7/23/2024 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S19-E04

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

In This Episode

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

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

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 –

Meet the Experts – 00:01:41 –

Meet Joseph Schieffer.

Joseph Schieffer is the CEO at A2J Tech. A2J Tech is a social enterprise that builds technology to improve access to justice. A2J Tech is a leader in developing applications with Airtable in the legal industry.

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:01:41 –

We dive into a full working base that will The Justice Passport is a digital portfolio of information to assist Marylanders seeking legal help. Its a very complex app built on Airtable with a Stacker front end.

A Case for Interface – 00:01:43 –

Explore Interfaces with “Charting – New Options”.

Airtable recently launched new charting options that Kamille will walk us through..

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.

Segment: Meet the Experts

Start Time: 00:01:41

Joseph Schieffer –

Meet Joseph Schieffer.

Joseph Schieffer is the CEO at A2J Tech. A2J Tech is a social enterprise that builds technology to improve access to justice. A2J Tech is a leader in developing applications with Airtable in the legal industry.

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:01:41

Maryland Justice Passport

We dive into a full working base that will The Justice Passport is a digital portfolio of information to assist Marylanders seeking legal help. Its a very complex app built on Airtable with a Stacker front end.

Segment: A Case for Interface

Start Time: 00:01:43

Charting – New Options

Explore Interfaces with “Charting – New Options”.

Airtable recently launched new charting options that Kamille will walk us through..

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, On2Air 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.

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[00:01:37] Dan Fellars: Welcome to the built on air podcast. We are in episode four of season 19. Good to be back with you, myself and Kamille. And special guest, Joseph. Welcome Joseph. Hello. Great to be here. Good to have you on. We're going to learn more about Joseph and his story later on in the show, but first I'll walk us through what we're going to be talking about today.

[00:01:59] As always, [00:02:00] we start with our round the bases to keep you up to date on all the news and happenings and air table and no code, then then highlight of our sponsor onto our backups. Then we will learn about Joseph Schaefer. Schaefer. How do you say your name? Schieffer. Schieffer. All right. Joseph Schieffer and what he's been up to and his background and story.

[00:02:22] Then he's going to walk us through a very cool technical use case that he's built with his company and then a shout out to join our community. And then Kamille is going to wrap us up with the new charting options. Available to us. 

[00:02:38] ROUND THE BASES - 00:02:39

[00:02:40] So with that around the bases. First, let's start off. Wonder if everybody had a fun weekend or week last week with the crowd strike fiasco.

[00:02:52] Here's a little bit of commentary on it in the built on air community. Probably didn't affect Kamille. I don't think because it [00:03:00] was only windows. So I was 

[00:03:06] Kamille Parks: fine. 

[00:03:07] Dan Fellars: Yeah, it didn't impact us. We're, we're too small. We don't, we don't use CrowdStrike, but I didn't hear any of our clients complaining too much maybe because they were quiet and couldn't log on.

[00:03:19] But, and I didn't have to travel. Luckily I know travel was a mess. 

[00:03:23] Kamille Parks: I knew a couple of people who were stuck in airports. Yeah. Same here. 

[00:03:27] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Luckily I was not traveling and I didn't hear anything about air table. Nobody, I didn't see any outages specific to this. So I don't think air table was impacted.

[00:03:44] So that was a, that was a fun couple of days still recovering from that. Okay. This is a little bit meta. What's new. The what's new page is new. I don't know if you noticed, but they switched to the new interface embed [00:04:00] instead of the the view embed. And so I came to this site today. I was like, Hey, this is new, but there are a couple new.

[00:04:10] So this, we've talked about this, a real world example of how you can view. The interfaces, you can embed them inside of webpages. So it's kind of cool. You can switch between views here and see what's going on and you can click on it and it'll have the slide out instead of the pop up. And so the first thing they talk about is this read only public share interface pages which we talked about last couple of weeks, but here's air table eating their own dog food.

[00:04:47] And then here's another, a new one. That I, I just noticed today, checkbox formatting for Boolean formula fields. So if a formula returns a Boolean, [00:05:00] you can display it, format it as a checkbox. 

[00:05:02] Kamille Parks: I've been to this page and I also remarked upon, Oh, they're using the new interface, embed. And yet I completely.

[00:05:12] Missed this, you know, change that's on this page that I looked at. So, 

[00:05:20] Dan Fellars: and then, and we, where we first saw it was credit to Olive, who actually does some cool work, very good designer, and mentions this as a, what's interesting about this is I think this is the first time that. Could you always return something other than a string or a number?

[00:05:42] Could you always return a Boolean value? 

[00:05:44] Kamille Parks: I, I don't know. I, I, I would have to look at old implementations of things that use the API that were like querying that formula field. I feel like it was [00:06:00] always treated as. In Airtable, it was treated as a Boolean, but elsewhere it wasn't. 

[00:06:06] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Like, I feel like it was converted to a number.

[00:06:10] Kamille Parks: That makes sense. 

[00:06:11] Dan Fellars: A one or a zero. And the reason why I ask this is because I know I tried when they when they added the formatting for drop down fields. I tried to return an array of like string values to see if you could do a multi select format. And you can't return an array, but. Now with returning Booleans, I might try it again, or that might be coming next, maybe.

[00:06:43] Kamille Parks: Yeah, I'm wondering what other field types they're, considering, because, single selecting checkbox are the two at the top of my list to include. But I wonder if [00:07:00] there's some other field type that's not coming to mind that would be nice to have as a formula output, because you could always do dates, you know, you could always do numbers.

[00:07:08] You could always do strings. So those are fine. But 

[00:07:12] Dan Fellars: yeah, 

[00:07:14] Joseph: yeah, I like this. But the concern is with the API. So we use stacker a lot and it doesn't do well with a stacker at this point. So with the single select, so they would need to do some updates on their end and so forth. So I think it is in the API now, but those downstream portals don't necessarily accommodate it yet.

[00:07:37] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. And the meta information, it does tell you what the output format is. You could in theory, but it doesn't give you the options with the colors that you configure that is not available in the API. Yeah. I don't believe, maybe 

[00:07:55] Kamille Parks: it is, did we look at that? I mean, Airtable, it [00:08:00] should be in the API, 

[00:08:03] Joseph: We did, so I was able to bring it through on a stacker portal, but I had to do a hard sync to get it to pull the data.

[00:08:13] So, typically stacker updates like every few seconds automatically, but for those fields where I had formatted it, With that formula and the single select, it wouldn't, when you had the automatic one to two second update, it didn't work. You had to do like a manual sync to get that to come through. 

[00:08:32] Dan Fellars: That makes sense.

[00:08:34] Cause that probably to refresh the meta information. Interesting. Well, I think those are the only new items, displayed here in the built on air community. We've got our sleuths always finding new features. And Russell and others showcased, and this is what Kamille is going to dive deep into, [00:09:00] but some cool new features within charts.

[00:09:04] So, excited to look at that. And then Alex also showcased a different version, a different additional. So, very cool stuff, and Kamille is going to walk us through, through these charting options. All right. Here's one from Max who was on the show a couple weeks ago. Anyone seen this error? So trying to invite a new user, getting an error.

[00:09:31] We're unable to verify your email. You're not signed into the account with the verification link associated with somebody mentioned what I would have mentioned. Try incognito. You're likely signed in. That didn't work. So the only other thing I could think of is if it's an enterprise account, there are some, some controls you can configure on who can can be added.

[00:09:58] They have to have like a [00:10:00] domain specific email address. Or maybe single sign on is configured and messing things up. 

[00:10:08] Joseph: That's what I was thinking. 

[00:10:10] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So it might be something along those lines, but hopefully max, you figure that out. All right. Okay. Here's a tool on top of air table that. Is I'm just blown away by these guys.

[00:10:28] I'm very impressed. I know Dominic. I've talked to him a few times and they just produce features like no other. Their developers are just constantly pushing out stuff. So anyways, if you if you need a form, I highly recommend fill out. That's the primary solution when we when we. Sunset at our forum solution at onto where we push people to fill out because it's a great product, but they, I think it's worth giving them a shout out for all the [00:11:00] features that they're producing bunch more just came out, calculations, which is interesting.

[00:11:08] Big calculations is a new one as well as other integrations to other tools and everything. I 

[00:11:18] Joseph: can also just mention one more shout out to fill out that came out, came to me this morning. One of our projects uses fill out for a form and they have a person who has visual disabilities and they said that the form on fill out worked perfectly with JAWS screen reader.

[00:11:38] So we've worked with fill out on some of these accessibility features. So just a shout out to Dominic and the team for doing that. And that. Someone with using JAWS had a great experience with a fill out form. 

[00:11:50] Dan Fellars: That's awesome. Yeah, they are. They are top notch developers for sure. All right. If you are [00:12:00] looking for more insight into Airtable, there's a couple webinars coming up.

[00:12:05] I thought we'd spotlight Tuesday, July 30th. That's next Tuesday. If you want to hear Airtable talk about some of their new features, You can do that. Also, if you want some assistance to get up to speed on app building within with using interfaces on July 25th, they will be available. So you can sign up for those on Airtable's website.

[00:12:34] And Alicia, another shout out to fill out, love their features. Their support is also top notch, very true. So good group there. I really recommend. Okay. Here's one more, talking about the air table Academy. Is it available for business plans? Rock and roll CEO is asking on X their email support says no.

[00:12:59] Their [00:13:00] Twitter account says yes. And then their Airtable Twitter account says, yes, I can confirm it is accessible to all users. And he says, sorry, that's not correct. I still get cannot access it. And Airtable says, can you reach us? He says, already did. Your webinar and your, and your DM says it's available for business plans.

[00:13:24] And now you say it's for everyone but reached out to them and then they said it's only available to enterprise. And so it looks like we're not sure who it's available to. I've accessed it through an enterprise account, so I'm not sure. 

[00:13:41] Joseph: I've accessed it through a business plan account. 

[00:13:45] Dan Fellars: And and you can, yeah, it 

[00:13:47] Joseph: worked 

[00:13:48] Dan Fellars: interesting.

[00:13:50] So yeah, not sure who that's available to, let us know in the comments if you can access it through anything other than enterprise. [00:14:00] And on that note, Nelson, who we know well, he runs the partner group. So I, I know I work very closely with Nelson, huge fan of Nelson. He's been great to work with and he himself finished the builder certification.

[00:14:15] So congrats to Nelson on doing that. So yeah, check out the builder course. Let's see what we got. Oh, yeah, this is just a news alert. And Marvin says because so this is talking about public shared pages because these pages benefit from no protection access control whatsoever. I'm struggling to think of possible use cases.

[00:14:45] I think there should be a specific kind of license seat for logged in users. Who only have read only access. So there is, that is, there is a read only Marvin access. This is more for, like, what we [00:15:00] shared with the What's New, if it really is public information that, that you want to display from that.

[00:15:11] Here's a cool application. Kind of similar, basically what the, this, this, this product is Basefront. Basefront. app is the URL. If you want to build kind of more advanced, they're kind of taking this public sharing, but making it more customizable. So if you want to share publicly your data from Airtable, but you don't like the options that you can use with like the interface builder, this is this is a different approach that looks like it will give you more.

[00:15:42] Configuration and it looks like it doesn't have the, the air table branding. So that's important. You can use this tool and it'll create like a embed code that you can put into your website. So kind of more, that's 

[00:15:59] Joseph: great to know about. We've [00:16:00] been in the, in the market for. For better ways to show data from Airtable.

[00:16:05] When did this come out? 

[00:16:07] Dan Fellars: We saw it on Reddit. I think it's been around a couple months, but this, it seems like this was a big update. I don't remember it being this fleshed out. 

[00:16:18] Joseph: Nice. We'll give it a, we'll give it a go. 

[00:16:21] Dan Fellars: Okay, there you go. All right, moving on to the Facebook community.

[00:16:27] Congratulations to Chris Dancy and Ben Green, who Ben Green primarily run this group, both of them, and it looks like they just passed 12, 000 users on Facebook. So congrats to them. And also shout out to, they're, they're also the team behind, Daret coming up. So be sure to get your tickets. Joseph, you're gonna be at Daret?

[00:16:54] Joseph: No, but I'd love to. cam. Yeah, I [00:17:00] read, I read about it on. In the Facebook group all the time. Like, I think New York can be a little hard to navigate and expensive. Yeah. So if it was a, if it was in a more place I could get in and out quickly, I might do it, but I've got a lot going on right now, but I've got it on my bucket list.

[00:17:18] So one day, 

[00:17:19] Dan Fellars: all right. One more also from Chris Dancy. The other The other team member there behind Facebook Airtable group and Airtable, I thought this was funny. He says beware of MIA. MIA means missing an Airtable. And this is Chris refers to employees. Who for whatever reason will not use the tool.

[00:17:44] There's some good conversation there talking about it. And this is something that's been on my mind in our agency business. This is something important to us. And we're trying to find ways to help improve adoption and roll out of air [00:18:00] table implementations. And how to get those laggards on board with adopting air table.

[00:18:07] And for whatever reason, people just have. A hesitancy to adopt new tools in general, not just Airtable, but so I don't know, any thoughts on best practices for getting people to adopt? 

[00:18:25] Kamille Parks: Well, I don't know. It depends on the type of project. I find it's obviously easier to get adoption if you have a smaller set of users who are supposed to use it.

[00:18:35] But if you have a long, large team, a lot of different people, a lot of different roles, Sometimes it's good to just have as many people as you can in a room and sort of ask pointedly, what do you want out of this project up at the front so that things aren't missed out by the time you're ready to deliver

[00:18:58] Joseph: for us. We try to [00:19:00] actually keep people out of air table and get them into, get them into stacker. So there's just, there's a lot. In Airtable, it can be confusing. So we try to make those custom front ends with something like stacker to make it really simple. And then we create dashboard pages, bring in all the related records to that user.

[00:19:20] So like they're only seeing what is specific to them rather than. 

[00:19:25] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. And that's similar with some of the new advancements in, in the interface builder that's, that's common as well. It's a kind of a pain to, to manage because you can hide pages for certain people, but now you've got to keep track of that.

[00:19:44] But it is doable to, but, and, and we highly recommend doing that. It takes effort to do, but having interface pages specific to roles or types of users, so they only see what's relevant to them. [00:20:00] That's a big piece of it, so. Alright, I think that wraps up around the bases, and now you are up to date on Airtable.

[00:20:10] So let's move on. 

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[00:20:54] MEET THE EXPERTS - JOSEPH SCHIEFFER - 00:20:56

[00:20:56] Okay, let's move on Joseph. [00:21:00] Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, what you're up to, what your company does, and then how you came into this world of Airtable. 

[00:21:09] Joseph: Yeah. So, where should I start? Okay. Let's start with what I do in the company. I'm the CEO at A2J Tech and A2J Tech is a company that works to improve access to justice.

[00:21:23] So that's what A2J means is access to justice. And what we do is we help low income people So the legal system shouldn't just be people for people who have a lot of money and can afford a lawyer. It's supposed to be justice for all. So what we do is we build tools and systems and work with many organizations to improve access to justice through better technology.

[00:21:47] So our client base is typically nonprofit legal aid organizations, courts, law firms and other legal technology companies. We have a team of currently about 12 people. [00:22:00] So 

[00:22:02] Dan Fellars: how did, what's your background? How did you get into this? Oh, and 

[00:22:05] Joseph: I, I forgot. I, so just I saw last week, no code ops was acquired by Zapier.

[00:22:13] So just a shout out to Phil and the team there. And Phil hooked me up with a sweatshirt when I was at the no code conference in Paris last year. 

[00:22:22] Kamille Parks: You can go to Paris, but not New York. Yeah. 

[00:22:31] Joseph: So, okay. Kind of funny how I got started with Airtable. All right. So I was on this webinar that I really didn't want to be on.

[00:22:41] And I, I was just listening to it just, and somebody, and this was in 20, 2017. Okay. And someone mentioned air table and said, Oh, I'll just look this up. And that was the, I was. 

[00:22:57] Dan Fellars: I 

[00:22:59] Joseph: was [00:23:00] hooked. I was like the rest of my life since then has been air table. So 

[00:23:05] Dan Fellars: were you already running a two J at that point 

[00:23:08] Joseph: at that time?

[00:23:09] I was working for the Florida justice technology center. So that's an organization that does, Did it at the time they're no longer in existence, but they worked on technology projects for the Florida legal aid community. And that's where I learned about this field. And the work I could do is by building projects for them and then going to conferences and talking about it and having people from other states.

[00:23:34] Oh, we would like the same thing in our state. So I realized, oh, I could develop Business to serve the needs of the nonprofit community for technology projects. 

[00:23:47] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. So what year did you go up on your own? 

[00:23:51] Joseph: I think we started A two J Tech in 2018 or 2019. [00:24:00] So, so our team does a lot with Airtable.

[00:24:06] One of the main things is portals. Well, such as with stacker, softer, no loco, pori, et cetera. And then we build a number of intake systems. So for nonprofits intake is a huge deal because you have people looking for those services and you want to have a good system to do that. And then in the legal space, there's even, it's even more involved with conflict checking and making sure you're not representing the opposing party, and then.

[00:24:39] Document automation would be, I think, the third component to that. And so we've done a lot of work where we're using air table data to then populate documents. We, the main tool we use for that is probably form stack. You can, you can do it, you know, a hundred ways. [00:25:00] But the, so far form stack has given us the most functionality for what we do there.

[00:25:07] So 

[00:25:09] Dan Fellars: what's been the reception of your client base to, I guess you're, they're mostly interacting with stacker and what's been the response to air table. 

[00:25:18] Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. They, they love it. They feel like it, it gives them what they need. And then for us as developers, we feel like between a portal and then their table data, we have all the tools we need.

[00:25:34] So I can't, I'm trying to think of a situation where we couldn't do what we were asked and I can't think of one currently. So 

[00:25:44] Dan Fellars: that's awesome. 

[00:25:45] Joseph: Yeah. So we, we feel like in general, we can, we can, Between air table and the portals, we can build anything. So, and I think that's largely because of APIs. So like, in other words, when we, when we build something on stacker for someone [00:26:00] they're, they could say, Oh, can I integrate with this?

[00:26:03] Can I integrate? Well, like, yeah, because, because air table can integrate with anything 

[00:26:08] You know, your, your portal can integrate with anything. 

[00:26:11] Dan Fellars: So yeah. Favorite feature functionality of air table. 

[00:26:18] Joseph: Favorite, that's a tough one. Yeah, I just, I think, I think the simplicity of creating relational databases, it is, is the biggest thing.

[00:26:33] So, and that's, I like want to create a course just on that aspect of it. And one of the reasons for that is our client base often uses spreadsheets. So it's, so if I could, if I could find a way to, To articulate why a simple relational database is better. I think [00:27:00] they would do it, but it's, it's hard to explain how that works and have them comfortable with that.

[00:27:06] You know, in a succinct way, so I'm always trying to articulate that. And so rather than having 20 or more different spreadsheets that have common elements, just have one air table base, and now everything is going to be accurate and updated when you just update something in one place. So, so I think that, that, like, to me, the, the relational database aspect and the simplicity of it brings a ton of power for nonprofit legal services organizations.

[00:27:41] Dan Fellars: So that really is the secret sauce that Airtable unlocked right there. Yeah. What biggest wishlist item feature that you wish they would add?

[00:27:58] Joseph: There, well, there's one coming up that I've been thinking [00:28:00] about that's updating linked records through, and I'll talk about it with my demo, updating linked records through a sync table. Yeah. Thanks. Any minute now. I saw the, I got the notice, they said in August, I think. So I was like, Ooh, 

[00:28:18] Kamille Parks: originally they said this Thursday and now I'm upset.

[00:28:24] Joseph: Good to know. So that's gonna, and that's, yeah, it gets to the topic I'm going to talk about today is that the, or I guess that would be maybe that I should have said that first, the, the 50 limit or limit on automations that, so for these portals that have a lot going on, that 50 limit is, it's not working.

[00:28:45] And so that's why I had to develop this other solution I'll talk about today. 

[00:28:49] Dan Fellars: Very cool. All right. Why don't we get ready for that? So yeah, you're going to give us, highlights into, are you, we'll be [00:29:00] using this just for, 

[00:29:02] Joseph: it's part of it. That's, that's one of the bigger ones I've built. I'm also going to show this California pro bono portal.

[00:29:08] And the reason that is that that particular platform has more like general information I can show, whereas the Maryland Just Passport is more client specifically in other words, like actual people seeking legal help, whereas the California pro bono portal is volunteer opportunities. Gotcha. 

[00:29:24] BASE SHOWCASE - MARYLAND JUSTICE PASSPORT - 00:29:34

[00:29:26] Dan Fellars: Yeah. If you want to share your screen.

[00:29:28] Joseph: Okay. 

[00:29:29] Dan Fellars: We'll dive into that. Yeah. I'm excited. This is a cool kind of advanced use case that we haven't dove into.

[00:29:45] Joseph: And I'm going to go into, 

[00:29:49] Dan Fellars: Can you see my screen? Yeah. Once you move it off, it's still, there we go. 

[00:29:54] Joseph: There we go. 

[00:29:55] Dan Fellars: Okay. 

[00:29:57] Joseph: Perfect. So I'll start out here. [00:30:00] And show you like one of the portals that we've built and I'll show it to you as just like a test user, for example. Okay. So here's what I'm talking about in which someone can volunteer.

[00:30:16] So this is typically paralegals attorneys can be other people. That are other legal professionals as well, and they can go into this portal and they can filter by many different attributes and they can choose to volunteer on, some type of legal issue or clinic. So the StayHoused LA Tenants Rights Clinic, help educate tenants on their rights and how to enforce them, time, lots of details.

[00:30:49] And then if you click on one of these linked records, it's going to take you to more of that thing. So here I click on practice area housing. Now I'm going to see [00:31:00] More housing type of opportunity. So if that's a area of law that I'm interested in, I can do that. And then I can go and click expressed interest.

[00:31:10] And I haven't done that yet, so I'll click add new, click save, and then I've expressed, I'm not going to do it because it will send an email to the organization, and I can submit interest in the opportunity. Alright, so with these portal type applications, there's a lot going on, and so you can't do it.

[00:31:31] With the 50 automations. So I had to figure out a way that I could build out more functionality and have more than 50. And I actually sent a message to the built on our Slack and said, all right, who who's figured out how to do this? And. What a few people said is contact Airtable to ask for more automations.

[00:31:56] And I'm on, we're on the business plan. And so I did that [00:32:00] and they said, no. So I was like, okay back to next option. And so you could of course use Meg, Zapier, other automation tools. But I would say that the, the drawback to that is. It doesn't have the same functionality as the air table automations.

[00:32:22] And then it's a different environment. So you're, you have to, it's not as, it's not as easy to work with in my viewpoint as the air table automations. So I had an idea. What if I created a table that is just for more automation? So I'm going to sync that data. To another table and then run more automations for there.

[00:32:47] And then in theory, I could have as many automations as I wanted on. So that's a little bit true. And so I'll go through. I put some slides together just to show everyone a little bit how this works, [00:33:00] and I'll go through the process here. So here's my very long title to this very short slide deck, setting up an automation space when you need more than 50 automations.

[00:33:10] Okay. First thing in a little bit, we talked about what those limitations is you can't create records in the target table. So actually I, for these. Portal applications that have a lot going on. I'll set up a table called automations management. And then what I do is I track the attributes and some things can't be done in that synced table.

[00:33:36] So I'll mark that, for example, updates a linked record. I can't do that. So that tells me, okay, that's not a good one, not a good candidate to move to the automation space. The find records action, those can be a bit more complex. So I try to do those in the source table rather than the target table. So this is just an example of how I keep [00:34:00] track of the attributes of the automation, and then I may say like, oh, this is a candidate to move.

[00:34:06] To the automation space. Okay. Let's go back to the slides here. Can't update linked records. That's the feature that Kamille said was coming out Thursday, but it looks like it's going to be later than that. Or did you say last Thursday, Kamille? 

[00:34:23] Kamille Parks: It's original launch date was the 25th of July. It has since been pushed back to August.

[00:34:29] Joseph: Okay. Got it. Can't update records in a table that is synced to the source. So it's kind of like the three way or side chaining. Something is, is synced to your source and you need to update that. Well, you can't do it from then a third sync table. And then, the, one of the better pieces of documentation is about their two way syncing.

[00:34:55] And I'll show you a little bit. I encourage you to, if you're doing this to [00:35:00] really read it and maybe read it a second time, because in a sense, there are limitations throughout. So there's a section that says limitations. Even when you read through these, you're going to find more limitations. So as I've shown a little bit here, like you just want to make sure that generally with those and I can go through them, those automations from your automations base, they're on the more simple side or they're sending emails updating like a single select field, things that are just.

[00:35:38] You want, you want your simpler automations to be an automation space because of all the limitations. And even when you think that you have, okay, you've, you've figured this out. You may even run into another limitation. So here they have this limitation section and then they have, I remember, right, two way [00:36:00] syncing and then another, a whole nother limitation section.

[00:36:04] So truthfully, there are just a lot. And you have to think it through. Okay, let's go to this next one here. Okay, and this is what Kamille and I were talking about. In August, we will expand two way sync to also allow linked, record, and collaborative edits to sync back to the initial source of truth table.

[00:36:25] Alright, I'll go, I'll go through this list of setup and then I'll show you a little bit, but for the sake of time, I won't go through. Every single step because it would take quite a while. So first one, create a view that will sync to the target base and lock it. So I will let's just do this real quick.

[00:36:42] So here's my, here are my opportunities. And then I will have. Probably like sync to automations database. Do not change unless I want to change the records or fields that are synced to the automations database. Okay. And here's the data I'm working with and [00:37:00] you could see this same data. So let's go here.

[00:37:02] Let's go back to all opportunities. So here are all these volunteer opportunities. And so here are those with the title and then the status. Okay. So I've got my. I've got my synced view. I'll create the table. So here I'm going to go into this. This is my automations database. And now I'm syncing these particular fields.

[00:37:30] And I've got a lot more. Just showing you the ones so you can kind of keep track of the same data across the different pages. I'm showing. Okay, then you're going to create the automation in the sink table. So here here's an example of an automation. Let's just read it through here. Opportunity created by.

[00:37:51] When deadline to express interest has passed, notify the person that created the opportunity. So, as a legal services organization, I put in a [00:38:00] volunteer opportunity and I say that people need to express their interest by July 30th and after July 30th. I'll get an email saying, okay, now the interest period has passed.

[00:38:13] Now you can reach out to the volunteers or let's say you didn't get as many volunteers as you wanted. You could repost that opportunity. Okay. So I created the automation. All right. No, you, and this is a key. Maybe I should bold this guy. Okay. No, you'll need to create an automation. such as in Zapier make to wake up the synced base so that it runs the automations.

[00:38:38] So that was I remember when I first set this system up, I was so excited and then the automations didn't run. And it's because you have to wake it up. Okay. So the next thing I do set up tracking in the sync table to track the wake up calls to the sync table. So let's [00:39:00] go into that. Okay. So I call it pings.

[00:39:03] That's my, my official term for it. So I'll make these different ping types. So I've got ticket created, status linked as updated role for update as updated volunteer entity, interest approval is updated so that I can keep track and make sure that. The pings are working correctly, and here I've got my pings.

[00:39:25] So, and actually I meant to use a different view here, demo, just so it doesn't show people's info. So I've got my ping type, so I can track that, so I know, for example, like one is a ticket created. Okay, and I have that lookup field and date and time created ticket ID opportunity. It's just for tracking purposes.

[00:39:47] So for example, if someone didn't get an email or Something didn't run on time. I could go and look it up and see when Did the base get that ping? And essentially [00:40:00] the automation should run right after it gets that pain. So if there's some type of time delay, I could look into that. I haven't had any issues with it.

[00:40:08] And that's one of the reasons I want to talk about it on the pod here today is that this is working really well. So it's taken me some time, but. I feel like it's a it's a really good solution when you need more than 50 automations. Next one I've got here. Okay, so that's my tracking is I just set up the reasons and like, okay, every time a ping comes in, I'm going to track it and then create a, so in your source, create a last updated field.

[00:40:33] So this is pretty familiar. To most people, probably if you work with Zapier, you need a last updated field in order to monitor that base for any automations and then set up an automation to create a record in the target base. And that's what I'm doing here is every time I get a ping, I'm logging it. So I can do any investigation I need to.

[00:40:55] And here in Zapier. So let's just go into this real quick. [00:41:00] Okay. So my California pro bono. Probably on a portal database, my opportunities, when the status linked is last modified, and I've got my, that's my trigger here, I can do my test, and let's go ahead and just go to the create record, action, my pings, I know that this particular ping type is number four, because I'm tracking it, and then I may try to just put a little more information in, just to help me if I need to troubleshoot something, now I've got a little, I don't, in other words I know what the ping was related to and not just that there was one.

[00:41:38] So easier to troubleshoot. Okay. And there you go. And now you've got, now you have as many automations as you want, as long as it's not one of the ones in the limitations. So Kamille or Dan, any questions on that?

[00:41:58] Kamille Parks: I [00:42:00] guess like the, just a baseline, if you're using Zapier for some of it, is your reason not for, to, to put as many automations in Airtable, in Airtable simplicity or to reduce cost? 

[00:42:19] Joseph: Actually it's just for simplicity. Like so let's take an example here. So I find this interface just to be easier. To work with then the Zapier interface.

[00:42:33] So I know I could, and I've done it and I have, I have both. I have automations in Zapier and then the ones in air table. And I find, let's say for example, let's go into this one and go to automations. So let's say I get to a point that I'm over 50. Well, I find it easier to put like this. Page on a, on a second screen, another monitor, and then just set it [00:43:00] up on in the automation space.

[00:43:03] Because I can essentially just copy the elements, which would be great if you could copy an automation, but, in terms of between bases. But I just, I find it easier. For the logic and everything to just use their table automations rather than doing it in Zapier. Does that make sense, Kamille?

[00:43:26] Dan Fellars: Yeah, and then talking about the, the need for the ping. So that basically, what have you found as far as like, basically, if there's no data being updated. That's why you have to ping. Do you have a good sense of like how much time has to pass or, yeah, so it's 

[00:43:50] Joseph: just that an audit a saint base it, if you're just pushing records [00:44:00] into it.

[00:44:00] From the source table, it essentially is asleep and like nothing you can do will wake it up except for an API call. So you have to somehow push data into it. That's not like the synced data. It's from some other system. And then it does it almost immediately. So like, so let's take an example here. Let's say, the person in stacker.

[00:44:30] So let's go in here. And let's actually go to, I'll be like, Jenny. Who's a common user.

[00:44:44] Okay. Let's go to, let's refresh. There we go.

[00:44:55] Okay. I could go in you [00:45:00] know, this is some of this, but I could go in and I could put a ticket in. And then it's going to send a API call through Zapier. It's going to send into here and say a ticket was created. Then this automation is going to send me an email saying there was a new ticket. When ticket created, send Joseph and Victoria an email.

[00:45:27] So and because this is a simpler one, this is a good Candidate for this automation space. Whereas the more complex ones I want to do in that source table. So it all happens within a few minutes depending on your Zapier plan. But so and we have the, I don't know, something at a higher level.

[00:45:48] It's not necessarily enterprise, but a higher level Zapier plan. So that makes sense. 

[00:45:54] Dan Fellars: Yeah. And so it's the fact that now, if, if, if people were logging in directly [00:46:00] into air table, even on the source, that would trigger the sink. So the air tape air table UI will trigger the sink. It's the fact that you're in, in, in stacker that it's not triggering.

[00:46:15] Is that correct? 

[00:46:17] Joseph: No, no, it's nope. In other words, so you have your, your table here. The source table and your destination table. This thing essentially, unless you have open on your computer, I guess that would be another one. That's what I did at the beginning. When I was first doing this, I would keep it open on my computer because that would keep it awake.

[00:46:38] But if it's, if you, if the base is closed, okay. In other words, it is, it is like dead to the world. If you don't open it, it won't do the syncing and it won't run the automations. 

[00:46:52] Dan Fellars: Right. So yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah. So if you're in the air table ui, then it will do the sink. Yeah, 

[00:46:58] Joseph: yeah, yeah. On that synced [00:47:00] on the, you have to have that sink table open, right?

[00:47:02] For it to be awake. Yeah. Sorry about that. 

[00:47:04] Kamille Parks: Yeah. To clarify, we, we mean a base that's entirely comprised of synced tables, because most of the time Yeah. People only have like one or two tables and then a series of. Regular native tables. And so most people aren't going to run into this problem. 

[00:47:20] Joseph: Correct.

[00:47:21] Well, it depends if you have an open or not. 

[00:47:24] Kamille Parks: Well, most people are in their air table base is what we're saying. 

[00:47:27] Joseph: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. This is just, if you need more than 50 automations, really, which is, I find with the, with the portals, and applications, that's where it's like, yeah, like, Organizations will keep asking for functionality and features and all that, which is great.

[00:47:49] It's just, then you get to the fifth, you're like, all right, I gotta, I gotta. Figure something out. Yeah. Yep. 

[00:47:57] Kamille Parks: Automation is one of the weird limits [00:48:00] that don't increase based on plan. Like you get more records, you get more attachment space, you get more in some cases a AI credits. I think now skills with your plan.

[00:48:13] Automations are locked at 50 for everyone, which is interesting. 

[00:48:18] Joseph: Yeah, unfortunately, 

[00:48:20] Dan Fellars: they can on certain plans, they will increase the limit for you. If you ask, yes, 

[00:48:25] Kamille Parks: you do have to ask. It's always a support ticket. They're always going to first tell you, try optimizing your automations. But yeah, that's your point.

[00:48:35] Sometimes you can optimize because some automations do need to do similar, but different things, and there's only so much you can do. 

[00:48:43] Joseph: Yeah, that's what people would say Tuesday. Oh, did you? Oh, there's certainly you don't need 50. You can optimize that. I'm like, I don't know how else to say it. Like with these portals, you can build unlimited features.

[00:48:55] So there's just so many different things 

[00:48:57] Kamille Parks: you got to start telling your clients. No. [00:49:00] 

[00:49:00] Joseph: Yeah, 

[00:49:02] Dan Fellars: yeah, yeah, for sure. So Very cool. Yeah. All right. Thanks for sharing that. And yeah, if anybody is in the legal world and need some help, where can they find you? 

[00:49:13] Joseph: Yeah. Go a2jtech. com or joseph j o s e p h at go a2jtech.

[00:49:19] com. So if you you need help with stuff in the legal space we're happy to help whether it's a portal, just Airtable in general, document automation, things that connect to Airtable. 

[00:49:32] Dan Fellars: Thank you for sharing that Joseph. 

[00:49:34] BUILTONAIR COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT - 00:49:34

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[00:50:15] A CASE FOR INTERFACE - CHARTING - 00:50:27

[00:50:17] and let's wrap up with charts with Kamille. There you go. 

[00:50:24] Kamille Parks: Once again, it's time to give a very long explanation about the differences between features that are all within Airtable inside their own product. So, recently, there have been some updates to charts that make them a little bit more powerful.

[00:50:40] You can display things in ways you previously couldn't, but before I get into that, I just want to highlight those are not available on the Airtable website. Older style interface pages. We are currently looking at a blank interface page and or a. blank template type of an interface page. [00:51:00] And if I click on it, you'll see that the options for the charts are the same as they were previously.

[00:51:07] So I can have an x axis and a y axis and that's about it really. If I, try to modify this, I don't, I'm not going to see some of the same settings that I will see if I were to look at, say, a dashboard layout, for instance. Clicking on this. chart, you'll notice I have two options right off the bat.

[00:51:30] I now have the ability to have two different y axes. It'll still default to having something on the left, but I now can have an independent y axis on the right, and you can see One, this one is giving me the count, and this is giving me the sum. Also, this absolutely crazy line that, is the default.

[00:51:55] But you can change it to, like, a scatter or another bar [00:52:00] chart if you want. I'm going to turn that off because it is going to distract me terribly, but that's one of the biggest changes that was added. Another one that was added to bar charts specifically is if I go into, pardon me really quickly, if I go into my y axis, the one that it starts off with, and I start to group, let's say I group by, let's say, I think I want to do major category.

[00:52:31] I now have the ability to display it as a hundred percent stacked bar chart. This isn't a great example for that type of chart display, but I can turn it on or off, but it allows you to. Previously, you could always group by whatever your y axis was, but now you can display it as a 100 percent stacked bar.

[00:52:54] If I turn that back on and then try it with the different bar orientation, it also [00:53:00] works if you want to go horizontal. And then similarly, it still works no matter where you put your legend, which is nice. So you're now able to have a Charts that look a little bit closer to what you could do on some other platforms.

[00:53:20] There's still a few features that I find missing for charts in Airtable interfaces, but when you couple them with things like the dropdowns that you could put up at the top you know, things like that, they start to become, more Much closer to where I wanted them to be quite some time ago.

[00:53:48] Now we can see if I can try and make this chart look good, which is the thing that I'm worst at. 

[00:53:55] Dan Fellars: You're much better than most. 

[00:53:57] Kamille Parks: I don't know. I feel like Allie [00:54:00] is the one who's really good at charts on this show. As far as I can tell well, let's go through the other types of charts. When you first add one to an interface, it's always going to default as bar.

[00:54:14] You can change it to line and it looks just as crazy as before, but you can still have multiple Y axes, which is nice. So if you wanted to have two lines, you could, if you want to have two bars, you could. And then I do find this to be a little bit. confusing just because, the type of chart that's for the first y axis is controlled by this type up here, but the type of chart for the second y axis is controlled down here.

[00:54:52] And I understand, I understand why it's there from a UI perspective, because when you go to pi, there is no y axis. [00:55:00] So you want a sort of overall toggle up at the top. So you can, you know, select pie as your choice. However, I do think this could be a little bit better. And then it switches to two different X axes if you're on horizontal as your orientation.

[00:55:26] And then just because we're here, I'll flip through the other charts. So as far as I could tell, pie and donut are the same. I wasn't able to see any additional changes made to it. Although I didn't investigate as thoroughly as I did with bars and lines but as far as I can tell, they operate the same way as they did before with no additional settings.

[00:55:49] Scatter does work the same way as line and bar because it's basically the same under the hood. It's just they're not drawing the line in between all of these points.[00:56:00] 

[00:56:06] Yeah, I'm going to try and play with it a little bit more. I've been avoiding making true dashboards in Airtable for a while. Mostly I'm displaying data in like grids and lists sometimes galleries, but I'm rarely doing summarizations of data. And this might sway me to try and build what I was envisioning in my head directly in ErgTable interfaces.

[00:56:32] Previously, I think I was leaning more towards doing things in something like Noloco or Retool, which gives you a little bit more flexibility in how you can display things like this. And I'll go back to a bar because it's more visually interesting. 

[00:56:48] Dan Fellars: Did you showcase how you could actually have two different fields on the same chart?

[00:56:56] Kamille Parks: I didn't say that aloud, but if you [00:57:00] have, if I activate my second axis and I'll change this to a bar, so it looks a little bit less weird. The field can be different. So you can see for the first one, I'm using category. As my field, and then for the second one, I'm able to change it to a different field.

[00:57:23] So if I go back to category, it's going to say, don't do that, because it's already on there twice. But if I change it to, oops, oops, sorry, I broke it. If I change it to account, for instance, I don't know where it is. Did I, did I actually break it? Hmm.

[00:57:51] Maybe, maybe it was there and just not obvious. 

[00:57:55] Dan Fellars: Nope. Yeah. Looking at from Alex, what he posted in the built [00:58:00] on air thread about this. Where is it? He has it on the X axis. It will actually say fields instead of field. So it allows for more than one field. I don't know what settings you have to do. So one field, if you click on the, the.

[00:58:20] The icon, does it give you a different menu? 

[00:58:24] Kamille Parks: Where, this here? Yeah, 

[00:58:25] Dan Fellars: or that just brings the public. 

[00:58:27] Kamille Parks: No, it brings up the same. There you 

[00:58:29] Dan Fellars: go, fields. So there you can do fields. 

[00:58:31] Kamille Parks: Ah, okay. All right. I'm sorry. So there's a lot of places that you should go if you want to see things. So the first selection for a field is under, I'll go, To vertical because this is how charts start off under x axis.

[00:58:48] The first place that you can select a field is here under category. So that's where that's how the chart started off. And if you go under x axis [00:59:00] left, I have multiple different fields clicking there. Let's say.

[00:59:09] Let's do distinct. We'll start making as many different adjustments as I can. So this, I feel, is going to get real confusing real fast. But it is, it is nice that you're able to have multiple different fields represented on the same chart. Now I don't, believe that you can have fine control over each field based on color.

[00:59:40] So I'm not seeing the ability to adjust. If I want this field represented in blue and then this one represented in green, I'm not able to make that adjustment. I can only control the color palette overall which is okay. But I think it would be more helpful if I had [01:00:00] that fine control. And then the last place that you could choose a field is on your secondary y axis.

[01:00:07] And this is where you could have it start to display as a different type of chart. So right now, If I turn this off, I have less things to look at. Everything is represented as the same type of bar. So there's a lot going on in these charts now.

[01:00:28] Joseph: I was excited by that. I think Russell showed a trend line or something. 

[01:00:32] Kamille Parks: Yeah. So that's, that's what if I did show on the. XX is right or YX is right and had it as a type of line and then picked something that would look less insane. Maybe transaction date.

[01:00:50] Nope, that's even worse, but someone who is better at charts would be able to have that line say something meaningful. 

[01:00:59] Dan Fellars: This is [01:01:00] more realistic. This is what our data usually looks like.

[01:01:06] Yeah. Awesome. Very cool. Thank you, Kamille, for sharing that insight. So yeah, show us your pretty charts if you've got one. And with that, that concludes this week's episode. We are off for next week for a mid season break. I will be off the grid next week, so not available, but we'll be back in two weeks for episode five of season 19.

[01:01:33] So thank you, Joseph, for joining and Kamille, and we will see everybody. In two weeks.

[01:01:56] OUTRO - 01:01:58

[01:01:56] Thank you for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. [01:02:00] Be sure to check out our sponsor, onto our backups, automated backups for air table. We'll see you next time on the built on air podcast.