7/11/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S15-E01

Duration: 56 minutes

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In This Episode

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

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

Todays Hosts

Alli Alosa – Hi there! I’m Alli 🙂 I’m a fine artist turned “techie” with a passion for organization and automation. I’m also proud to be a Community Leader in the Airtable forum, and a co-host of the BuiltOnAir podcast. My favorite part about being an Airtable consultant and developer is that I get to talk with people from all sorts of industries, and each project is an opportunity to learn how a business works.

Kamille Parks – I am an Airtable Community Forums Leader and the developer behind the custom Airtable app “Scheduler”, one of the winning projects in the Airtable Custom Blocks Contest now widely available on the Marketplace. I focus on building simple scripts, automations, and custom apps for Airtable that streamline data entry and everyday workflows.

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

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:03:11 –

Automate Create – 00:35:27 –

Watch as we review and work through automations. Alli will walk through how to set up 2 way sync and what to be aware of

Learn more about the automation

Audience Questions – 00:44:51 –

Lisa Bauer answers the Airtable question: “Create new records for each week of another record’s timeframe”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille will walk through this question and provide a working solution.

Field Focus – 00:51:44 –

A deep dive into the Progress Bars Percentage – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars 

Learn More Here

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:11

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

Segment: Automate Create

Start Time: 00:35:27

Airtable Automations – 2 Way Sync

Watch as we review and work through automations. Alli will walk through how to set up 2 way sync and what to be aware of

Learn more about the automation

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:44:51

Airtable Question – Create new records for each week of another record's timeframe

Lisa Bauer answers the Airtable question: “Create new records for each week of another record’s timeframe”

View the question in the community

Answer: Kamille will walk through this question and provide a working solution.

Segment: Field Focus

Start Time: 00:51:44

Learn about the Progress Bars – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars

A deep dive into the Progress Bars Percentage – Percentage Fields can now be displayed as progress bars 

Learn More Here

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:41] Welcome back to season 15, episode one.
[00:01:45] It's good to be back with you after a
[00:01:47] month off.
[00:01:48] Alli, Kamille, good to see you again.
[00:01:51] Are we live?
[00:01:52] We are live.
[00:01:54] Yeah.
[00:01:55] All right, cool. Hi. Hello.
[00:01:59] We've had a, a few weeks off.
[00:02:01] You guys have a good break?
[00:02:03] Absolutely.
[00:02:05] Yeah. Very good. I'm glad to be back.
[00:02:08] Always good to have people watching us.
[00:02:11] Good to have.
[00:02:13] Hi,
[00:02:13] Brandy.
[00:02:14] Brandy. That's right. That's who that is.
[00:02:18] Well, for our new season,
[00:02:20] we'll be kicking off with some fun,
[00:02:23] exciting things.
[00:02:25] Welcome Garrett to the show.
[00:02:27] So for today, we'll always start with our
[00:02:30] Round the Bases. We've got a lot of
[00:02:31] things to get caught up on,
[00:02:33] on what's new in the last
[00:02:35] month since we've been off
[00:02:37] and then a quick shout out to
[00:02:38] On2Air, our primary sponsor.
[00:02:41] And then it doesn't show up here
[00:02:43] my automation broke, but we'll do some
[00:02:45] more automation create.
[00:02:46] Alli is gonna walk through a two way sync
[00:02:50] and then Kamille is going to
[00:02:52] answer a question from a community
[00:02:54] member and then a quick shout out to
[00:02:57] join our community and then finally,
[00:02:59] we'll talk about the new progress bars. So
[00:03:03] with that, that's a little sneak peek
[00:03:05] to something that came out.
[00:03:07] Let's talk about what's new.
[00:03:10] So the first one
[00:03:13] is in interfaces. So they launched,
[00:03:16] this was middle of June,
[00:03:18] they launched some new interface features.
[00:03:23] Let's see what they
[00:03:24] talk about. So we've got
[00:03:26] conditional form fields.
[00:03:29] So as far as visibility
[00:03:31] got helper text
[00:03:33] limit, select options
[00:03:35] and read only default values.
[00:03:38] So a lot of things,
[00:03:39] thoughts and
[00:03:41] these
[00:03:42] I have, they're pretty useful.
[00:03:44] These are more because they're interfaces,
[00:03:46] they're still
[00:03:48] internal facing. Whereas a regular form
[00:03:50] view is the one that you could send to
[00:03:52] anybody in the world to fill out. But
[00:03:55] these are bringing them more
[00:03:57] into parity with what form views can do.
[00:04:00] I've made a lot of use of
[00:04:03] particularly with select fields
[00:04:05] just showing one option and then making it
[00:04:07] required and then not letting them
[00:04:09] edit that field. So you basically come in
[00:04:12] with a default value and
[00:04:14] that's pretty useful for
[00:04:17] you know, certain use cases,
[00:04:19] especially since you could
[00:04:20] have multiple different
[00:04:20] forms. So each form can
[00:04:22] have a different default depending on
[00:04:24] like, oh, you're a manager,
[00:04:26] fill out the manager form if you're a,
[00:04:28] you know, regular employee,
[00:04:29] fill out the regular one
[00:04:30] and it comes in with a
[00:04:31] different value.
[00:04:35] Yeah. Exciting stuff. I think
[00:04:38] I still don't really use
[00:04:40] the interface forms
[00:04:41] just
[00:04:42] because of a couple
[00:04:44] of different things, but
[00:04:46] mainly I want them to be,
[00:04:47] I want there to be a redirect option
[00:04:49] because right now when you
[00:04:50] just hit submit,
[00:04:51] it's just like record created and
[00:04:53] then you stay on the page and like
[00:04:55] nothing really happens,
[00:04:58] which I don't love.
[00:05:01] And then I also just don't love how
[00:05:04] I wish there were more options
[00:05:06] to get to the form rather
[00:05:07] than having a page
[00:05:08] specifically for the form
[00:05:10] or like having a little plus
[00:05:12] by the record picker.
[00:05:13] Like
[00:05:14] if you could just,
[00:05:17] you know, bypass needing a record picker
[00:05:19] to get to the form like or all sorts of
[00:05:21] things. And basically I'm just using
[00:05:23] buttons and automations to create new
[00:05:24] records and interfaces still.
[00:05:27] Yeah.
[00:05:27] Yeah.
[00:05:28] And
[00:05:30] and forms in here are just
[00:05:33] for creating new records.
[00:05:35] Yes, they're, they're
[00:05:37] not for editing. So it, it is,
[00:05:41] it has like the
[00:05:42] it's positioned such that
[00:05:45] it makes sense to me that it should
[00:05:48] be able to be like adapted to edit an
[00:05:50] existing record and the changes
[00:05:52] only happen when you hit submit because
[00:05:54] otherwise it's just a normal page, right?
[00:05:56] It it all changes would happen as you
[00:05:57] keystroke. Maybe you
[00:05:59] want a page that's like
[00:06:00] show me everything non editable.
[00:06:02] You click a button, you get to a form that
[00:06:04] edits it, but only when you click submit.
[00:06:07] I could see that being very useful
[00:06:09] to a lot of different people and that's
[00:06:10] something you could do in
[00:06:12] a interface form but not in an interface
[00:06:14] or a form view as easily. So,
[00:06:17] I don't know if that's something
[00:06:19] that they'd work towards. I feel like it
[00:06:21] wouldn't be a
[00:06:22] monstrous lift on the back end
[00:06:24] because interfaces are baked in
[00:06:27] the record I DS in the URL somewhere.
[00:06:29] This is the record I'm trying to edit for
[00:06:31] all the other types of views. So,
[00:06:33] who knows?
[00:06:34] Yeah.
[00:06:36] And Jen mentions it only really works
[00:06:39] on the same screen if you use list view,
[00:06:41] which is a pain.
[00:06:44] So
[00:06:45] yeah, so it's good, good step forward.
[00:06:48] I think there's always more,
[00:06:49] more room for,
[00:06:50] for growth on the future side
[00:06:53] and functionality. But definitely
[00:06:55] I love to hear your experiences using
[00:06:57] interface forms.
[00:06:59] Yeah. Likewise, I don't, yeah,
[00:07:01] I don't think we use the actual forms
[00:07:03] as much yet. So
[00:07:05] it's getting there.
[00:07:07] All right. Next one.
[00:07:09] I already mentioned we're gonna
[00:07:11] go deep into this
[00:07:12] so we don't need to talk
[00:07:13] too much, but they now have
[00:07:15] a new, it's not a new field type.
[00:07:16] It's still a percentage field
[00:07:19] which we'll talk about later in the show.
[00:07:22] But now you get a nice visual
[00:07:23] progress bar that you can display.
[00:07:26] So that is cool.
[00:07:29] Yeah. Really, really like that one.
[00:07:31] Yeah.
[00:07:32] Yeah.
[00:07:33] And
[00:07:35] yeah,
[00:07:36] but you can also use it with
[00:07:37] computed fields as well.
[00:07:38] That's important too.
[00:07:39] So, but you have to
[00:07:40] format it as a percent. So
[00:07:43] can be used with with formulas,
[00:07:45] roll ups and lookups.
[00:07:50] All right.
[00:07:51] Next one, there's another
[00:07:52] one I didn't see this one
[00:07:55] shared directly from Airtable, but Jan
[00:07:58] who goes by a Databaser,
[00:08:00] found this
[00:08:01] and posted on the Airtable forums.
[00:08:04] And
[00:08:06] so basically, if you're using
[00:08:09] a sync source, it will show you a link
[00:08:13] back to the back to the original
[00:08:17] source to make it easy to jump back to it
[00:08:20] because I believe otherwise you
[00:08:22] would need to create a button that,
[00:08:24] that linked back to the source field.
[00:08:27] So now they make that easy.
[00:08:30] Yeah, I can't remember when this
[00:08:32] first appeared, but it is pretty useful.
[00:08:34] Especially if you have a multi sources
[00:08:36] going on and you don't
[00:08:38] know like which base
[00:08:39] this particular record came from.
[00:08:43] Right.
[00:08:46] Yeah. But like I, I think it's,
[00:08:49] it's
[00:08:50] there in
[00:08:51] the expanded record model.
[00:08:52] It'd be great if you could have
[00:08:57] I don't know something similar
[00:08:58] in an interface environment.
[00:08:59] I know you could
[00:09:00] create
[00:09:01] like Dan said, a button
[00:09:02] that would take you there. But like
[00:09:04] you, you lose the syncing from
[00:09:06] and then the name of the sync source
[00:09:08] that sort of automatically update if you
[00:09:10] rename the sync source.
[00:09:11] So like if there was,
[00:09:13] I don't know if it's a field type,
[00:09:14] I don't know if it's a formula that you
[00:09:16] could
[00:09:17] plug in. That'd be great if you could
[00:09:19] add these into anywhere you might see a
[00:09:21] record
[00:09:22] including interfaces.
[00:09:24] Yeah. And right now they have the,
[00:09:26] the sync source field
[00:09:28] that gets automatically
[00:09:29] added is only if you have more than
[00:09:31] one source syncing to the same table.
[00:09:33] So it would be nice to be able to add that
[00:09:36] just even if you only have one source.
[00:09:39] Yeah, I'm, I'm dealing right now
[00:09:41] where I'm setting up a base
[00:09:43] where one of the
[00:09:44] bases that's gonna sync into it
[00:09:46] is ready.
[00:09:47] And then there's three more that will
[00:09:48] be created eventually.
[00:09:50] But I already know that
[00:09:51] certain records from certain
[00:09:53] bases need to be treated differently.
[00:09:55] And I can't create a formula that says if
[00:09:57] sync source is blah,
[00:09:58] blah, blah, blah blah yet
[00:09:59] because it won't let me put
[00:10:01] that field in and it just feels,
[00:10:03] feels like arbitrary
[00:10:05] that it's not there
[00:10:06] unless you have a multi
[00:10:07] source sync, just put it there.
[00:10:09] If you have a sync at all.
[00:10:10] I think, I
[00:10:11] think if you
[00:10:13] think you can kind of hack it
[00:10:15] if you add a sync a second
[00:10:17] source and then remove
[00:10:19] it,
[00:10:19] I think it keeps
[00:10:21] the sync, it will work,
[00:10:23] but I don't wanna do that.
[00:10:24] I want it to be there.
[00:10:29] Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice.
[00:10:31] Yeah. That's the hidden
[00:10:33] hidden field that only
[00:10:34] shows up in magical instances.
[00:10:39] All right. So yeah, that's
[00:10:41] I think that's all the features.
[00:10:43] This one came out at the end
[00:10:45] of May but after our last episode.
[00:10:46] And then those other
[00:10:49] ones, as far as I know the only
[00:10:51] feature announcements that that came out
[00:10:54] the last month.
[00:10:56] So let's move on. Let's go to the
[00:10:58] BuiltOnAir community.
[00:11:00] This is always a fun one.
[00:11:01] Hannah posts
[00:11:03] some nice questions. Food for thought.
[00:11:06] This one is if Airtable disappeared
[00:11:09] tomorrow, what would you use?
[00:11:11] Always good to see what people
[00:11:12] have to say. Kamille,
[00:11:14] you were the first to
[00:11:14] respond.
[00:11:17] Yeah, I said Xano and if I needed
[00:11:19] to edit a bunch of records in like a grid
[00:11:22] like format, glide has its own open
[00:11:25] source table component that I would
[00:11:28] probably try and make use of
[00:11:29] because it editing records
[00:11:31] one by one and Xano is
[00:11:32] very annoying.
[00:11:33] Granted, you're not supposed to do
[00:11:35] that one by one. It's an API builder.
[00:11:37] So logically you would edit
[00:11:38] your records via API
[00:11:39] but if you're getting started,
[00:11:41] my God, is it annoying.
[00:11:42] Other than that
[00:11:43] I've been playing with it a lot this
[00:11:45] past month and it's, you know,
[00:11:48] I like it. There's some things
[00:11:49] I miss but a lot of
[00:11:50] things that it adds that I
[00:11:51] think are pretty good.
[00:11:53] Nice. Yeah, that's cool.
[00:11:55] Yeah, some other ones.
[00:11:59] let's see here.
[00:12:02] Ng
[00:12:03] says I can't imagine using anything else
[00:12:06] by Airtable for no code database.
[00:12:08] Ben says antidepressants
[00:12:11] comment there.
[00:12:13] So there are a few,
[00:12:15] you know, I said glide,
[00:12:17] maybe spreadsheet.com or Google Tables
[00:12:20] if Google continues to support that
[00:12:23] or maybe just go back to Google Sheets.
[00:12:27] The other interesting ones.
[00:12:31] Yeah, Alli
[00:12:32] do you have to go to?
[00:12:34] Oh, gosh, I try not to even think
[00:12:36] about it but I probably should.
[00:12:42] No, I don't right now.
[00:12:44] I mean, I played with coda a lot
[00:12:46] and I really liked it
[00:12:47] but it didn't scale well.
[00:12:49] But I've heard good things about
[00:12:51] some updates that they've made
[00:12:53] in the last couple of years.
[00:12:54] So maybe I'd try
[00:12:54] that out again.
[00:12:57] Yeah, Mecca says indeed to find a new job.
[00:13:02] Kuovonne says, Coda.
[00:13:04] Scott says Filemaker.
[00:13:06] Andres says smart sheet.
[00:13:07] Zapier tables.
[00:13:09] I haven't played with Zapier tables.
[00:13:11] I saw the launch,
[00:13:12] I think I did like look
[00:13:13] at it for a minute but
[00:13:15] I don't think it's quite there
[00:13:17] for replacement. Notion you could do,
[00:13:19] you could do a lot with notion.
[00:13:22] It
[00:13:22] would be quite the same experience.
[00:13:28] And then graph API from, from Jen. So
[00:13:34] interesting.
[00:13:34] It would be interesting to see how jot
[00:13:37] form has a nobody
[00:13:38] mentioned jot form tables.
[00:13:41] I remembered it as soon as you said
[00:13:43] Zapier tables. I was like,
[00:13:44] oh yeah, and then jot form has one too,
[00:13:47] but no one ever, at least no one in my
[00:13:48] sphere references either of those.
[00:13:51] And that's not to say that they're not
[00:13:52] good. It's just that,
[00:13:54] I don't know anyone who's ever used them,
[00:13:56] so
[00:13:57] I don't know what that says.
[00:13:59] Yeah,
[00:13:59] there's a couple open source replacements,
[00:14:02] like kind of clones of Airtable that
[00:14:05] are out there that,
[00:14:06] that could be worth exploring. So,
[00:14:08] yeah, there's something,
[00:14:10] there's something unique about Airtable.
[00:14:11] I mean, I think Smart Suite
[00:14:13] is coming up as kind of a pretty,
[00:14:15] you know, direct competitor and
[00:14:18] coming up market. So we'll see
[00:14:20] how that continues to, to expand.
[00:14:23] It's probably the one to watch.
[00:14:26] All right, let's move on.
[00:14:28] We're in the DEV channel in BuiltOnAir.
[00:14:33] This one, Jen asked a
[00:14:34] common question about
[00:14:36] how to append to, to the URL
[00:14:39] and I thought this was worth pointing.
[00:14:42] Just talking about just general,
[00:14:44] you know, if you're, if you're trying
[00:14:47] to create URL S, if it's a
[00:14:51] if it's a get request, I don't know,
[00:14:53] it's hard to explain. But if it,
[00:14:54] there's a get and a post
[00:14:56] and a get means you're retrieving data.
[00:14:59] So most website, when you go to a
[00:15:00] website, you're actually
[00:15:02] performing a, a get request.
[00:15:05] And a post is when you're sending data.
[00:15:08] So a get request does not have a body,
[00:15:10] a post does.
[00:15:11] So if you need to pass information
[00:15:14] into a get request, like a URL,
[00:15:16] you have to pass it as parameters.
[00:15:20] And so, but the big thing that
[00:15:22] I wanted to share here.
[00:15:24] So we kind of clarify,
[00:15:25] she, she figures out how to do parameters.
[00:15:28] But the big thing was this link
[00:15:30] from Scott,
[00:15:31] which I had never seen this tool.
[00:15:33] I don't know if somebody created
[00:15:36] a nice little tool that's free
[00:15:38] and helps you to generate the URL.
[00:15:42] that would be necessary for using
[00:15:45] the Airtable API. So if you're ever doing
[00:15:48] anything with the API
[00:15:50] and you want to figure out how to
[00:15:52] generate the URL, this is a nice
[00:15:54] little tool that will help you.
[00:15:56] I believe this is built by Airtable
[00:15:59] themselves or it is least directly
[00:16:01] referenced in some of their
[00:16:03] support documentation.
[00:16:05] Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Oh
[00:16:07] It's got a pen by Airtable. Yeah.
[00:16:09] Yeah.
[00:16:09] Yeah.
[00:16:10] So yeah, I was looking to see
[00:16:12] like what else they've got.
[00:16:15] It'd be nice if they sort
[00:16:17] of baked this into, they have that
[00:16:19] automatic documentation for all
[00:16:21] of your bases for like here's what the get
[00:16:23] request would be.
[00:16:25] It'd be great if you could just plug in,
[00:16:28] into that interface.
[00:16:29] Like if you wanted
[00:16:31] certain query parameters,
[00:16:32] just fill them in,
[00:16:33] in that same space. So it will be all
[00:16:35] sort of cohabitated
[00:16:37] and prefilled with what your base ID is.
[00:16:40] Yeah.
[00:16:42] If you ever needed to sort strings
[00:16:44] with emojis
[00:16:45] looks like they've got a script
[00:16:46] for that
[00:16:47] and then they've got some random ones,
[00:16:50] Edward doing some,
[00:16:53] I wonder if this is just some
[00:16:56] person at Airtable and then they, like,
[00:16:58] forgot to log out.
[00:17:00] That's like, what, what is,
[00:17:02] what's the relationship of that
[00:17:04] to Airtable?
[00:17:05] You know, one of these makes sense.
[00:17:07] Right. They've got more. Oh, wow.
[00:17:11] I wonder what they are.
[00:17:14] Yeah. I wonder if these are
[00:17:15] developers that work there.
[00:17:18] I'm beginning to notice a theme.
[00:17:21] 1200 by 900.
[00:17:23] Yeah,
[00:17:24] they must have done,
[00:17:28] what's happening?
[00:17:29] So strange
[00:17:33] that one's got 80,000 views
[00:17:34] and all the rest are like. Yeah.
[00:17:38] Ok.
[00:17:40] All right. So that's where,
[00:17:43] if you wanna see what the latest,
[00:17:44] maybe they'll, they'll leak some,
[00:17:46] upcoming updates
[00:17:47] that they're testing in there
[00:17:51] can keep an eye on that.
[00:17:52] All right, here's one from Justin,
[00:17:54] friend of the show, talking about the
[00:17:56] rest api we'll keep it in the DEV channel.
[00:17:59] This, I thought was an
[00:18:00] interesting discussion that,
[00:18:02] you actually don't have to
[00:18:05] match the table ID with the base ID.
[00:18:08] So
[00:18:09] even if you have the wrong base ID,
[00:18:11] but you have the table ID,
[00:18:13] it will still retrieve the,
[00:18:17] the, the record
[00:18:18] that, that you're looking for.
[00:18:21] Actually it's just the record ID
[00:18:23] is what you need. You don't,
[00:18:24] you don't even need the right
[00:18:27] table or base.
[00:18:28] So I thought that was interesting.
[00:18:31] Yeah, it's in the custom extensions
[00:18:35] api expand record function.
[00:18:37] You, you only provided the record ID,
[00:18:40] it doesn't even ask for the table.
[00:18:41] So,
[00:18:42] you know, record I DS are supposed
[00:18:44] to be unique and I guess they're so
[00:18:46] unique that
[00:18:47] they're like, yeah, I, we don't
[00:18:48] care what table it is. We know,
[00:18:50] we know what the record is.
[00:18:51] They're unique across
[00:18:53] all the bases and all of Airtable?
[00:18:56] It,
[00:18:57] it would seem that way now,
[00:18:59] I, you know, you obviously
[00:19:00] have to provide it a base
[00:19:01] ID, I believe. Because then it's like
[00:19:05] you're going to query all of Airtable
[00:19:07] all at once. It seems like
[00:19:08] a
[00:19:08] hefty load.
[00:19:10] But yeah, for
[00:19:12] it, it does not seem to me to parse
[00:19:15] what table it comes from.
[00:19:18] Ok.
[00:19:20] Yeah,
[00:19:22] yeah, interesting tidbit
[00:19:24] and then Bill talks about
[00:19:26] if you have like a ton,
[00:19:27] it does reduce the size
[00:19:29] by not including it.
[00:19:30] So there might be advantages of doing it.
[00:19:33] But yeah, you probably always should
[00:19:35] include the, the base ID
[00:19:38] as needed
[00:19:40] and for documentation like as
[00:19:43] you're writing a script, if you just say,
[00:19:45] oh get this record and then
[00:19:47] two months later,
[00:19:48] you have to expand the script to
[00:19:49] do some maintenance on it.
[00:19:51] You're not gonna know what,
[00:19:52] what's happening because
[00:19:53] if you can figure out,
[00:19:55] oh this record,
[00:19:56] I'm trying to pull from this table,
[00:19:58] the projects table,
[00:19:59] then I know where to look
[00:20:01] for this missing record.
[00:20:02] But if you just say get this record,
[00:20:04] it's gonna be hard to debug later in life.
[00:20:06] So
[00:20:07] just ask for it anyway, if you know it.
[00:20:12] Here's another feature actually,
[00:20:14] this one snuck in, this came from Mecca.
[00:20:16] He spotted this in the run history.
[00:20:19] So within your automations,
[00:20:21] you can now sort them
[00:20:23] or filter by the status.
[00:20:26] So you can, there's a dropdown
[00:20:28] now on the run history
[00:20:29] and you can see which
[00:20:30] one's failed,
[00:20:31] which one's canceled.
[00:20:34] So this is one step to search,
[00:20:38] they
[00:20:38] search that will be helpful.
[00:20:41] This is awesome. That's, I mean,
[00:20:43] it's been a long time coming,
[00:20:44] but
[00:20:45] it's so frustrating, especially if you
[00:20:47] have an automation that runs very often
[00:20:49] and you, like, wake up
[00:20:50] in the morning
[00:20:51] and you've got an alert from
[00:20:52] last night and you're like,
[00:20:53] OK, now I've got a search
[00:20:56] for all of them.
[00:20:57] Yeah. Yeah,
[00:20:58] especially because the email you got
[00:21:00] doesn't tell you,
[00:21:02] you know, it tells you the time
[00:21:04] but it doesn't tell you what went wrong.
[00:21:05] I know.
[00:21:07] Yeah,
[00:21:08] it's, this is one of my favorite,
[00:21:11] more recent updates just because it's a,
[00:21:13] a quality of life thing.
[00:21:15] It's not a new feature really. It's just
[00:21:18] helping you find
[00:21:20] automation runs that
[00:21:21] have already happened.
[00:21:22] And it makes, I, you know,
[00:21:24] now that I'm in an enterprise environment,
[00:21:26] practically 100% of the time.
[00:21:28] And there's so many automations
[00:21:31] going all at once,
[00:21:33] the failed to run cab
[00:21:35] is my new best friend.
[00:21:37] My goodness. If something goes wrong,
[00:21:39] I want to know
[00:21:40] and I don't wanna have to, like,
[00:21:42] you know, wade through
[00:21:45] a billion successful runs
[00:21:47] to get to the one that failed.
[00:21:48] I will say, I don't,
[00:21:50] I haven't really figured out
[00:21:52] when a run is canceled.
[00:21:54] Like,
[00:21:55] I, I know it happens,
[00:21:57] but I can't figure out what causes
[00:21:59] an automation to be canceled
[00:22:02] versus it failing to run.
[00:22:04] That's a
[00:22:04] good
[00:22:05] question.
[00:22:05] The only time I've ever seen it
[00:22:08] actually say canceled is say you,
[00:22:11] like, hopefully this never happens
[00:22:12] to you, but it,
[00:22:13] it happens to the best of us.
[00:22:15] Say, you forget, you've got an automation
[00:22:17] on and you like, are importing data or
[00:22:19] something and you forget to shut it off
[00:22:21] and then you paste all the rows and then
[00:22:23] you're like,
[00:22:24] oh no, and go into your automations
[00:22:26] and shut it off. But by that time,
[00:22:29] all of them have already started
[00:22:31] to run. Exactly. So it, it'll cancel them
[00:22:34] when they've just started.
[00:22:36] Got it.
[00:22:38] I have noticed there's
[00:22:39] other situations where if you
[00:22:42] say, like, you've made a change to
[00:22:44] a field that like nullifies
[00:22:46] your automation like makes
[00:22:48] it so it can't run anymore.
[00:22:49] That will sometimes
[00:22:51] show up as a failed run,
[00:22:52] which is weird and the error run,
[00:22:54] like the error message
[00:22:55] in the failed run will
[00:22:56] be like Airtable shut this automation
[00:22:58] off because it broke.
[00:23:01] Those are interesting.
[00:23:03] Well, that, I don't know if that one
[00:23:05] bothers me because I think I'd rather,
[00:23:06] it be failed versus canceled
[00:23:08] because then it's an error.
[00:23:10] If something is
[00:23:10] canceled, then it's like,
[00:23:13] you know,
[00:23:15] whatever, you know,
[00:23:16] the next time it'll run, it'll run.
[00:23:18] But if,
[00:23:18] you know, if something went wrong,
[00:23:20] if the automation is no longer compatible
[00:23:22] with your schema,
[00:23:23] that feels like an error. To me,
[00:23:25] it's what, what, what bothers me about it.
[00:23:28] And I think the only thing that bothers me
[00:23:29] about it is that I don't think it
[00:23:30] actually corresponds with an actual run.
[00:23:33] It's just like, not a record
[00:23:35] didn't try to run like,
[00:23:37] or didn't trigger it,
[00:23:38] it just
[00:23:39] is like a fake
[00:23:41] instance. That,
[00:23:43] yeah, that is strange. Yeah.
[00:23:45] Yeah.
[00:23:47] Yeah.
[00:23:49] Useful.
[00:23:50] Yeah. Jen has a question
[00:23:51] whether it counts against the runs or not.
[00:23:53] I don't, I don't know
[00:23:54] if you cancel it?
[00:23:55] If you cancel those mids,
[00:23:58] I think if they trigger
[00:24:00] once they trigger,
[00:24:01] I think they might count.
[00:24:02] Yeah.
[00:24:03] I, I think it is the trigger
[00:24:05] because with the repeated actions,
[00:24:07] each repeated action is not
[00:24:09] a new automation run. It's just,
[00:24:11] it's, it, it is counting
[00:24:12] the triggers and so
[00:24:14] it would be consistent
[00:24:15] of Airtable to count
[00:24:17] canceled runs as runs because they
[00:24:19] were triggered. They just didn't complete.
[00:24:23] Do fail, do failed automations count?
[00:24:26] Yeah. I mean, they, they should, by,
[00:24:29] by, by logic it'd be great if,
[00:24:32] you know, I, I think we've all been
[00:24:34] there when we've accidentally triggered
[00:24:36] like 100 automations
[00:24:38] and many of them failed.
[00:24:40] It'd be great if our,
[00:24:41] our failures didn't count but
[00:24:43] they did trigger
[00:24:44] sometimes it's Airtable's
[00:24:46] fault that they failed. That is true.
[00:24:48] There was a period,
[00:24:49] there was a period, like, I think
[00:24:52] it might have been in our month
[00:24:54] break where we had a very script heavy
[00:24:57] automation and Airtable hadn't,
[00:24:58] not even Airtable, it wasn't
[00:25:00] Airtable's fault. It was aws that went
[00:25:01] through
[00:25:02] and so every script action failed
[00:25:04] because it had nothing to process its
[00:25:06] scripting power
[00:25:08] and that's not my fault.
[00:25:10] That's not Airtable's fault either,
[00:25:11] but it does mean we still got charged.
[00:25:15] So,
[00:25:16] you know.
[00:25:18] Yeah.
[00:25:19] All right. Let's move on
[00:25:20] a couple more. This one,
[00:25:22] Kamille if you wanna explain.
[00:25:23] So you say if you edit a record
[00:25:25] in inter interface
[00:25:26] that will filter it out of
[00:25:28] your views, the relevant record picker
[00:25:30] from which that filter stems will now
[00:25:32] highlight itself in addition
[00:25:34] to the your changes,
[00:25:35] we'll hide this record toast
[00:25:36] at the bottom of the page.
[00:25:38] Yeah, this would have been great
[00:25:40] with a photo
[00:25:40] that I couldn't quite capture.
[00:25:42] But for a while now in
[00:25:46] regular grid views,
[00:25:49] if you were to edit a record and
[00:25:52] whatever you edited makes
[00:25:54] it no longer compatible
[00:25:55] with the current filters,
[00:25:57] it will disappear from that view
[00:25:59] as soon as you move your mouse away.
[00:26:01] So like as soon as you click out
[00:26:03] of that record,
[00:26:04] it will disappear from your
[00:26:05] view, but it's the whole row
[00:26:06] would be highlighted orange,
[00:26:08] that's been a feature
[00:26:08] for quite some time
[00:26:10] and somewhat recently in interfaces. Now,
[00:26:13] if you have like
[00:26:14] a record picker or the record list
[00:26:16] component or something of that effect,
[00:26:18] and you're editing
[00:26:20] a
[00:26:20] record and now it's no longer
[00:26:22] part of whatever that
[00:26:24] record picker's filter is,
[00:26:25] similarly, you'll, you'll get a toast
[00:26:28] message at the bottom.
[00:26:30] It says, hey, you're about to
[00:26:32] hide this record from view,
[00:26:33] but it will also take whatever
[00:26:35] the record picker is
[00:26:36] or the record list
[00:26:37] and outline it in orange. So it's
[00:26:40] a, I
[00:26:40] think it's a nice visual indicator
[00:26:42] of like if you have multiple
[00:26:44] record pickers
[00:26:45] on your page,
[00:26:46] it's just nice to say,
[00:26:47] oh yeah, it's this one
[00:26:49] that it's no longer compatible
[00:26:51] with and it still won't go
[00:26:52] away until you click
[00:26:53] away or click on a different record. But
[00:26:56] just another, again,
[00:26:58] quality of life improvement
[00:26:59] rather than like a feature.
[00:27:02] Yeah.
[00:27:02] Very good.
[00:27:04] All right. A few more.
[00:27:07] So I can't remember who
[00:27:09] so we had a guest on
[00:27:10] a
[00:27:10] while ago and they showed us this,
[00:27:13] this hack of how to
[00:27:16] copy and paste attachments
[00:27:18] into the file upload widget,
[00:27:21] and but you had to like click
[00:27:24] in the header area
[00:27:25] in order for it to like get focus.
[00:27:28] But apparently according to Russell
[00:27:30] that, that that's fixed now,
[00:27:32] so you don't have to click
[00:27:33] in that secret area anymore.
[00:27:37] Very nice.
[00:27:38] So now once the pop up comes up,
[00:27:41] you can, I believe,
[00:27:42] just paste directly in and
[00:27:43] it will recognize it. So that's of course,
[00:27:45] I bet, I bet one of the Airtable
[00:27:47] developers listened to that episode,
[00:27:49] and was like I can fix that.
[00:27:51] Yeah, it seems like it would have
[00:27:53] been a auto focus
[00:27:54] as a thing that you could
[00:27:55] just add to HTML elements
[00:27:56] and they were probably
[00:27:57] idea a
[00:27:59] simple fix.
[00:28:01] Nice little addition.
[00:28:03] Shout out to whatever intern
[00:28:05] or maybe a new employee fixed
[00:28:07] that. So shout out to whoever
[00:28:09] fixed that at Airtable,
[00:28:11] go unnoticed
[00:28:13] but not by us.
[00:28:15] We notice.
[00:28:16] OK, from back to the
[00:28:18] Airtable forums,
[00:28:20] question on the personal access
[00:28:22] tokens, you likely got
[00:28:24] an email or I probably
[00:28:26] got 30 emails
[00:28:28] saying that all the accounts
[00:28:30] that I have access to that,
[00:28:33] that you can no
[00:28:34] longer create account tokens
[00:28:36] starting August 1st, I believe.
[00:28:39] And that's not exactly what
[00:28:41] this is asking, but it,
[00:28:42] it's kind of the bigger
[00:28:44] question of like moving away from
[00:28:46] account tokens.
[00:28:47] And this question is more about
[00:28:49] personal access tokens and in
[00:28:51] and specifically that
[00:28:53] jot form has not
[00:28:57] made the change yet to use
[00:28:59] either O'Auth or personal access tokens.
[00:29:02] And so,
[00:29:05] what that means, I think,
[00:29:07] I think Scott mentions it
[00:29:09] is any new accounts,
[00:29:10] you know, it's fine if you've already,
[00:29:12] if you've already
[00:29:13] have your account key
[00:29:15] that you can use,
[00:29:16] but any new Airtable users,
[00:29:18] they will not have an account
[00:29:21] api key starting August 1st.
[00:29:24] And so
[00:29:25] that means they wouldn't be
[00:29:26] able to use any of these
[00:29:28] services that have not
[00:29:28] upgraded yet.
[00:29:31] So that's relevant.
[00:29:34] Absolutely.
[00:29:35] Yeah. I'm glad they,
[00:29:38] I mean, before all we knew
[00:29:39] was that it would just be
[00:29:41] a after January they'd be
[00:29:42] deprecated. But now this is
[00:29:43] kind of new where it's like, oh,
[00:29:44] you can't actually create anything new.
[00:29:48] Luckily, most of the apps out there like
[00:29:50] Zapier,
[00:29:51] I have already made the update so
[00:29:55] I actually prefer
[00:29:56] it that way, which is nice.
[00:29:59] Yeah, although I will give an update,
[00:30:02] so
[00:30:03] it, so you likely if,
[00:30:05] if you started using, I know Zapier
[00:30:07] had issues with this,
[00:30:09] I think maybe softr somebody else,
[00:30:12] a big player.
[00:30:13] So Airtable's O'Auth
[00:30:15] implementation
[00:30:18] is not perfect and they were too quick to,
[00:30:22] to cancel your connection
[00:30:24] for when it was refreshing,
[00:30:27] it's kind of technical.
[00:30:28] But
[00:30:29] what was happening is
[00:30:30] Zapier was losing its connection
[00:30:32] from Airtable because Airtable
[00:30:33] was cutting it off
[00:30:36] too aggressively
[00:30:38] and we experienced this at On2Air
[00:30:39] as well. I think we figured it out,
[00:30:42] but I also was pushing them heavy that
[00:30:44] they needed to
[00:30:45] have a grace period.
[00:30:48] And at first they were saying no,
[00:30:50] no, you gotta just deal with it.
[00:30:51] But once, you know,
[00:30:53] once the real big players
[00:30:55] were experiencing the same things.
[00:30:56] I was
[00:30:58] they, I think they finally realized
[00:31:00] they needed to implement the grace period.
[00:31:02] So
[00:31:02] I think we were able to
[00:31:04] figure it out
[00:31:04] even before they implemented it.
[00:31:06] But I believe now there's a grace period.
[00:31:08] So I haven't seen those errors coming
[00:31:10] up as much
[00:31:12] with Zapier and whatnot. So,
[00:31:14] so yeah, if you had, if you had issues
[00:31:17] where your connection was getting
[00:31:18] dropped, I think they've fixed that.
[00:31:23] Right. Good to know.
[00:31:25] Yeah, last one. Ok. From Twitter,
[00:31:27] this actually came from Airtable.
[00:31:30] Thought this was somewhat interesting.
[00:31:33] Capterra
[00:31:35] that's kind of a website you go to,
[00:31:37] to rank or to get reviews on different
[00:31:39] software
[00:31:40] they generate a report of.
[00:31:43] So this is the database software category.
[00:31:47] I don't know if I put Airtable in a,
[00:31:49] in a true database software platform.
[00:31:51] It is to a degree. But I guess they've
[00:31:54] got access on here as well.
[00:31:56] It's kind of a strange list. It's,
[00:31:59] and it's like I can't even
[00:32:01] tell who these are.
[00:32:05] And there's a whole lot more
[00:32:07] databases out there.
[00:32:08] This is pretty limited list
[00:32:09] for
[00:32:10] what not. But anyways,
[00:32:11] that's where Airtable fits
[00:32:13] in the database world.
[00:32:15] Top
[00:32:16] top performer.
[00:32:19] Yep. So
[00:32:20] emerging top performer. Yeah,
[00:32:24] so the scale is highly rated,
[00:32:27] highest rated. So it has a high
[00:32:29] rating and a popularity score.
[00:32:31] So this is based off of ratings in
[00:32:34] Capterra in their reviews. So
[00:32:37] I can only assume that like,
[00:32:39] four quadrants includes
[00:32:41] fire base because it's like,
[00:32:42] why would Mongo DB
[00:32:44] be on here but not fire?
[00:32:47] Yeah,
[00:32:47] there's post
[00:32:48] grass. I recognize the elephants.
[00:32:51] Yeah. No idea what's in there.
[00:32:53] It's so small.
[00:32:55] I know.
[00:32:56] Yeah.
[00:32:58] I checked, I checked threads.
[00:33:00] Now, threads that came
[00:33:02] out since the last time
[00:33:03] we met. So now there's a new
[00:33:06] social media platform.
[00:33:07] But you can't search on,
[00:33:09] you can't really search for
[00:33:11] keywords or anything.
[00:33:12] You can only search for people
[00:33:13] right now on on threads.
[00:33:14] And so
[00:33:15] there's still some work to do
[00:33:17] where you can really use it. But
[00:33:21] we'll see
[00:33:21] the other bad part is
[00:33:23] they don't have a web interface. It's,
[00:33:24] it's mobile app only.
[00:33:26] So it might be difficult to show
[00:33:28] if anything of interest
[00:33:30] comes up on threads
[00:33:32] interesting,
[00:33:34] but we'll keep an eye on it
[00:33:35] if there, there are people, you know,
[00:33:37] you can search profiles.
[00:33:38] And so there's like 10 people
[00:33:40] that have Airtable in
[00:33:41] their profile. So
[00:33:43] there is
[00:33:44] there is people talking
[00:33:46] about Airtable to some extent.
[00:33:50] All right, let's jump to
[00:33:52] our primary sponsor On2Air.
[00:33:54] It's an all in one
[00:33:54] tool kit to run your business on Airtable.
[00:33:57] Check us out at on2air.com
[00:34:00] So last month,
[00:34:01] I don't know if you knew this,
[00:34:04] but last month was backup
[00:34:06] awareness month,
[00:34:07] National Backup Awareness Month.
[00:34:10] So since we were off,
[00:34:11] we decided that this month
[00:34:13] we're going to highlight our
[00:34:15] backups
[00:34:16] and talk about that. So On2Air backups
[00:34:21] is our backup solution.
[00:34:22] And
[00:34:26] so you can check it
[00:34:27] out on2air.com/backups,
[00:34:29] see how people are using
[00:34:30] it to make sure that their data
[00:34:32] is safe and secure outside of Airtable.
[00:34:35] And I was gonna highlight
[00:34:37] our essential guide to backups
[00:34:39] for your Airtable base.
[00:34:41] So Hannah, who is our marketing guru
[00:34:45] wrote up this great
[00:34:47] guide and got walked you all through
[00:34:50] everything, best practices related to
[00:34:53] Airtable and backups
[00:34:54] and how you could do it
[00:34:56] either by yourself or by leveraging
[00:34:59] our tool at On2Air. So check that out
[00:35:02] in our resource section
[00:35:04] and
[00:35:07] we'll walk you through the process. So
[00:35:09] very cool. So if you're
[00:35:11] not backing up your data,
[00:35:13] June is the reminder month
[00:35:14] to remind you to back up your data.
[00:35:17] And so we'll be talking about that
[00:35:18] in the next couple of weeks
[00:35:20] on this podcast.
[00:35:23] OK. Let's move on
[00:35:25] Automate Create two way sync with Alli.
[00:35:29] Share your screen. There you go.
[00:35:31] Awesome.
[00:35:33] All right. So this is
[00:35:35] a long awaited feature
[00:35:37] that unfortunately is only
[00:35:40] available to enterprise clients.
[00:35:43] So I'm working in an
[00:35:45] enterprise workspace here.
[00:35:48] Another huge bummer is like
[00:35:50] if you had access to the private beta
[00:35:52] that is now gone
[00:35:53] So, even if you had access to it
[00:35:55] and you weren't in an enterprise
[00:35:57] workspace
[00:35:59] that went away when they released
[00:36:01] the feature full fledged,
[00:36:02] which is a huge bummer.
[00:36:05] But if you are lucky enough
[00:36:06] to have an enterprise workspace
[00:36:08] and maybe someday
[00:36:08] they will release it to the masses,
[00:36:10] which would be great.
[00:36:13] Here is how you can take
[00:36:15] advantage of two way sync.
[00:36:17] So, I've got a very, very
[00:36:19] simple table here.
[00:36:20] I just threw it together for this
[00:36:21] demo.
[00:36:23] I'm gonna start by creating a view
[00:36:25] that I'm gonna sync out to another base.
[00:36:28] And my best practice for that
[00:36:31] is I always create a new view
[00:36:34] and I name it with like a
[00:36:35] couple emojis here. That's like,
[00:36:38] you know, telling me this
[00:36:40] is integral to a process and it's also
[00:36:43] got a lightning bolt telling
[00:36:45] me it's either associated
[00:36:46] with a sync or an
[00:36:46] automation.
[00:36:48] The reason for that is if you just
[00:36:50] go with your grid view and sync this out
[00:36:52] somewhere else
[00:36:53] and then you change the filters
[00:36:55] on this main view here,
[00:36:57] then all the records on your
[00:36:59] destination base are gonna be
[00:37:01] messed with and some of them will go away.
[00:37:03] So I always create a new view
[00:37:05] and then eventually
[00:37:07] I will lock this down so that
[00:37:08] I can't even change the filters
[00:37:10] because sometimes I forget.
[00:37:13] So if I go to
[00:37:15] share and sync and actually
[00:37:17] I'm gonna do,
[00:37:18] I'm gonna add a filter and say where
[00:37:20] the status is active because I want to
[00:37:23] play with something live in a moment here.
[00:37:27] So I'm gonna go to share
[00:37:28] and sync and this menu
[00:37:30] has been updated a little bit.
[00:37:31] I think it's so much cleaner now.
[00:37:34] I can say sync data to another base
[00:37:37] and I wanna to toggle on allow data to be
[00:37:39] synced to other to other bases.
[00:37:43] This is the new feature where
[00:37:45] I can say I want to allow
[00:37:47] edits from other bases.
[00:37:49] So if I toggle that on
[00:37:51] now, I get the option to say,
[00:37:54] OK, all the editable fields
[00:37:56] can be edited
[00:37:58] in the destination base
[00:38:00] or I can say just specific fields.
[00:38:02] So if I want to
[00:38:04] let's
[00:38:06] say everything but email can be updated
[00:38:11] in the destination.
[00:38:14] Now I'm gonna say sync this view
[00:38:18] that view sync activity
[00:38:20] that seems like a new thing as well.
[00:38:22] I haven't really looked at that but that
[00:38:24] sounds cool.
[00:38:25] It, it's fairly new. It looks at
[00:38:28] once you sync to a new source,
[00:38:30] go back and look at view sync activity.
[00:38:32] So we show this view is being synced out
[00:38:34] to all of these different bases
[00:38:35] and you click and go directly to them.
[00:38:37] It's very useful, right?
[00:38:38] Absolutely. Really, really cool.
[00:38:42] So here is
[00:38:43] another caveat is you have to be
[00:38:46] syncing also to an enterprise workspace.
[00:38:48] I just tested this out where
[00:38:50] syncing from enterprise
[00:38:51] to a different workspace.
[00:38:53] You still can't edit the data
[00:38:54] as if it were
[00:38:56] two way syncable.
[00:38:57] So
[00:38:58] bummer, you've got to pick
[00:38:59] an enterprise workspace for this to work.
[00:39:02] So I'm gonna just create a new base
[00:39:05] and make sure I've got this top option
[00:39:07] on so that it'll be kept up to date as
[00:39:09] data changes.
[00:39:19] And now,
[00:39:23] I am able to
[00:39:25] Oh Wow, interesting.
[00:39:27] I think you have to enable it
[00:39:29] from within this base as well.
[00:39:31] So
[00:39:32] if you go to the, the actual table
[00:39:35] tab and then do update sync configuration
[00:39:38] and then turn edit records on,
[00:39:43] I think,
[00:39:44] I feel like if you're creating a new,
[00:39:48] you know, if you, if you went
[00:39:49] through the process that you went through,
[00:39:50] you, you're creating a new base
[00:39:52] and a new table
[00:39:53] that should just be on because
[00:39:54] you've selected it as editable from
[00:39:56] the original.
[00:39:57] There are instances where you're
[00:39:59] putting it into
[00:40:01] like you turn the toggle in
[00:40:03] on after you've already
[00:40:05] created the source that I
[00:40:06] get it not being on by default,
[00:40:08] but the way you did it, it should
[00:40:10] exactly, it should be on.
[00:40:12] But that's OK. I mean,
[00:40:14] I guess it, you know,
[00:40:15] makes the security pitfalls minimal.
[00:40:19] So this is great too. You're,
[00:40:21] you're able to decide if it's,
[00:40:22] you know, creators and above
[00:40:24] or editors and editors
[00:40:25] and above or just no one.
[00:40:27] So I'll leave it as editors and above.
[00:40:30] And now that that's on,
[00:40:32] I always
[00:40:33] hit that button when you,
[00:40:34] you don't actually have to.
[00:40:36] Now I can actually edit this data.
[00:40:38] So
[00:40:40] I actually changed this to
[00:40:42] technically my real last name.
[00:40:47] I changed my name everyone,
[00:40:49] but I'm keeping my full
[00:40:50] name professionally.
[00:40:54] now in my source base
[00:40:55] that has also been updated.
[00:40:59] And it's instant, it's super, super cool.
[00:41:02] I'm only sharing one window
[00:41:04] but I should have
[00:41:07] if I did it side by side,
[00:41:09] you could also just kind
[00:41:10] of see it being updated.
[00:41:13] Now, one thing I wanted to try out
[00:41:14] that I haven't
[00:41:15] actually tested is I want to
[00:41:16] see what happens
[00:41:18] because I have this filtered
[00:41:21] where the status is active
[00:41:24] and I've made it so that you
[00:41:26] can actually edit the status field on the
[00:41:29] destination base,
[00:41:31] which I would think is probably
[00:41:33] not best practice.
[00:41:35] But I wanted to just see what
[00:41:36] would happen live here
[00:41:38] if we actually change
[00:41:39] this to say inactive.
[00:41:40] Like is it gonna say
[00:41:42] this has been filtered out?
[00:41:43] Yeah, it doesn't, it just goes away.
[00:41:46] So
[00:41:47] that's something to note
[00:41:48] is be careful, make sure that
[00:41:51] you're either just not allowing
[00:41:53] people to edit that field
[00:41:57] in the destination base.
[00:41:59] If it's part of your
[00:42:00] filter for your source
[00:42:02] or make sure people are aware
[00:42:04] that if they do that, then
[00:42:05] there's no real way
[00:42:06] to get that record back.
[00:42:08] If I hit control Z
[00:42:09] just a second
[00:42:11] broke it
[00:42:12] Exactly.
[00:42:14] So, yeah, the, the record, it can't,
[00:42:18] it can't claw back that record
[00:42:20] because it wasn't technically
[00:42:22] deleted from your
[00:42:23] table's perspective.
[00:42:24] So it has nothing
[00:42:25] for the undo button to grab.
[00:42:27] Like they should fix that though
[00:42:29] and just say
[00:42:30] they have a pop up that comes up
[00:42:32] sometimes saying
[00:42:33] they can't undo action
[00:42:34] and it should just come up
[00:42:36] with that one in this instance.
[00:42:37] Exactly.
[00:42:39] So, just be really careful with
[00:42:40] what fields you're
[00:42:42] allowing people to edit.
[00:42:45] Another difference between
[00:42:47] the full fledge two way sync version
[00:42:49] and the beta that some of you may have had
[00:42:51] access to
[00:42:52] is in the beta, you weren't able
[00:42:55] to edit those synced fields in interfaces.
[00:42:58] But in the new full fledge release,
[00:43:00] you can, which is really,
[00:43:02] really great.
[00:43:03] I have not tried to edit any of these
[00:43:07] field values with like Zapier or API
[00:43:09] calls. Have either of you?
[00:43:12] No, I do know that you can't
[00:43:14] edit them directly
[00:43:15] through an Airtable automation
[00:43:17] which
[00:43:17] is
[00:43:17] you
[00:43:19] the API you can't,
[00:43:20] you can't edit.
[00:43:21] I think that was one of the constraints.
[00:43:23] Yeah,
[00:43:24] I would, I would think that
[00:43:26] would be my expectation.
[00:43:29] But just wanted to see which is,
[00:43:31] which is frustrating because any third
[00:43:34] party tool, any form builder or whatever
[00:43:36] you can't, you can't use on these tables.
[00:43:39] Exactly.
[00:43:42] But you also can't add a new
[00:43:44] record from the the destination base.
[00:43:46] So
[00:43:47] yeah,
[00:43:48] definitely some limitations.
[00:43:50] I mean,
[00:43:50] the other thing is like if you have
[00:43:52] two tabless that you've got synced
[00:43:55] over from a different base
[00:43:56] and you're linking them back together
[00:43:58] again with automation or something
[00:44:01] changing up, those linked relationships
[00:44:03] will not change the source base either.
[00:44:05] So it's really only just these,
[00:44:08] you know, one layer,
[00:44:09] one dimensional fields
[00:44:10] that you can edit and have sync back
[00:44:12] over.
[00:44:15] Which again, I would expect. But
[00:44:17] yeah, because
[00:44:19] does make some
[00:44:21] annoyances, I guess.
[00:44:22] Yeah.
[00:44:23] Yeah. So linked records you can't do.
[00:44:26] Yeah,
[00:44:29] very good. Thank you.
[00:44:31] But yeah, I mean, it's that,
[00:44:33] that opens up
[00:44:34] the use cases of what you can do now
[00:44:36] with, with two way sync and
[00:44:38] how to organize, especially
[00:44:40] for large enterprises
[00:44:41] like multidepartment and everything
[00:44:43] on that front.
[00:44:44] Yeah,
[00:44:45] absolutely.
[00:44:46] OK.
[00:44:48] Kamille,
[00:44:48] what do you got for us?
[00:44:51] There was a question on the forums
[00:44:54] that I thought was pretty interesting
[00:44:58] titled create New Records
[00:45:00] for each week of another records,
[00:45:02] time frame. So essentially they have
[00:45:04] a form where someone
[00:45:06] could put a start date
[00:45:07] and an end date
[00:45:08] and they want to break that one record
[00:45:11] out into multiple records
[00:45:12] for each week within that time frame.
[00:45:15] So it's unspoken in here,
[00:45:16] but I noticed the pattern that,
[00:45:19] you know, weeks start on
[00:45:20] Monday and, and on Friday.
[00:45:22] And that's not
[00:45:23] super relevant
[00:45:24] but it is relevant to this
[00:45:26] precise implementation that I
[00:45:28] tried.
[00:45:29] So
[00:45:30] they specifically asked
[00:45:32] can this be done without a script?
[00:45:34] And that's why I chose this question
[00:45:36] because I was like, can you do this
[00:45:37] script? And you can.
[00:45:39] So
[00:45:39] just as a quick look of what things
[00:45:43] look like from a table structure,
[00:45:46] it's pretty simple.
[00:45:48] Oh And before I forget,
[00:45:50] they also want to copy
[00:45:51] not just the broken out weeks
[00:45:54] into the new records,
[00:45:55] they want to copy certain
[00:45:57] fields from the original record as well.
[00:45:59] So I have a email address
[00:46:01] that is going to be copied
[00:46:03] amongst all of the
[00:46:03] different
[00:46:05] time frame records.
[00:46:06] There's a start date and end date
[00:46:08] that you would fill in
[00:46:09] from a form
[00:46:11] and then I have two helper
[00:46:13] fields and like Alli, I use
[00:46:16] emojis to sort of differentiate them.
[00:46:19] These have the gear
[00:46:20] icon because they are,
[00:46:22] you know,
[00:46:23] back end, you don't really have
[00:46:24] to look at them. But they do something
[00:46:26] important for the purposes
[00:46:28] of this automation.
[00:46:29] So the first one is clamped and date
[00:46:32] and taking a look at that formula.
[00:46:36] I'm saying
[00:46:37] if there is a start date,
[00:46:39] then add,
[00:46:41] you know, this bit five minus
[00:46:43] the weekday of the start date,
[00:46:44] that's in order to get it to be
[00:46:46] whatever the Friday of that week is
[00:46:48] and whatever necessary number
[00:46:51] of days to the start date.
[00:46:53] So, and then the second one
[00:46:55] is next start date.
[00:46:57] Now, if the clamped end date is less than
[00:47:01] end date,
[00:47:03] then add a week to
[00:47:07] add a week onto,
[00:47:11] you know, the, the appropriate
[00:47:12] start date. So,
[00:47:13] I have the automation turned on
[00:47:16] and it's pretty simple,
[00:47:18] but I'll turn it off
[00:47:19] just so you guys can see,
[00:47:21] I'm gonna say
[00:47:25] test at email dot com.
[00:47:27] I'm some person filling
[00:47:29] in some kind of form
[00:47:32] starting on
[00:47:34] the seventh and ending on,
[00:47:38] let's go all the way to the fourth
[00:47:40] of September.
[00:47:41] So now you'll see that both of
[00:47:43] these fields are filled out.
[00:47:44] Whereas for the first four,
[00:47:46] because the automation
[00:47:47] already ran for these
[00:47:48] only the first one is filled in.
[00:47:50] So the clamped end date is giving me the
[00:47:54] 11th, which should be and it is
[00:47:56] the Friday of the week
[00:47:58] of wherever I said the start date is.
[00:48:01] The next start date would be
[00:48:03] one week from
[00:48:05] this date. So what the
[00:48:07] automation is going to do now
[00:48:08] is say when this is not empty,
[00:48:13] then
[00:48:15] take this record
[00:48:18] change the end date
[00:48:19] to the clamped end date.
[00:48:21] So it's now just spanning one week
[00:48:23] and then create a new record
[00:48:25] that starts on
[00:48:27] this
[00:48:30] starts on this next start date.
[00:48:33] So I'm gonna go back
[00:48:35] and turn my automation back on
[00:48:38] and then I'm gonna have to
[00:48:41] a mess this up really quickly
[00:48:43] because it says
[00:48:44] when that field is not empty.
[00:48:47] So now if I give it a second
[00:48:49] to think a little bit,
[00:48:51] you can see that like one week
[00:48:54] by one week, it's going to
[00:48:57] duplicate the record,
[00:48:59] including the email address
[00:49:01] and then it's going to
[00:49:03] copy and paste what the
[00:49:05] next start date is into
[00:49:07] the start date of the copied record.
[00:49:10] And then it's just gonna keep doing that
[00:49:13] until it runs out of weeks
[00:49:15] where it needs to do that
[00:49:18] and looking back at the automation
[00:49:21] in detail, you might do this
[00:49:23] was specifically a form for this person.
[00:49:26] So they might have chosen
[00:49:27] when a form is submitted.
[00:49:29] First thing I'm doing again,
[00:49:31] I'm creating a new record
[00:49:33] in that same table
[00:49:34] where the start date
[00:49:35] is the next start date
[00:49:36] and the end date is whatever
[00:49:38] the old end date was,
[00:49:41] then copy the email address
[00:49:43] as well and no matter
[00:49:44] how many fields that you
[00:49:46] wanted to copy over as well,
[00:49:47] you would just keep choosing, choose field
[00:49:50] and then update the original
[00:49:52] one and get rid of the
[00:49:54] end date that's too far away.
[00:49:56] Instead insert the clamped end date.
[00:49:59] And that's what
[00:50:01] one could do in order
[00:50:02] to do this without a script.
[00:50:06] Love it. It's like a little loop
[00:50:08] with one automation run
[00:50:10] per
[00:50:12] nice little trick.
[00:50:13] Yeah. So, I mean,
[00:50:15] the, the caveat of course is that
[00:50:17] it is a fresh automation run.
[00:50:20] It's not a true loop.
[00:50:21] It's not a repeating action.
[00:50:23] So you are gonna every
[00:50:25] time,
[00:50:26] you know, for as many number
[00:50:28] of weeks there are,
[00:50:29] that's how many automation runs
[00:50:31] are going to happen.
[00:50:33] Unless
[00:50:35] your end date is exactly one week away,
[00:50:37] then this won't be filled in.
[00:50:39] And then if no automation will run
[00:50:40] you get the picture.
[00:50:42] So as long as you're not,
[00:50:43] you know, running low on
[00:50:45] the number of automations
[00:50:47] you're given in your chosen plan,
[00:50:48] then this solution might work for you
[00:50:51] and because it doesn't have a script
[00:50:53] involved, that means you can use it
[00:50:56] for a lower plan like free.
[00:51:00] Yeah.
[00:51:01] Nice, very cool,
[00:51:04] nice solution there. Hopefully that helps.
[00:51:07] We'll have the link to it on that
[00:51:09] thread.
[00:51:11] All right, quick shout out to
[00:51:12] join our community at
[00:51:14] BuiltOnAir
[00:51:14] we'd love to have you in with us.
[00:51:16] We are growing,
[00:51:17] we're approaching 1500 members
[00:51:19] in our slack community
[00:51:21] more on our newsletter and growing
[00:51:23] our youtube channel. Subscribe to all of
[00:51:26] those if you haven't already.
[00:51:28] So we'd love to have you join.
[00:51:30] We would also love to have you
[00:51:32] come on the, on the podcast.
[00:51:33] So if you've got
[00:51:34] something worth
[00:51:35] sharing with the community,
[00:51:37] please reach out and we'll have you on.
[00:51:40] All right,
[00:51:41] let's finish up with Field focus
[00:51:43] and we're gonna be talking about
[00:51:46] progress bars. So
[00:51:48] we mentioned this came out recently.
[00:51:51] So this is how you get these
[00:51:53] nice looking progress bars right here.
[00:51:56] Let's look at what they are. So
[00:51:58] they are a percent field.
[00:52:00] So this is not a new field type
[00:52:02] like I mentioned
[00:52:02] earlier. So you still have
[00:52:04] to go to a percent field
[00:52:05] or
[00:52:07] you can also let's do a formula
[00:52:11] that references the
[00:52:15] that field. And then if you format it
[00:52:18] as a percent, then it gives you the option
[00:52:20] to display it as a progress bar
[00:52:23] and it,
[00:52:25] then you set up your own condition. So
[00:52:28] I won't worry about that.
[00:52:29] Let's go back here.
[00:52:31] So if once you set it as the progress bar,
[00:52:34] the other option you have is to
[00:52:36] display the actual percent
[00:52:38] value next to the,
[00:52:40] to the progress bar.
[00:52:42] So I'll show you what that looks like.
[00:52:44] And then in here you set up your
[00:52:45] condition so you can actually have
[00:52:48] pretty, actually pretty, pretty nice
[00:52:51] layers of coloring.
[00:52:53] So it, I think it goes in order
[00:52:55] it'll look for to see
[00:52:57] if it solves this first
[00:52:59] condition first.
[00:53:00] If it does
[00:53:02] solve this as true,
[00:53:03] then it'll set it to this color,
[00:53:05] then it'll go to the next
[00:53:06] one.
[00:53:07] If you have them out of order,
[00:53:09] you can drag them around
[00:53:10] so you can change the
[00:53:11] order.
[00:53:11] But this wouldn't make sense
[00:53:14] because you, it would be true.
[00:53:16] It would never get to that second one
[00:53:18] because it would always
[00:53:19] be greater than 50.
[00:53:20] But you can also do like
[00:53:22] layered conditions.
[00:53:23] So that's kind of nice,
[00:53:24] you can say
[00:53:26] and or,
[00:53:27] and then you can also set up
[00:53:29] this otherwise,
[00:53:31] which is this default color.
[00:53:33] So you can specify if it's not any
[00:53:35] of these conditions, then set it to this
[00:53:37] color.
[00:53:38] And so you can add more,
[00:53:40] puts it up there.
[00:53:42] Whatnot. So once you have
[00:53:44] your conditions set up
[00:53:46] then
[00:53:48] that's interesting.
[00:53:50] Yeah, I think it works.
[00:53:52] What is the display for a negative number?
[00:53:55] Let's
[00:53:55] find out.
[00:53:56] I think it,
[00:53:58] I think it shows it empty
[00:54:00] like I could be remembering wrong.
[00:54:02] But
[00:54:02] we'll see now.
[00:54:05] Yeah, it shows it empty
[00:54:07] so it doesn't go negative on the display.
[00:54:10] But yeah, you see these nice
[00:54:12] so now I'm having
[00:54:13] it display the percent sign
[00:54:14] next to it.
[00:54:15] It's kind of interesting to edit it,
[00:54:18] you just click into it and then you modify
[00:54:20] the percent
[00:54:22] sign there. If you don't have it
[00:54:24] now, these aren't editable because they're
[00:54:26] formulas
[00:54:27] and roll ups and lookups would,
[00:54:30] would be the same as this,
[00:54:32] but these are editable.
[00:54:35] So it stays there.
[00:54:38] And so that's kind of it.
[00:54:40] I wanted to take it one layer deep.
[00:54:42] I wanted to know
[00:54:45] at the API level,
[00:54:47] what does it look like?
[00:54:49] So I go to the API schema
[00:54:52] page and there's no change.
[00:54:54] So basically
[00:54:55] it's just the percent sign and it
[00:54:58] just gives you the number.
[00:54:59] So it doesn't tell you
[00:55:01] what color it would be. I wish
[00:55:03] there was a way where you could say
[00:55:05] also tell me,
[00:55:06] you know what color this would
[00:55:07] be based off of my conditions.
[00:55:11] And then I also wanted to look at
[00:55:13] the metadata API
[00:55:14] to see if they've updated the
[00:55:16] configurations for the percent
[00:55:18] to give you that information.
[00:55:20] Unfortunately, it does not yet.
[00:55:23] So the according to the documentation,
[00:55:26] it just gives you the, the precision.
[00:55:29] OK.
[00:55:30] So
[00:55:33] I
[00:55:33] yeah,
[00:55:34] it'd be good if they treated it like
[00:55:37] the single select field in the API
[00:55:39] where it'll say the id
[00:55:41] of the select choice,
[00:55:42] the name of the select choice
[00:55:43] and then the color
[00:55:44] of the select choice in this
[00:55:46] case, it'd be
[00:55:47] like the precision.
[00:55:49] or I guess if you're reading
[00:55:51] the field value
[00:55:52] would say like the value and also
[00:55:54] the color.
[00:55:55] Yeah.
[00:55:55] Now that would be a pretty big
[00:55:58] change because any,
[00:55:59] any previous one it would,
[00:56:01] you know, it would break
[00:56:02] because you'd be expecting a number.
[00:56:04] So it'd have to be like a
[00:56:06] one of the options that you
[00:56:09] can specify like type cast
[00:56:12] where you could pass it in
[00:56:14] to give it to you in the other format
[00:56:16] for, for,
[00:56:18] I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:56:19] No, I was just gonna say,
[00:56:21] what about if it's a formula field?
[00:56:22] Does it give you different?
[00:56:24] They probably haven't updated it then
[00:56:25] either.
[00:56:26] There. Yeah, I think it's the same.
[00:56:28] Yeah, let me refresh.
[00:56:36] Yeah, it's a percent
[00:56:38] although it's interesting.
[00:56:45] Yeah, so it does
[00:56:46] give it to you in percent.
[00:56:48] OK.
[00:56:51] When you're doing record coloring,
[00:56:54] can you color by percent field or no?
[00:57:01] And
[00:57:03] yeah,
[00:57:03] it
[00:57:03] should be in
[00:57:04] order.
[00:57:05] Yeah, but like if you
[00:57:07] clear out these conditions,
[00:57:09] it'll give you
[00:57:10] normally it would give you the option
[00:57:12] color by select field or your conditions.
[00:57:14] Could you do
[00:57:16] color by?
[00:57:17] Yeah, get rid of those.
[00:57:19] Yeah. No.
[00:57:20] Yeah. At this point because it is,
[00:57:22] it's effectively
[00:57:23] the same because it's not a
[00:57:24] gradient of colors. It's a solid color
[00:57:27] for whatever conditions you
[00:57:29] set up within the percent field.
[00:57:30] I would like it if you could color
[00:57:32] by percent field in the same way you could
[00:57:34] color by a select field.
[00:57:35] Otherwise you have to recreate
[00:57:37] those color conditions
[00:57:39] in the color records panel.
[00:57:41] Yeah, that'd be great.
[00:57:44] Yeah. So
[00:57:46] yeah. So this is a great feature.
[00:57:48] As a third party developer,
[00:57:50] it's always frustrating because
[00:57:52] you can't recreate this in a tool.
[00:57:54] You'd have to recreate
[00:57:56] your own conditioning.
[00:57:57] You can't repurpose the
[00:57:58] conditioning already set up in here
[00:58:00] because you don't have that information.
[00:58:02] They also do not have their
[00:58:04] support article
[00:58:05] on percent file type updated.
[00:58:07] So there's no
[00:58:08] reference to
[00:58:10] progress bars in their Support docs.
[00:58:14] Yeah. And
[00:58:15] they, they do have now the thing
[00:58:17] at the bottom
[00:58:18] of this support page reminds me
[00:58:19] that they have changed since before.
[00:58:22] So
[00:58:23] I don't know what's up with
[00:58:26] percent
[00:58:27] underneath it all.
[00:58:28] But you know this is the second time
[00:58:32] they've gotten or might have,
[00:58:33] might get a shakeup
[00:58:34] if they adjust how it's
[00:58:35] reported
[00:58:37] in the FBI.
[00:58:39] Yeah, it's um
[00:58:41] very good. That concludes
[00:58:43] season 15, episode one.
[00:58:45] Good to be back with you.
[00:58:46] We will be back next week with more fun.
[00:58:49] I believe we have a guest joining.
[00:58:51] So
[00:58:51] thank you everybody for joining
[00:58:53] and we'll see you next week.
[00:58:56] Thank you.