8/29/2023 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S15-E08

Duration: 65 minutes

Be Sure to Subscribe to the podcast!

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

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 – 00:03:18 –

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Airtable Community] New pricing !!! – Airtable Community

[Airtable Community] Updates to Our Pricing Plans – Airtable Community

[Airtable Community] Powerful new features to govern and scale with eas… – Airtable Community

Audience Questions – 00:27:28 –

Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “What is up with the Pricing Changes?”

View the question in the community

Meet the Creators – 00:47:37 –

Meet Ben Bailey.

Sr. Research Systems Manager at Frame.io, an Adobe Company

Visit them online

Base Showcase – 00:55:47 –

We dive into a full working base that will Ben will share some never before seen publicly features coming to Airtable, relating to how 2 way sync will work in the future. Insider Information seen first here!

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:03:18

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

Following Articles Used in this Segment:

[Airtable Community] New pricing !!! – Airtable Community

[Airtable Community] Updates to Our Pricing Plans – Airtable Community

[Airtable Community] Powerful new features to govern and scale with eas… – Airtable Community

Segment: Audience Questions

Start Time: 00:27:28

Airtable Question – What is up with the Pricing Changes?

Kamille Parks answers the Airtable question: “What is up with the Pricing Changes?”

View the question in the community

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:47:37

Ben Bailey –

Meet Ben Bailey.

Sr. Research Systems Manager at Frame.io, an Adobe Company

Visit them online

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:55:47

2-way Sync, Version 2.0

We dive into a full working base that will Ben will share some never before seen publicly features coming to Airtable, relating to how 2 way sync will work in the future. Insider Information seen first here!

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:01:40] Welcome to the BuiltOnAir
[00:01:42] podcast. This is season 15.
[00:01:45] The last episode, episode eight
[00:01:47] will be off for a few weeks
[00:01:49] after this and then
[00:01:50] we'll be back in October for
[00:01:52] season 16.
[00:01:54] So good to have
[00:01:55] everybody joining us today.
[00:01:57] We've got Kamille Parks back as always,
[00:02:00] we've got Alli could not join us today.
[00:02:03] So we've got Ben Bailey coming back.
[00:02:05] Welcome, Ben.
[00:02:08] Good to have you. And
[00:02:09] we'll get into to an update on Ben.
[00:02:12] Ben's been on the show,
[00:02:13] I believe a few seasons ago.
[00:02:15] But back with us and he's got
[00:02:17] some exciting news to share with us.
[00:02:19] So
[00:02:20] I will walk us through what
[00:02:22] we're gonna be talking about today.
[00:02:23] We do an hour long show,
[00:02:25] we talk about everything Airtable,
[00:02:27] keep you up to date.
[00:02:28] We always start with our Round the Bases
[00:02:31] and what's going on
[00:02:32] in the different communities.
[00:02:34] And then a quick shout out to On2Air
[00:02:36] our primary sponsor.
[00:02:38] Then we will do the question
[00:02:40] that everybody's been asking
[00:02:42] what is up with the
[00:02:43] pricing changes. Kamille
[00:02:45] is gonna walk us through that
[00:02:47] and help everybody
[00:02:48] understand how it impacts us
[00:02:51] and then Ben, we'll get an
[00:02:53] update on what's new
[00:02:55] in Ben's life and his career.
[00:02:56] And then
[00:02:58] a quick shout out to our community
[00:03:00] how you can join it. And then Ben's gonna
[00:03:02] walk us through some new
[00:03:03] functionality that will be coming
[00:03:05] and a sneak peek into that.
[00:03:08] And it's related to two way
[00:03:10] sync version 2.0 so
[00:03:11] welcome everybody.
[00:03:13] Good to have you
[00:03:16] with Round the Bases.
[00:03:18] There's a few things.
[00:03:19] So like I mentioned,
[00:03:21] we're gonna be talking about the
[00:03:23] pricing changes,
[00:03:24] but that definitely is the big topic
[00:03:26] that everybody is talking about.
[00:03:29] So we won't dive too much
[00:03:30] into that because
[00:03:32] we're gonna focus a segment on it.
[00:03:33] But it's definitely
[00:03:35] there's discussions pretty much
[00:03:37] everywhere about it.
[00:03:39] There's a long thread
[00:03:41] on the Airtable community
[00:03:42] talking about it
[00:03:44] and all the changes.
[00:03:46] I know in the BuiltOnAir community,
[00:03:50] I think this might be
[00:03:51] we had 150 replies to,
[00:03:53] to this comment on the
[00:03:54] pricing changes.
[00:03:56] I haven't kept track,
[00:03:57] but that might be one of the higher
[00:03:59] threads that we've had in the community.
[00:04:01] So definitely a lot going on.
[00:04:03] I know in the Facebook community
[00:04:05] and likely in the
[00:04:07] Airtable forums community,
[00:04:10] everybody's talking about pricing.
[00:04:12] So we're gonna go deep
[00:04:13] into it with Kamille in,
[00:04:14] in a little bit. So hold on to that
[00:04:18] the other thing that is kind of
[00:04:20] in conjunction with it
[00:04:22] with that we can talk,
[00:04:23] talk more about is some of the
[00:04:25] features that were also added in this.
[00:04:28] So
[00:04:32] yeah, I don't know this,
[00:04:33] you guys might be more familiar with this.
[00:04:35] So there is some enterprise
[00:04:38] feature scalability governance.
[00:04:40] You familiar with these changes?
[00:04:43] I am. Yeah,
[00:04:45] yeah,
[00:04:45] yeah, walk through what they did there.
[00:04:48] So
[00:04:50] in place beforehand,
[00:04:52] there were certain like high level
[00:04:55] administrative controls you could
[00:04:58] have if you were on the enterprise plan.
[00:05:00] And
[00:05:01] some of the things that larger
[00:05:03] enterprises might have run into
[00:05:04] is you might have
[00:05:05] had multiple different
[00:05:08] you,
[00:05:09] your
[00:05:10] business was so large
[00:05:12] that it kind of made sense
[00:05:14] to have localized,
[00:05:16] you know, versions of Airtable
[00:05:17] that had different settings
[00:05:19] applied to them.
[00:05:20] Maybe the legal department
[00:05:21] is more locked down
[00:05:22] or has fewer permissions granted
[00:05:24] to them
[00:05:25] than the finance department
[00:05:26] or I don't know.
[00:05:27] So one of the things
[00:05:29] that was added in this
[00:05:31] batch for enterprise scale,
[00:05:34] which is the new name
[00:05:35] for the enterprise plan
[00:05:37] is things called,
[00:05:39] there's organizational units
[00:05:41] which are kind of like sub
[00:05:43] organizations within one enterprise
[00:05:46] instance. So you can simplify your billing
[00:05:49] instead of having multiple enterprise
[00:05:51] instances and contracts with Airtable.
[00:05:54] It's one contract where each
[00:05:55] pod or organization
[00:05:57] can have slightly different settings. So
[00:06:00] there's a lot of nuance in there
[00:06:02] and how you would implement.
[00:06:04] It really depends on your organization,
[00:06:06] but that's one of the major things that
[00:06:07] they added.
[00:06:09] Airtable A I is a beta that's
[00:06:12] currently out and being tested that's
[00:06:15] available for the
[00:06:16] pro slash team plan maybe also.
[00:06:19] So it's not just enterprise,
[00:06:20] but that's one of the things
[00:06:22] that's kind of lumped into
[00:06:23] the enterprise adjustments and
[00:06:29] enterprise key management,
[00:06:31] I believe is another one that was added
[00:06:34] for the enterprise side of the,
[00:06:37] you know, recent batches of updates
[00:06:40] and then for everybody, it was various
[00:06:42] improvements to the timeline
[00:06:44] view yet again.
[00:06:45] So they're constantly updating
[00:06:48] that view in particular.
[00:06:51] And then,
[00:06:52] you know,
[00:06:53] yeah, so here's the thread that's about
[00:06:55] enterprise specifically and all
[00:06:57] of the additional things
[00:06:58] that they're getting.
[00:06:59] So,
[00:07:00] yeah,
[00:07:01] yeah, I'll add one little detail.
[00:07:03] The, the new, what I think they call it
[00:07:04] enterprise hub,
[00:07:05] like Slack calls it enterprise grid and
[00:07:07] Airtable
[00:07:08] is calling enterprise hub
[00:07:09] with the like different layers,
[00:07:11] so you've got like your big Master account
[00:07:14] and then like your org units,
[00:07:15] but they've introduced
[00:07:16] this new role for super admin.
[00:07:18] So if you're like an it
[00:07:19] and you just need to
[00:07:21] make sure that like your skim
[00:07:22] and like your O'Auth
[00:07:24] oh sorry, your sso configurations
[00:07:26] are like set, no one else can touch them.
[00:07:28] Like that's what that's for.
[00:07:29] But then you, you are not an Airtable
[00:07:31] user yourself, right?
[00:07:32] You're probably administering, you know,
[00:07:33] dozens of different tools
[00:07:35] and making sure they all
[00:07:36] conform to your orgs,
[00:07:37] like your, your company's larger
[00:07:39] security and finance concerns.
[00:07:40] So that's like your role
[00:07:41] and that's at that highest level,
[00:07:43] that's where those
[00:07:43] settings are set.
[00:07:44] But then within the ORG units,
[00:07:46] there are admins who are gonna
[00:07:47] be like Airtable builders
[00:07:48] and users like us
[00:07:49] who are actually like configuring
[00:07:52] like, do we want
[00:07:53] our org to be able to like
[00:07:54] add these integrations?
[00:07:56] It's up to the discretion
[00:07:57] of like those admins.
[00:07:59] So I, I like that sort of split
[00:08:00] between, you've got like your
[00:08:01] central it security
[00:08:02] and finance people who control
[00:08:03] like
[00:08:04] the stuff that we don't care about.
[00:08:06] And then there's the actual like
[00:08:08] users of the product who are administering
[00:08:09] their different slices of the account,
[00:08:12] you know, as they see fit.
[00:08:15] Great.
[00:08:16] Yeah, very good.
[00:08:17] And, did you touch on the,
[00:08:19] the record updates
[00:08:21] or are you gonna talk about
[00:08:22] that?
[00:08:23] Ok. No, and I have the, the first of my,
[00:08:27] you know, I'll this,
[00:08:29] I'll call a complaint.
[00:08:31] it is difficult now to find how
[00:08:33] many records you can have per table.
[00:08:35] The old pricing page broke down
[00:08:38] how many records would be
[00:08:40] the max per base and the max per table,
[00:08:42] the new pricing page just is the max per
[00:08:44] base.
[00:08:45] So this is the first I'm
[00:08:47] hearing of the
[00:08:48] records per table being 250,000.
[00:08:51] So I will quickly add
[00:08:53] that to my chart and then
[00:08:55] it's a mystery with the other maxes are.
[00:08:57] But, yes, generally speaking,
[00:08:59] record
[00:09:01] limits have been increased
[00:09:02] for the enterprise and they have been
[00:09:04] adjusted in,
[00:09:07] the other plans which will go over later.
[00:09:10] Yeah.
[00:09:11] So,
[00:09:13] ok.
[00:09:14] Yeah. So that, that was a big
[00:09:16] increase. I know that had
[00:09:18] been in beta for a while.
[00:09:21] and hopefully they're working on
[00:09:23] even more. I was reading,
[00:09:25] I didn't have it here but there
[00:09:26] was a, there was a thread in the Facebook
[00:09:28] community about
[00:09:31] you know, how, how they're
[00:09:33] they're
[00:09:34] moving to the enterprise
[00:09:36] and they're kind of like moving
[00:09:38] upstream and,
[00:09:38] and kind of
[00:09:41] not putting as much emphasis on the SMB
[00:09:44] but yet the record limits are still not,
[00:09:47] you know, where an enterprise
[00:09:48] would want them to be
[00:09:49] like, they need to get into
[00:09:50] the millions
[00:09:51] to really
[00:09:52] satisfy the needs of,
[00:09:54] of enterprise customers. And so
[00:09:56] it'll be interesting how they figure
[00:09:58] that out. It, it seems like a technical
[00:10:00] hurdle. They gotta figure out.
[00:10:02] And one thing I just checked
[00:10:04] because
[00:10:05] that did not seem
[00:10:07] news to me of the record limits
[00:10:09] that I checked
[00:10:09] and there was an Airtable blog
[00:10:10] post back in March
[00:10:11] where they list that as like
[00:10:13] a new thing of increasing those
[00:10:14] limits to those numbers.
[00:10:16] So maybe that was a beta
[00:10:18] and I just wasn't familiar with it.
[00:10:20] Yeah,
[00:10:21] they, I announced it
[00:10:23] but they didn't roll it out
[00:10:26] yeah,
[00:10:28] in my comparison,
[00:10:29] which I'll go through later
[00:10:31] I was checking against December
[00:10:32] 2022. Is there sort of
[00:10:35] mid
[00:10:36] point between
[00:10:37] the newer Pro plan
[00:10:39] versus the older Pro plan.
[00:10:42] Rather than getting through
[00:10:44] all of those minutia
[00:10:46] going with what was current as
[00:10:48] of like a week ago.
[00:10:50] And in 2022 December,
[00:10:52] the limits for enterprise
[00:10:55] were 250,000 per base,
[00:10:57] 100,000 per table.
[00:11:01] Gotcha. Yeah. So I know,
[00:11:03] I know they've had this,
[00:11:04] you've likely had access to
[00:11:06] this for a while. But
[00:11:08] yeah, I think this is
[00:11:09] the final roll out. So,
[00:11:13] actually, yeah, this is,
[00:11:15] there we go. Yeah.
[00:11:16] So this is actually the thread
[00:11:18] I was kind of talking about
[00:11:19] Airtable's turning their back
[00:11:21] on non enterprise users.
[00:11:22] Where should we move to?
[00:11:23] This is a long discussion of
[00:11:27] 142 comments.
[00:11:29] It's kind of interesting just
[00:11:31] thinking big picture
[00:11:33] about where Airtable is
[00:11:34] moving with these changes.
[00:11:36] Who's gonna fill in the gap?
[00:11:38] Are, are we gonna see a huge exodus of,
[00:11:41] of kind of smaller
[00:11:43] businesses leaving Airtable?
[00:11:45] And if we do, where,
[00:11:47] where are they gonna go to? Thoughts on
[00:11:49] big picture changes from these
[00:11:52] decisions?
[00:11:54] It really depends on what
[00:11:56] each individual like Airtable user
[00:11:59] or, or a business run on Airtable really
[00:12:01] needs.
[00:12:02] Some of the
[00:12:04] changes that have gotten the most,
[00:12:07] flack and I would agree is moving
[00:12:10] originally,
[00:12:11] your API calls
[00:12:12] was unlimited and now there's a,
[00:12:14] number applied to it.
[00:12:16] A maximum and for a lot
[00:12:18] of people they're not gonna
[00:12:20] notice or care because
[00:12:21] they're not using the API in any way,
[00:12:23] shape or form. If you don't
[00:12:25] have anything that's
[00:12:26] hooked into Make or Zapier,
[00:12:27] you don't have a softer
[00:12:29] account or a, a
[00:12:30] website built off of stacker
[00:12:32] or any of those portal type
[00:12:34] things you're not even
[00:12:36] gonna notice.
[00:12:37] But if you are on the opposite
[00:12:39] end where you have like a
[00:12:41] storefront that is powered
[00:12:43] by Airtable
[00:12:44] which requires several different API
[00:12:46] calls in order to get that to work,
[00:12:48] you may or may not notice that.
[00:12:50] I haven't really done some testing.
[00:12:52] I have some suspicions that
[00:12:54] businesses of a certain volume
[00:12:56] which isn't gonna be a small portion.
[00:12:58] I think a considerable amount
[00:13:00] of businesses run off
[00:13:02] of Airtable are gonna see
[00:13:03] that API limit.
[00:13:04] I don't know if I
[00:13:05] would be able to test that.
[00:13:07] But
[00:13:08] that is my feeling. So to,
[00:13:10] to me it's more like what
[00:13:12] are you using Airtable for?
[00:13:14] And of the features that have been
[00:13:16] limited or, you know, shuffled around a
[00:13:19] bit.
[00:13:20] Were you using them?
[00:13:21] Would you eventually have need for them?
[00:13:24] And then what are the other
[00:13:26] platforms offering?
[00:13:27] Because every platform is
[00:13:29] probably really good at something.
[00:13:31] If you, if you've heard the name of it,
[00:13:33] someone
[00:13:33] must like it for some reason. So
[00:13:35] names that I've heard going around
[00:13:38] are no code DB which is on the screen
[00:13:41] here. API table, sea table s e a table
[00:13:46] are sort of the three that are
[00:13:48] most like and smart suite,
[00:13:50] the four that are most like Airtable
[00:13:53] that are being brought up
[00:13:55] in these conversations.
[00:13:56] And then there's other things
[00:13:57] that are
[00:13:58] not Airtable but do similar
[00:14:00] things like coda,
[00:14:01] I wouldn't say is anything really
[00:14:03] like Airtable, but it has a
[00:14:05] database in it that you could,
[00:14:07] you know, adjust your workflow to use. So
[00:14:11] there's that.
[00:14:14] Anything to add Ben
[00:14:16] from your perspective?
[00:14:18] I'll say I've just been waiting to see
[00:14:21] how Microsoft and Google with their soft
[00:14:24] Airtable competitors or like relational
[00:14:26] database tools sort of evolve and they
[00:14:27] just have had no traction
[00:14:29] because that's really attractive
[00:14:30] to small and medium
[00:14:30] businesses. Like I don't want 100 tools
[00:14:33] I pay for our office 3 65 or Google,
[00:14:35] what do they call it?
[00:14:36] I guess, workspace something
[00:14:37] works
[00:14:39] pay for that per user
[00:14:40] and it's just really easy
[00:14:42] to keep track of.
[00:14:43] But like
[00:14:44] Microsoft's
[00:14:46] tools called lists, I think and Google is,
[00:14:49] is
[00:14:50] tables. Thank you.
[00:14:51] But like they haven't gone anywhere.
[00:14:53] And
[00:14:54] so like if, if they
[00:14:57] you know, reach some level
[00:14:59] of feature parity, even with like non
[00:15:01] interface Airtable, then I think we,
[00:15:04] that would be like the solution
[00:15:06] for a lot of small and medium
[00:15:07] business teams.
[00:15:08] But I just haven't seen them actually
[00:15:09] move that way. Now that said,
[00:15:10] like
[00:15:11] Microsoft is throwing a lot
[00:15:12] of weight behind the loop.
[00:15:14] Maybe that is like a bridge
[00:15:17] to like a better, more Airtable
[00:15:19] like experience. But I have no idea.
[00:15:22] Yeah.
[00:15:23] Yeah. The Microsoft competitor,
[00:15:26] I don't, I haven't checked it in
[00:15:28] a year plus, but it was
[00:15:30] nowhere near ready for usage.
[00:15:33] It was awful.
[00:15:35] That was my assessment
[00:15:36] of a lot of like,
[00:15:38] for whatever reason,
[00:15:40] all of the companies I would
[00:15:42] expect to look like a product
[00:15:44] from Microsoft's Alternative
[00:15:46] Google's alternative,
[00:15:48] Jotforms alternative, Zappier's
[00:15:49] Alternative.
[00:15:50] All of those were just not,
[00:15:54] they weren't even close whereas
[00:15:58] I
[00:15:58] was gonna
[00:15:58] say Zapier
[00:15:59] tables is like that thing.
[00:16:00] You're like, oh, this would have a lot of
[00:16:02] promise
[00:16:03] if this were several years ago.
[00:16:05] I, I just don't know how
[00:16:06] they close that gap.
[00:16:07] So they, they kind of started with like
[00:16:11] real bare bones that
[00:16:13] does it with what Airtable
[00:16:15] could do at the time.
[00:16:17] It felt like why would I ever move,
[00:16:19] move to that system?
[00:16:20] Whereas some other ones
[00:16:22] that are like purpose built,
[00:16:24] they don't have a, 1000 products
[00:16:26] in their catalog. They only have built no
[00:16:29] code D
[00:16:30] or they've only built API Table
[00:16:33] or Smart Suite.
[00:16:34] Those are the ones that feel
[00:16:36] the most. They have the most
[00:16:38] feature parody, they seem more stable.
[00:16:41] They're not in a,
[00:16:42] you know, in the workshop
[00:16:44] or in DEV or in open beta
[00:16:46] they're released and people
[00:16:48] are using them
[00:16:49] with accessible API S
[00:16:51] and all of those, those feel like
[00:16:53] the more likely transition points,
[00:16:55] at least at this time,
[00:16:57] if you're looking to
[00:16:58] move out of Airtable into something else,
[00:17:01] it's probably gonna be
[00:17:03] in that realm.
[00:17:06] Yeah, I think,
[00:17:07] I mean smart suite is definitely,
[00:17:10] you know, nipping at their,
[00:17:12] at their tail as far as
[00:17:14] trying to be feature comparable
[00:17:17] and, and in some ways better.
[00:17:19] So they, they seem to be taking a lot
[00:17:22] of the SMB space or at least making a
[00:17:25] dent there on the enterprise.
[00:17:27] I would probably say,
[00:17:28] I think Google Tables is probably
[00:17:30] the most promising
[00:17:32] if you're already in the
[00:17:33] Google world
[00:17:34] more so than, than the Microsoft product.
[00:17:37] We'll see if, if they actually make
[00:17:40] that part of the,
[00:17:41] the Google Works Suite
[00:17:43] line of products,
[00:17:45] which I think is the plan. But
[00:17:47] yeah, until then it won't, it won't get
[00:17:49] a ton of adoption.
[00:17:53] All right, let me, let me throw some
[00:17:55] comments out here. People are suggesting
[00:17:56] other ones base row.
[00:17:59] Yeah.
[00:18:00] Jen says SMB or need,
[00:18:02] we need to go to the business tier or
[00:18:05] get more specific tools
[00:18:08] mentions Butter C MS,
[00:18:10] more tools specific to yours
[00:18:12] instead of duct taping
[00:18:15] them Jotform is so buggy
[00:18:17] and,
[00:18:18] but it's not truly a database. So
[00:18:21] I think that's another good point
[00:18:23] Airtable is like there are,
[00:18:25] if you want just a database
[00:18:28] with, you know,
[00:18:29] a, a bajillion records that you could
[00:18:32] put in Fire Base or sequel or you know,
[00:18:35] those are like established platforms that
[00:18:38] many, many, many, many
[00:18:40] large businesses run off of
[00:18:43] because they just need a database
[00:18:45] if you need a database with a nice graphic
[00:18:48] interface for you to add records
[00:18:50] and do all of that kind of stuff,
[00:18:51] but not necessarily
[00:18:53] a website or a front end
[00:18:56] then things like API table
[00:18:59] and base row are
[00:19:01] they have similar looks and feels
[00:19:04] to them as Airtable.
[00:19:05] So you're not gonna have
[00:19:07] as hard of a time moving over.
[00:19:08] Same thing with smarts suite.
[00:19:10] It's gonna look fairly similar
[00:19:11] and there's gonna be
[00:19:12] a lot of feature parody
[00:19:13] there if you need
[00:19:15] a database, a nice graphic interface
[00:19:18] for entering data and also some kind of
[00:19:21] front end,
[00:19:22] that's when you're gonna run into
[00:19:24] a little bit more trouble having
[00:19:26] some a solution
[00:19:28] that's all in one. Because Airtable
[00:19:30] has started with interface
[00:19:31] designer, which is still pretty basic
[00:19:34] as compared to something like
[00:19:36] I don't know, softer or glide
[00:19:39] where you can have a much
[00:19:41] more flexible design
[00:19:42] experience. But
[00:19:43] these are the things that
[00:19:45] you're gonna want to think of like
[00:19:46] what are all the pieces that I need
[00:19:49] and which of these platforms
[00:19:50] is gonna be the
[00:19:51] best fit for all or most of
[00:19:53] those before you move over
[00:19:55] because
[00:19:56] you know, Airtable is fairly
[00:19:58] specialized in what it does
[00:19:59] and its competitors are gonna
[00:20:01] be better at some
[00:20:02] but not necessarily better at
[00:20:04] all. So
[00:20:05] you may need
[00:20:06] a couple of tools together,
[00:20:09] but you also might save money
[00:20:11] that way. It really depends on
[00:20:12] which ones you pick.
[00:20:13] Because some of the options
[00:20:15] that we've mentioned
[00:20:16] are open source.
[00:20:17] So they don't cost anything.
[00:20:20] Yeah, I was gonna say,
[00:20:21] I think that's a great discussion
[00:20:22] for another time,
[00:20:22] not today but like how for people
[00:20:24] who know a lot more about like open source
[00:20:27] communities
[00:20:28] over what timescale could we expect?
[00:20:30] Like a true 1 to 1 feature parody,
[00:20:33] like with some lag Airtable
[00:20:35] open source project
[00:20:36] to like develop because I think
[00:20:38] that'd be super powerful like,
[00:20:39] yeah, throw up
[00:20:40] like a small like node network
[00:20:42] in your house
[00:20:43] and you self host your own little
[00:20:45] Airtable alternative.
[00:20:46] Like that'd be incredible
[00:20:47] for so many different projects.
[00:20:49] I think if you ignore interface designer,
[00:20:52] I think that probably exists and
[00:20:54] automations.
[00:20:55] Well, some of them have,
[00:20:57] have automation in there. I haven't,
[00:20:59] I want to test API table because
[00:21:01] it was recommended in our BuiltOnAir
[00:21:02] community.
[00:21:03] And I was looking at it and it seemed like
[00:21:07] it seems like it's pretty dang close
[00:21:09] in terms of what you can do in Airtable.
[00:21:11] And what you can do there base
[00:21:13] I know also comes recommended
[00:21:15] I haven't been able to test,
[00:21:16] I don't know if they have automations but
[00:21:19] they have similar view types.
[00:21:21] They have, you know,
[00:21:22] similar sort of processes
[00:21:24] that you go to, to add new
[00:21:25] records and all of that. So
[00:21:27] I think in terms of like,
[00:21:29] when can we expect an
[00:21:30] open source alternative to Airtable
[00:21:32] that's,
[00:21:33] you know, pretty dang close
[00:21:35] without getting into like
[00:21:37] intellectual property problems.
[00:21:39] I think we're, we're close
[00:21:41] if we're not already there. So,
[00:21:43] you know,
[00:21:44] maybe by next season,
[00:21:45] I'll have had time to
[00:21:48] do some comparisons,
[00:21:49] some more in depth comparisons.
[00:21:52] Yeah. My only fear is like a as Airtable
[00:21:55] moves into the enterprise,
[00:21:57] which is great. I mean,
[00:21:59] it's great for, for me,
[00:22:00] for the business that I run.
[00:22:02] And we have two experts here
[00:22:04] on our show with us
[00:22:05] that work for some of the
[00:22:06] largest enterprise customers of Airtable.
[00:22:09] But
[00:22:10] most of the fun stuff that we can
[00:22:12] actually share on the show
[00:22:14] and the community
[00:22:15] people,
[00:22:15] they're sharing stuff usually
[00:22:17] are kind of the creators SM BS.
[00:22:19] And so that's the part
[00:22:21] I hope we don't lose because
[00:22:24] there's a lot of community of,
[00:22:27] of, you know,
[00:22:28] freelance or, or small business
[00:22:30] users and, and creators
[00:22:32] that use Airtable that
[00:22:34] if we lose that we'll lose
[00:22:36] that dynamic community aspect.
[00:22:38] Absolutely. I mean,
[00:22:40] I like working for Apple,
[00:22:41] I've, I've done a lot of
[00:22:43] projects that are really challenging
[00:22:45] and really fun to sort of ship off and
[00:22:47] complete. But going to things
[00:22:49] like the Dare table conference
[00:22:51] earlier this year
[00:22:51] and hearing how other
[00:22:54] people are just building,
[00:22:57] you know, regular businesses
[00:23:00] off of Airtable
[00:23:01] and the stuff that they're able to
[00:23:03] do without being developers themselves.
[00:23:06] I am technically speaking a developer
[00:23:09] now, but like
[00:23:10] all of the people who just sort of,
[00:23:13] I run a real estate business,
[00:23:15] I need a tool
[00:23:16] and setting it up themselves.
[00:23:17] That's really powerful and
[00:23:20] you know, it,
[00:23:22] I would,
[00:23:23] it would be such a shame
[00:23:25] if that kind of vibe
[00:23:27] that Airtable gives people sort
[00:23:29] of falls by the wayside in favor of,
[00:23:32] you know, more
[00:23:34] like enterprise focus,
[00:23:36] which feels hypocritical
[00:23:39] for me to say as I sit in
[00:23:41] an, in an apple
[00:23:43] to,
[00:23:44] yeah, look at all this white.
[00:23:48] Yeah,
[00:23:49] Jen says there's room for everyone.
[00:23:51] It's just a perspective shift for SM BS.
[00:23:53] If it adds values, it's worth
[00:23:55] the subscription hike. I would agree.
[00:23:57] I mean, there's a, there's the whole
[00:23:58] point of if you're running your business
[00:24:00] off of any of these tools,
[00:24:03] it's gonna be a business expense,
[00:24:04] right? You know, a perfect solution is not
[00:24:06] gonna come for cheap, even the
[00:24:09] open source alternatives.
[00:24:10] It's gonna take some man
[00:24:12] hours to set it up and make
[00:24:13] sure it's hooked in correctly
[00:24:15] and you gotta,
[00:24:15] there's, there's gonna be more stuff
[00:24:17] on the front end of that to make sure it
[00:24:19] all runs correctly.
[00:24:20] But if you're just starting out,
[00:24:23] you know, if you have,
[00:24:24] if you need to do that prototyping
[00:24:26] of your system,
[00:24:27] Airtable
[00:24:27] is really great
[00:24:29] for rapid prototyping. And if
[00:24:31] the shifting of features around
[00:24:34] in this pricing change makes that
[00:24:36] cost prohibitive,
[00:24:37] that would be sort of a shame.
[00:24:41] Yeah, I'll end with you mentioned
[00:24:43] Airtable, our friend Chris Dancy,
[00:24:45] he put,
[00:24:47] I didn't link to it.
[00:24:48] I can't remember if it
[00:24:49] was in their community on
[00:24:50] Facebook or it might have
[00:24:52] been on Reddit.
[00:24:53] Kind of an open letter to Airtable,
[00:24:55] kind of speaking on that,
[00:24:57] that, that hopefully
[00:24:58] they don't lose sight of,
[00:25:00] of those people that helped
[00:25:02] create it and, and also supporting,
[00:25:05] there's, there's on several communities
[00:25:08] people continue to say that they are
[00:25:10] not getting a response
[00:25:12] and they're an enterprise customer
[00:25:14] and why not?
[00:25:15] So there's an open letter
[00:25:17] out there from Chris that that is
[00:25:19] worth a read.
[00:25:20] We'll see if anybody at Airtable
[00:25:22] picks up on that.
[00:25:24] In a couple of comments,
[00:25:27] I have a clients of any size
[00:25:28] who are just blown away
[00:25:30] how easy it is to get stuff
[00:25:31] stood up.
[00:25:32] Amir, welcome, Amir.
[00:25:33] I think there needs to be a
[00:25:35] balance between falling in love
[00:25:36] with the product and being
[00:25:38] careful of getting locked into a product.
[00:25:40] Very valid.
[00:25:41] You should always be in any
[00:25:43] system that you build,
[00:25:45] there should be an escape
[00:25:46] hatch.
[00:25:46] Just in case because if you're especially
[00:25:49] if your business is built off of it,
[00:25:51] right. If their servers catch on fire,
[00:25:54] you need to be able to have
[00:25:56] an export of all
[00:25:58] of your stuff just in case.
[00:26:00] So,
[00:26:01] you know, it's important
[00:26:02] to back up your data and
[00:26:04] I I'm sure Dan might have a plug about,
[00:26:06] speaking of which, On2Air
[00:26:09] On2Air
[00:26:10] is our
[00:26:11] primary sponsor and is now focused
[00:26:14] on backups for that specific use case.
[00:26:16] Best practice is to have your data
[00:26:19] backed up on more than one place.
[00:26:21] And
[00:26:23] for today's show,
[00:26:24] I'm gonna highlight one of our
[00:26:26] articles that we have the essential
[00:26:29] guide to backups for your Airtable base.
[00:26:31] This guide walks us through
[00:26:33] definitely worth book marking.
[00:26:36] Keep it,
[00:26:36] keep it in case you need it.
[00:26:38] Hopefully you never need it.
[00:26:40] But if you do here is
[00:26:41] the ultimate guide
[00:26:42] on how you might go about
[00:26:43] backing up your data
[00:26:44] different ways that you can do it.
[00:26:46] Obviously, our recommended way
[00:26:49] is to use On2Air, but that's not
[00:26:51] the only way you can do it.
[00:26:52] So if you are exploring Airtable,
[00:26:55] if you're using it, like was mentioned
[00:26:58] core to your business, you gotta make
[00:27:00] sure that you're backing up your data
[00:27:01] outside of Airtable. Airtable
[00:27:03] obviously backs it up themselves.
[00:27:05] But best practice is to have that data
[00:27:08] stored outside of Airtable for,
[00:27:11] for worst case scenarios.
[00:27:13] So check out On2Air
[00:27:15] on2air.com and use our
[00:27:17] backups for your Airtable data.
[00:27:21] Ok.
[00:27:23] Moving on the question that everybody
[00:27:25] has been asking, what is up with the
[00:27:27] pricing changes? What does it mean for us?
[00:27:30] Kamille has your answers.
[00:27:33] There you go.
[00:27:34] All right. So we are
[00:27:36] currently looking at the
[00:27:38] pro or the Airtable pricing page
[00:27:41] as of today, which of course is gonna
[00:27:44] list out all of the features.
[00:27:46] And I say all of the features
[00:27:47] that's actually not
[00:27:48] true for certain features
[00:27:50] and you have to really dig
[00:27:52] for a particular answer.
[00:27:53] That's kind of always been the case.
[00:27:55] With their tables pricing,
[00:27:57] there are specific limits
[00:27:59] that aren't really
[00:27:59] called up here.
[00:28:00] Maybe because they're too,
[00:28:03] you know, minute to put on
[00:28:05] the pricing page.
[00:28:06] If you have no idea what Airtable is,
[00:28:08] you're not gonna know
[00:28:09] what that limit is. But
[00:28:10] you know, you can get all
[00:28:13] of the specific information about what
[00:28:16] is available per pricing
[00:28:18] just now by going to
[00:28:19] airtable.com/pricing. However,
[00:28:22] if you want a comparison
[00:28:24] of what these plans used to be,
[00:28:27] I've made an Airtable base,
[00:28:30] of course, that
[00:28:32] does its best to
[00:28:34] compare like to like. So
[00:28:37] I have all of the features
[00:28:40] as they were in 2022. Again, for me,
[00:28:43] I did a snapshot of December,
[00:28:46] I think 30th or so. 2022.
[00:28:49] And then what they are all
[00:28:52] today as of August 29th, 2023.
[00:28:55] So when I say like to like,
[00:28:58] some of it was easy,
[00:29:00] free plan and free plan,
[00:29:01] some of it was somewhat easy
[00:29:03] pro plan to team plan. But then there's
[00:29:06] the removal of the plus plan
[00:29:08] and the addition of the business plan.
[00:29:12] And so
[00:29:13] basically,
[00:29:17] what used to be pro
[00:29:18] and is now team, you're
[00:29:20] going to be shuttled either
[00:29:23] into that or out of that,
[00:29:25] depending on what side of
[00:29:27] the spectrum you you're on
[00:29:29] in terms of how many records
[00:29:31] you need or how many
[00:29:31] automation runs, et cetera.
[00:29:33] So
[00:29:34] walking through each comparison
[00:29:37] at a high
[00:29:38] level, a lot of features are the same,
[00:29:41] but some of them are different and
[00:29:43] some of those are pretty critical
[00:29:45] differences.
[00:29:46] So comparing free 2022 to free
[00:29:48] 2023.
[00:29:50] 1st things first,
[00:29:52] you're losing 200 records per base.
[00:29:56] That's not a whole lot of records,
[00:29:58] but it is a whole lot of records
[00:29:59] proportionally to how many
[00:30:01] you used to be able
[00:30:02] to have in the first place.
[00:30:03] So
[00:30:04] 1200 was a weird
[00:30:06] number to me. 1000 makes more sense,
[00:30:08] however, it's fewer records.
[00:30:10] So that's negative
[00:30:11] just as a note, if it's a change
[00:30:14] that I personally feel is a negative,
[00:30:17] it's gonna be a color coded red.
[00:30:19] If it's a change
[00:30:20] that is gonna be a positive
[00:30:22] for most people,
[00:30:23] it's gonna be color coded green.
[00:30:25] I don't know how many records
[00:30:27] per table it is. I suspect also 1000 but I
[00:30:30] can't,
[00:30:31] I didn't see that number anywhere. So,
[00:30:33] I can't verify that is true.
[00:30:36] Free plan works a little bit differently
[00:30:38] from the other plans and that
[00:30:39] there's a specific number
[00:30:41] of editors you can have
[00:30:43] in the workspace and the
[00:30:44] specific number of commenters.
[00:30:47] The editors is the same number
[00:30:49] five,
[00:30:50] commenters went from unlimited to 50.
[00:30:52] So there's is one of the 1st
[00:30:55] 1st examples of some feature
[00:30:58] going from unlimited to a hard number that
[00:31:03] you know, you can't go above.
[00:31:05] Attachment space is cut in half
[00:31:07] from two gigabytes to one gigabyte.
[00:31:12] And then a lot of the rest
[00:31:13] of the features
[00:31:14] are the same until you get to
[00:31:15] extension. So,
[00:31:19] the history of extensions with the free
[00:31:22] plan is a nice storied adventure.
[00:31:24] Originally,
[00:31:27] someday Bill will write a book on it.
[00:31:30] Yeah, I
[00:31:31] well,
[00:31:32] so I mean long story short
[00:31:34] back when the scripting
[00:31:36] extension was made
[00:31:38] available, it was available
[00:31:40] for everybody. And then
[00:31:41] there was a pricing plan change
[00:31:44] that locked extensions down to
[00:31:46] the pro plan and there was this
[00:31:48] whole back and forth
[00:31:49] about whether or not that
[00:31:49] would include the scripting extension.
[00:31:52] And as of December 2022
[00:31:54] you could have the scripting
[00:31:57] extension and
[00:31:58] one of any other type of extension
[00:32:01] within your base.
[00:32:02] If you were on the preplan
[00:32:04] as of today,
[00:32:05] you can't have either. Which means,
[00:32:08] you know, my longstanding
[00:32:10] bet about the subject with Bill.
[00:32:12] Unfortunately, it means that my bet
[00:32:15] was accurate, although I was,
[00:32:17] you know,
[00:32:18] three decisions early,
[00:32:21] I guess.
[00:32:23] I don't know. Airtable has bought
[00:32:25] me the second sandwich. So,
[00:32:26] you know, I've, I've been made
[00:32:28] good on that particular bet.
[00:32:30] This saddens me
[00:32:30] though. I'm, I, I think this is
[00:32:33] deeply unfortunate. Scripting is
[00:32:36] a do it yourself
[00:32:39] solution, you know, I want to be able to
[00:32:42] make my base good and
[00:32:44] even though I'm on the free plan
[00:32:46] and I'm already pretty limited
[00:32:47] with the number
[00:32:47] of records again for the purposes
[00:32:50] of rapid prototyping,
[00:32:51] I think it's pretty important
[00:32:52] for all plan levels to have the scripting
[00:32:54] extension.
[00:32:56] It's weird because the scripting
[00:32:58] extension runs on your local machine.
[00:32:59] So like there's no added cost for
[00:33:01] two,
[00:33:02] isn't
[00:33:04] there sure isn't.
[00:33:06] I don't know there is
[00:33:08] if you're performing updates,
[00:33:13] but at the same time I did,
[00:33:14] I don't like this change,
[00:33:16] I'll, I'll leave it there.
[00:33:19] So automation integrations
[00:33:20] have also been cut,
[00:33:22] you used to be able to have them
[00:33:23] and now you doesn't seem that you can,
[00:33:26] you also can't sync anymore.
[00:33:28] You used to be able to have
[00:33:30] at least one synced
[00:33:32] Or at most one synced table,
[00:33:33] you can no longer have any synced tables,
[00:33:36] it seems.
[00:33:37] And then the last one
[00:33:40] API api calls going from unlimited to
[00:33:44] 1000 per month. I believe
[00:33:49] that is still at the workspace level.
[00:33:52] So not per base.
[00:33:54] That's fairly significant.
[00:33:57] I have no idea if the average
[00:33:59] person on the free plan
[00:34:01] will hit this number.
[00:34:03] I, I don't suspect just because you have,
[00:34:06] you're already so limited
[00:34:07] in the number of records.
[00:34:08] I don't imagine there's many API calls
[00:34:11] you would make. Although
[00:34:12] I don't know if that's true
[00:34:13] and it might not be true for your
[00:34:15] use case. So just keep that in mind that
[00:34:18] you now have a limit for your API calls.
[00:34:21] Those are the high level
[00:34:23] changes for the free plans.
[00:34:26] The next one is going from plus to maybe,
[00:34:31] maybe, maybe don't spend too
[00:34:32] much time on this.
[00:34:34] So I don't know how many plus
[00:34:35] users are here,
[00:34:36] but I'm not gonna spend much time on it.
[00:34:38] I will say that if you
[00:34:39] were on the plus plan,
[00:34:40] that plan is being eliminated,
[00:34:42] you will be moved to the
[00:34:43] team plan and you will be paying
[00:34:45] the same amount you used to pay.
[00:34:47] So you basically get all of team
[00:34:49] for half the price.
[00:34:50] So basically everything is
[00:34:52] a positive for you.
[00:34:54] Now from pro to
[00:34:56] team,
[00:34:59] these are the most like plans together,
[00:35:01] most of the changes are gonna be
[00:35:03] negative.
[00:35:04] So
[00:35:05] originally you used to be able to
[00:35:07] have unlimited extensions and then it was
[00:35:09] limited to 10 per base.
[00:35:11] And now you're no longer
[00:35:16] you, you no longer
[00:35:17] have that arbitrary limit. So
[00:35:18] it got better
[00:35:20] and that's, that's a positive,
[00:35:22] I mislabeled that.
[00:35:23] But things like automation runs
[00:35:26] have been cut in half from 50,000 to
[00:35:29] 25,000.
[00:35:31] It is unclear if you are able to
[00:35:34] have certain automation integrations like
[00:35:37] Jira.
[00:35:38] I wasn't able to tell that from
[00:35:40] the comparison
[00:35:41] to the different pricing pages,
[00:35:42] it might be hidden in support articles.
[00:35:45] Multisource syncing,
[00:35:47] is not available and neither
[00:35:49] are premium sync integrations.
[00:35:52] Just kind of why I feel like
[00:35:54] you might not have the premium automation
[00:35:56] integrations either because it would be,
[00:35:58] you know,
[00:35:59] going essentially to the
[00:36:01] same place, either Jira
[00:36:02] cloud or Jira
[00:36:03] the Jira server, I think it's called
[00:36:08] A
[00:36:08] lot of these are the same
[00:36:10] API calls again, are limited from
[00:36:13] unlimited to 100,000 per month.
[00:36:18] Yeah. Again, it really depends on
[00:36:20] what your use case is
[00:36:22] whether or not this is
[00:36:23] going to be something that you notice.
[00:36:27] I am thinking if you run like
[00:36:29] an e-commerce store
[00:36:31] of some sort off of Airtable,
[00:36:33] you're probably gonna see this
[00:36:35] if you
[00:36:38] have a less intense
[00:36:40] sort of front end built on
[00:36:43] Airtable you might not.
[00:36:46] This, I think this is the change
[00:36:48] that would be most worrisome,
[00:36:49] I think.
[00:36:50] And then something that I also
[00:36:52] noticed
[00:36:53] email support is not included under
[00:36:55] team plan anymore.
[00:36:57] I thought that was odd.
[00:36:59] You, you, you get less.
[00:37:01] So, what kind of support?
[00:37:04] Yeah. II, I just,
[00:37:06] it used to be there
[00:37:07] and now it's not, so, it's,
[00:37:10] maybe that's just a typo,
[00:37:11] like email support is the only kind
[00:37:13] of support they offer anyway.
[00:37:14] Yeah, I would, I would hope
[00:37:16] but it, it, it didn't have
[00:37:18] the other ones had a
[00:37:19] check. So
[00:37:23] just flagging that.
[00:37:24] Now from pro to business
[00:37:26] business is a net new plan.
[00:37:28] Before it used to be one
[00:37:30] type of enterprise, business is basically
[00:37:33] enterprise light.
[00:37:34] So
[00:37:35] for a lot of these positives,
[00:37:37] keep in mind that
[00:37:38] you will be paying more if
[00:37:40] you're going from what used
[00:37:42] to be pro into what is now business.
[00:37:44] This is so
[00:37:46] to kind of compare
[00:37:49] the,
[00:37:50] you know,
[00:37:51] hard limits that that are given.
[00:37:54] So if a limit was introduced
[00:37:56] into the team plan
[00:37:57] that you're worried about,
[00:37:59] you might be better suited
[00:38:01] now for the business plan,
[00:38:02] which again
[00:38:03] costs more,
[00:38:04] but you will be
[00:38:06] less limited for things like the
[00:38:08] number of records per base and attachments
[00:38:11] and how long you could keep the
[00:38:15] automation history and the
[00:38:17] revision history for you know,
[00:38:19] like deleting records
[00:38:20] and things like that.
[00:38:23] You would be
[00:38:24] able to get all the extensions,
[00:38:26] et cetera,
[00:38:27] all of the automation runs per month,
[00:38:29] et cetera. Basically, all of the
[00:38:33] hard limits, the numerical limits
[00:38:36] are increased from pro to business.
[00:38:40] As they probably should be,
[00:38:43] the business plan is where you're
[00:38:45] gonna be able to do
[00:38:46] the more complicated sync
[00:38:47] integrations
[00:38:49] like two A sync.
[00:38:51] And also the business plan is where you
[00:38:54] would be able to use the sync api
[00:38:56] whereas the teams plan cannot.
[00:38:59] So it's another change
[00:39:01] I personally dislike.
[00:39:03] I really like using the sync API,
[00:39:05] but you would now have
[00:39:06] to be on the business
[00:39:07] plan in order to use it.
[00:39:10] And then
[00:39:11] because it's business or enterprise light,
[00:39:15] there's I like to call it for
[00:39:17] business, you get some of the
[00:39:19] enterprise level controls. So
[00:39:21] the admin panel and user groups
[00:39:24] and sso and things like that
[00:39:27] that you could do at this level
[00:39:30] without getting to the full
[00:39:32] enterprise plan.
[00:39:33] And then
[00:39:36] you're just, you know,
[00:39:37] you get to keep the unlimited
[00:39:39] API calls per month.
[00:39:40] So if that was a concern for you,
[00:39:44] business plan might be
[00:39:46] the plan to go for.
[00:39:47] You don't have access
[00:39:49] to the enterprise API.
[00:39:50] The enterprise API is lets you do
[00:39:53] more,
[00:39:55] you know, nitty gritty stuff
[00:39:58] from a coding perspective like
[00:40:00] moving
[00:40:02] people between groups I think
[00:40:04] is like a specific example of things that
[00:40:07] are relegated to the enterprise API
[00:40:10] versus the more low level web API.
[00:40:14] And then lastly enterprise
[00:40:17] 2022 to enterprise scale 2023
[00:40:21] most of this is
[00:40:24] met new features,
[00:40:26] things that didn't exist at all. And then,
[00:40:29] you know,
[00:40:30] they were added for enterprise scale
[00:40:32] and then some of them are things
[00:40:33] that we talked about earlier,
[00:40:34] like the increased records per base.
[00:40:37] And then you get a little bit longer
[00:40:40] revision snapshot history.
[00:40:43] The rest of the changes are mostly
[00:40:46] things that didn't really exist like the
[00:40:48] verified data sets and,
[00:40:50] and a lot of it is gonna be under
[00:40:52] the admin controls that would
[00:40:54] be both enterprise hub
[00:40:56] and organizational units,
[00:40:57] which we talked about
[00:40:59] at the top of the show.
[00:41:00] And those are the kind of like
[00:41:02] the high level touch points
[00:41:04] of what has changed
[00:41:05] from plan to plan.
[00:41:07] And then,
[00:41:09] you know, good just going
[00:41:12] back to all of them together,
[00:41:14] the pricing is effectively the same for
[00:41:18] if you were on pro and going to
[00:41:20] team, it's gonna be the same,
[00:41:22] you know, numerical value
[00:41:23] in terms of your price.
[00:41:25] Business is the new plan that
[00:41:26] didn't exist before. So
[00:41:29] that's if you pay by year,
[00:41:31] it's 540 a year. If you pay by month,
[00:41:33] it's $54 per seat per month.
[00:41:36] And I think that's the only real
[00:41:40] difference in pricing because
[00:41:41] it's a new plan enterprise.
[00:41:43] I cannot tell you if
[00:41:43] you're gonna pay more or less because it's
[00:41:46] nebulous. They never really release
[00:41:49] with a lot of detail,
[00:41:50] how much enterprise actually costs.
[00:41:54] This is awesome Kamille.
[00:41:56] You could sell this to Airtable,
[00:41:58] I would think.
[00:42:00] I just feel like this should be,
[00:42:03] you know, you can,
[00:42:04] you share this base with the community?
[00:42:07] Yeah, I could probably put it on the
[00:42:09] universe and just leave it there.
[00:42:12] I might, I didn't finish putting
[00:42:14] in all of the descriptions
[00:42:15] for what each of
[00:42:16] these features are because it's
[00:42:18] kind of annoying to get to.
[00:42:20] And the price table has changed
[00:42:22] like some items used to be on the pricing
[00:42:24] table and are no longer there,
[00:42:26] which means it's harder to find what this
[00:42:27] description
[00:42:29] of each of these features are.
[00:42:30] That's why I have the
[00:42:32] records per table for all the old plans,
[00:42:34] but not for any of the new plans except
[00:42:36] for the one we discovered
[00:42:38] a second ago for enterprise. So
[00:42:40] not completely filled in but
[00:42:42] filled to the best of my ability.
[00:42:44] Yeah. No,
[00:42:44] this is awesome.
[00:42:46] It'll be interesting to keep this update
[00:42:48] over the years and see how their
[00:42:50] pricing changes. Yeah, in 2024
[00:42:53] if they make more adjustments,
[00:42:55] you know, hopefully that's just
[00:42:57] increasing the record limit and not,
[00:42:59] you know, shuffling who
[00:43:01] gets to use extensions and
[00:43:03] you know, whether or not you can
[00:43:06] write your own syncing
[00:43:08] integration. When's the last time
[00:43:10] Airtable had a pricing and plan
[00:43:12] change? Like a significant one.
[00:43:14] Top of 2023 I think.
[00:43:17] Really? Is that recent?
[00:43:18] I just don't remember. Well, no, not 2023.
[00:43:20] I'm sorry. 2022
[00:43:22] I think.
[00:43:24] Yeah, maybe.
[00:43:26] I believe it was like
[00:43:29] February or so. 2022.
[00:43:32] That was the change that,
[00:43:34] you know, you could only have 10
[00:43:35] extensions per base if you were
[00:43:37] on the pro plan, which is
[00:43:39] probably the, the most baffling
[00:43:41] pricing change that I think I've seen
[00:43:44] the other ones are like,
[00:43:46] I get it.
[00:43:47] I don't like them but I understand
[00:43:49] why from like a business perspective and,
[00:43:52] you know, trying to
[00:43:53] make profits and whatnot
[00:43:54] that change I to this day
[00:43:56] have openly described as like,
[00:43:59] just
[00:44:01] ridiculous.
[00:44:31] Yep. Looks like Dan is having
[00:44:33] some technical difficulties.
[00:44:35] Whoops.
[00:44:36] Well, well,
[00:44:38] yeah. So I, I'd be very
[00:44:39] interested to see because there's a,
[00:44:41] there's a very significant
[00:44:43] consumer mindset gap
[00:44:44] between
[00:44:45] a free plan and then the next step
[00:44:48] up is $20 per use of
[00:44:49] a
[00:44:49] month. That's a very large gap. So
[00:44:52] I, I would wager that Airtable
[00:44:54] will probably at some point,
[00:44:56] I know insider information
[00:44:57] is fairly speculation
[00:44:58] just knowing what other,
[00:44:59] even business tools having like
[00:45:01] a get your foot in the door as like an
[00:45:03] independent creator or an independent,
[00:45:05] like business person.
[00:45:08] I, I would suspect at some point
[00:45:10] they're gonna have to
[00:45:11] have like an entry level
[00:45:12] around $10 a month,
[00:45:13] something with like
[00:45:14] hard limits on it. Sure.
[00:45:15] Like only up to five users or something.
[00:45:18] Um,
[00:45:19] but $20 a month is a pretty big leap.
[00:45:21] They did have it with the plus plan, but
[00:45:24] they basically were like, nobody was,
[00:45:26] nobody ever used it.
[00:45:28] So that's why they just flat out
[00:45:30] removed it as a plan. So,
[00:45:34] and it may, it could be that the
[00:45:36] combination of features
[00:45:37] that were available and
[00:45:38] plus just weren't enticing
[00:45:40] enough to people. And that
[00:45:42] maybe you could get well
[00:45:44] and before when there weren't any
[00:45:47] api limitations,
[00:45:48] you could have collaboration
[00:45:51] through third parties and not have to pay
[00:45:55] an Airtable license fee
[00:45:57] for every individual
[00:45:58] who needed to touch the data in
[00:45:59] some way. And now you kind of
[00:46:01] have to do a balancing act of
[00:46:03] how many people are gonna
[00:46:04] be editing directly within Airtable.
[00:46:06] That's a seat
[00:46:07] that I have to pay to license
[00:46:08] fee for.
[00:46:10] And how many people need to edit
[00:46:12] externally through a portal
[00:46:13] or a website or a,
[00:46:14] or Ecommerce store or something like that.
[00:46:17] That's gonna rely on API integration.
[00:46:19] And now you have a limit.
[00:46:20] If you're on the team plan,
[00:46:22] you don't have a limit
[00:46:23] if you're on business,
[00:46:24] but business costs more.
[00:46:25] And so you really do have to
[00:46:27] look at the specifics
[00:46:29] of each of these plans
[00:46:30] and really ask yourself,
[00:46:31] am I going to use this feature?
[00:46:33] Do I need an admin hub?
[00:46:36] You might not
[00:46:37] or you might actually need it.
[00:46:39] I mean, one of the biggest like
[00:46:41] baffling things with Airtable
[00:46:42] is that many people
[00:46:44] were trying to get on the
[00:46:45] enterprise plan and got like radio silence
[00:46:48] your
[00:46:49] business plan. You're supposed
[00:46:51] to be able to sign up
[00:46:52] for the same way you would
[00:46:53] with teams with no interaction
[00:46:55] with the sales team. So,
[00:46:57] you know, that eliminates whatever
[00:46:59] hurdle there was before,
[00:47:01] but again, it does cost more money.
[00:47:04] So really checking
[00:47:06] each of these plans and which one
[00:47:08] is the best suited
[00:47:10] for what your team or what
[00:47:12] your business
[00:47:13] actually needs.
[00:47:16] Can you guys hear me now?
[00:47:18] Sure.
[00:47:20] I kicked something under the table
[00:47:22] and I think I lost my audio
[00:47:24] and everything.
[00:47:25] So,
[00:47:26] all right. Thank you Kamille for,
[00:47:28] for walking us through those changes.
[00:47:31] We're gonna move on
[00:47:33] and
[00:47:35] Ben if you want to, I wanna make sure
[00:47:37] we give enough time for,
[00:47:38] for your exciting news that you're
[00:47:40] gonna share with us. So maybe just a brief
[00:47:42] update on
[00:47:43] what's new in your life,
[00:47:44] your new role at Doby.
[00:47:47] Sure. So last time I was on like
[00:47:50] a a
[00:47:51] and you said it was like February
[00:47:52] of last year or something like that.
[00:47:54] So I think we had
[00:47:57] just, you know, gone through like
[00:47:59] our,
[00:48:01] my dates are crazy. We had only recently
[00:48:04] started to be acquired by Adobe.
[00:48:06] Maybe it was like the year prior.
[00:48:09] But that this past summer, summer of 22
[00:48:13] I had just come back from paternity leave
[00:48:16] and we have a team that does
[00:48:18] research and I was an editor for 10 years.
[00:48:21] I if you don't know, it's a tool that lets
[00:48:23] video creation teams collaborate
[00:48:24] from anywhere in the world
[00:48:26] we were acquired
[00:48:26] by Adobe. Adobe obviously has
[00:48:28] a lot of tools
[00:48:28] that work with creative work flows.
[00:48:30] But we have a team that does research
[00:48:32] on how our customers
[00:48:34] solve their problems,
[00:48:35] solve their problems in the real world
[00:48:37] with real tools and
[00:48:38] real productions and all these things.
[00:48:39] And I was like, hey, I was an editor for
[00:48:40] a long time.
[00:48:41] That sounds really interesting.
[00:48:42] So they had a need to figure out
[00:48:45] how do we pipe
[00:48:46] all of this data around that
[00:48:47] could be like insights
[00:48:49] from a customer interview
[00:48:50] to like a product manager's design
[00:48:53] or design team's designs,
[00:48:54] product manager, strategic insight.
[00:48:56] Like how do we pipe all that around?
[00:48:57] Well, I had a lot of
[00:48:58] experience having worked
[00:48:59] with Airtable for like four years
[00:49:01] prior five years now.
[00:49:02] And just said,
[00:49:05] hey, I think you could do it
[00:49:06] this way
[00:49:07] and I joined the user insights team for my
[00:49:08] user insights. It's a lot of fun.
[00:49:10] It's great to be able to meet with really
[00:49:12] smart creative people
[00:49:13] all day long from the industry and
[00:49:15] learn from them and then build cool
[00:49:18] solutions with Airtable to help us all,
[00:49:20] you know, kick really hard
[00:49:21] and make a dent
[00:49:22] in the universe because like
[00:49:23] tiny little product decisions
[00:49:25] impact as we're all learning now,
[00:49:26] can impact lots and lots of people.
[00:49:28] So we want to make sure that when we're
[00:49:30] making those changes or making
[00:49:31] improvements
[00:49:32] that it's making people's lives
[00:49:33] better.
[00:49:34] So that's, that's my new role.
[00:49:35] But a big part of that is using Airtable.
[00:49:38] And so Airtable is used across
[00:49:39] Adobe for lots of things. But
[00:49:41] I, we use it for
[00:49:43] a whole list of things.
[00:49:44] What we are using it
[00:49:45] in user insights for is like this
[00:49:46] research repository and all of the various
[00:49:48] components that go into that.
[00:49:50] So we're going to capture data,
[00:49:51] analyze it, organize it
[00:49:53] and then pipe it back out
[00:49:54] across various potentials
[00:49:56] to different teams.
[00:49:57] Well,
[00:49:58] like I said, I've been using
[00:49:59] Airtable for a long time and,
[00:50:00] and
[00:50:01] one of the, the,
[00:50:02] the key compromises
[00:50:04] that we as builders
[00:50:05] have had to just sort of live with for a
[00:50:06] long time
[00:50:07] is like where your data lives
[00:50:09] dictates entirely what you can do with it.
[00:50:11] So in the old days,
[00:50:12] you know, let say like pre 2020
[00:50:14] or 21 whatever it was
[00:50:17] data lived in a base
[00:50:18] and the only way to really get out
[00:50:20] of it was to like, use Zapier to like,
[00:50:22] kind of move things around,
[00:50:24] but you couldn't really
[00:50:25] do a whole lot with that.
[00:50:26] And then at some point
[00:50:27] they like tested with the sync block,
[00:50:29] which I
[00:50:30] only vaguely remember how it worked.
[00:50:32] But basically, it would like take a
[00:50:33] snapshot of the, of the data
[00:50:35] in one base and like dump it
[00:50:36] somewhere else and
[00:50:36] like kind of helped in
[00:50:38] that you could have data
[00:50:40] live in multiple bases.
[00:50:42] But then make its way from one
[00:50:44] place to to the to another in kind of an
[00:50:45] automated way.
[00:50:46] And then they bring out
[00:50:48] you know, multi basing
[00:50:49] the idea that you can have
[00:50:51] a share view or share link
[00:50:52] from one table and create
[00:50:54] with a little lightning bolt,
[00:50:56] a sync table in another
[00:50:57] base. Oh That was amazing. Suddenly
[00:50:59] you could reference data
[00:51:01] from one base even though it lived
[00:51:04] somewhere else.
[00:51:05] So we're starting to narrow
[00:51:07] the like distance between data.
[00:51:08] But, but there were still limits.
[00:51:10] Like
[00:51:11] you couldn't update that data,
[00:51:12] you couldn't edit it from a destination.
[00:51:14] You still needed to go back
[00:51:15] to the source
[00:51:16] if you actually wanted to interact
[00:51:17] with the data in any way other
[00:51:19] than just like I can read it
[00:51:20] right here and I can
[00:51:21] make a linked relationship
[00:51:22] in the destination,
[00:51:23] even though it lives somewhere
[00:51:24] else, you had to go back
[00:51:26] to the source
[00:51:27] and then they bring out two way sync and
[00:51:28] oh, amazing.
[00:51:29] Suddenly you can have
[00:51:30] data live in different places,
[00:51:32] but it can sync right in front of you
[00:51:34] in this table and you can even edit it.
[00:51:36] That's fantastic.
[00:51:37] But I'm sure you can guess
[00:51:39] there's like one extra piece
[00:51:40] that's missing and it's
[00:51:40] the ability
[00:51:42] to be able to create
[00:51:43] and delete records from a source,
[00:51:45] even though you're not there,
[00:51:47] you're in a destination.
[00:51:48] And that's what I'm here
[00:51:49] to talk about today.
[00:51:50] So two way sync is I've been data,
[00:51:51] be testing it last year.
[00:51:52] It's really exciting. It's very cool.
[00:51:54] But the, like the, the number one
[00:51:56] blocker I saw from day one was like,
[00:51:57] we have to have the ability
[00:51:59] to like create this new data
[00:52:01] and interact with it
[00:52:02] from a, from a destination
[00:52:05] into the source. So Airtable's
[00:52:07] working on this right now.
[00:52:08] I've been testing it for a long time.
[00:52:10] So they were, they were comfortable.
[00:52:11] They gave me my,
[00:52:12] the blessing to talk about
[00:52:12] it today. I don't know timelines.
[00:52:14] Like I don't have a mock up or anything,
[00:52:15] but I made my own.
[00:52:16] So hopefully we'll have
[00:52:17] time to show that off.
[00:52:19] But the, the, the,
[00:52:20] the, the TLDR version
[00:52:22] of this is, I think that
[00:52:24] two way sync with the ability
[00:52:26] to and they don't have a catchy
[00:52:28] name for this yet.
[00:52:28] So we'll just call it like full two
[00:52:30] way sync or 2, 2 way sync 2.0
[00:52:34] I think the value proposition
[00:52:35] here is that it really will allow
[00:52:37] this
[00:52:38] like total interface Airtable
[00:52:41] interface like user experience
[00:52:43] where if you want to build something,
[00:52:46] the analogy I've been using is like LEGOS.
[00:52:48] If I want to build something in Legos,
[00:52:50] I don't think. Well, I need to like
[00:52:53] learn how injection molding
[00:52:55] and plastics work
[00:52:56] and then like come up with a hyper
[00:52:57] mathematical system of like
[00:52:59] how all of the little Nubbins
[00:53:00] fit together.
[00:53:01] No, I just want to build a pirate ship
[00:53:03] and I've got a box of lego pieces and I'm
[00:53:04] like imagining this thing
[00:53:06] and I put it together.
[00:53:07] Well, in its current iteration,
[00:53:08] if you want to build something
[00:53:10] with data
[00:53:11] that your organization already has,
[00:53:12] let's say it lives in like two
[00:53:13] or three different bases
[00:53:14] or you don't have a base at all.
[00:53:16] You've gotta build that base first.
[00:53:18] You've got to figure out that
[00:53:19] mathematical system
[00:53:20] of how all the pieces fit
[00:53:21] together.
[00:53:22] And then
[00:53:23] you can build a pirate ship
[00:53:24] or your castle or your whatever.
[00:53:26] With two way sync
[00:53:27] and the ability like full two way sync
[00:53:28] and create records from
[00:53:29] wherever. Well, then like suddenly
[00:53:31] it doesn't matter where the data lives and
[00:53:32] then you can have nerds
[00:53:34] like me whose whole job
[00:53:35] is designing the LEGO pieces
[00:53:36] and then you want to make
[00:53:37] a new interface
[00:53:38] and then you can just sync in data
[00:53:39] from wherever you want.
[00:53:41] And let's say you've got like
[00:53:42] a table somewhere for like accounts
[00:53:44] or like sales deals
[00:53:45] or tasks or projects or
[00:53:46] whatever you want.
[00:53:47] You don't have to worry
[00:53:49] so much about like,
[00:53:51] how is this table built?
[00:53:52] I just want to reference it.
[00:53:54] I just want to reference it
[00:53:55] and bring it in.
[00:53:56] And if I need to add things to that
[00:53:57] list, I don't have to come up
[00:53:58] with some crazy group
[00:53:59] Goldberg machine to like
[00:54:00] automatically
[00:54:02] create new records in that source.
[00:54:03] When I like tick a box, it's just going to
[00:54:05] interact with it.
[00:54:07] Like any other record
[00:54:08] that would be in the interface
[00:54:09] slash the base that you're
[00:54:10] working in.
[00:54:12] So I see this as opening the door
[00:54:13] to sort of like this, this true
[00:54:15] interface only user experience
[00:54:17] and then frees up people
[00:54:19] like me to focus on
[00:54:20] the building the pieces.
[00:54:21] So you'll have like the stratification
[00:54:22] between like
[00:54:23] people who are not building
[00:54:25] the pieces,
[00:54:26] they just wanna build cool stuff in in
[00:54:28] Airtable. And then the people
[00:54:29] who can focus on, we need to build really
[00:54:31] robust data hierarchies across
[00:54:33] our entire org where like we can actually
[00:54:35] centralize our data and we can't actually
[00:54:37] have that single source of truth.
[00:54:41] Yeah, so that's, that's the
[00:54:43] the long and short
[00:54:44] of it and like real databases,
[00:54:45] I say real databases,
[00:54:46] Airtable's real database,
[00:54:47] sorry, older older applications
[00:54:48] that are not test programs.
[00:54:50] like have this ability
[00:54:51] to like reference data and
[00:54:53] create it and like master tables
[00:54:54] and stuff. But I think it's a really
[00:54:56] important thing
[00:54:57] for Airtable and,
[00:54:58] and, and seeing the
[00:55:00] the pricing changes like this,
[00:55:02] this will mostly because two way sync
[00:55:03] is is limited to business plan
[00:55:05] and above.
[00:55:06] This will be something
[00:55:07] that mostly influences people
[00:55:09] who are using Airtable for,
[00:55:12] for like commerce.
[00:55:13] But if you're a consultant
[00:55:14] and you're building
[00:55:15] for like major enterprises,
[00:55:16] now, I do think this is going
[00:55:17] to change the way that we built
[00:55:18] because that compromise,
[00:55:19] like I said of like,
[00:55:20] where does the data to live
[00:55:21] matters a whole lot less.
[00:55:23] So I was just gonna share my screen
[00:55:25] real quick and sort of walk through a very
[00:55:26] easy example.
[00:55:31] Yes. And
[00:55:31] while you're doing that,
[00:55:33] I'm gonna give a quick plug
[00:55:34] to join our community where
[00:55:35] amazing people are in there
[00:55:37] talking about stuff like this every day.
[00:55:39] So join us at builtonair.com/join
[00:55:42] and we're now talking
[00:55:44] about the two way sync
[00:55:45] with Ben
[00:55:46] and
[00:55:48] there you go your screens up. Yeah.
[00:55:50] And so an illustration of like,
[00:55:52] why does this really matter?
[00:55:53] So here we have a very simple base.
[00:55:56] I've seen a lot of or of orgs adopt like
[00:55:58] this exact thing,
[00:56:00] if not some like equivalent,
[00:56:02] this is project management type base,
[00:56:03] but this could apply to anything
[00:56:05] you start with Airtable
[00:56:06] and you build a base
[00:56:07] and you put all your stuff in it.
[00:56:08] That's great. Cool.
[00:56:10] You have fairly simple
[00:56:11] data hierarchy here.
[00:56:13] Loading.
[00:56:14] All right. And we've just got, oops,
[00:56:16] we've got
[00:56:18] projects
[00:56:20] and we've got tasks
[00:56:21] and we've got deliverables,
[00:56:22] things we want to produce.
[00:56:23] Cool. Awesome, fairly simple
[00:56:26] hierarchy makes a lot of sense.
[00:56:27] You can do anything
[00:56:28] you need with just this
[00:56:30] right here.
[00:56:30] But as people start to work
[00:56:33] and actually use the system,
[00:56:34] they realize like, oh like
[00:56:36] this is a little more
[00:56:36] complicated
[00:56:38] that like our work is a little
[00:56:39] more complicated
[00:56:40] than this simple representation
[00:56:41] because like
[00:56:42] while we are tracking
[00:56:43] all of our deliverables
[00:56:45] in one place,
[00:56:46] webinars are super different
[00:56:47] from emails which are super different
[00:56:49] from presentations,
[00:56:50] social and blog and all that stuff, right?
[00:56:52] So
[00:56:53] unless we just want to have
[00:56:54] a ton of fields
[00:56:55] that are really only specific to
[00:56:57] certain flavors of record,
[00:56:59] well, we should really break
[00:57:00] this out into different
[00:57:02] tables. Because like
[00:57:03] these all map up to this
[00:57:04] higher entity of like deliverable,
[00:57:07] but as units,
[00:57:08] they are different themselves.
[00:57:10] So like sort of the next generation
[00:57:12] that I have seen often
[00:57:13] is that people will break out
[00:57:15] the different like subunits
[00:57:16] into their own tables.
[00:57:18] So you got videos and
[00:57:20] maybe I should have loaded
[00:57:22] this beforehand.
[00:57:22] There we go, we got videos and
[00:57:23] stills and webinars
[00:57:24] and everything together.
[00:57:25] These are all deliverables but they
[00:57:26] exist on their own tables.
[00:57:27] And that means
[00:57:28] you can customize them as much as you
[00:57:30] want and have a ton of different,
[00:57:32] you know, formulas and fields or,
[00:57:34] or even scripts that automations
[00:57:35] that are only relevant to that,
[00:57:37] to that specific table. Fantastic.
[00:57:40] But new problem now you have
[00:57:42] a data hierarchy that is a lot messier
[00:57:43] because you've got a bunch of different
[00:57:45] sub entities that are mapping
[00:57:47] to like the highest level entity here,
[00:57:48] the project as individual things
[00:57:51] and there's no good way
[00:57:52] to sort of like have
[00:57:53] all of it represented
[00:57:55] as a deliverable. Well,
[00:57:56] this is where two way sync comes in,
[00:57:58] right?
[00:57:59] You can have
[00:58:00] a base where you now have
[00:58:02] a single creative deliverables table,
[00:58:05] but with their two way sync, right?
[00:58:07] These all exist as their
[00:58:08] own tables or sorry,
[00:58:09] certain bases
[00:58:09] and you're just syncing them,
[00:58:11] you're consolidating them right to
[00:58:12] this single sync table here.
[00:58:13] Fantastic. And you can even
[00:58:16] edit them from your destination
[00:58:18] even though they live in the source.
[00:58:20] That's great. What's the limiting
[00:58:22] factor? If I want to create
[00:58:23] a new whatever I can't do it here.
[00:58:26] I have to go back. We have to either have
[00:58:28] like a complicated system
[00:58:30] where we have an automation
[00:58:31] that fires in one place
[00:58:32] and does something else and
[00:58:33] blah, blah, blah, blah
[00:58:34] just to like generate this new thing
[00:58:36] or we have to just like limit
[00:58:38] our ability to do workflows and say like,
[00:58:40] well,
[00:58:40] just like if you want to do this action,
[00:58:42] you have to go somewhere else.
[00:58:43] Which is like
[00:58:45] dumb,
[00:58:46] but also it can just slow teams down
[00:58:48] or it can create these artificial
[00:58:50] barriers in ways of like, well,
[00:58:51] we, we don't create like that type
[00:58:53] of record that has to be that team.
[00:58:55] And that's, I don't think a very good
[00:58:57] lesson in a lot of cases.
[00:58:58] It could be like maybe you want to limit
[00:59:00] the ability to only create
[00:59:01] certain types of records
[00:59:03] to certain people,
[00:59:03] but that shouldn't be an inherent
[00:59:04] limitation. It should be something you
[00:59:06] implement yourself.
[00:59:07] So with two way sync
[00:59:08] I think and the ability to like,
[00:59:10] actually create records in a source from a
[00:59:12] destination.
[00:59:14] I don't know what it looked
[00:59:15] like exactly,
[00:59:15] but I'm going to imagine like in an
[00:59:16] interface,
[00:59:17] just like we now have the ability
[00:59:19] to customize
[00:59:23] the ability for.
[00:59:24] Let me get a list for you real quick.
[00:59:26] Let's drop something
[00:59:27] on here.
[00:59:29] So we with the new list views,
[00:59:32] the consolidated views,
[00:59:34] you can
[00:59:36] say if you want like in online
[00:59:38] edit permission
[00:59:39] in online creation permission
[00:59:41] and like all of those things.
[00:59:42] So I I'd imagine
[00:59:43] that you'll have like a button here for,
[00:59:46] you know, and I edit
[00:59:48] create like you'd be able to create
[00:59:50] and even though it's
[00:59:51] coming from a new source,
[00:59:53] maybe apply like a record template
[00:59:55] or like the default options
[00:59:56] like you can now
[00:59:57] with the form views and that's
[00:59:59] going to be really powerful because like
[01:00:01] in combination with like the buttons
[01:00:02] that we can now get at the top,
[01:00:04] you could be like, I want to create a new
[01:00:05] blog post in this example
[01:00:07] or still request or whatever.
[01:00:09] So that's gonna populate
[01:00:10] a new record
[01:00:11] in that new base,
[01:00:12] even though you're staying in one place,
[01:00:15] I could go on and on to talk
[01:00:17] about this in any detail.
[01:00:18] I I do feel like we had
[01:00:19] to rush it just a little bit.
[01:00:20] But the, the basic premise here,
[01:00:21] the analogy that I think is
[01:00:23] helpful is that lego analogy of
[01:00:24] you're gonna be able to design pieces,
[01:00:26] publish them like to your workspace
[01:00:28] and then people can use those to build
[01:00:30] whatever they want without having
[01:00:31] to understand the data in the same way and
[01:00:33] take a step down
[01:00:34] an important
[01:00:35] piece to this that I, I guess
[01:00:38] I did not bring up was that
[01:00:40] with the updates to two way sync,
[01:00:43] it's going to also mean that more field
[01:00:45] types are supported.
[01:00:47] One they've talked about specifically
[01:00:49] is that if you have a like a a synced view
[01:00:52] somewhere that linked record
[01:00:53] relationships will come over,
[01:00:55] you're not gonna have to do that
[01:00:56] crazy thing now or you have to be like,
[01:00:57] oh it, it turns into just
[01:00:59] a simple texting and then
[01:01:00] I sync over the second table
[01:01:02] and then I change the field type.
[01:01:04] No, that'll just like
[01:01:05] come over altogether.
[01:01:06] So you could do lookups without
[01:01:07] having to do all of the crazy
[01:01:08] like Mabo Jumbo that you need to,
[01:01:09] that's really important and of course,
[01:01:11] automations to be able to address that
[01:01:12] as well.
[01:01:13] So
[01:01:13] this is why I'm really excited about it.
[01:01:16] It's gonna fix like so many problems
[01:01:18] with a bunch
[01:01:19] of the builds that I currently
[01:01:20] have that have like
[01:01:21] ridiculous amounts of complexity
[01:01:23] just to accomplish
[01:01:24] simple things.
[01:01:26] But yeah,
[01:01:27] that's why I'm really excited.
[01:01:28] I don't have time
[01:01:29] to tell anyone because
[01:01:30] I certainly don't know,
[01:01:31] Airtable doesn't tell me those
[01:01:32] things. I just get to beta
[01:01:33] test it when it's ready.
[01:01:34] So yeah, that's what
[01:01:36] we can all look forward to
[01:01:37] and can't wait for it to really
[01:01:40] allow us to build way cooler stuff.
[01:01:43] Couple of questions I had,
[01:01:45] So this, this really works if you,
[01:01:48] if you have multi
[01:01:49] source syncing into one table, right?
[01:01:51] That's kind of the use case where you
[01:01:53] talked about where you can actually create
[01:01:56] that
[01:01:57] original source in that,
[01:01:59] in that destination table.
[01:02:01] And then is this any different
[01:02:03] than the verified data
[01:02:05] component that's supposedly in beta still?
[01:02:08] Yeah. So I, I guess I don't have
[01:02:11] entirely a good idea of how they differ or
[01:02:14] what I can talk about,
[01:02:16] but they do seem
[01:02:17] to be like closely aligned
[01:02:18] I I can
[01:02:19] explain. So
[01:02:20] a
[01:02:21] verified data set is basically
[01:02:23] exactly like all other syncs
[01:02:26] except for what it does
[01:02:27] that surfaces if you click
[01:02:29] add or import at the top,
[01:02:30] pretend like you're making a new table.
[01:02:34] And then right now
[01:02:36] from data library are
[01:02:38] like
[01:02:40] you would basically
[01:02:41] pick of all of your synced
[01:02:43] tables that you've already set up.
[01:02:46] Here's one that
[01:02:47] is, you know, all of my projects
[01:02:49] are gonna need this or
[01:02:51] you know, II I need to
[01:02:53] reuse this same synced table
[01:02:55] 1000 times. So rather than me
[01:02:58] finding that link 1000 times,
[01:03:00] it just sort of
[01:03:01] surfaces. It as like, hey,
[01:03:03] you're gonna use this
[01:03:05] here. It is. And it also allows you
[01:03:08] at an enterprise scale to say,
[01:03:10] OK, only the marketing
[01:03:11] team really needs this as
[01:03:12] a verified data set
[01:03:14] and the sales team needs
[01:03:15] their own separate set
[01:03:17] of things that they're
[01:03:18] constantly syncing back and forth
[01:03:19] so you can separate them out.
[01:03:21] So anything that you could do with
[01:03:23] any sync you can also do with the data
[01:03:25] library, probably.
[01:03:28] These adjustments to syncing,
[01:03:30] just sort of makes
[01:03:31] it much easier to edit from within
[01:03:34] the target base. It almost feels like
[01:03:37] the relationship where you have
[01:03:39] the source and the target
[01:03:41] is being changed so
[01:03:42] that it's,
[01:03:44] there's they're more blended
[01:03:46] because you could do everything in the,
[01:03:48] the source base now and few things
[01:03:50] in the target base,
[01:03:51] it sounds like you'll be
[01:03:52] able to do
[01:03:54] much of the same things in both.
[01:03:57] Yeah. Because you can totally
[01:03:59] imagine a scenario
[01:04:00] in which like a verified data
[01:04:01] set, like a master list of accounts
[01:04:02] that's like syncing from sales force or
[01:04:04] somewhere. Like obviously,
[01:04:05] you don't want you
[01:04:06] just to be able to like change
[01:04:07] that. We need to go to your system
[01:04:09] of record for that.
[01:04:09] So being this is this is
[01:04:10] the list,
[01:04:11] look at it but like don't edit anything,
[01:04:13] but
[01:04:13] there are lots of times
[01:04:15] where like you want,
[01:04:15] like
[01:04:16] you do want to be able to edit that.
[01:04:19] So yeah,
[01:04:20] the the opportunities are
[01:04:23] going to grow,
[01:04:24] I think pretty significantly for
[01:04:25] how we sort of finagle our,
[01:04:27] our, our grander account structure
[01:04:30] to be a lot more coherent
[01:04:32] and get rid of like silos,
[01:04:33] hopefully just like get rid of like,
[01:04:34] oh well, that data lives there
[01:04:35] and this data lives here.
[01:04:36] They don't really talk
[01:04:37] to each other.
[01:04:38] Yeah.
[01:04:40] Yeah, that ability to create
[01:04:42] and then it'll know the mapping
[01:04:44] on the back end of
[01:04:45] because it'll be named differently
[01:04:47] on your destination, but it'll know,
[01:04:49] you know where to map back
[01:04:50] to when you create it on the destination.
[01:04:52] That's interesting.
[01:04:54] I would love a field, you know,
[01:04:56] we have created by and last edited by.
[01:04:58] I wanna like created in field.
[01:05:02] Like the the the sync source field
[01:05:05] will tell you like where a record
[01:05:08] came from.
[01:05:10] But like, I just wanna make sure that
[01:05:12] when we're able to add
[01:05:14] records from within a target base.
[01:05:16] We also get to know like
[01:05:19] this is the record
[01:05:20] it was created in as well just to,
[01:05:23] you know, I might treat it differently
[01:05:25] in automation based on that value.
[01:05:27] Yeah, I was trying to find it.
[01:05:28] I was like, where the heck is this?
[01:05:29] Because I renamed it,
[01:05:30] your sync source field
[01:05:31] is called acid type.
[01:05:33] And, and right on top of that,
[01:05:35] I would love a base schema
[01:05:36] that's not just the
[01:05:37] base but shows like
[01:05:38] the via dotted line.
[01:05:40] Where is the data coming from?
[01:05:41] Because we have the
[01:05:43] data. Can I talk about this?
[01:05:44] Oh OK. I can't talk about that
[01:05:46] but it's basically just fancier
[01:05:48] base schema.
[01:05:50] But if you could see it
[01:05:51] like an account level or a
[01:05:52] workspace level, how is all the data
[01:05:54] moving around
[01:05:55] that would be really cool and
[01:05:56] maybe have like layers for like,
[01:05:57] you know, this is the actual data
[01:05:59] and then these are the
[01:06:00] automations that live on
[01:06:01] top of the data.
[01:06:02] And then these are the interfaces
[01:06:03] that live on top of all of
[01:06:04] that. That would be super cool
[01:06:05] and would save so much time
[01:06:07] for tracking down
[01:06:08] like where the heck is this coming from?
[01:06:10] Like why does it work this way?
[01:06:12] Yeah,
[01:06:15] that's awesome.
[01:06:16] Very cool. So yeah, no timeline.
[01:06:18] I know there was a question on that.
[01:06:20] So
[01:06:21] I mean, the fact that you haven't,
[01:06:23] they haven't given it to you to beta test.
[01:06:24] That probably implies
[01:06:26] we've still got a ways to go.
[01:06:28] Yeah.
[01:06:28] How, how hard could it be?
[01:06:30] It's just replacing the lightning
[01:06:31] bolt with a plus
[01:06:32] symbol. Right?
[01:06:35] Yeah. They made several changes to,
[01:06:39] sync as is for,
[01:06:40] at least on the enterprise level plans.
[01:06:42] I don't know if they've trickled
[01:06:43] down to pro slash team slash business
[01:06:46] yet.
[01:06:47] Ubut I, they're actively improving
[01:06:50] pieces of it as they go.
[01:06:51] So
[01:06:52] I don't know when adding
[01:06:53] records from a target base
[01:06:54] is gonna be there.
[01:06:55] But we did recently get
[01:06:57] updating via automation and updating via
[01:07:00] an interface, which was,
[01:07:03] you know, also deeply
[01:07:04] annoying limitations of
[01:07:06] sync which have been
[01:07:07] eliminated very recently. So,
[01:07:09] you know, I don't know the
[01:07:11] timeline either. I imagine that, you know,
[01:07:12] because they were able to
[01:07:15] solve those things recently,
[01:07:17] you know,
[01:07:18] it might be.
[01:07:21] And as
[01:07:21] soon I don't wanna,
[01:07:24] I, I refused to give a number
[01:07:26] because I have no idea.
[01:07:28] And obviously I won't commit
[01:07:29] anyone to anything. But the, the,
[01:07:30] the team over there who's focusing on,
[01:07:32] on sync, cross base sync
[01:07:33] has been working on
[01:07:34] this problem for a long time
[01:07:36] and they're thinking about it a lot
[01:07:37] and they talk about it a lot and they're
[01:07:39] very clutter.
[01:07:40] So
[01:07:40] I think,
[01:07:41] I think it'll like if I had a big
[01:07:43] a wild number,
[01:07:44] like, I hope it's here by the
[01:07:45] end of the year because that would make,
[01:07:47] it would be a fantastic end of your
[01:07:48] gift.
[01:07:49] But obviously I have no idea.
[01:07:51] Good.
[01:07:52] Thank you. Thank you Ben
[01:07:54] for that insight and
[01:07:55] sneak peek at what's to come,
[01:07:57] appreciate you coming on
[01:07:59] and that concludes our season 15.
[01:08:01] So we'll be off for a few weeks
[01:08:03] through the month of September
[01:08:05] and we'll be back
[01:08:06] online in October.
[01:08:07] We will see you then take care everyone.