4/9/2024 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S18-E02

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

In This Episode

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

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

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 – 00:01:40 –

Meet the Creators – 00:01:41 –

Meet Stephane Menet.

Visit them online

An App a Day – 00:01:42 –

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the WP Connect App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “WP Connect enables advanced connection between WordPress and Airtable (as well as Notion and other no-code tools)”.

View App

Base Showcase – 00:01:43 –

We dive into a full working base that will Kamille walks through a base built for creating a multi question voting process.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:01:40

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

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:01:41

Stephane Menet – Founder, WP Connect

Meet Stephane Menet.

Visit them online

Segment: An App a Day

Start Time: 00:01:42

Airtable App Showcase – WP Connect – WP Connect enables advanced connection between WordPress and Airtable (as well as Notion and other no-code tools)

Watch as we install, explore, and showcase the WP Connect App from the Airtable Marketplace. The app is described as “WP Connect enables advanced connection between WordPress and Airtable (as well as Notion and other no-code tools)”.

View App

Segment: Base Showcase

Start Time: 00:01:43

Multi-Question Voting System

We dive into a full working base that will Kamille walks through a base built for creating a multi question voting process.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

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

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

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

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

[00:01:37] Dan Fellars: All right. Welcome back to episode two of season 18 of the built on air podcast. Good to be back with everybody. We've got Kamille and myself and joined WP connect. Welcome Hugo. Glad to have you on. We may, we may be joined by Stefan from WP connect as well. He's dealing with some, some internet [00:02:00] connectivity issues.

[00:02:00] So hopefully he'll join us here in a second. And Ali couldn't make it this week. She was returning from the eclipse yesterday and stuck in a place without internet. So she'll be back next time. But I'll walk through what we're going to be talking about. It's always an hour long show. We go through different items.

[00:02:20] We always start with our round the bases, get you up to date on everything air table related and all the communities of what people are talking about. Then we'll do a quick shout out to our sponsor onto air. And then we'll learn about both Hugo and Stefan and their background and how they got into this world.

[00:02:39] And then we'll turn it over to them to showcase their app called WP Connect and how it works with Airtable and then talk about our community, how you can join and participate. And then finally, Kamille is going to walk us through a base on multi question voting. 

[00:02:58] ROUND THE BASES - 00:02:59

[00:02:59] [00:03:00] So with that, with around the bases, a few interesting updates, this'll be the Russell show for a bit.

[00:03:09] Russell's been active this week, showcasing a couple of cool things. So he first talks about, how he built a, a web hook based web analytics inside of air table using a JavaScript to a web hook to then update an air table record. So Just a little bit of JavaScript knowledge. You could build your own Google Analytics replacement inside of Airtable.

[00:03:36] It's kind of cool. We'll have to have, I think Russell's coming on. Maybe I'll showcase this in a future episode. He also talked about a feature that we, I don't think we've mentioned in the past, Where on a button, you now has visibility where you can actually hide the button. If [00:04:00] it doesn't meet certain conditions or if it does meet certain conditions.

[00:04:03] And so buttons, and it's probably there's 20 different types of buttons. So I don't know which buttons this applies to. As far 

[00:04:13] Kamille Parks: as I'm aware, this is for newer detail pages. Buttons that are, you know, at the very top of the detail page or on individual groups. But yeah, it's really useful for if you had a button that had the action was say, update the record and the update is say, mark as paid.

[00:04:37] Well, you don't really want to click the button again, if it's already marked as paid. So the conditional visibility now lets you say. hide this if it's already paid. And so it's little things like that, that kind of clean up your interface and make sure that people don't repeat the same process twice, or, you know, do something before they're supposed [00:05:00] to do it because it doesn't meet certain criteria.

[00:05:04] Dan Fellars: So it's just like now they have groupings that have visibility, but this is at the, at the button specific level, so. 

[00:05:12] Kamille Parks: Yes. So you can hide individual fields, you can hide whole groups, and now you can hide buttons conditionally. 

[00:05:20] Dan Fellars: So that's, that's cool. That is good. Welcome, Stefan. You with us? Sorry. Hello?

[00:05:30] No, you're good. We can hear you now, so you're good. 

[00:05:32] Stephane: I had to, to reboot the whole thing. Well, yeah. My, my camera didn't work. And, and just after it, it was the, the, the,

[00:05:46] the, the microphone. 

[00:05:49] Dan Fellars: You're good. You're good. I'm a little complicated, but it's okay. The news, and then we'll get learn more about you in a second, so. 

[00:05:57] Stephane: No problem. Thank you. 

[00:05:59] Dan Fellars: [00:06:00] Alright, one more from, from Russell. Using a roll up on a percentage field with color conditions will pre fill the colors the same as the source field.

[00:06:11] I don't think I knew about this feature. 

[00:06:13] Kamille Parks: No. That's 

[00:06:14] Dan Fellars: kind of cool. 

[00:06:15] Kamille Parks: I don't often apply different colors to is really only relevant, I think, to percentage fields when you have, you know, a specific color applied to certain percentages. I normally just leave it as green all the time. And so I'd never would have noticed this.

[00:06:32] So. Pretty cool. 

[00:06:34] Dan Fellars: Yep. So that is cool. Nice little hack there. All right. I think that's the last from, from Russell. This one from Jan default options for a date field. So default to current date. This is actually really cool. And it's not listed in their what's new section. 

[00:06:57] Kamille Parks: Well, of course not Dan, that thing's not [00:07:00] updated.

[00:07:01] But yeah, so quietly and very recently they've updated the default options for a couple of different fields, like check boxes. You can now default to checked. But to Jan's point. You can default to current date. Previously, this is something you could do on a form, where the form would be pre filled with the current date, but this is now a global default setting, much like a single select and single line text.

[00:07:29] And now multi select, you can also do a default applied to it. So they're adding more and more defaults, which is nice to see. 

[00:07:39] Dan Fellars: And I wonder, it looks like it's, I haven't tested this. If the, is that clickable where you can maybe set it to like a static date? 

[00:07:47] Kamille Parks: I will check in the background. Let's 

[00:07:50] Dan Fellars: see. Let's see.

[00:07:52] It's got, 

[00:07:55] Kamille Parks: Nope. It's just default to current date. 

[00:07:59] Dan Fellars: [00:08:00] Okay. Yeah. 

[00:08:01] Kamille Parks: It does appear clickable. So I don't know if that might be a future intention they have to add that as a functionality, but right now it seems like you can only default to whatever the You know, the date is, 

[00:08:15] Dan Fellars: yeah, this one from Scott, this is from fill out talking, showing how they do their defaults, you know, a bit more advanced, saying maybe air table will do that.

[00:08:31] All right, so that is a cool feature that will come in handy. Okay. Here's 1. I found this morning. I was looking through the what's new to see if anything was added. There's nothing in April, but I'm 99 percent sure this top one here was not there a week ago and we could, we didn't talk about it last week.

[00:08:53] Kamille Parks: I don't know if it was there a week ago, but it was, it was pointed out, I think [00:09:00] in our Slack community, I think that's where I first saw it and they updated the help article about it, but didn't otherwise make a big fanfare, which was surprising because this is one of the most. asked for features is to create or delete a record from a downstream base.

[00:09:19] There are many caveats. I have done a little bit of testing for this feature, but it is very useful. If you have a pretty simple sync from A to B in base B, you can create a new record and you can delete that record. The deleted record shows up in the deletion history in both the original base and in the downstream base, and you can restore from either base.

[00:09:45] That is very nice, because originally I thought it would be only in the base in which you deleted it, or only in the source base. It does appear in both of the trash histories, so that's Great for traceability. And 

[00:09:59] Dan Fellars: [00:10:00] when you restore it restores on both. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:10:04] Kamille Parks: Just like with editing a synced record, it seems pretty, it's pretty quick.

[00:10:09] There's not a lot of delay that I noticed. Between creating it in one base and seeing it appear or disappear in the other. There are, there's like a lot of little gotchas, I think for, especially if you are linking records together, you're going to come into some issue. And if you're synced base, is based on a filter.

[00:10:35] You got to make sure that it matches those filter conditions. Otherwise, I don't know where the record goes. It might get stuck or trapped. So, yeah, there's some gotchas. But it's very, it's very encouraging. 

[00:10:50] Dan Fellars: Yeah, no, that, that is really useful. But on that note, let me see if this is the right one.

[00:10:57] I'm gonna skip. Here we go. [00:11:00] On that note of synced tables Sam in the built on air community says, I learned the hard way that if you're dependent on reliable and live data, you should not use Airtable Sync. The sink times can be very fast at times, but other times it can be very slow. There's a good conversation on some issues people have with, with sink tables.

[00:11:21] So definitely it's not perfect. Sometimes it does go to sleep where they don't sink. And so you do have to kind of be aware you can nudge it. If you make some changes, it might wake it up. 

[00:11:38] Kamille Parks: Yeah, this is for like. I don't know what air table would call it in terms of their own terminology. If it's a dormant base, or if the base is sleeping or whatever, they call it.

[00:11:50] But if you have a base, it just sort of sits there and no one goes in and edits they, they will not sink at the same [00:12:00] frequency as a, as a active base where people are in it all the time and there's changes being made and et cetera. So not entirely reliable, to. Have, you know, completely rely on the regular sync refresh rate, especially if you're, if it's not a very active base.

[00:12:21] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So, yeah, just be aware. There is still some nuance to that. All right. Here's a weird issue with email. Joseph in the built on air community has an email template that doesn't have anyone in the CC, but when it gets sent, it puts the person's email address that is in the two line also in the CC line.

[00:12:46] I'm bccing myself on the emails and I'm wondering if it's related to that. It's just weird. I've never seen it before. And I bcc myself on a lot of automation emails. Never seen this issue. So there [00:13:00] it shows, the two going here, and then it shows up as a CC. So there's discussion there. And this is, this is an email from Airtable itself.

[00:13:17] Kamille Parks: So, I read through this 1 before up until about when Scott started replying and the apparently the response from air table is that this is intended behavior done for some compliance reasons where if you were to have you Multiple people that are in the two or CC line, the reason why you appear in both is yada yada compliance reasons.

[00:13:40] And you can read the full response on the built on your slack community, but it sounds like they kind of this was their way around you know, being compliant with something. Messaging, rules and laws and whatnot. And I think one of the concerns from this thread [00:14:00] is I don't want to receive the same email twice.

[00:14:03] Your email provider should not be sending you multiple emails. If you're in the two CC and BCC line, that's just an, that's an email thing. You should only receive one with the caveat of if you're in like a group email, And you are personally added to the 2 line, then you will receive 2 emails, but that's not what's happening here.

[00:14:25] Dan Fellars: Yeah. And I, and I believe this was confirmed later that it doesn't send a duplicate. Yeah. So, yeah, there, there has been changes. I think I think we talked about it. Maybe we didn't talk about that. They now have the ability to, remove yourself from, from an email thread. And so it now adds an email, a link at the bottom where you can, where you can, you know, remove yourself.

[00:14:54] And I, have we done testing on that? Like that removes you from that automation, any [00:15:00] future. Emails from that automation or that base, I think 

[00:15:03] Kamille Parks: I haven't tested yet. I could see this being tricky to resolve from air table standpoint, because one base might have 30 different email digest things. And if you only want to unsubscribe to 1, well, that might be a feature that you have to bake in yourself.

[00:15:22] But I don't know how you get around Airtable's default unsubscribe feature because they have to have one for, again, compliance reasons. So, you know, at some point if you're anticipating people unsubscribing and you have multiple campaigns, this is one of those instances where perhaps you should be using a different email system that's sort of purpose built for this so that you have more control over what you're doing.

[00:15:48] What they're unsubscribing to, 

[00:15:52] Dan Fellars: but definitely air table has been making modifications. It looks like they're trying to get compliant and this, this might be part of [00:16:00] that as well. All right, move on. Here's an interview. If you like to hear interviews with air table executives, here's one on tech talks daily with.

[00:16:17] It's with Anthony Maggio, who is the head of product management at Airtable. So we'll provide a link to that. If you like listening, I, I cannot say that I've listened to this yet. So not sure on the quality, but always like to hear what, what. People at Airtable have to say about the product and future roadmap.

[00:16:39] Okay. Here's an interesting one. So this is, this is a post from Airtable talking about AWS, Amazon using Airtable internally, the quote from AWS is Airtable has enabled AWS to quickly build the front end and back ends of internal applications. Which are now integrated with generative AI, no code or engineering resources [00:17:00] necessary.

[00:17:00] So that's a pretty good. The reason why I thought this was interesting was AWS had a product that was called honeycomb. That was somewhat competitive. Tear table is kind of like a, a low code, no code app builder. They sunsetted that a few months ago, if I, if I remember correctly. And so it's just interesting that they were using Airtable to build their internal tools and not, and not their own product.

[00:17:28] Well,

[00:17:32] that's a good, that's a good testimonial there from, from native U. S. as Chris Dancy says. So, all right. Actually it's a good time. I'll do that at the end. We'll make an announcement on that. Okay, this one's coming from LinkedIn. This is from Jimmy, who was on the show last week. Been trying to write an Airtable formula for two years that I could never figure out.

[00:17:57] Found some helpful stuff in the community and their support was good, but I [00:18:00] still couldn't get it to work for my use case. Then Eric told me to ask ChatGPT to write the formula, and it worked. Now I would say probably what you're thinking is Airtable now has built in AI for writing your formulas that you don't even need to go to chat GPT.

[00:18:17] Kamille Parks: Well, I was going to say, what was the formula? Cause I like to think I'm quite good at air table formulas. Maybe I could have done it. 

[00:18:26] Dan Fellars: I don't need 

[00:18:26] Kamille Parks: your stinking AI. 

[00:18:29] Dan Fellars: That is true. Yeah, it's amazing. Like that functionality for I haven't done that. I haven't been doing a ton of formulas lately, but, just I know how complex formulas can get and if they I can help, but you also got to be careful.

[00:18:45] You got to know that what I came up with is what you're trying to do. 

[00:18:50] Kamille Parks: In this case I would prefer using your tables built in formula Generator that appears at the bottom of a formula [00:19:00] field just because it is presumably well trained on air table formula syntax and all of the, you know, how to actually write one in air table rather than chat GPT, which may or may not have, you know, Good training on how to write formulas specifically for Airtable.

[00:19:17] I suspect it's quite good at Excel formulas, but Excel formulas are inherently different from Airtables. And so, but if it worked for Jimmy, it worked. So 

[00:19:27] Dan Fellars: yeah, that's good. Yeah. I do know in the past, I remember like it would use functions that didn't exist inside of Airtable and things like that. All right.

[00:19:39] A few more. These are from the Airtable community. This is kind of a request I thought was interesting. This was more towards enterprise users, enterprise admins, asking for better support for the SAML SCIM integration to be able to [00:20:00] automatically link a user to a. Seat type. So an editor or or a viewer.

[00:20:07] Yeah. Based off of some kind of mapping. So it doesn't currently do that. So you can't, it does have single sign on, but it doesn't, if it, if a new user comes in, it probably defaults to just one use type or something. I 

[00:20:22] Kamille Parks: believe I could be incorrect, but I believe what happens is the manner in which you're invited to.

[00:20:30] The enterprise org unit, it determines what seat type you have. So if your first invite is like, be an editor on this interface, you'll come in as an editor. Otherwise, you'll come in as a viewer. That could be wrong, but I think that's what happens. But I agree this would be pretty useful if you happen to have an attribute that's passed through your single sign on or other You know, authentication, I mean, that would be great if you could [00:21:00] just pre fill it yourself as you happen to already know.

[00:21:05] Dan Fellars: So that's useful. And last 1, this is kind of a long discussion interface share permissions to be set independently of base permissions. Scott answers this, but not exactly the way that what he was intending the original question, but I thought what. Scott brought up was a good reminder of understanding when you're sharing at the base level versus the interface level, those are different and can be confusing.

[00:21:36] So be aware if you want people to only have access to the interface, you have to share from the interface. If you share from the base or the workspace level, then it, they'll have access to the data layer. So that's a good reminder, although that wasn't what they were asking. They were asking for just.

[00:21:55] Being able to publicly share an interface, where [00:22:00] anybody could use it without having to log in, which currently is not available except for the forms. 

[00:22:07] Kamille Parks: Yes. Which is getting increasingly confusing before it was fine. Forms being, you know, publicly shareable and interfaces not because they were entirely separate concepts and, you know, pieces of the product.

[00:22:20] But now the new form builder is only accessible via the interfaces. You know, three tab, if you go under interfaces, that's where the new form builder is, and those new forms can be publicly accessible, but the rest of interfaces can't. And so, my hope is that eventually interfaces will be, will have a toggle for publicly accessible, probably in view only.

[00:22:43] I mean, I don't suspect they would give you edit capability, because that's how they make their money, through licenses. But that's not a thing yet, as explained in this post. 

[00:22:57] none: Yep. 

[00:22:57] Dan Fellars: Yep. So, all right, [00:23:00] let's catch up a couple of chats. We, we missed out on Alicia says, I'm excited about this. Talking about the default dates for my current time tracking, love being able to default it to current time.

[00:23:12] Yeah, I agree. I think that's a really powerful. And then Frank talking about the, the formula generator Airtable formula generator is also aware of other fields in your table, which is super helpful. That's a great point. So that's another advantage to use the built in one. Yeah. Okay. One quick announcement.

[00:23:36] If you haven't heard about dare table, this is which this is number three. Three, four, if you count the online one, right? 

[00:23:46] Kamille Parks: Well, I don't know. Can I count? 

[00:23:49] Dan Fellars: Is this three? I think this is three in person. Austin, San Francisco, New York. I think, right? 

[00:23:56] Kamille Parks: Yes. The original was all virtual. 

[00:23:59] Dan Fellars: Yeah. [00:24:00] Okay. So this is 3. 5 Garrett says, yeah, that's, that's probably fair.

[00:24:05] So, and this will be in New York, October 25th. And that's a Friday. And then I believe there's also networking and other activities on the Saturday. So kind of a day and a half of events. So excited for that. Limited tickets. So they're going to be 300, which I think is the most they've ever had. And so Chris Dancy and Ben Green are organizing this.

[00:24:31] So tickets are on sale now and I plan to be there. Kamille, I think maybe we'll make the trip out. 

[00:24:39] Kamille Parks: I will most likely be there. 

[00:24:42] Dan Fellars: So it's great to lots of people. Plan to join and participate. And so, yeah, so check that out. We may be able to, I'm talking to, or I need to talk to Ben. Ben and Chris, if you're listening hook us up at Built On Air to give us [00:25:00] some discount coupon codes for our, for our listeners.

[00:25:03] So maybe we can help out with that. Friday, Saturday, there we go. October 25th and 26th. And if you want to be a presenter as well, you can, you can apply to, to be a speaker to that. Okay. So that concludes everything going on in the air table world. So let's move on to quick shout out. 

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[00:26:06] MEET THE CREATORS - STEPHANE - WP CONNECT - HUGO - WP CONNECT - 00:26:10

[00:26:10] Okay. We're going to now jump to our discussion. Learn about Stefan and Hugo will include both of you learn a little bit about your backgrounds. And what you've got going on. So I'm curious, gimme a little history of yourselves and how you came into this world of, of Airtable. 

[00:26:33] Stephane: Okay, I begin, I, I, I make, I make it quick 'cause I have 20 years of of of, web, behind me.

[00:26:44] So, I'm come from a web agency web agency world. So, I created a digital corner five years ago, seven years ago. So we are in France, in Nantes. [00:27:00] So we are specialized in website creation, SEO web marketing web development. Basically. And in 20,020, we, we are specialized in WordPress area to, to be to be precise.

[00:27:19] We, we, we do other stuff, but really expertise in in, in WordPress. And in 20,020, we, we include in our in our offers the no-code no-code services. So and in 2022, we we, we built WP Connect who is the, the, the studio design developer and sales of WordPress plugin to connect no-code tools.

[00:27:55] To WordPress. 

[00:27:59] Kamille Parks: I'm wondering [00:28:00] what the pipeline is from WordPress to no code in general, because I feel like WordPress, I don't want to call it the original necessarily, but it is, it's, it's a no code tool itself. And there's a lot that you can learn from. Dealing with WordPress and its various limitations and apply that to other products as well.

[00:28:25] Stephane: WordPress is a no code tool, of course. Yes, you're totally right. It is a low code tool as well. And it is a code tool. So, it is. a framework. Now, this is more than CMS. So WordPress is more like a, yeah, as I say, a framework where you, you can build some things with code, no code, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:28:52] And what we want to do here is to connect. More database, no code [00:29:00] tools, with what press, so use the, the, the, the, the front end of what press and even the, the, the, the admin panel of what press, once we have made the first sink to, from our table or notion, cause we have two plugins.

[00:29:20] That that we connect to to WordPress in this, this way at table to WordPress and notion to WordPress. We have also add ons that send data. What, from what press? Two notion? But basically for for the, the, the, the, the air wpc, the, the plugin that we will show, show you the idea was to, have an external database to handle some data, and not in the admin panel for press.

[00:29:53] That can be in some way, a little bit tricky to, to use for some users. 

[00:29:59] Dan Fellars: I had [00:30:00] a question. Actually, Hugo, if you want to give your background and what you're up to, 

[00:30:04] Hugo: yeah, I'm a little bit younger than Stefan. So it's going to be, you're nice. I've just, received my diploma from from my master's degree in web development, you know, in more full stack way.

[00:30:25] And I am I'm working with Stefan in the, in the agency since, since two years and a half now. So it's been a, a long time. And so as, as Stefan said, I, I could assist to the launch of of the WP Connect. And and I think that's it. My, my major role is to be developer and project manager.

[00:30:53] In the, in the web agency, 

[00:30:55] Stephane: we have the same entity. For now we hope that [00:31:00] we, we, we will, build a, a society WP Connect on, on its own, but for, for now to see digital Corner that handles, the, the services. Web WordPress services digital strategy services and no code services and the products, the, the products editing like WP connect.

[00:31:26] So the WP connect is more like a brand mark of for digital corner is not the society. So It begins to be a little bit complicated to have services and products to to manage, to handle, to organize, but yeah, we, we, we, we managed to do that with a bunch of freelancers that is around you.

[00:31:58] Dan Fellars: Yeah, I, I'm, I'm in the same boat [00:32:00] as you. I know the, the complexity of managing both those. My question for you is, is I'm curious about, like, everybody in the, in the web world knows and likely is used WordPress. What, what do you think is the future of WordPress? How, how do you think, how is, is, is it still continuing to grow strong or is it losing momentum?

[00:32:23] Stephane: We hear a lot of things about WordPress, especially in the No-code community who. He's doesn't like WordPress. So it's it's a bit funny to, to hear that WordPress is dead. WordPress is dead. I'm sorry. Now WordPress is not dead. It's it's, is it strong? The truth is that. There is a lot of tools now that that, that didn't exist before like to, to, to, to design a website with something like that, like Doric, like a [00:33:00] Webflow of course.

[00:33:00] Yeah. But I think that is good for WordPress. WordPress, this is a 45 percent of the web. So this is like. As you know, and the, the, the, the market is not is not is not growing, but it's, it's how do you say that in English? It's not, it's not down as well. So. There is a lot of of, of news in, in WordPress.

[00:33:34] There will be the FSE, I don't know if you know the, the FSE. It is the full site editing. So you can man, now you can manage totally your website in WordPress. The header, the content, the footer there's a lot of AI as well with AB testing on the with the, the, the gut number blocks.

[00:33:56] There, there is a. AI in the page builder as well, like [00:34:00] Elementor, things like, things like that. There is a lot of stuff that that, that is coming, especially the, the redesign of the, the admin panel and the collaboration on the, on the admin things that there was not, there were not till till now.

[00:34:20] Dan Fellars: Yeah, it is amazing that the ecosystem around wordpress is just phenomenal. This is huge. 

[00:34:26] Stephane: This is this is a little web. It's inside the web. So yeah, and there is a lot of of of people that that is using wordpress. But yeah, WordPress is a dinosaur. That's that's for sure. 20 years old, but it's still there.

[00:34:45] It's open source and it's not to forget that it is open source. So, I'm going to say that it, it, it will never, never, never be it will ever exist [00:35:00] because the community is really, really, really strong. And active. So, and, and it's good, it's good for for, for open source tools. Yeah.

[00:35:12] And in the no-code ecosystem, we, I strongly believe that the no-code open source will will be rising this this year. 'cause there is a lot of of tools no code that is that are really good. Yeah, very cool. 

[00:35:31] Dan Fellars: All right, let's let's move on. If you want to share your screen. Yes, yeah, you go.

[00:35:39] We'll talk about your product WP Connect. You're going to share with us. 

[00:35:43] AN APP A DAY - WP CONNECT - 00:35:49

[00:35:46] Stephane: Yeah, so WP Connect is the The, the, the entity, the, the, the brand mark, and what we're going to show you is the, the one of the 10 products that we [00:36:00] have developed. So RWP Sync R table to WordPress. We have another plugin that is called Notion WP Sync, which is connect Notion to WordPress.

[00:36:12] And we have some add ons that connect plugins. Forms plugin to our table and notion. So we have gravity form to our table, WP form to our table, contact from seven, contact from seven to our table. We have three plugins and we have freemium plugins and paid plugins. And a RWP sync is one of, one of the, the, the plugin.

[00:36:38] It exists in three version in free, free version, pro version and prop version. And in two weeks, I'm, I'm say, I'm saying, I'm saying it now we will release, 11 who is connecting WooCommerce with. Ah, in [00:37:00] both ways. For now, air, WPC is just one way. 'cause we want to keep a single source of truth, philosophy, and for the airing.

[00:37:13] So, WooCommerce for Airable, we, we, we, we managed to include the bo. Both, both both ways. Both, both. Two way think. Okay. So. Products, products in air table, WooCommerce and holders in WooCommerce to air table with, with with the stock regulation of course. 

[00:37:43] Kamille Parks: I'm sure everyone knows, but in case they don't, WooCommerce is I believe the most common in, eCommerce plugin for WordPress.

[00:37:53] So allowing you to have a storefront on your page to buy and sell things of some sort. [00:38:00] So that's really cool that it could connect to Airtable to, as you say, automatically manage you know, what products are you selling and what's the stock of those items, et cetera. Pretty cool. 

[00:38:11] Stephane: Yeah. I think it will we have, we have, 15 beta tester.

[00:38:19] And we will we will test the product with them in in 10 days. 

[00:38:26] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So can you share with us how, how this Air WP Sync works? 

[00:38:31] Hugo: Yes. Can you see my screen now? Okay. So basically how does it work? Just like other plugins in, in WordPress. So once you have downloaded and activated, you can, you have an interface here, and the the, the, the major feature, which is really important to understand in this [00:39:00] plugin is that NWP sync is using the API of of air table, to make this the synchronization between WordPress and air table.

[00:39:13] And, How does it work? It's working thanks to the connections for the example. Now I'm going to present a simple use case, with a job board. So I have my database with, All of my job, of all of my vacancies. So I have a lot of information, job, name, company the logo, the, the type, et cetera.

[00:39:49] And what I want to do is to, Synchronize all of this info in my in my WordPress. So for that, I have a [00:40:00] connection. There are four steps in a connection. First, the settings, as I said before to communicate between WordPress and Airtable, we need to, to use the API. So for that. We have what we call a token and that we can find, in your after that account, once you're connected in your account, you have a space called, sorry we had 

[00:40:31] Stephane: to change this part when they decide to.

[00:40:34] To, to to, to migrate from A-A-A-P-I key to Access Token. Yes. 

[00:40:41] Kamille Parks: I was gonna ask which, which path you went with and, yeah. Access tokens. 

[00:40:46] Stephane: We, the, the first version of RWP think in August 20. And, so with the API key and we wanted to release the provision in January, [00:41:00] 20, 2023 and, air table announced the, the token in December, I think 2022.

[00:41:11] So we had to stop the development and to integrate the, the, In the, in the first version, the, the, the, the access token because we, we do, we do didn't want to to change it in, in 2022. So yeah. 

[00:41:28] Hugo: Yes. So, so far I, I 

[00:41:29] Stephane: think they know you go for the token. That's, that's okay. 

[00:41:33] Hugo: Yes. Yes. That's I think that's, for now, we are using the API is not the API key is not supported by Rtable. So, once we have created our, we can put it in the, in the connection and then, I can, the, the, the connection [00:42:00] is established. So, we have all of our basis. And one, I, once I've selected my basis, so this one, I can find my tables.

[00:42:15] So the one I want to use is the job board, and then I can select also the views and filter by formula. What is really important by these two features is that, the view I don't know, maybe if I have another view with, only a permanent contract, I can create a view and only synchronize permanent contracts.

[00:42:38] And I can also make it. By the formula here, 

[00:42:44] Stephane: we, we had the filters in next release the filter and the filter group, it will be, it will be easier for for, for your user to filter, to filter directly in the [00:43:00] connection. 

[00:43:00] Hugo: Yeah, 

[00:43:00] Kamille Parks: it's very 

[00:43:01] Hugo: nice. Yeah, as you said before, in order for your reviews sometimes the formula as we can say I think it's what Jimmy that was saying that sometimes the formula could be a little bit tricky so we are going to, to, to make it easier.

[00:43:21] For all of our users. So the first step is where my data come from, then how can I import it? On WordPress. So, All the post type and all of the feature of WordPress and then coming to the field mapping. So, for example, my job name is going to be corresponding to the title of my job. And I make it for all the fields that I want to import in WordPress.

[00:43:55] And finally, I have my synchronized settings so I [00:44:00] can select my strategy. So add, update, and delete, add, update, and just add. It means that the strategy, add, update, and delete. If I delete what's, on, it's going to be deleted on WordPress and I can trigger manually recurring, so. I can choose how often I want to, to see, to be, the, the, the, the thing you make.

[00:44:25] And also via a web book as you, as you know, in Airtable, you can, launch, trigger a web book thanks to the scripts. So once I have synchronized my my posts, I have all the lists here. That is the same, I have here and then on the front end, so it means on the website, all the users can can see, I have all [00:45:00] the posts.

[00:45:01] So it means that I really can create a job on, but you can imagine A lot, a lot of use case. You can manage your blog on air table. You can manage everything if you have 

[00:45:17] Stephane: Directories, for example, as well. We have a lot of clients who, who, who, who are reading directories websites. So it's easier for us to use air table, for example.

[00:45:28] Yeah. Or even events as well. Yes. And real estate, we have a lot of real estate clients that that on, that run their business on on earth. 

[00:45:42] Hugo: Yes, exactly. And why they are using. Also that is because, once my, data is imported in WordPress, I can use it, as many ways. And, [00:46:00] for example, now I'm using Elementor.

[00:46:05] Elementor is a, is a page builder on WordPress. But it means that once your data is in the CMS. You can use it as you want. If you want to put it in a single page, if I just want to use this or that, I can select and pick exactly what I want. And that is really important. Because. From my single page.

[00:46:29] Now I can display the salary, the, the, the type of the contract and all of the informations that are in, in my air table. All of this info that I can see here have been imported into the WordPress. 

[00:46:51] Stephane: The difference with the previous plugin, I don't know if you, you, you, you knew it air Press.[00:47:00] 

[00:47:01] The difference is that we import the content in WordPress. We do not call the data. Heritable. So we import and we synchronize. So we get better in the for, for the performance. And as you go say once the data is in WordPress, you can manipulate the, the way you want in the, for, for, for to, to, to display it in the, on the front end.

[00:47:29] Kamille Parks: It's better for SEO as well, probably because it's, you could be crawled by. You know, different search engines because it's in it's permanently there rather than only on page load. 

[00:47:41] Hugo: Yes, exactly. That's a good thing that you talk about SEO. I think that's what I wanted to say is that. The plugin supports, 80% of the SEO plugins, the major plugin of [00:48:00] SEO on WordPress.

[00:48:02] So it means SEO press used, SEO SEO key, and, 

[00:48:08] Stephane: and all in one SEO. Yeah, we, we, we have a comp, a full compatibility with the, the four major SEO plugins. So, you can manage your SEO in Airtable and you can map. The meta we go, we show you, I think yeah the, the meta data, the, the, the meta description the Facebook description, the meta, the meta title, the slug, you can, you can even manage the slug.

[00:48:39] Of your URL. You can the Twitter description and of course, the Meta description and the Meta title. And this for Yoast, Erudite One, RankMath and SEOpress were the four major SEO plugins. So you can have your content in Airtable and you can [00:49:00] have your SEO data, your SEO, SEO content with related to your content in the same table.

[00:49:14] Kamille Parks: Amazing. So while we're on this page, I just want to point out several things that I like about the setup. One each connection seems like it could have its own access token and with personal access tokens, you can define very specific scopes in air table. So only give it read and write access to this base for this token and give, a different token to a different base.

[00:49:37] So full control over, you know, how much. Each of these imports sees. I like the usability of dropdowns of the base and table and view because you're reading the API to get that information rather than having someone put in the base ID and the table Id just very good for usability. And [00:50:00] then I, I love little bit.

[00:50:01] Stephane: Yes. So sorry,

[00:50:06] Kamille Parks: I love that you can import not just as posts, but other, what are they, tech taxonomies in WordPress. 

[00:50:15] Stephane: Yeah. Taxonomies. Totally. Yeah. 

[00:50:17] Kamille Parks: Yeah. I love that. And then different post types and defaults, and then the field mapping, which you just explained, which includes things like the metadata properties, not just like.

[00:50:30] Custom fields that you might add. So, yeah, I agree with Frank. Not having to constantly call Airtable is huge. This sounds great and I do. I'm what I call a survivor of WordPress. I used to use WordPress. I started in WordPress and no longer use it personally, but this makes it feel more. Vastly more usable.

[00:50:55] Yeah. 

[00:50:55] Stephane: Yeah. We, we, we think so too. And thank you for your, [00:51:00] for your words, Kami. We, we, what we, we wanted to do is really we, we listened to our, our users and we we obviously had some functionalities with the, with the, the life of the, the plugin. So the, the, the plugin has 1-year-old now 1, 1 1 year and a half.

[00:51:18] So we had the version two. So we had. As well, the possibility to create user you go, just show you, we, you can create user in a table as well. So, you, you, you, you, you have as well, this this possibility, and you can also, if you want, create post type and create custom field as well directly in the, in the plugin.

[00:51:46] So. Really? I think you have really full control on on on your content management here. 

[00:51:56] Dan Fellars: Yeah, it really is amazing. Cause you know, [00:52:00] the, the platforms that took off like softer being one of the big ones, the main advantage they had was tying directly into air table. So you could use air table as your back end.

[00:52:11] But now you have all the power of WordPress and all the other plugins that you want to use, but still use, because admittedly, like I'm, I'm a long, I still use air or WordPress for several of my sites. But I hate going into the backend and it's slow and it takes long for page loads to manage all the posts.

[00:52:32] So being able to do all that in air table and sinking it over, Is, is really a game changer of being able to manage all your content and everything in Airtable. 

[00:52:44] Stephane: Yeah, we, we, and especially with the, this this new no code generation we, we strongly believe that it was the, the, the right move to To have the [00:53:00] power of the two two words, which are not two words at the end, but, were really complimentary.

[00:53:10] So so we, we, we work for, for, for, for that to and we want to improve as well, the, the, the, the UX UI here, because, this is, this is really the first version of of the, of, of this admin, of the plugin for the WooCommerce. We totally redesigned the interface. It would be really, more accessible and beautiful and, easy, easy to, to, to have.

[00:53:46] We have a. Ideas as well of like templates, you know, we, we, we thought to, we think to to, to make bundles, for example imagine you can download air table template [00:54:00] with the plugin and with the configuration already already done with a JSON file or XML file, I don't know that you can just in one click install the, the, the, the, the, the full ecosystem.

[00:54:17] We think as well to maybe have front front end templates with WordPress. So you can, you, you would, you would be, you will have the total control of your front. Your your sink tool and your back in in her table. So the possibility are endless. 

[00:54:43] Dan Fellars: Yeah, there's a lot. We'll have to have you back on when maybe showcase WooCommerce and whatnot.

[00:54:49] So exciting stuff. Thank you for, for sharing Stefan and Hugo. Awesome. Thank you. And they can find you WP connect .CO. Is that correct? [00:55:00] Totally. Okay. Thank you. Okay, let's move on quick.

[00:55:04] BUILTONAIR AIRTABLE COMMUNITY - 00:55:06

[00:55:06] If you're not in our built on air community, learning about these amazing tools and all about air table, join us at built on air dot com.

[00:55:13] We have a very active slack community of users. Give a quick shout out here. Some of the faces of of the community. There's many more. There's thousands of people in there. So come join us at built on air dot com. We'd love to have you in. 

[00:55:27] BASE SHOWCASE - KAMILLE PARKS - VOTING TABLE - 00:55:27

[00:55:30] with that, Kamille is going to walk us through her base that she built for us.

[00:55:38] Kamille Parks: All right. So as mentioned previously, dare table is coming back again this year, this time, October and New York, but last time there was a conference I had a session and one of the sessions was one of the things that I did in my sessions was answer questions live and [00:56:00] Chris Dancy, one of the organizers of dare table, ask me, what do you do if you happen to be running a conference and you have this thing where people can vote on sessions or what have you, but you want to prevent someone from voting several times, and in having their vote.

[00:56:18] Like spamming the vote counter. So I gave several answers. Many of the people who were present Allie Alosa, our co host, I believe Jen Rudd had an answer. Cherry Yang had an answer. I feel like Lorenzo had an answer. A lot of the names and faces that you will see in the built on air Slack community, everyone kind of had an idea.

[00:56:42] Of course, Kavan had answers as well. And so I decided since we are, going back to dare table, what would you do in order to get at that idea in practice? In the conference, I just sort of talked [00:57:00] aloud how I thought one might do it. And here is a very quick rundown of what you could do, starting with the form itself.

[00:57:08] So you have a form where, people fill it out and you have different categories. So one of the things that Chris was saying is that you can vote on multiple things. It's a full day conference. So there might be you. I think there's different tracks. There might be three different tracks and what is the best session for each conference track might be how the form is structured.

[00:57:33] So I have, question one category a question to category B. I've set this so you can only select. One record for each category just makes splitting it up easier. But I will go into how the base is structured and what's happening behind the scenes. So based on some of the answers from my. Compatriots at the [00:58:00] conference.

[00:58:00] We're starting off with a table of registrants. This is a conference, so you should know who's showing up beforehand because they will have purchased tickets. And so I just made a really quick checkbox for whether or not they've paid for their ticket. But I have everybody who should be coming to the conference.

[00:58:20] In all of this is like test data from Airtables templates, but I have Dan, myself, and Hugo, but I've added Hugo after Hugo already submitted the form, and I'll explain why. Really simply here are all of the things that could be voted on. These are just the different sessions of the conference. And here is the table that gets filled out when you submit a form.

[00:58:43] So, all it's really is is exactly what the form showed category a category B because I have the form set that you must be logged in to use it. I am capturing the email used, And so it's [00:59:00] it's definitely that email that is submitting rather than having a free text email field, which you could also use but, you know, it's, it's easier to fake it if you can type in your own email.

[00:59:12] So the first thing that happens when you submit a form, I have a find record step that's checking my registration table to see is there a record where the email matches the created by email, which is filled in because I have that option selected on the form and then check if they're paid. If there's exactly one registrant that has that email, and there hopefully should only be one person, hopefully someone didn't register twice with the same email, and that they have paid, then go ahead and create a new record in a different table, one for each of your different questions.

[00:59:54] This is at the point where, personally, I Depending on how many questions you have [01:00:00] on this form, maybe you want to use a script to break it up, but in this demo, I only have two questions. So I'm just going to have to create record steps where I'm going to link to that voter. Fill in what the category it is that they're voting on, and then what was their answer to that question.

[01:00:21] So if I go into my votes table, I can see that my response was split out into two different records for category A and category B. And so was Dan's. Now, I have this other field called value. And again, one of the things that Chris wanted was you should be able to resubmit your form as many times as you want.

[01:00:46] However, we only want to count your most recent submission. So what happens is if someone were to go in and fill out the form again, Dan or Hugo, you can [01:01:00] now do so if you would like. But what would happen is that. Any previously submitted vote would be canceled out. And by that, I just have an automation run and check.

[01:01:15] Are there any other submissions that happen to have the same voter and the same category? So these are the conditions I used. Category is the same, voter is the same, and the record ID is not the same. I don't want to count the new one that I just created. For each of those old ones, go ahead and mark their value as zero.

[01:01:41] By doing that, that means that I can keep my most recent ones, but not my old ones. So you can see someone has gone in in the background and filled out that form again. And my older submission that was done earlier this morning was marked with a value of zero, but the one that just [01:02:00] came in from Dan at 9 a.

[01:02:01] m. Was taken. So Hugo did fill out the form originally and was not a registrant. So their votes didn't get transferred over and I realized that they weren't transferred over now. So I'm wondering, did I mark as paid? I didn't. So that did work the way I expected, which is great. We are not counting Hugo's cause we've said that he didn't pay for the conference.

[01:02:27] So. In order for your votes to count you should be an active registrant or, or whatever. And that is totally flexible to however you set up the base. You can have any conditions you want. If you just want to make sure that their email is there at all, that's fine too. But. The end result is that you should be able to have as many backlogged votes as you want, but keeping it with only the most recent submissions.

[01:02:59] And then, of [01:03:00] course, you could build a dashboard off of it. And I'm still only counting four valid votes. And then slapped together dashboard. You could see what was the most voted on. Session for each category. It's pretty unexciting because we don't have that many people that filled it out, but hopefully you get the gist.

[01:03:20] Dan Fellars: Very cool. All right, Chris, we'll make sure this is available for this year's dare table. Awesome. Thank you, Kamille for sharing. Very cool solution for that. And that concludes today's episode. Thanks again, Stefan and Hugo for joining us and Kamille as always. And we will see you. Thanks so much for having us.

[01:03:44] OUTRO - 01:03:45

[01:03:45] Thank you[01:04:00] 

[01:04:02] for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out our sponsor, OntoAir Backups, automated backups for air table. We'll see you next time on the Built On Air podcast.