember that sometimes, even though I have improved, there are a lot of people that I know that still don't even know what a database is. And I like to help those people to start thinking that, hey, The world really does run more on a database than what we believe it does.

[00:25:46] And I'm here to kind of walk you through it just as beginners. Cause I still feel like I'm there. 

[00:25:52] Dan Fellars: Very good. So based in Brooklyn. So if anybody needs photography, Oh, 

[00:25:57] Shae Redding Rogers: yes. 

[00:25:57] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Love 

[00:25:59] Shae Redding Rogers: [00:26:00] New York all the way. I basically work with architects, contractors, and interior designers. And so majority of the work is either in Manhattan, New Jersey, sometimes Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

[00:26:11] But that's. That's my love. And Airtable has become the side love to run everything in the background. And I've been getting really good at making that work on its own and me just once in a while checking it. So 

[00:26:26] Dan Fellars: that's awesome. That's what I love about Airtable for a one person shop running a business.

[00:26:31] It's amazing for that. 

[00:26:33] Shae Redding Rogers: Yes. As soon as you learn how to work with it. Cause I still, one of my complaints was I think like an artist. I don't think like an. I IT person. And so with Airtable, although I love how beautiful it is and how I can make it all pretty, I still have to think like, okay, how does this database going to work?

[00:26:54] How does things link? I've gotten better at it, but I know for me [00:27:00] trying to still think like an artist and make the database work, like I think the artist brain should work is where I'm always tripping with, but I've, I've gotten better at figuring that out. 

[00:27:12] Dan Fellars: Any questions for Shay before we move on? 

[00:27:17] Kamille Parks: I think not really a question, but just like a, just an interesting point in that it's Airtable is a Relational database and therefore it's more structured than what a lot of people might be used to if they're used to Excel or sheets and that it's mostly structured.

[00:27:36] And then, like, 1 column, you know, your dates are also text and all of that. And your table really does kind of force you to, like, you got to pick 1 path for each column. So I could see how that would be difficult. If you're, if you come in with something, In mind of what you want to build and then having to like make those decisions up front, you can't even really start without having, [00:28:00] you know, you have to decide on something you can change it later, but it's not as free form as some other solutions.

[00:28:07] Shae Redding Rogers: And a lot of people that I know are accustomed to Excel. And so I'm like, yes, it's amazing, but this one's so much prettier. And they're like, okay, but I'm like, Oh, Shay. You have to not think like that. I have to break it down to, okay, now we're doing it structurally this way. This is the basics of it. Let's get it there.

[00:28:28] And so I've learned how to keep that structure in my head because I know I could just go not, I'm already at the end of the project and I haven't even started the project. 

[00:28:38] Dan Fellars: Awesome. If you want to share your screen, we'll get that going in just a second. 

[00:28:47] Shae Redding Rogers: Let's pray I do not mess this up. 

[00:28:50] BASE SHOWCASE - HOME SEARCH BASE - 00:28:59

[00:28:52] Dan Fellars: Yeah, and we're gonna do, we're gonna do her nerd NRD base first, I believe, and then we'll, we'll do a home [00:29:00] searching one as well.

[00:29:02] Alright, 

[00:29:03] Shae Redding Rogers: so let's start here. 

[00:29:07] Dan Fellars: There you go. 

[00:29:08] Shae Redding Rogers: Thank you. Okay, so basically, I started this project four years ago. Most of, hopefully everybody that knows me or has at least seen this, It's basically the network relationship database. I started it out with just the tarot, planets, ingredients, and alignment. The tarot row is nothing but my to do list.

[00:29:32] The planets is nothing but the companies that I would be working with or that I interact with or that I meet with people and they have their companies. It's anything that has to do with the business. Then we have the ingredients, which is nothing but the people that I've met. I always believe that without them, nothing necessarily works.

[00:29:53] And so to us, we are ingredients. And then we have the alignment tab, which is nothing but the interactions and [00:30:00] events that I have with each and every person that I meet. This is all I have. These three, four little things, and how does it, I have built it out to be a lot more and I'm ecstatic. One of the things that I realized is that I was meeting with a bunch of people, and then sometimes they had subtitles or sub little areas within the companies, and so I broke that down and I labeled that as stars.

[00:30:25] Once you click into this, the stars is connected to the planet so that I could keep track of it and know where the locations are and if there's anything else I need to know with that person or that specific company. So that was kind of like my little, let's break that down a little bit more. The other thing that I added before I got into my photography company, adding into this database was I wanted to start keeping track of all of the apps that I use.

[00:30:53] Because it turned out I have about like 400 apps and I did not know that. And [00:31:00] so I was like, yeah, I think you need to know how many services you use because you can branch out with that in a totally different side that you're not thinking about, but start cataloging that. So that's, what's in here. So I wanted to show that majority of the time though, it's in this Kanban view because.

[00:31:18] It just looks so much prettier, rather than this whole list, but I have that. Now, the challenge that I have been working on for the past four years is all of these tabs up here. This has to do specifically with my photography company. I wanted to break it down to make sure that I knew who I was sending the proposals to and when they were getting their proposals that then branches out to, if they actually want to work with me.

[00:31:46] I use a mo. Website I use, sorry, my website is build off a web flow. And so I was able to come up with a web hook to link a [00:32:00] form so that once that person actually decides that they actually want to work with me, I send them that web hook. They then go on my website, well, sorry, I send them the web link, they go on my website, they fill out the form, we end up doing the photo shoot, but it all gets put into Airtable automatically.

[00:32:16] So I was excited to figure that little piece out, because, whoo, that was hard. From there, It then goes into, sorry, goes into me doing a contract with them. All of that is in here now, which then breaks out into invoices, which is where everything really works from per se in this database. So we'll have like the invoice.

[00:32:38] We then have any receipts from them paying for the project. The photoshoot, contract, other payments, mailing information. I really wanted to break everything down the way I normally would do because before I decided to put it in the Airtable, it was just all in an external hard drive as [00:33:00] PDF files. And so I broke that down even more in here.

[00:33:03] We of course have the floor plans that I use, the tolls, the cars that I have to rent, all of that stuff I need to keep track for taxes purposes, which has not been added into this database yet. I still use Excel for that, but I'm working on breaking it into here. And then the last thing I've added to this space is all of my marketing.

[00:33:25] I'm praying that I could convince Airtable to work with MailChimp. If anybody's watching, I need y'all to start talking to each other, but I have to use Zapier to do this. But what it ends up happening is when an advertisement is scheduled in MailChimp, the URL link that the advertisement then turns into gets pushed into Airtable, which will also tell me how many subscribers to that mailing list it is.

[00:33:50] So I can keep track of who's in that list. And if I need to find more people to get added to, if I need to market in a certain way, I now have a place where I see [00:34:00] those numbers, which Four years ago, I had no idea that I needed to keep track of any of this. And now that I do, I'm like, Ooh, I feel smart. So smart.

[00:34:10] So this is what I basically work out of every single day and I love it and I can understand it and I keep track of it. And my brain feels amazing, but everyone that I know that I love, I talk to them about databases and they just don't get it. And so I decided that I was. I would try to remember the basics for everything and I had a relative that was looking to move and I was like, okay, tell me what you need to move.

[00:34:39] Cause I didn't quite feel that they were thinking it correctly and can't quite tell them that. So I was like, talk to me. And all the person kept saying was, I need a good schooling for my kid. And then I want this certain house. And I was like, let's break it down. I'm like, look into schools. And so I ended up coming up with a quick little [00:35:00] database.

[00:35:00] Basic for the person and they loved it. They understood it was not overwhelming for them. And then it hit me that yes, I've been doing this for four years now, but I still have a lot of people around me that just need to know the basics. And if I could build something simple, then you never know where that might take them to start doing their own databases with their whole thing.

[00:35:24] Cause that's kind of how I started with this nerd was just four things and it has expanded to more. Right. So this database is basically. them looking for a home. I started it with the school districts because that was the most important part was understanding where the best school systems were in New York State, not just the city, and the grades and how many people have passed math and reading and with the school different than school to student ratio.

[00:35:53] Is it more Caucasians? Is it more Asians? We want to make sure that this person's children grows [00:36:00] up in the most roundabout area because that is how we become whole. If we're stuck in our box, we don't know anything. So I ended up building this. From there, I was like, okay, I know where the school is, let's now go and do the house.

[00:36:14] Now, of course, That's all the person was thinking about was the house. It wasn't thinking about the school. So I made that the first view and because I like things to be pretty, I got as many pictures as I could of the houses to show, Hey, this is kind of what the price range is for the house. This is kind of where the house is surrounded.

[00:36:33] This is where the. This is all the information that I could find on the house from the broker to the township to the school. So I just kind of kept going from once I found the school, let's go to the house. And then of course it became, well, what is the town like? And I was like, all right, let's figure out this.

[00:36:53] Let's go through the county, more or less than the specific town. New York has smaller towns, but the [00:37:00] counties are more important. And so that broke it down to the different elementaries, the hospitals that we need to keep track of. What is the politics? Because as we know, we are in that society where we have to know that too.

[00:37:12] And so I ended up just presenting this and I was like, I don't know if this is how you think, but this is how I think. And I wanted to show you to give you a different view, a different mindset of what, if I was going to look for a house and if I was focusing on the school, this is what I would build. And this is as simple as it could be.

[00:37:32] And instead of you having to go to 10, 000 websites to find this information, you can start from here. And so I wanted to show this to you guys and show this to the viewers, because a lot of times I find that I'm so further than where I was that I do forget that I need to go back here and I want to help anyone that doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't even know how to start to be like, Hey, I'm not an expert.

[00:37:58] But I would love to just talk with [00:38:00] you and kind of tell you what I know about air table and see how that goes and also show my personal database. So I think y'all for allowing me to show that with you guys. And if there's any questions, please let me know and I'll try to answer. But thank you. I just, I wanted to give you guys an update.

[00:38:17] Kamille Parks: Really quick. The impetus for the second base made me laugh because for the past decade or so my father has been like, I'm moving out of California and that was it, and we'd be like, to where, what state, you know, he's retired now. So I'm like, well, live your life. Dad, where do you, he's from Missouri. So I was like, you want to move back to Missouri?

[00:38:37] He was like, no. All right. Well, there's 48 other States, dad. And he was like, no, he didn't, you know, his kids, as you can see are grown. So he didn't even have like, Oh, we'll narrow it down by school district. So as soon as he gives me any detail, a single detail, I'll build him a database. 

[00:38:58] Shae Redding Rogers: It's helpful.

[00:38:59] [00:39:00] Because I remember when I moved all the way to New Mexico, I went on apartments. com and it's before it got to where it is now. And I just put in like the rent and it popped up with any location in the United States that had that rent and that was very helpful because I didn't know where it was going.

[00:39:16] I just knew I didn't want to be in New York anymore and so that database. Who would have thought that that's really a database, but it is. Helped me find a location based on one thing. Now I'm a lot older and I know that there's a lot more that goes into it than just how much can I pay for it. So I look at it now.

[00:39:34] It's like, okay, no, the website that I'm going to is also a database. They have information that I need to understand for myself. So I can make the best decision and have a bigger view of what I'm trying to do. And. I know a lot of people don't think like that, but they always call me and I give them the answer and I'm like, you know, I'm just going to build you something so that you could be in my brain and understand how I look at this now.

[00:39:58] And over the four years, I've [00:40:00] slightly turned into a database, but I had fun building it and I just wanted to show everyone that we still have to go to the basics sometimes and formulas and automations and all that stuff. They're cute, but if you don't have the foundation of a base, you, it doesn't matter.

[00:40:17] Kamille Parks: You can't fool me. All of your primary fields are formulas. Oh, 

[00:40:22] Shae Redding Rogers: I have automations. Oh wait, I did not show you that. This is the last thing. I promise, which I was proud. Oh my goodness. Okay. So in here. 

[00:40:32] Dan Fellars: You got to share it again. Yeah, there we go. 

[00:40:34] Shae Redding Rogers: Are we there? Okay. So in here we have automation so that I could do easily referrals for update.

[00:40:43] We have automations for my Outlook calendar, which I was so proud that they started working with Outlook made it so much easier where now if an event or a regular planetary alignment calendar that I create on my Outlook, all of that goes into [00:41:00] the Airtable base now, which. When I started this, I had no idea what an automation was, and I got that.

[00:41:07] We have the form here so that when somebody does a project form, that goes in perfectly. I have it where it sends an email and a calendar event to both parties. That was a game changer, because I was doing that manually for years. And so I was like, Oh, I've gotten so much better. And then of course I figured out how to use Google.

[00:41:30] Now, if anybody on here knows me, I do not like Google, but I figured out that I'm going to use it like Zapier. And basically have it where my mother, I put an event on our Apple calendar. It shoots over to the Google calendar that then shoots into Airtable. Now for y'all, that might've been like no brainer for me.

[00:41:53] It took me forever to figure out how to make those steps work, but it does. And it automatically does. [00:42:00] And I was so proud of myself. And then the last part If you guys don't know, I always find people's information off of LinkedIn to be put into the database, especially if I have like one on ones with them, but LinkedIn doesn't have, like, they don't really want you to create your own database.

[00:42:15] They want you to use Airtame. They want you to use LinkedIn. And I found a software called Magical that will literally copy whatever's on that page and then puts it into a Google sheet. And because Google works with them. I was able to shoot it into Airtable, which has helped me so much. Cause I still meet a lot of people and I would have to do it manually.

[00:42:40] The only thing it doesn't do is bring in the photographs, which, you know, I love pictures but I'm able to do that in like a second. So that has taken building out the people that I network with, people that I meet, the people that I want to meet, that has taken that whole project for the ingredients.

[00:42:58] Record to literally like five [00:43:00] seconds. And I was like, so I figured that out and it's free. So I was even more happy about that. So my little automation row has developed and has grown and has matured with me as the database has too. So I think y'all 

[00:43:15] Dan Fellars: awesome. Very cool. Thank you for sharing that and giving an update.

[00:43:22] Shae Redding Rogers: Oh, and when I have more, which hopefully won't be in four years, but when I have more, I will be back because You guys have seen me since I was like way little baby. And now I'm in a good elementary school version of this. 

[00:43:36] Dan Fellars: Very cool. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. 

[00:43:39] BUILTONAIR AIRTABLE COMMUNITY - 00:43:39

[00:43:40] Quick shout out. If you are not in the built on air community, like the rest of us, please join us built on air.

[00:43:46] com slash join that gets you into our Slack community and also our newsletter. Actually a big announcement. We're revamping our newsletter to make it more Useful, better content. So if you're subscribed [00:44:00] to our newsletter, check it out. I believe this week we'll be going out with our new format. So excited to see that as well.

[00:44:08] A CASE FOR INTERFACE - ALLI ALOSA - PIVOT TABLES - 00:44:11

[00:44:12] Okay. Pivot tables with Allie finally available in interfaces. 

[00:44:18] Alli Alosa: Yay. Awesome. All right. So this is super exciting. It. Launched probably what almost like a month and a half ago, probably it was while we were on a season break. So in the base previously, actually, I should just mention under the extensions panel, there is a pivot table extension.

[00:44:44] That was super, super useful, but once interfaces launched and extension started getting less. Attention, and people wanted to just be in the interface more. Everybody was really missing the pivot tables, especially [00:45:00] me. And I know Cherry mentioned it a bunch of times as well. So now, I think two years after Interface is launched, we finally have pivot tables available, but they are only available on the new dashboard layout currently.

[00:45:16] Hopefully that gets fixed soon. Changed and you can have them added anywhere you want, hopefully soon. So if I just go and create a new page of the dashboard type, it's going to throw one in for me automatically. But so if we just look at this, you can also of course, just hit the plus at the bottom of the group here and throw in a new pivot table as well.

[00:45:46] You can also stack them next to each other, which is nice. So you can put two different ones right next to each other. I find it kind of strange that you can't put it up here. Like [00:46:00] you can only put numbers at the top and you can't put the numbers down below. And you can only put the pivot tables at the bottom and not at the top.

[00:46:06] So it's very rigid. Again, it's 

[00:46:10] Kamille Parks: getting silly. 

[00:46:11] Alli Alosa: Yeah, right. It's so strange. And I would love to be able to put a pivot table next to a chart. But I guess let's talk about what you can do, which is create pretty nice looking pivot tables. So I guess the way that I would describe a pivot table is it's somewhat of a matrix summarizing your data.

[00:46:43] So you can choose to have. Something on the left hand side. So those, those are going to be your rows and then you can choose optionally to have columns defined as well. So that's choosing two different fields. To be your [00:47:00] rows and columns. You don't need to have columns. You can just do rows if you want.

[00:47:06] And by default, it just starts with summarizing it by a count similar to the charts. So when you go and create a chart that's gonna do the same thing, it'll by default just have the count, but you could switch it to a summary as well, so you could switch to a field. And it's going to grab whatever field it thinks is a good one to choose, and it's actually a good one.

[00:47:31] So, I have a field called estimated value in my, data layer for each opportunity. And this is just summing it up, bucketing it by status. So, oftentimes I might do something similar where I'll have, you know, the same kind of thing shown in the chart and the pivot table. So, that way when you hover over each one of these where we've got that pivot table.

[00:47:57] 330, 000 [00:48:00] matches up to this 330, 000. So just a different way of being able to summarize and see those numbers. Then you could also, if we wanted to add back in the columns, this will bucket it even further to give us, you know, so the intersection of my opportunities that are in the qualification and very high priority, this is the sum of that estimated value for each one of those cells.

[00:48:29] A couple other things you can do, which you could also do in the base in the extension, I believe it was, you could click on one of these values and expand it to see the records that actually go into that total. This is kind of like a new page that's specific to the pivot table. So when you go back, you could also click this expand and it'll bring you to the same kind of bigger page which [00:49:00] is really nice.

[00:49:01] So as I click on each of these cells, it's going to show me the records that go into that bucket. Last thing I'll show is you can also sort this by whatever you want. So by default, it's just sorting by the group. So that would be the order of those single selects, but you could also sort it by the value.

[00:49:25] So if I want. The things that have the most, I think this is going the opposite. It's hard to figure out. 

[00:49:40] Kamille Parks: I, I am struggling to interpret, but I think it's doing by the sum total. 

[00:49:46] Alli Alosa: Yep. I know. I'm like, wait, well, how, what am I talking about here? 

[00:49:51] Kamille Parks: You look at the total column. It's that the all the way to the right.

[00:49:56] The final sum is how it's being sorted. 

[00:49:59] Alli Alosa: [00:50:00] Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So down that way. So you can play around with it. However, you want those values to be sorted. And so, yeah, as I know, if it's just 1 column, that's much easier to see sorting, descending or ascending and all sorts of fun things you can do with pivot tables.

[00:50:24] Dan Fellars: What what restrictions are there on field types for the columns? 

[00:50:30] Alli Alosa: Oh, that's a great question. Generally speaking, you can do most. 

[00:50:36] Kamille Parks: I think everything except attachment. I could be wrong about attachment. I've, I've never tried, but. 

[00:50:42] Alli Alosa: Yeah, I wouldn't think, I don't think you can do attachment. I don't have an attachment in this space, unfortunately.

[00:50:49] How 

[00:50:49] Dan Fellars: does it handle multi select when you have multiple 

[00:50:55] Alli Alosa: If you had multiple, I think it does the same thing as grouping. It doesn't split it out [00:51:00] into. 

[00:51:01] Dan Fellars: It's the combination is a single 

[00:51:04] Alli Alosa: exactly. 

[00:51:05] Kamille Parks: I wish there were a toggle for that. I 

[00:51:07] Alli Alosa: do too, right? Like, kind of like, I think it's the timeline view. You can split out multiple things into buckets.

[00:51:13] Yeah. Another cool thing you can also do just like the charts is if you pick a date as your field, you can bucket it. So it'll bucket it by month or quarter or whatever it is you want to use. which is also very nice 

[00:51:28] Kamille Parks: again for consistency in timeline. And I think technically Gantt you can set your own custom quarters.

[00:51:38] I wish you could do that here. It, it does calendar quarter, which is fine, but you, if you had a timeline above it, which you can put on a dashboard layout. They would be you would say different numbers, right? Because it's a custom quarter that you could have said on the timeline, but not in the, 

[00:51:57] Alli Alosa: you know, that is, that would be a nice to [00:52:00] have I am to get around that.

[00:52:03] I usually have, I do like a table of quarters and link things to the table. Yeah, I think that would be definitely nice again, have the same features across all the elements. Wonderful. The basics. Yeah. , I know. Oh, and last but not least, this is not yet supported on mobile pivot tables. 

[00:52:31] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. And then just to confirm, so once you put a pivot table in, you can't put anything underneath a pivot table.

[00:52:38] It has to be the, 

[00:52:39] Kamille Parks: you could put things beneath it. You can't. You can only put another pivot table beside it. You 

[00:52:48] Alli Alosa: can put a list beside it, too. Okay. Or a number. Now, 

[00:52:54] Kamille Parks: now, hold on, Airtable. 

[00:52:56] Alli Alosa: Yeah. What? How did that 

[00:52:58] Kamille Parks: get decided? [00:53:00] 

[00:53:00] Alli Alosa: I know, right? And then I think if I, can I do a timeline next to it? 

[00:53:05] Kamille Parks: No. I think the maximum is two columns.

[00:53:07] So, I, yeah, try doing, Then what's wrong? What? What now? I would argue that a pivot table is a type of chart. Yeah, I don't understand. 

[00:53:25] Alli Alosa: I don't either. And then the numbers like what if I want to have numbers next to my charts or anywhere else but the top just not doable. Maybe we'll get there someday.

[00:53:44] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Isn't the 

[00:53:46] Shae Redding Rogers: interface still a baby person? No! It's like three years old.

[00:53:56] Kamille Parks: The toddler. They were in their two year beta, but they are [00:54:00] not in beta anymore. 

[00:54:03] Dan Fellars: True, true. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks for sharing that Allie. And that concludes our episode for today. We'll be back with you for our final episode of the season. Thanks everybody for joining. We'll see you next week. 

[00:54:19] Shae Redding Rogers: Thanks.

[00:54:20] Thank you.

[00:54:36] OUTRO - 00:54:38

[00:54:37] Thank you for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out our sponsor, Ontoware backups, automated backups for air table. We'll see you next time on the built on air podcast.