11/29/2022 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S12-E11

Duration: 60 minutes

Be Sure to Subscribe to the podcast!

To get all the latest videos and demonstrations from the BuiltOnAir Podcast, subscribe and get notified on our Youtube channel here and our newsletter/community here.

FULL EPISODE VIDEO

Watch the full video of the show. See below for segment details.

FULL EPISODE AUDIO

Listen to the full Audio podcast for this episode here. Or add to your favorite podcast player

Listen On: Apple | Overcast | Spotify


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.

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.

Dan Fellars – I am the Founder of Openside, On2Air, and BuiltOnAir. I love automation and software. When not coding the next feature of On2Air, I love spending time with my wife and kids and golfing.

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:57 –

Meet the Creators – 00:28:06 –

Meet Alex Tellez.

Alex Tellez works with Sterling Administration, an independent health savings accounts administrator

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:37:10 –

We dive into a full working base that will This 2 part demo will showcase how to do both 1-way and 2-way chatbot messaging within Airtable with your customers.

Field Focus – 00:57:46 –

A deep dive into the Displaying commas in number fields Currency Fields – Using a currency field instead of number field allows for comma based formatting. 

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:57

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:28:06

Alex Tellez –

Meet Alex Tellez.

Alex Tellez works with Sterling Administration, an independent health savings accounts administrator

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:37:10

Chatbot Messaging in Airtable

We dive into a full working base that will This 2 part demo will showcase how to do both 1-way and 2-way chatbot messaging within Airtable with your customers.

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:57:46

Learn about the Displaying commas in number fields – Using a currency field instead of number field allows for comma based formatting.

A deep dive into the Displaying commas in number fields Currency Fields – Using a currency field instead of number field allows for comma based formatting. 

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:43] All right, welcome back
[00:01:45] to BuiltOnAir podcast.
[00:01:47] Season 12,
[00:01:48] episode 11. Good to be back with you.
[00:01:51] We were off last week for the holidays and
[00:01:53] and excited to be back again,
[00:01:57] myself Dan Fellars
[00:01:59] and Alli Alosa
[00:02:01] regular home back
[00:02:04] actually be a
[00:02:06] familiar
[00:02:07] podcast regular Scott
[00:02:12] hey there,
[00:02:14] but the s out
[00:02:17] Alex, it's
[00:02:20] last name,
[00:02:22] have you on the show with us today.
[00:02:26] Nice to be here.
[00:02:29] I think I'm having
[00:02:30] good, I think I was having
[00:02:32] some freezing issues but I think
[00:02:34] I'm good now.
[00:02:34] Good to have everybody with us.
[00:02:36] We may have Kamille,
[00:02:37] Kamille joining with us midway.
[00:02:40] She's having internet issues at her home,
[00:02:42] so she may be joining us.
[00:02:44] But let's run through
[00:02:46] what we're gonna be talking
[00:02:47] about today. As always,
[00:02:49] it's a one hour show,
[00:02:51] talking about all things Airtable.
[00:02:52] We always start off with
[00:02:54] our Round the Bases,
[00:02:56] keep you up to date on
[00:02:57] everything
[00:02:58] news related and what's going on
[00:03:00] in the different communities
[00:03:02] around Airtable.
[00:03:02] Then we'll do a quick shout out to
[00:03:05] On2Air our primary sponsor.
[00:03:06] Then we're going to learn more
[00:03:08] about Alex and his story
[00:03:10] and how he came into the
[00:03:11] world of Airtable
[00:03:13] and then Alex and Scott
[00:03:15] are gonna show us some show,
[00:03:17] so I was thinking as text messaging,
[00:03:20] but it's really more chat messaging using
[00:03:23] Airtable for chat messaging
[00:03:25] and how that works in Airtable
[00:03:28] and a live chat messaging system.
[00:03:31] So we'll dive into
[00:03:33] the world of chat messaging
[00:03:35] and then a quick shout out to
[00:03:37] how to join our community
[00:03:38] if you're not already in
[00:03:39] it. And then finally Scott's
[00:03:42] gonna walk through
[00:03:43] using currency and number
[00:03:45] fields and show us a cool hack
[00:03:48] around fields.
[00:03:49] So with that we'll start with
[00:03:52] Round the Bases and
[00:03:55] not a whole lot going on.
[00:03:57] I actually only have
[00:03:58] two things to share both
[00:04:00] airtable specific,
[00:04:01] so I think it's been a little bit
[00:04:03] quiet maybe because of
[00:04:04] holidays, but the first thing is,
[00:04:07] is the community is moving.
[00:04:09] If you go to the community.airtable.com,
[00:04:12] you'll see it's in read only
[00:04:14] mode, so they're working right now
[00:04:17] it looks like on December 1st,
[00:04:19] which is a couple of days away,
[00:04:21] they will have a new site on a whole new
[00:04:23] platform.
[00:04:25] I know Scott, you've got
[00:04:27] opinions on this, what do you think?
[00:04:30] I was just I don't know,
[00:04:32] I really love the discourse
[00:04:34] community forum. I love
[00:04:35] how user friendly the software is,
[00:04:37] how inviting it is, they've got those cool
[00:04:39] leaderboards,
[00:04:40] it's really easy to follow threads and
[00:04:43] and, you know,
[00:04:44] all the preferences. So
[00:04:45] I don't know,
[00:04:46] I don't know if the new community can beat
[00:04:49] everything that we already have.
[00:04:50] I don't know,
[00:04:51] I guess we're gonna find out.
[00:04:54] Yeah. What do you think Alli?
[00:04:56] Interesting I mean,
[00:04:58] it'll be I have no idea
[00:05:00] what the new platform is,
[00:05:01] but I do agree,
[00:05:03] I've really loved
[00:05:04] discourse for the time
[00:05:06] it's been around.
[00:05:07] So, I mean, looking forward
[00:05:09] to seeing what the new community
[00:05:11] looks like.
[00:05:15] Yeah, Kuovonne did us all a favor,
[00:05:17] and she took snapshots of all the leaders,
[00:05:19] all of the,
[00:05:22] Kuovonne
[00:05:24] thank you, Kuovonne.
[00:05:27] To hold on to, yep.
[00:05:30] A streak of consecutive days posting
[00:05:35] 365 at least visiting. And so these
[00:05:41] couple of days she's not able to post,
[00:05:43] so that's broken her streak and I don't
[00:05:45] know what she's doing
[00:05:46] with all her free time.
[00:05:49] Kuovonne, if you're watching,
[00:05:50] let us know
[00:05:51] what you're doing with all your free
[00:05:52] time these couple days.
[00:05:57] And Scott as well,
[00:05:58] I think you're the top poster,
[00:06:01] is that right?
[00:06:02] Thank you. Yeah.
[00:06:05] I was number one and Kuovonne
[00:06:07] was number two.
[00:06:08] Here it is, all time. Yeah,
[00:06:11] Scott, Kuovonne, Justin, Bill, Kamille
[00:06:13] Jeremy. So Jeremy,
[00:06:14] we gotta get Jeremy on the show,
[00:06:17] he's the top one we haven't
[00:06:18] gotten on the show yet.
[00:06:20] That's crazy that Van Hall,
[00:06:22] who probably hasn't posted in two years,
[00:06:25] is still in the leaderboard
[00:06:26] that shows how much
[00:06:28] he posted at one point.
[00:06:30] It's amazing, interesting. So
[00:06:33] yeah, we'll see.
[00:06:34] So in a couple of days
[00:06:35] it will be a new platform.
[00:06:37] Hopefully, hopefully all your clout
[00:06:39] carries over and
[00:06:40] and you don't have to start
[00:06:42] over from scratch.
[00:06:45] Totally. They did say that all
[00:06:47] the badges and leaderboards
[00:06:49] stats would carry
[00:06:50] over in their email,
[00:06:51] I'm interested to see how it looks,
[00:06:54] but they did say that,
[00:06:55] I think very cool.
[00:06:57] Yeah, I think the new platform
[00:07:00] is called khoros
[00:07:01] or something like that is that
[00:07:06] K H O R O S Bill French found
[00:07:08] some interesting information on that.
[00:07:12] It's mostly mostly we don't know
[00:07:15] if it's conspiracy, conjecture, or fact,
[00:07:17] but khoros's parent company
[00:07:20] is one of the primary
[00:07:22] investors in Airtable.
[00:07:24] Yeah, the relation between the khoros
[00:07:28] community software and Airtable.
[00:07:31] So that may be the reason for the move.
[00:07:35] Could be could be we'll see.
[00:07:38] All right, well the only other
[00:07:41] big thing this is a little bit old.
[00:07:43] We weren't on last week to
[00:07:46] to talk about it, but Airtable made a big
[00:07:49] announcement new A P I S
[00:07:52] and new endpoints,
[00:07:54] lots of new stuff on the
[00:07:57] developer front was announced.
[00:07:59] It's still in beta
[00:08:01] but let's go through these.
[00:08:03] So they're they're using
[00:08:05] personal access tokens,
[00:08:07] so that's basically the ability
[00:08:10] to create multiple
[00:08:11] api keys that you could
[00:08:13] use on more granular control
[00:08:15] over things although that there is some
[00:08:19] confusion as to whether you could
[00:08:22] use those in place of your api keys.
[00:08:24] Somewhere in the documentation,
[00:08:26] it says that you shouldn't
[00:08:27] use those with third
[00:08:28] party. That's more for
[00:08:29] your internal use only.
[00:08:31] But api key should
[00:08:33] are being replaced by OAuth
[00:08:36] so OAuth is in beta
[00:08:38] and so that is a big change.
[00:08:42] The big thing about OAuth
[00:08:44] it is you can actually determine
[00:08:47] which bases that you want
[00:08:50] to give access to the
[00:08:52] third party tools that
[00:08:54] you're giving access to.
[00:08:56] So and you can give access to
[00:08:59] just read only
[00:09:01] or write or updating fields,
[00:09:03] things like that.
[00:09:04] So you have more granular
[00:09:06] control over who you're giving
[00:09:07] permissions to your data.
[00:09:09] So that is pretty cool.
[00:09:11] You can also set things up
[00:09:13] at the workspace level
[00:09:15] so you can give access to like
[00:09:17] just one workspace and any
[00:09:19] base current or future
[00:09:21] that's in that workspace
[00:09:23] or everything overall.
[00:09:24] So
[00:09:25] that will be big
[00:09:29] what else?
[00:09:30] New api endpoints.
[00:09:32] So they're adding more information.
[00:09:35] New enterprise admin features.
[00:09:39] So I don't know if anybody's
[00:09:42] dove too much into this.
[00:09:44] Any other commentary?
[00:09:46] The comments api is exciting.
[00:09:49] I know more and more
[00:09:51] clients that are into
[00:09:53] the comment feature
[00:09:54] especially since they surfaced
[00:09:56] that element in the
[00:09:56] interfaces. And I love the updates
[00:09:59] they've made recently that you know,
[00:10:01] if you get a notification in your email,
[00:10:03] it says so and so mentioned you in this
[00:10:05] interface instead of bringing you
[00:10:07] into the base, it brings you right to the
[00:10:09] place where the person actually
[00:10:11] wrote the comment
[00:10:12] which is hugely beneficial.
[00:10:13] But the api I mean,
[00:10:15] something actually a client
[00:10:17] pointed out to me
[00:10:19] the other day is that
[00:10:20] when you put the grid,
[00:10:22] a grid view in an interface at one
[00:10:24] point or another, they showed the
[00:10:26] little numbers next to the each row to say
[00:10:28] this row has two comments.
[00:10:30] This row has three or whatever.
[00:10:32] Those those numbers
[00:10:33] are now gone.
[00:10:34] So this comments and I get
[00:10:36] I get why, I mean I think it makes
[00:10:38] sense for security purposes. But
[00:10:40] now with this api
[00:10:42] you could at least, you know,
[00:10:43] if a comment exists,
[00:10:44] you could have a little flag
[00:10:46] on that record saying
[00:10:47] there are comments on this so
[00:10:49] you don't have to expand
[00:10:50] everything to look for it
[00:10:52] if that makes sense.
[00:10:53] Yeah, that's cool.
[00:10:55] That's interesting. Yeah,
[00:10:57] I've played a ton
[00:10:59] with the web hooks and the new
[00:11:01] personal access tokens
[00:11:02] and very similar to what
[00:11:03] you were saying with the OAuth
[00:11:04] the new personal access tokens
[00:11:06] are so cool
[00:11:06] because you can choose specifically
[00:11:08] which bases you want access to
[00:11:10] and with the and you can specify
[00:11:13] what actual permissions you want,
[00:11:15] like whether it's reading
[00:11:17] or writing
[00:11:18] or there's a couple other things as well.
[00:11:20] You know, for the web hooks,
[00:11:22] whether you're monitoring
[00:11:23] table changes or data
[00:11:24] changes. So it's very, very powerful.
[00:11:29] They don't even list web hooks
[00:11:31] in this one. But yeah,
[00:11:32] web hooks is part of this
[00:11:33] release,
[00:11:35] interesting.
[00:11:36] Yeah. One thing that's kind of interesting
[00:11:39] if you can get into the technical
[00:11:40] weeds of web hooks
[00:11:41] if you don't get overwhelmed
[00:11:43] by the technical nature because
[00:11:44] there's no there's no front end to it.
[00:11:47] You have to get into it yourself,
[00:11:49] you know, through other means
[00:11:52] if you as a user of Airtable
[00:11:54] are not, you
[00:11:55] know, put off by the technical elements
[00:11:58] the web hooks are a very interesting
[00:12:00] way to work around the limitations
[00:12:02] of Airtable's automation runs.
[00:12:05] So because there's no limitation
[00:12:08] to how many times
[00:12:10] you can trigger a web hook,
[00:12:12] so it's
[00:12:14] it's almost identical to the
[00:12:16] automation with a lot more power,
[00:12:18] but it has that little loophole
[00:12:20] where you can work around
[00:12:21] the automation runs.
[00:12:22] Yeah, it also tells you
[00:12:24] when records are deleted,
[00:12:26] which there's no other way to
[00:12:29] do that really.
[00:12:30] So that's a powerful addition.
[00:12:33] That is correct.
[00:12:34] That is correct.
[00:12:35] Of course, now that I've mentioned
[00:12:36] the loophole on this podcast,
[00:12:37] they're gonna close that loophole.
[00:12:40] I think that's the whole point
[00:12:42] of web hooks.
[00:12:43] So I doubt that they would close
[00:12:45] that.
[00:12:47] But the other thing to mention
[00:12:49] is there's now a new web
[00:12:51] web documentation for
[00:12:52] all their api stuff.
[00:12:54] So this is pretty nice.
[00:12:57] I know you gave them some kudos
[00:12:59] for this new layout.
[00:13:04] Yeah, so you can break out
[00:13:06] so you can see everything.
[00:13:08] And and the meta api is also part of this.
[00:13:11] So now that that's publicly
[00:13:13] that used to be required
[00:13:15] additional approval
[00:13:17] from Airtable to get that.
[00:13:20] And so that and they they
[00:13:22] actually added more to the meta api
[00:13:24] that wasn't there before.
[00:13:25] So now you can actually create
[00:13:27] a base via the api
[00:13:29] before you could just do
[00:13:30] tables and
[00:13:32] fields. There are some limits.
[00:13:34] Some fields you still can't do,
[00:13:37] especially formula fields.
[00:13:39] That's like the one big thing
[00:13:41] with the meta api once
[00:13:42] you can do a full base replication,
[00:13:45] that's a game changer.
[00:13:49] But nothing around,
[00:13:51] there's no api for interfaces
[00:13:54] or automations those are
[00:13:56] those are two api's
[00:13:58] that would be cool
[00:13:59] if they ever add that functionality
[00:14:01] to be able to create interfaces
[00:14:03] dynamically through an api,
[00:14:05] that would be crazy
[00:14:06] that
[00:14:07] would be incredible.
[00:14:09] Yeah I was very very surprised
[00:14:10] to see that they added the
[00:14:12] create a base feature
[00:14:13] which I think we have just been
[00:14:15] talking in the forums just
[00:14:16] like two weeks prior
[00:14:17] when we were telling people
[00:14:19] that that's not a part of the api
[00:14:20] then boom it was a surprise
[00:14:22] and you're right
[00:14:23] and you cannot create any formula fields
[00:14:25] or anything that's
[00:14:26] like a formula like field
[00:14:28] like roll up fields for example,
[00:14:30] you can't create.
[00:14:32] Right, right.
[00:14:35] Yeah. So yeah that that's still missing.
[00:14:39] But yeah, once, I mean this gets you
[00:14:42] a whole lot closer to you know,
[00:14:45] being able to build
[00:14:47] true apps in Airtable and
[00:14:50] I wonder it's a matter of time
[00:14:52] before this gets abused of people creating
[00:14:54] millions of bases
[00:14:55] because they don't charge
[00:14:57] you per base. Right?
[00:14:58] So you could you could literally
[00:15:00] generate a million bases.
[00:15:04] I don't know if there is
[00:15:05] some kind of cut off
[00:15:07] but it says unlimited on the
[00:15:08] pricing page
[00:15:10] who's up for the challenge
[00:15:12] to see if they really mean unlimited?
[00:15:15] I'll nominate bill.
[00:15:17] I bet bill is working on that
[00:15:19] Bill or Kuovonne, maybe.
[00:15:21] Yeah, Kuovonne, Kuovonne
[00:15:24] yeah, I will say
[00:15:26] Kuovonne's commenting in here.
[00:15:28] She has used personal tokens
[00:15:30] as a substitute for
[00:15:31] an api key. Yeah,
[00:15:33] I know it's possible,
[00:15:34] but their documentation says they don't
[00:15:37] want you to or they don't prefer you do.
[00:15:40] She also mentions web hooks give
[00:15:42] you previous values,
[00:15:44] which is awesome.
[00:15:45] So that is really cool as well.
[00:15:47] Yeah, that's huge. That's huge.
[00:15:52] Previous to that,
[00:15:53] you need to do some crazy workarounds
[00:15:56] to like save the old
[00:15:57] value and compare it to the new one. And
[00:16:00] that's the tricky part about web hooks
[00:16:03] is their only live for seven days.
[00:16:05] You have to refresh it
[00:16:07] within seven days, otherwise it just dies.
[00:16:10] And I don't know if that's just
[00:16:12] for the beta or if that's the plan to be
[00:16:14] when it rolls out or not.
[00:16:16] I'm not sure. I think Yeah,
[00:16:18] I was talking with Sean
[00:16:19] keenan about that.
[00:16:20] He's the he's one of the guys
[00:16:22] that was working on the api
[00:16:23] stuff and he made it seem to me
[00:16:25] that that would be a
[00:16:26] permanent feature of it
[00:16:27] that they would expire after seven days.
[00:16:30] But what you can do is,
[00:16:31] you can just like set,
[00:16:32] you know, whatever tool you're using
[00:16:34] to access those web
[00:16:35] hooks. You know,
[00:16:36] whether it's javascript or,
[00:16:38] you know, make.com or whatever.
[00:16:39] You can just set like a daily repeating
[00:16:42] automation that just does a ping
[00:16:45] to refresh it like once a day.
[00:16:47] I mean at most you have to do
[00:16:49] at the least you'd have
[00:16:50] to do it once a week.
[00:16:51] But on the safe side you may want
[00:16:53] to just refresh it once once a day,
[00:16:55] which is kind of silly.
[00:16:56] If they've got all these people
[00:16:58] pinging them to refresh
[00:17:00] it, they should just have keep
[00:17:02] alive setting when you create it,
[00:17:04] you know, and that will save them
[00:17:07] from getting all these refresh pings.
[00:17:10] That's true. I wonder if they're doing it
[00:17:12] because when you do call the web hook,
[00:17:14] it actually gives you all the information
[00:17:17] historically through time that that
[00:17:19] web hook has ever received.
[00:17:21] And and you can and each
[00:17:23] each call is labeled by a cursor number.
[00:17:25] So you can say, I only want the
[00:17:28] information from cursor number 17 onwards.
[00:17:32] And so maybe they're expiring them
[00:17:34] so they don't run out of disk space
[00:17:36] eventually because the web hooks,
[00:17:38] it's not like the web hooks
[00:17:40] just send you the
[00:17:40] information
[00:17:41] and then delete that information.
[00:17:43] That information is permanently
[00:17:45] stored in that
[00:17:45] web hook.
[00:17:46] So maybe they're doing that because
[00:17:49] they were worried about too much
[00:17:51] storage taking place, I don't know. Yeah,
[00:17:56] interesting. So yeah,
[00:17:58] it's, it'll be
[00:17:59] it'll be interesting to see what this
[00:18:02] does to open up, you know, new innovation.
[00:18:06] I've I know I've been thinking of
[00:18:08] ways to take our applications
[00:18:10] actually talk a little bit
[00:18:12] about that in the
[00:18:13] On2Air demo
[00:18:14] but it definitely opens up Airtable
[00:18:17] to be more of a true platform,
[00:18:19] all of these new functionalities.
[00:18:22] So we'll see what
[00:18:24] what creators do with it,
[00:18:26] any other final comments?
[00:18:28] Any anything I've missed
[00:18:31] on updates from the communities?
[00:18:34] I think in relation to this,
[00:18:36] I'm not sure if it was
[00:18:39] released prior to it or
[00:18:40] along with all of this
[00:18:42] and I know it's an enterprise only
[00:18:44] feature but there's
[00:18:45] now you can have like an access
[00:18:47] only account.
[00:18:48] I haven't been able to find it
[00:18:50] but it's
[00:18:52] and I have not taken advantage
[00:18:54] of it yet
[00:18:55] but I can see where it would be useful
[00:18:57] to like set up an account that says,
[00:18:59] okay this is gonna be my
[00:19:01] access account for
[00:19:02] my Zapier api and so
[00:19:04] you don't have to worry about
[00:19:06] like having that api
[00:19:07] key be associated with a person
[00:19:10] that may leave
[00:19:11] and then you are left with a
[00:19:12] bunch of broken zaps
[00:19:14] that you need to reconnect.
[00:19:17] I think I think they called it
[00:19:19] an access only account.
[00:19:20] I'm not sure I had the
[00:19:21] documentation up the other day
[00:19:23] but I'll dig around for it and find it.
[00:19:26] Well that's interesting.
[00:19:27] I didn't know about that.
[00:19:28] That would be extremely
[00:19:29] helpful. Absolutely.
[00:19:31] Are they Service, service accounts? Yes.
[00:19:34] Service account. That's what it's called.
[00:19:36] Yeah. I don't
[00:19:38] know if they're in here.
[00:19:43] Let me see. I've got it somewhere.
[00:19:48] But yeah, I think that
[00:19:49] would be super, super useful
[00:19:51] for sure.
[00:19:53] So they've got the
[00:19:56] personal access tokens.
[00:19:59] Yeah, it says service for enterprise
[00:20:02] for enterprise admin, service accounts set
[00:20:04] up service accounts as non user
[00:20:06] accounts for integrations and other uses.
[00:20:09] But I that was copied and pasted
[00:20:11] into my slack somewhere
[00:20:13] and I'm not sure where
[00:20:14] it was copied and pasted.
[00:20:16] Is that something that was
[00:20:18] that's in beta? That you're using?
[00:20:20] I'm not using it yet.
[00:20:21] It was something that
[00:20:23] one of my clients like pointed out
[00:20:24] to me and was like,
[00:20:26] we should look at this
[00:20:27] and I was like, yeah we should.
[00:20:29] Haven't yet.
[00:20:31] Yeah, no, that would
[00:20:33] definitely be helpful,
[00:20:36] awesome. So yeah, this
[00:20:38] there's other limitations
[00:20:40] like with web hooks,
[00:20:42] it's like
[00:20:44] six web hooks per base or something.
[00:20:49] Pretty low limit
[00:20:50] and that might be just during beta.
[00:20:53] Yeah, no, they're actually,
[00:20:55] I think they're sticking with the limit.
[00:20:57] I asked about that as well and I think
[00:20:58] the current limit is 10.
[00:21:03] So that that's kind of a problem.
[00:21:05] I mean I mean it's only a problem
[00:21:07] if you're if
[00:21:08] you're gonna be, if you plan
[00:21:10] on being a heavy web hook user
[00:21:11] then then it could
[00:21:12] be a problem for you.
[00:21:13] It's not a problem for me.
[00:21:15] But it could be for
[00:21:16] somebody
[00:21:20] Oh,
[00:21:21] Kuovonne said in the chat that
[00:21:23] there is a limit of 500 bases
[00:21:25] per workspace.
[00:21:27] Interesting.
[00:21:32] So it's not unlimited, like they state.
[00:21:37] I don't know, is there anywhere
[00:21:39] that counts how many bases you have?
[00:21:41] Like under your storage?
[00:21:43] Does it tell you the number of bases?
[00:21:44] Because I don't even know,
[00:21:46] I've never seen that. I don't know.
[00:21:48] I would love to know.
[00:21:49] I'd love to,
[00:21:50] let's start a thread about how
[00:21:51] many bases people have
[00:21:54] in their workspaces, I want to know.
[00:21:58] This is interesting. I don't think I
[00:22:00] noticed this, web hooks created with user
[00:22:03] api keys will not expire,
[00:22:05] but are restricted usage
[00:22:07] on enterprise plan users.
[00:22:09] Oh, and we'll be deprecating.
[00:22:11] Oh, so that's like the
[00:22:14] old api keys. Gotcha.
[00:22:18] Yeah, I was I did the same
[00:22:19] thing you did.
[00:22:20] I was so excited by that last sentence
[00:22:22] and then I got to the part.
[00:22:23] Oh, and they'll be deprecated.
[00:22:24] So we better not go down the path.
[00:22:26] So I think that's just yeah,
[00:22:28] because legacy web hooks
[00:22:29] was available on the enterprise plan.
[00:22:31] So they're basically saying
[00:22:33] like those will still work
[00:22:35] for the time being.
[00:22:38] Yeah, more from Kuovonne,
[00:22:39] expiring web hooks makes sense
[00:22:41] for web hooks that
[00:22:42] people create to try
[00:22:44] and then never actually use
[00:22:46] definitely true.
[00:22:50] so yeah, good stuff coming.
[00:22:52] I think this will,
[00:22:53] we'll see lots of innovation.
[00:22:55] And excited for that. So
[00:22:57] that kind of concludes
[00:22:59] what's going what's new,
[00:23:01] relatively quiet, but
[00:23:02] that was definitely a big update
[00:23:05] that you know we'll
[00:23:06] see how long they haven't said
[00:23:08] how long the beta is.
[00:23:09] Have they have they set a
[00:23:10] date when it's out of beta?
[00:23:13] I don't think so.
[00:23:14] Yeah so maybe a few months before
[00:23:17] that goes out
[00:23:19] and one more from Kuovonne
[00:23:21] enterprise service account's
[00:23:22] an account that is not
[00:23:23] tied to a user. It's also free
[00:23:26] free if you're on enterprise.
[00:23:29] All right, very good.
[00:23:32] Let's move on to
[00:23:34] On2Air our primary sponsor,
[00:23:36] On2Air is an all in one toolkit
[00:23:38] that run that helps you
[00:23:39] run your business on
[00:23:40] Airtable. If you rely on
[00:23:42] Airtable for your business,
[00:23:44] you need to be checking out
[00:23:46] On2Air for all the suite of apps
[00:23:49] that we have.
[00:23:49] Today I want to talk about our backups app
[00:23:53] and maybe pull the curtain back
[00:23:55] a little bit of you know some behind the
[00:23:59] scenes of running a business
[00:24:00] that's dependent on Airtable
[00:24:02] and some of the
[00:24:03] joys of what you get to deal with.
[00:24:06] So as most people know so we have a
[00:24:09] backups application that helps you
[00:24:11] back up all your data and it will store it
[00:24:13] into box dropbox and google drive
[00:24:16] and it'll back up your data and your
[00:24:20] attachments.
[00:24:21] So as you know we've talked
[00:24:23] a lot about changes
[00:24:24] that Airtable made with
[00:24:26] expiring URLs for attachments
[00:24:29] and so we knew this was coming.
[00:24:32] We we did some prep work
[00:24:33] to try to prepare for it.
[00:24:35] But Airtable didn't really
[00:24:37] give us like you couldn't beta
[00:24:39] like sign up for it
[00:24:41] and so we really didn't know
[00:24:43] what the behavior was going to be
[00:24:46] until it actually the switch was flipped
[00:24:48] and so we thought we would
[00:24:50] be in a pretty good case
[00:24:52] or a situation to to handle
[00:24:53] it. Unfortunately that was not the case.
[00:24:56] After a couple of weeks of kind of
[00:24:57] reviewing what the new behavior
[00:25:00] was with with expiring
[00:25:01] URLs we found
[00:25:03] that we were not fully prepared for
[00:25:06] for that change and it definitely had an
[00:25:09] impact on how we backed up
[00:25:11] especially the attachments
[00:25:13] and really just how they worked
[00:25:15] in conjunction with the destinations.
[00:25:18] Dropbox in particular had some
[00:25:21] just odd behavior that
[00:25:23] that we didn't foresee.
[00:25:25] So actually just at the beginning of this
[00:25:29] this podcast we sent out an email to
[00:25:31] anybody that was impacted.
[00:25:33] We did have some delays
[00:25:35] in backing up our
[00:25:37] attachments and we had to
[00:25:39] rework our code to
[00:25:40] to better support the new expiring URLs
[00:25:43] and because of that we have a
[00:25:45] huge backlog of attachments that
[00:25:47] that's still that we're actually retrying.
[00:25:50] We don't know for certain
[00:25:51] how many actually got backed up
[00:25:53] so we decided to
[00:25:54] just re back up all of the attachments
[00:25:57] since the change which means we have
[00:26:00] weeks worth of of attachments
[00:26:02] that need to be backed up
[00:26:04] and it takes quite a
[00:26:05] long time for that.
[00:26:06] So if you're a customer
[00:26:08] of our backups I apologize for
[00:26:10] the inconvenience but we're working on it
[00:26:13] and it'll take a few days for the
[00:26:15] backlog to clear out
[00:26:17] and we'll get everything backed up
[00:26:19] and stored and we're now
[00:26:21] prepared for the future with
[00:26:24] with this new approach and dealing with it
[00:26:27] when those you URLs expire.
[00:26:30] And but the good thing about it and
[00:26:33] in conjunction with all these new changes
[00:26:35] the Airtable is doing
[00:26:37] we're working on the next iteration
[00:26:40] of backups to be
[00:26:42] able to back up your comments
[00:26:44] with your data.
[00:26:45] So that's a new feature we're
[00:26:47] working on.
[00:26:48] It will probably be Q one of next year.
[00:26:52] Maybe Q two.
[00:26:53] Were also we were also pretty much
[00:26:56] rewriting our our backup
[00:26:58] processes to be much
[00:27:00] more scalable.
[00:27:01] So that's in the works
[00:27:03] backing up all your schema data
[00:27:07] which before
[00:27:08] you could do just through
[00:27:09] our schema apps
[00:27:10] were now incorporating that into the
[00:27:12] backup. So you'll be able to
[00:27:14] back up your schema information
[00:27:17] as well as far
[00:27:17] as all your field data and table data.
[00:27:21] So that will all be available on certain
[00:27:24] tiers of the backup plan. And
[00:27:29] I think those are the main ones.
[00:27:31] You're back up your comments your meta.
[00:27:34] So lots of changes coming
[00:27:36] reworking to to support the new URLs
[00:27:39] and things like that so
[00:27:41] I just wanted to share that
[00:27:43] with any of our
[00:27:44] customers that may be listening
[00:27:46] but you'll get an email with full
[00:27:48] explanation of what's going on
[00:27:50] and how it impacts you.
[00:27:51] So you should have
[00:27:52] already received that
[00:27:54] during the show.
[00:27:56] So with that we'll move on
[00:27:59] to our spotlight on Alex.
[00:28:02] Alex. Welcome to the show.
[00:28:05] Why don't you tell us a
[00:28:07] little bit about yourself, your
[00:28:10] your background your business. Then
[00:28:12] I'd love to just kind of turn it
[00:28:14] over you but things
[00:28:15] I'd love to learn about is
[00:28:16] your story, how you found Airtable.
[00:28:19] Maybe what you were trying what you
[00:28:22] were using before Airtable
[00:28:24] to accomplish your business goals
[00:28:27] and then really how Airtable
[00:28:29] has changed your business? So with that,
[00:28:32] don't we
[00:28:35] yeah you're in here,
[00:28:39] tell us Alex. Well thanks Dan,
[00:28:41] thanks for having me on the show.
[00:28:43] My name is Alex Tellez.
[00:28:44] I have been a data scientist now for
[00:28:49] 13 years which makes me like
[00:28:51] like an old timer
[00:28:53] in my field at the rate that
[00:28:54] like General Assembly graduates
[00:28:56] data scientists is
[00:28:57] you know it's pretty pretty
[00:28:58] common now.
[00:29:01] I live and work in the Bay Area.
[00:29:03] And so I've been fortunate
[00:29:05] to work on like a
[00:29:06] lot of really interesting projects.
[00:29:08] I've done some of my more funny ones,
[00:29:11] I've worked in online dating.
[00:29:13] News, advertising, banking,
[00:29:16] healthcare. Two of my favorite
[00:29:18] data science projects I've done that I
[00:29:20] enjoyed
[00:29:21] was in NFL football so right
[00:29:26] Bill brady and tom Belichick,
[00:29:28] they're the top longest standing.
[00:29:30] They were you know quarterback
[00:29:33] and coach duo. And we tried to build an
[00:29:36] algorithm that could predict run
[00:29:38] or pass depending on the down distance,
[00:29:40] the game, the weather etcetera etcetera.
[00:29:42] And it turns out that Bill Belichick
[00:29:46] is like a it's like a 55 45
[00:29:48] so past 55% run
[00:29:49] 45
[00:29:50] we were able to get them down
[00:29:52] to around 77%
[00:29:53] using something called sequencing.
[00:29:55] So this is when an algorithm takes
[00:29:58] previous plays and kind of
[00:30:00] ties them up as a
[00:30:00] sequence but it remembers
[00:30:02] what happened in the previous place.
[00:30:04] So as an example,
[00:30:06] you know if I said a b c d
[00:30:08] and said what are the subsequent
[00:30:10] words to that?
[00:30:11] You would obviously know what
[00:30:12] that is because you're taking the sequence
[00:30:14] and you're applying it forward same
[00:30:16] thing that we do here.
[00:30:17] The other one that I did
[00:30:20] that was really fun was a
[00:30:21] while ago, I was a bit of a wine buff
[00:30:24] and we built an algorithm to predict
[00:30:27] vintage years of bordeaux wine
[00:30:29] so that if you wanted to
[00:30:31] buy the wine while it
[00:30:32] was in a barrel
[00:30:33] kind of like a future of a stock,
[00:30:36] you could buy it and then we would predict
[00:30:38] whether or not the wine's value
[00:30:39] would go up or down based on certain
[00:30:41] geographical features.
[00:30:43] And so my whole life
[00:30:44] has basically been in data science
[00:30:45] and then algorithms.
[00:30:47] I've been really lucky to
[00:30:49] I've written a book about it,
[00:30:50] I've taught courses on it
[00:30:52] and so it's been it's been
[00:30:54] quite a journey of data
[00:30:55] science if you will.
[00:30:57] But one thing that was
[00:30:58] I never really got into there was
[00:31:00] a pretty clear
[00:31:02] division of labor if you will,
[00:31:04] was kind of more of the
[00:31:06] data engineering side
[00:31:07] and also the data storage side.
[00:31:09] And so typically in a typical
[00:31:10] workflow of data
[00:31:11] science right?
[00:31:12] You have data engineers,
[00:31:14] you have sequel guys,
[00:31:15] you have you know data warehouse people,
[00:31:18] devops etcetera and they're storing
[00:31:20] this data. And then as a data scientist
[00:31:22] you are asking for data so you're
[00:31:23] consuming it and then you're
[00:31:25] doing something with it.
[00:31:27] And why this was so interesting
[00:31:29] like about Airtable was for the first time
[00:31:33] I had to think about I guess
[00:31:36] taking off my data science hat
[00:31:38] and turning on my
[00:31:39] data engineering and
[00:31:41] kind of like data storage hat.
[00:31:43] And so not having ever done
[00:31:44] this profession in my life,
[00:31:46] not only do I have a huge
[00:31:47] respect for devops people
[00:31:48] and D. B. A. S. Etcetera but
[00:31:50] I was able to discover Airtable
[00:31:53] and so you know
[00:31:54] fast forward
[00:31:55] to kind of present day now
[00:31:57] and I work for a company called sterling
[00:32:00] managed services
[00:32:02] and what we do is
[00:32:03] we try to build applications in the
[00:32:06] healthcare world
[00:32:08] in particular for elderly people.
[00:32:10] And so given that this is
[00:32:12] a very growing population here in America,
[00:32:15] the idea is how can we
[00:32:18] better serve our elderly
[00:32:20] by kind of caring for them
[00:32:23] better and trying to use data.
[00:32:25] And obviously that's the
[00:32:26] data science comes in to
[00:32:27] kind of get out better ways
[00:32:30] to care for elderly people.
[00:32:32] And doing so that's
[00:32:34] kind of when I had to research
[00:32:35] this question of like,
[00:32:37] well where do we store
[00:32:37] this data? And obviously
[00:32:39] there's a ton of like data storage
[00:32:41] solutions out there.
[00:32:43] Like if we,
[00:32:44] you know, we could hack
[00:32:45] like I'm sure we could hack
[00:32:46] like a google sheets,
[00:32:47] kind of like multi tab thing
[00:32:48] together and I'm sure people do,
[00:32:50] but it was only kind of researching
[00:32:53] and doing my own independent
[00:32:55] research when I
[00:32:56] said, you know what, like,
[00:32:57] I probably don't have the acumen
[00:32:59] and wherewithal to
[00:33:00] get like an entire oracle dB like
[00:33:02] in front of me and like
[00:33:04] try and do this as a
[00:33:05] data scientist. So I thought what
[00:33:07] was the most intuitive thing
[00:33:08] that could get me
[00:33:09] up and running at least for a prototype.
[00:33:12] And that's when I found Airtable
[00:33:14] and that's kind of when
[00:33:16] I had like this wow
[00:33:17] moment where I was like,
[00:33:18] so you're saying that
[00:33:20] I can do a lot of other things
[00:33:21] with automations, I think that's
[00:33:23] that's kind of like a really
[00:33:24] fascinating thing
[00:33:24] that Airtable does.
[00:33:26] And in doing so
[00:33:28] in finding these automations,
[00:33:30] I started to ask like more thought
[00:33:32] provoking questions and I was like,
[00:33:33] I wonder if we can do
[00:33:34] this that and the other
[00:33:36] and not knowing those answers
[00:33:38] kind of led me to the Airtable
[00:33:40] community which
[00:33:41] kind of dovetails nicely into
[00:33:43] the beginning part of our podcast.
[00:33:45] That was when I was like, man,
[00:33:46] there's like this guy
[00:33:47] named Scott who keeps like
[00:33:48] commenting the heck out of like forums
[00:33:50] and stuff like that, like seems like he
[00:33:52] knows what he's talking about,
[00:33:53] you know what I mean?
[00:33:54] Like a modicum of like
[00:33:55] intelligence and so
[00:33:56] that's when I like reached out
[00:33:57] to Scott and like Scott and I
[00:33:59] have been been working together
[00:34:01] ever since, but that's kind of my journey
[00:34:03] from,
[00:34:04] you know, data scientists,
[00:34:06] nicely packaged data
[00:34:07] to suddenly now you have to do
[00:34:09] it but Airtables kind of given me
[00:34:11] this this opportunity to do so in a
[00:34:14] really intuitive way.
[00:34:18] I love it, I love it.
[00:34:23] Yeah, and so, you know, I think
[00:34:25] I think one of the interesting
[00:34:27] things that
[00:34:28] we see and I'll just start,
[00:34:29] I'll talk about kind of
[00:34:31] what Scott and I are
[00:34:32] gonna like demo here for you
[00:34:35] is as companies like Airtable
[00:34:38] or Zapier or Make
[00:34:39] kind of democratize technological
[00:34:43] functionality, right?
[00:34:45] And technology is easier to use
[00:34:47] and it's more consumable by people.
[00:34:50] So too comes, I think the desire
[00:34:52] to do something with it, right?
[00:34:54] And that's kind of the essence
[00:34:56] of data science is like, okay,
[00:34:57] you've generated this exhaust
[00:34:59] now, let's do something with it.
[00:35:01] And so one of the key things
[00:35:03] I had thought about was, you know,
[00:35:06] we're working with a lot of people.
[00:35:09] So you know, elderly people
[00:35:11] who are receiving care
[00:35:12] we're working with care
[00:35:14] administrators. So these are people
[00:35:15] who are sending, you know nurses to your
[00:35:17] home, to your mother's home
[00:35:19] to care for your loved one.
[00:35:21] And all these people are kind of
[00:35:23] asking somewhat similar questions
[00:35:25] such as like,
[00:35:26] you know, hey, what did my dad
[00:35:29] do today? Or you know,
[00:35:30] did my dad or mother take
[00:35:32] her medication for the day
[00:35:34] etcetera etcetera?
[00:35:35] And these would not only be coming
[00:35:36] from the concerned loved ones,
[00:35:38] they're also coming
[00:35:39] from the business as well.
[00:35:40] And so we kind of had this idea
[00:35:42] where I said, you know, I don't want to,
[00:35:45] you know have death by paper cuts
[00:35:48] by way of like report requests
[00:35:50] all day because
[00:35:50] believe me, that would happen.
[00:35:53] And so I thought
[00:35:54] is there a way we can use all of
[00:35:56] these kind of applications
[00:35:59] and Airtable to kind of make a chat bot
[00:36:04] such that the user in this case
[00:36:07] it could be the loved one. It could be the
[00:36:10] business, it could be an R N
[00:36:12] it doesn't matter who
[00:36:14] the loved one could kind
[00:36:15] of like self service themselves
[00:36:18] with a really intuitive chatbot
[00:36:20] that had a whole bunch of web hooks on it,
[00:36:23] in which those web hooks would fire
[00:36:25] essentially queries to Airtable
[00:36:28] and extract data
[00:36:29] and send it via email wherever
[00:36:31] it needs to go.
[00:36:32] So that was the thought process
[00:36:35] is how can we
[00:36:36] take this really good data and
[00:36:38] kind of have it be self
[00:36:39] I mean kind of have it be like
[00:36:41] a self service kind of
[00:36:42] thing whereby, you know,
[00:36:44] like you can fend for yourself
[00:36:46] more or less and as
[00:36:47] opposed to just
[00:36:48] you asking me all the time for
[00:36:50] for data etcetera etcetera.
[00:36:52] So with that
[00:36:53] let me I'll just go ahead
[00:36:55] and share my screen down and I
[00:36:57] think you have to re share it.
[00:37:00] Yeah, I'll share my screen.
[00:37:02] Okay,
[00:37:06] let me let me move on.
[00:37:08] So this is our Base Showcase
[00:37:11] on chat messaging in Airtable.
[00:37:14] Share your screen.
[00:37:17] There you go. Okay,
[00:37:19] so this is a this is a client
[00:37:22] that we have and this is,
[00:37:25] you know, these are real people here
[00:37:27] and you'll notice that
[00:37:29] on this site here we
[00:37:30] we work with a company called chat bot
[00:37:33] and we named this particular bot
[00:37:36] in honor of Scott.
[00:37:38] And we even have the avatar,
[00:37:41] we kind of had to make it look
[00:37:43] like him as best as we could.
[00:37:46] Yeah, but you know let me just show you
[00:37:50] kind of let me take you through the
[00:37:54] the application first
[00:37:55] and then I'll kind of
[00:37:56] show you the back end of what had to
[00:37:57] happen. So here it's just
[00:37:59] it kind of works like it's you know,
[00:38:01] we wanted to make it intuitive
[00:38:02] where you're basically pressing
[00:38:03] buttons and so it
[00:38:04] says you know, hello staff
[00:38:05] please tell us essentially
[00:38:07] what it is you want to do,
[00:38:08] do you want to explore your clients,
[00:38:10] caretakers etcetera? So we'll just press
[00:38:12] one because we want to explore
[00:38:14] clients and then it says you know,
[00:38:16] okay let's explore your clients,
[00:38:18] press one if you, you know the person that
[00:38:20] you're interested in
[00:38:22] or two if you want us to list
[00:38:23] all of the clients that you
[00:38:24] have and in this case
[00:38:26] I'm gonna choose the one
[00:38:27] that I know we have and it says you know,
[00:38:29] go ahead and type in the client's name
[00:38:31] and you can also build and I'll talk
[00:38:33] about the chat bot app,
[00:38:34] you can also build kind of
[00:38:36] defensive coding here where
[00:38:37] like if they type in something bogus
[00:38:39] like you know, Brad Pitt you can be like
[00:38:40] hey that's not a real client.
[00:38:42] But you know here you
[00:38:44] just say you know this is
[00:38:46] this is a client's name
[00:38:48] When days do you want it?
[00:38:49] You can choose these different
[00:38:50] things and so if you
[00:38:51] look right, these are just date filters,
[00:38:53] they're just being very clever with
[00:38:54] date filters, but obviously
[00:38:56] the user doesn't know that.
[00:38:57] So I'll just say the
[00:38:58] last 30 days and it says great,
[00:39:00] we're going to generate a report,
[00:39:01] what email would you like this to do.
[00:39:04] So I'll put in my email address
[00:39:09] and then then it basically says,
[00:39:11] you know, we're on it
[00:39:12] and so behind the scenes,
[00:39:15] so here's my email
[00:39:16] and as you can see,
[00:39:18] there's the report for Paul Novak
[00:39:21] and you click it, it generates the C S. V.
[00:39:24] and here's all the things that
[00:39:26] Paul Novak has done
[00:39:27] the last 30 days, this particular client.
[00:39:30] And so behind the scenes,
[00:39:32] what we have here is
[00:39:33] this is an application called
[00:39:35] chatbot.com
[00:39:36] and this was my first
[00:39:38] kind of like chatbot
[00:39:39] so it's really inefficient
[00:39:41] and how it works.
[00:39:42] But you're you're basically seeing
[00:39:43] this diagram and this diagram
[00:39:45] is kind of like all the different
[00:39:47] steps and paths
[00:39:48] you can take.
[00:39:49] And I say it's really inefficient
[00:39:50] because I realized I could probably like
[00:39:52] dovetail things into other things,
[00:39:54] but I didn't really know
[00:39:55] what I was doing at
[00:39:56] first. And so this was kind of like
[00:39:58] my first foray with it, but as you can see
[00:40:00] the critical step is web hook
[00:40:02] right here. So I'll zoom in.
[00:40:05] So everything basically says,
[00:40:06] you know, you're starting with
[00:40:08] like a name,
[00:40:08] you can set up filters,
[00:40:10] you can set up defensive coding
[00:40:12] whereby people,
[00:40:12] you know, don't put in a bogus name.
[00:40:15] This is the time frame that you desired,
[00:40:17] you know, where are we sending this email?
[00:40:19] This checks that it's an email,
[00:40:20] an actual, you know,
[00:40:21] at and with the dot com or whatever.
[00:40:24] And then at the end
[00:40:25] we have a web hook here
[00:40:27] that fires
[00:40:28] and as you can see this web hook fires
[00:40:31] were sending it to Make.
[00:40:33] And Make's just a really good,
[00:40:36] really incredible partner
[00:40:39] of ours and this is
[00:40:40] our make application
[00:40:42] for this particular chat bot.
[00:40:44] It's huge because we have a
[00:40:45] lot of permutations that go on with it,
[00:40:47] right? We have a lot of different
[00:40:48] scenarios that you can do.
[00:40:50] I think it's got like
[00:40:51] 120 like modules and stuff like that.
[00:40:53] But every one of these light blue
[00:40:55] modules and I'll try and zoom in.
[00:40:58] I mean these are
[00:40:58] these are Airtable modules,
[00:41:00] right? So it's doing a search
[00:41:01] records action
[00:41:02] where we're basically filtering,
[00:41:04] if the record exists,
[00:41:05] if it doesn't exist,
[00:41:06] if it does exist,
[00:41:07] create that C S. V. That you saw in the
[00:41:09] open and then send the email.
[00:41:11] And if it doesn't exist,
[00:41:13] we need to send another email that says,
[00:41:14] hey, sorry, this doesn't exist.
[00:41:17] And so all these things are basically,
[00:41:19] you know, to go back to the flow,
[00:41:22] we have this chatbot here
[00:41:23] that is basically
[00:41:24] logging the path that the user
[00:41:28] wants using those numbers
[00:41:31] like 1122 and based on
[00:41:33] that I guess code we're decoding
[00:41:35] that path in the context
[00:41:38] of these automations here
[00:41:40] and then it's firing the emails
[00:41:43] with the CSVs over to
[00:41:45] kind of whoever
[00:41:46] needs to consume this data.
[00:41:47] And so that way they
[00:41:49] can really kind of fend for
[00:41:50] themselves.
[00:41:53] It's gotta be one of the most
[00:41:57] complex Make maps we've seen.
[00:42:01] Yeah, well like I said,
[00:42:02] it was, it was like my first
[00:42:03] go around with it.
[00:42:04] So it was terribly inefficient
[00:42:05] I think the first time
[00:42:06] I'm sure there's like a
[00:42:07] lot more we can do with it.
[00:42:08] But you know,
[00:42:09] what it what it does do is it really
[00:42:12] kind of again, it relieves the,
[00:42:14] I wouldn't call it the burden,
[00:42:15] but it just, it lets people consume
[00:42:17] the data on their time
[00:42:19] when they want to do
[00:42:20] it. So if someone's working
[00:42:22] at like 11 PM and I'm not there,
[00:42:23] they can just pull up this chat bots
[00:42:25] and they can say, hey, I want to look at,
[00:42:27] you know, all the things
[00:42:28] that this particular nurse has done
[00:42:30] and whether and we even have it
[00:42:32] like if it's a specific nurse
[00:42:33] and a specific
[00:42:34] client or just everything
[00:42:35] that this nurse has done
[00:42:37] in the last whatever data
[00:42:38] frame you want
[00:42:39] because one of the things
[00:42:40] I've noticed is just like with Airtable
[00:42:43] in the data science world,
[00:42:44] there's all these other applications
[00:42:47] that are making it
[00:42:48] really easy to you know,
[00:42:49] gleam insight from your data
[00:42:51] to visualize it
[00:42:52] and you know that that should be
[00:42:53] shared and and I'm glad
[00:42:55] it's being more democratized
[00:42:56] and so you know again if
[00:42:57] you're working at 10 30 at night
[00:42:59] for whatever reason
[00:43:00] and you're on this chat bot
[00:43:01] and you download all this data,
[00:43:03] you can now go do something
[00:43:05] with it using all
[00:43:06] these other tools at your
[00:43:08] at your leisure.
[00:43:09] And so I think it's a really nice way
[00:43:10] of
[00:43:12] essentially like exposing your base
[00:43:15] but without like giving someone you know
[00:43:17] the keys to your base of Airtable,
[00:43:19] you're letting them
[00:43:21] kind of like explore it.
[00:43:22] And quite frankly,
[00:43:23] you know the number one
[00:43:25] business intelligence
[00:43:27] application on the planet is
[00:43:28] Microsoft Excel.
[00:43:29] And that's just what people know
[00:43:31] and use and whether
[00:43:32] that's good or bad, I'm not gonna debate.
[00:43:34] But people are familiar with that
[00:43:36] with that medium
[00:43:37] of kind of looking at data in
[00:43:39] a very tabular format
[00:43:41] and this kind of gives it
[00:43:43] to them in kind of how
[00:43:44] they want to do it without
[00:43:45] kind of like, you know like
[00:43:47] this is the formula field in the
[00:43:48] table and you can adjust it
[00:43:50] like it's just kind of more like
[00:43:51] its consumer ready
[00:43:52] and it's ready for you
[00:43:53] to do something with.
[00:43:56] Alex. It's so awesome
[00:43:57] what you've done. It's incredible. Very,
[00:44:01] that's why we named it the
[00:44:04] Scott bot came from you man,
[00:44:06] I'm so honored.
[00:44:07] I'm so honored that there's a real bot a
[00:44:09] working bot out in the world
[00:44:11] named after me.
[00:44:13] There you go man, it's the first time,
[00:44:15] yeah, Alex has really been
[00:44:17] pushing Airtable
[00:44:19] to the extremes with Make when,
[00:44:21] when Alex first came to me,
[00:44:23] he was using Zapier
[00:44:24] and you actually couldn't do
[00:44:26] the things that you wanted to do in Zapier
[00:44:28] because you with some of the other
[00:44:29] things that you didn't show today,
[00:44:32] you're doing like aggregations and a lot
[00:44:34] of like very heavy logic
[00:44:36] that we that you that you
[00:44:38] were able to solve once you
[00:44:39] switched over to Make.
[00:44:41] Yeah, I mean, so you know,
[00:44:43] I didn't know about Make quite frankly,
[00:44:45] right? So the first thing
[00:44:47] I knew about was kind of
[00:44:49] Zapier and you know,
[00:44:49] not knocking them.
[00:44:51] But what, when I approached Scott, I said,
[00:44:53] you know, here's kind of what
[00:44:54] I'm thinking of how to do. And I kind of,
[00:44:56] you know, approached him
[00:44:58] and I said I'm not able to do
[00:45:00] that at least at least to my knowledge
[00:45:02] and when we talk about what that is.
[00:45:05] I know that's like really broad,
[00:45:07] but one of the key things
[00:45:08] that we do at least
[00:45:09] in health care that's very important
[00:45:11] is we need to be able to look back,
[00:45:12] right? It's and again,
[00:45:13] this is probably the data scientists
[00:45:15] in me that's getting
[00:45:16] all like that. But we need to be able
[00:45:18] to say, you know, if someone,
[00:45:19] let's say your mother,
[00:45:20] your father is not receiving
[00:45:22] adequate care,
[00:45:23] we can't just throw our arms up
[00:45:25] and say, well my dad's
[00:45:26] not receiving care,
[00:45:27] What we need to do
[00:45:28] is we need to be able to
[00:45:29] look back in time and say,
[00:45:30] well why is your father
[00:45:32] not receiving this care?
[00:45:34] So let's look back end steps.
[00:45:36] And those steps could be
[00:45:38] defined as events,
[00:45:39] days, doesn't really matter to me how
[00:45:41] you define the steps back,
[00:45:43] but we need to be able to do a
[00:45:45] look back and kind of
[00:45:46] aggregate data from a look back
[00:45:48] point of view
[00:45:48] and that's kind of where Make
[00:45:50] really that's where Scott opened
[00:45:52] my eyes to Make and you know,
[00:45:55] like we're very happy enterprise,
[00:45:58] Make customers. So thank you again Scott.
[00:46:01] I love it, you're welcome,
[00:46:02] thank you. I love going out.
[00:46:04] I love doing all these these
[00:46:05] these challenging projects
[00:46:07] with you
[00:46:07] which are so successful and are helping
[00:46:09] people in a real way.
[00:46:11] Like, for example,
[00:46:12] Alex has this whole text messaging
[00:46:14] system that he's set up in.
[00:46:16] So it goes with your slide Dan,
[00:46:17] that said text
[00:46:18] messaging
[00:46:19] system set up that if two
[00:46:22] negative events happen in a row
[00:46:25] to a client, like for example,
[00:46:27] somebody doesn't take
[00:46:29] their medication twice in a
[00:46:31] row in a day,
[00:46:32] then a text message
[00:46:33] will be automatically
[00:46:35] sent to the caregiver to
[00:46:36] let them know that that happened
[00:46:38] and that's because
[00:46:39] the nurses in the field are
[00:46:40] actually they have QR codes
[00:46:43] that they can scan to let,
[00:46:45] which then gives them a
[00:46:47] survey to fill out a brief survey
[00:46:48] where they can say what happened with this
[00:46:51] with this client.
[00:46:53] Yeah so I mean just briefly
[00:46:54] so thank you Scott for launching into it.
[00:46:57] But you know one of the key things
[00:46:59] that we found just we have a we have an
[00:47:01] entire like clinician board
[00:47:03] of directors that helps us
[00:47:05] with and just just so
[00:47:06] that we all know everyone
[00:47:07] does better when you receive care at home.
[00:47:10] It's actually never a good thing
[00:47:11] when you land in the hospital,
[00:47:12] whether you're young or old
[00:47:14] it doesn't matter.
[00:47:15] You want to kind of avoid a
[00:47:16] hospitalization.
[00:47:17] And so what we found is
[00:47:19] for elderly people,
[00:47:20] they do better when they receive
[00:47:21] care at home.
[00:47:22] That's obviously true for everybody.
[00:47:24] But the key that the key
[00:47:25] thing that I think the pandemic
[00:47:27] really did is it really
[00:47:28] burned out a lot of
[00:47:28] workers, especially in health care
[00:47:30] whether you're an RN you're a caregiver,
[00:47:32] it doesn't really matter.
[00:47:34] That kind of have been really burned out.
[00:47:35] And so
[00:47:37] because it's kind of been an
[00:47:39] unfortunate revolving door
[00:47:40] of people who are
[00:47:41] caring for other people.
[00:47:43] The idea is could we use data
[00:47:45] also like Scott said
[00:47:47] using aggregations to say
[00:47:49] let's say Alex was caring for Alli today
[00:47:52] but for whatever reason I
[00:47:54] I can't care for you tomorrow
[00:47:55] and Scott needs to come
[00:47:57] in and care for Alli now,
[00:47:59] what does Scott need to know about Alli?
[00:48:02] So that Scott is like halfway
[00:48:04] prepared for like caring for Alli
[00:48:06] so if we know
[00:48:07] that
[00:48:08] you know hey like Alli like has like
[00:48:10] a bum shoulder from like Monday
[00:48:12] now we know
[00:48:12] like okay well like that
[00:48:14] that shoulder there
[00:48:15] we can also determine like how you
[00:48:17] know like what are the best times
[00:48:19] to give Alli her medication
[00:48:21] so that she doesn't
[00:48:21] miss her medication right?
[00:48:23] Because if you miss enough of it,
[00:48:24] you land in hospital
[00:48:25] that's obviously bad for everybody.
[00:48:27] And so all these types
[00:48:28] of really complicated logical paths
[00:48:32] were made possible you know using
[00:48:36] make but also using Airtable
[00:48:37] so Airtable's you know holding
[00:48:39] this data and we're
[00:48:39] querying it all the time
[00:48:42] and then we're using text messages
[00:48:44] to communicate because you know that's
[00:48:46] just I mean everyone,
[00:48:47] everyone's connected
[00:48:48] and you know we're all just kind of
[00:48:49] like see it and this but
[00:48:51] but as I was saying if it's a revolving
[00:48:54] door, the data that knowledge
[00:48:56] leaves with that person
[00:48:58] and now we can kind of
[00:48:59] take that knowledge
[00:49:00] and we can pass it to the next caregiver
[00:49:02] so they can do
[00:49:03] their job better for the next person.
[00:49:06] That's awesome,
[00:49:08] That really showcases basically
[00:49:10] using Airtable as a knowledge repository
[00:49:14] and knowledge base
[00:49:16] and how to query data out of it. So
[00:49:19] very cool stuff Scott I believe
[00:49:22] you're gonna expand on that same concept.
[00:49:25] You want to share your screen,
[00:49:28] I will share my screen.
[00:49:31] Okay.
[00:49:35] Oops.
[00:49:37] Okay cool perfect.
[00:49:39] So yeah so Alex really
[00:49:42] really inspired me to dive more
[00:49:45] into chat bot because
[00:49:46] because Alex was the first client
[00:49:49] that I had worked with
[00:49:50] that actually
[00:49:51] wanted to create a chatbot
[00:49:53] and Alex dived in and create it.
[00:49:55] And I was so
[00:49:55] inspired by it,
[00:49:56] I started playing around
[00:49:58] with chatbots to see what other things
[00:50:00] can we do with chatbots
[00:50:02] and as you can imagine
[00:50:04] what you can do is you can
[00:50:05] actually have the chatbot
[00:50:08] communicate back with the person
[00:50:11] about information
[00:50:13] that it finds in Airtable.
[00:50:15] So in Alex's example
[00:50:16] you went through the whole chain
[00:50:19] and then at the end
[00:50:20] the chatbot emailed you
[00:50:22] a customized C. S. V. File.
[00:50:23] And in this demo I'm gonna
[00:50:25] show you the chatbot will actually respond
[00:50:28] in the chat with the information
[00:50:30] that you need.
[00:50:31] So check this out what I have here
[00:50:34] is a simple database here.
[00:50:36] Some customers
[00:50:37] there's a first name, a last name,
[00:50:39] the last payment we received from them
[00:50:42] and the last payment date that they made
[00:50:44] and then here in the chat bot
[00:50:47] I've got a very simple scenario
[00:50:50] that I set up here
[00:50:51] and let's just run through it
[00:50:53] and I will show you
[00:50:55] what happens here, you can
[00:50:57] see this corner of my screen right? Okay,
[00:51:00] alright, so oops, that's
[00:51:03] that's actually their chat bot
[00:51:06] for chatbot.com.
[00:51:08] I meant to go up here to test my bot,
[00:51:10] so I'm gonna go up here to test my bot and
[00:51:12] it says welcome to our customer
[00:51:14] information chat bot,
[00:51:15] let's try to find you in
[00:51:16] our system. What is your email address?
[00:51:18] So if we go back to Airtable here,
[00:51:21] I have three email addresses in here,
[00:51:23] so I'm just gonna choose [email protected].
[00:51:26] So I'm gonna type in here in
[00:51:28] the chat,
[00:51:29] I'm gonna say jane at example dot com.
[00:51:31] And then I hit return and the
[00:51:33] chat about comes back
[00:51:35] and says hello Jane.
[00:51:37] So it actually from the email address
[00:51:40] it actually pulled in the first name
[00:51:42] from right here, so it says hello Jane,
[00:51:43] would you like to know
[00:51:45] your recent payment information?
[00:51:47] So I'm gonna say yes.
[00:51:48] And then the chatbot thinks
[00:51:49] for a moment
[00:51:50] and it comes back and says your last
[00:51:52] payment was $250
[00:51:53] and it was received on 11 1 22.
[00:51:56] And if we come back in the Airtable,
[00:51:58] we see that here's
[00:51:59] the information right there
[00:52:01] and again like
[00:52:03] Alex was showing you earlier,
[00:52:05] this is all due to placing
[00:52:08] web hooks within your chatbots scenario,
[00:52:11] so you know, you set these,
[00:52:14] you know, this whole path here.
[00:52:15] And Alex showed you
[00:52:16] a perfect example of a very
[00:52:17] complex path.
[00:52:18] And what you can do is
[00:52:20] you place these little web hooks along the
[00:52:22] way
[00:52:23] and then what you can do is
[00:52:26] you can set up a scenario
[00:52:28] in Make here where after
[00:52:30] you receive the web hook from chatbots,
[00:52:33] so this right here is how you received
[00:52:35] the information from chatbots
[00:52:37] with whatever the person typed in
[00:52:40] and then it does something in Airtable.
[00:52:42] So in this case it's searching for the
[00:52:44] records
[00:52:44] and then here is the key,
[00:52:47] the key thing here is that
[00:52:49] it will respond to chat bot
[00:52:51] with information that's taken
[00:52:53] from Airtable. So for example,
[00:52:55] if I go into this module here,
[00:52:58] we can see that
[00:52:59] I'm actually sending back to
[00:53:01] chatbots. So after it searches
[00:53:03] the records in Airtable
[00:53:04] and it finds a matching person,
[00:53:07] a matching customer,
[00:53:08] it'll actually send back to
[00:53:10] chat about the I. D.
[00:53:12] That's the record I. D.
[00:53:13] In Airtable. The first name and
[00:53:15] the last name.
[00:53:16] Now we're actually not using
[00:53:19] all three of those right away
[00:53:20] because if you remember
[00:53:22] when the chatbot actually said hello Jane,
[00:53:25] it was only using the first name.
[00:53:27] However one thing that's super super cool
[00:53:29] about chat bot
[00:53:31] is that it actually remembers
[00:53:33] any information
[00:53:35] that's sent to it throughout.
[00:53:37] Oops, where is it?
[00:53:38] It's over here,
[00:53:39] it remembers any information
[00:53:40] that's sent to
[00:53:41] it throughout the entire path.
[00:53:43] So it'll remember through
[00:53:45] this entire process the
[00:53:47] email address that somebody typed up.
[00:53:49] And it will remember through the entire
[00:53:51] process, it will remember
[00:53:53] the record I. D. Number
[00:53:55] the first name and the last
[00:53:57] name.
[00:53:57] And the reason that that it's important
[00:53:59] that it remembers all that is because
[00:54:01] when it comes to the second web hook
[00:54:04] and that was the one where it said would
[00:54:06] you like to receive
[00:54:08] your payment information?
[00:54:09] Yes or no. Then what it will do is
[00:54:11] oh this is actually where it asked
[00:54:13] the question and then when it goes out to
[00:54:15] Make I've got another
[00:54:18] scenario set up here
[00:54:20] and this time it will actually
[00:54:23] throw in all the information
[00:54:25] that it has received
[00:54:27] so far in the scenario.
[00:54:29] So it'll take all the information
[00:54:32] that is collected so far,
[00:54:34] and it will send it
[00:54:35] into the Make scenario and then
[00:54:38] we have all the information
[00:54:40] at our fingertips.
[00:54:41] So in this particular case
[00:54:43] we only needed the record I. D.
[00:54:45] So we are immediately
[00:54:46] know which record I. D. To look up.
[00:54:48] So you can see here we're just pulling in
[00:54:50] the I. D. This is all the information that
[00:54:55] that chatbot will send in to Make.
[00:54:58] And down here under the attributes the
[00:55:01] attributes, it will give you a list of all
[00:55:03] the information that is collected
[00:55:05] along the path.
[00:55:06] And then you can use it
[00:55:08] any way you want in Airtable.
[00:55:09] And then once again
[00:55:11] you create another web hook response
[00:55:14] and I formatted the date here,
[00:55:16] here's the payment received
[00:55:18] and you send it back
[00:55:19] into chatbots. So it's really
[00:55:21] really powerful.
[00:55:22] It's very very cool what you can
[00:55:25] do with chatbot and
[00:55:28] Alex is the one that inspired me
[00:55:30] now, I want to do chatbots for everyone.
[00:55:34] Yeah, that becomes your interface,
[00:55:37] your Ui for Airtable interacting with it.
[00:55:39] Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[00:55:41] And like I was saying
[00:55:43] there's security measures
[00:55:45] you can put in place,
[00:55:46] you know, if you don't
[00:55:46] want everyone to have access to
[00:55:47] everything, you know,
[00:55:48] have them type in a pin code,
[00:55:50] you know with their email
[00:55:51] address
[00:55:56] I mean like exactly what Scott did right?
[00:55:58] Like say you misspelled Jane and you
[00:56:00] put in, you know Jan
[00:56:02] you it'll go in there
[00:56:04] and you can say like,
[00:56:06] you know, hey that's not
[00:56:07] like a valid response
[00:56:08] and it'll do like that kind
[00:56:10] of like defensive kind of checking
[00:56:12] for you and it also has like synonyms,
[00:56:14] so like all the different permutations
[00:56:17] of saying yes and no it has and so like,
[00:56:19] you know, if you ask it like a yes
[00:56:21] or no question and you know,
[00:56:23] you respond with like,
[00:56:24] you know, yep, Y E P.
[00:56:26] It'll go like, yep that's a yes
[00:56:27] and then it will route you
[00:56:29] like correctly. And so it's not like
[00:56:31] all these really cool things
[00:56:32] that are built
[00:56:33] into it and what I love about
[00:56:35] when you test it as you saw with Scott,
[00:56:38] you get this nice visual ui
[00:56:40] that lets you see where
[00:56:41] you are exactly on the path
[00:56:43] so that you know, you can,
[00:56:44] you can diagnose if,
[00:56:45] if a step is not working as it
[00:56:47] should.
[00:56:49] Very cool.
[00:56:50] I think a lot of people are starting
[00:56:54] to question how can I use the
[00:56:56] chatbot now
[00:56:57] you just have to name them
[00:57:00] all the Scott bot. I love it,
[00:57:03] I love it. Thank you Alex.
[00:57:06] Awesome, cool, let's move on,
[00:57:08] let's go. And while you're getting
[00:57:11] your next demo ready Scott,
[00:57:12] I'll give a plug for
[00:57:14] our BuiltOnAir community
[00:57:16] where you can interact with
[00:57:18] amazing people like Scott and Alex,
[00:57:20] I don't know if you're in our community.
[00:57:22] If not you need to join,
[00:57:24] join us at builtonair.com/join.
[00:57:27] That'll get you into our newsletter
[00:57:29] and our slack community where there's
[00:57:31] thousands of Airtable users
[00:57:33] all discussing every day about
[00:57:36] how to best use Airtable
[00:57:38] in your own life and business.
[00:57:40] So check us out at
[00:57:41] builtonair.com for our final segment
[00:57:45] Scott's going to give us
[00:57:48] a cool airtable hack.
[00:57:50] Yes, yes, this is something that
[00:57:53] affected one of my clients the other day.
[00:57:57] Let me share my screen again here
[00:58:01] and okay, and they are a
[00:58:05] commercial real estate company
[00:58:09] and they had a very
[00:58:12] complex database where they were
[00:58:15] keeping track of the square footage that
[00:58:17] they're dealing with for all their
[00:58:19] different commercial properties.
[00:58:20] And what we realized was that Airtable
[00:58:25] doesn't actually give you the commas in
[00:58:29] your numbers and it's something
[00:58:31] that I've always known
[00:58:32] but I never really really
[00:58:33] noticed it until we were dealing
[00:58:34] with like these really large numbers.
[00:58:36] And that's especially it's especially
[00:58:38] confusing when you're looking at these
[00:58:40] numbers down here.
[00:58:41] I mean it's confusing to start with
[00:58:42] when you're looking at
[00:58:43] these numbers down there but then it's
[00:58:44] especially confusing when
[00:58:46] you're looking at sums up here
[00:58:48] because at first you're
[00:58:49] like wait is this 202,004?
[00:58:50] And then you realize oh wait a second,
[00:58:53] that's actually 2,024,000.
[00:58:55] You know very very difficult
[00:58:57] because if you go to the
[00:58:59] number field here there's
[00:59:01] there's no formatting that
[00:59:03] allows you to show commas.
[00:59:05] And then I figured out a quick
[00:59:08] little trick, a little hack
[00:59:10] which is that the
[00:59:12] currency field actually shows
[00:59:15] commas.
[00:59:16] And so look how much easier this looks.
[00:59:19] And the only real trick here
[00:59:21] is instead of using a number field
[00:59:23] you use a
[00:59:23] currency field. But what you do is
[00:59:26] you remove the currency symbol.
[00:59:28] So normally your currency field
[00:59:29] would look like something like this.
[00:59:31] But if you remove the dollar sign.
[00:59:34] Oh and by the way, change your precision
[00:59:37] to not be
[00:59:39] with decimals just make it an imager here
[00:59:41] then
[00:59:42] what you have is a field
[00:59:45] that looks just like a number field
[00:59:48] but it has commas
[00:59:49] instead
[00:59:51] and this is really cool in interfaces
[00:59:53] where this really comes in handy.
[00:59:54] So because we were creating an interface,
[00:59:57] look at the difference between these
[01:00:00] two
[01:00:01] on the left is without the commas
[01:00:03] on the right is with the commas
[01:00:05] and the
[01:00:06] and so you can see how much
[01:00:07] this is so much more confusing
[01:00:09] to read down the left
[01:00:10] side of this versus the left side of this.
[01:00:13] And if you hover over like the little
[01:00:15] pie charts here there's no commas
[01:00:17] in the values and then over here there are
[01:00:20] commas in the values.
[01:00:22] So same thing with this,
[01:00:24] if you hover over this
[01:00:25] you've got the commas and if you
[01:00:27] ever hover over this
[01:00:28] you do not have the commas.
[01:00:30] The only thing that's weird is
[01:00:31] that Airtable removes
[01:00:33] the commas for its legend here.
[01:00:36] I we might have to
[01:00:37] email Airtable about that.
[01:00:39] They may not even know about that.
[01:00:41] So that's the only weird thing.
[01:00:43] And then the other sad news
[01:00:44] is that this will
[01:00:45] not work for our friends in Europe
[01:00:47] or other countries. This will only work in
[01:00:50] the US and Canada because we use commas as
[01:00:53] thousands separators and in many
[01:00:56] other countries, most other countries they
[01:00:58] actually use periods instead
[01:01:01] and Airtable is only set
[01:01:03] to show commas instead of
[01:01:05] periods. But if you're in the US
[01:01:07] or Canada
[01:01:08] this will work very well for you.
[01:01:09] And so there you go.
[01:01:11] Just a nice little tip.
[01:01:13] A little trick on how to make your
[01:01:16] numbers more readable
[01:01:17] across the board in Airtable
[01:01:21] moment. Yeah, it's a question I get
[01:01:24] very very often
[01:01:25] like more often than I would
[01:01:27] think is can I put commas
[01:01:29] in the chart on the side?
[01:01:31] Like they don't really care
[01:01:33] about the numbers in the base
[01:01:34] but like when they're reading the chart,
[01:01:36] the bar charts and the interfaces
[01:01:37] people want to see those
[01:01:39] commas and that is
[01:01:39] something I've never thought of.
[01:01:41] I love that Scott. Thank you.
[01:01:42] I love it. I'm so happy
[01:01:44] I was able to give you
[01:01:45] an a ha moment today.
[01:01:46] That's great.
[01:01:47] That's awesome. Yeah
[01:01:48] it makes it makes a world of difference
[01:01:51] but we have to put
[01:01:52] pressure on Airtable too.
[01:01:54] Give up the European people
[01:01:56] the same thing
[01:01:57] and fix those little legends on the
[01:01:58] side and then we're
[01:02:00] then we're golden
[01:02:02] or just added to the number field or that
[01:02:05] you know, they can do it
[01:02:07] because they do it
[01:02:08] with the currency field.
[01:02:10] We do. And I think
[01:02:11] if I recall correctly is
[01:02:12] there the option to remove the
[01:02:14] commas in the currency field formatting?
[01:02:16] I don't let me check real quick.
[01:02:18] I don't think that's an option.
[01:02:20] I didn't see that.
[01:02:21] So that's not an option isn't
[01:02:22] that interesting. So you have the
[01:02:23] option to add it in number fields
[01:02:25] and you have no option to remove it in
[01:02:27] currency fields interesting.
[01:02:30] I really also to that
[01:02:33] end want a to currency
[01:02:37] or a currency format formula
[01:02:39] that would be amazing,
[01:02:40] would probably return as a
[01:02:41] string. So you wouldn't be able to
[01:02:43] like make any fun bar charts out of it.
[01:02:45] But that would also be helpful
[01:02:47] for our friends in Europe.
[01:02:49] Yeah, absolutely, totally agree.
[01:02:51] And by the way, for
[01:02:53] for people in the US you
[01:02:54] could actually create a formula field
[01:02:57] that you hide from the users and and
[01:02:59] formatted as currency
[01:03:00] and do the same trick
[01:03:02] that I showed you and that would be
[01:03:04] if you don't like the dollar sign
[01:03:06] showing up in the toolbar,
[01:03:07] you know up at the top because
[01:03:09] that might confuse people
[01:03:10] with my typing in
[01:03:10] currency here still wouldn't
[01:03:13] work for Europe,
[01:03:14] but it would work for us here.
[01:03:16] Yeah, that's great. Yeah and
[01:03:19] Kuovonne hasn't already
[01:03:20] made formulas I think
[01:03:23] a way to get that
[01:03:25] currency converter formula,
[01:03:28] the one that returns a string. But yeah,
[01:03:33] very cool, Alli, you're gonna modify
[01:03:36] all of us to have you on.
[01:03:39] Yeah, it's good to be here.
[01:03:40] Thank you so much.
[01:03:42] Yeah, thank you so much for
[01:03:45] showing your it's awesome
[01:03:47] to life scenarios of how
[01:03:48] people use it in the real world
[01:03:50] and for real business use cases.
[01:03:52] So thank you Scott
[01:03:53] Thanks for bringing Alex on
[01:03:55] and for showcasing your stuff as
[01:03:56] well. Always good to have you.
[01:03:59] So that concludes today.
[01:04:02] We'll be back next week
[01:04:05] with our final episode for the season.
[01:04:07] So join us next Tuesday 11 a.m. Eastern.
[01:04:09] Thanks for sharing what you BuiltOnAir.
[01:04:12] Take care everyone.