Airtable Assist / Airtable IA

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Hey @Jeremy1!

Kind of! Airtable has recently launched "Airtable Cobuilder" -see official post here.

The way in which it works is:
1. You type/prompt an insight of what your business is about, what your needs are, and what the system should include.
2. You are presented with a preview of the suggested App, to which you can make further small suggestions (e.g. include or remove tables or pages).
3. Your app is created.

Unfortunately, for the time being it does not work as a Copilot, meaning that you cannot prompt the AI to make changes on your existing system!

If you need further help to get your system off the ground, feel free to reach out via private message.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

In any case, I believe that your big advantage over Excel is that Airtable is easier to use and therefore I perhaps don't even need an AI assistant for simple things. And if yes, if it is difficult to get started for a beginner, it is clear that the Cobuilder is not ideal compared to a copilot integrated like which is now present in Excel.

But as I just said, such a copilot is, from what I understand, not necessary in Airtable because getting started, creating tables and everything that follows is easier than in excel.

In short, I will have to compare excel and airtable, the first of which is more complicated initially but the integration of copilot improves things for a beginner, while the second is easier to use, but does not integrate a "copilot" as intuitive as the one which is now integrated into excel (but integrates a cobuilder system which works in a very different and less intuitive way because it works on the basis of prompt, creation of assistant, application for a task precise, and not a simple copilot AI to ask him questions on how to achieve this or that need in Airtable which by the way I have not tried yet and therefore it may be that such an AI chat on the side is not necessary on Airtable as much creating rows, columns, moving them, making groupings, etc... is perhaps easy in airtable.

I will try it on excel and airtable to see what suits me best.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you again

Hey @Jeremy1 great question, and I see you already have some answers! 

The real question between using Airtable and Excel is - what are you trying to do? Airtable is a database that has the flexibility of creating formulas so you can action on your data like Excel, and also visualize your data with dashboards, etc. But a database is much more than rows and columns. It allows you to explore the relationship between various data points and build out more complex calculations, and create apps. 

What are you trying to accomplish with either tool? Are you running a business? Building financial models?

THANKS. I don't want to bother you and I don't want to go off topic. But in fact, as you point out, Airtable and Excel have important similarities and I am looking for this first small business that I am launching, I will need to establish databases of prospects, leads, then customers, collections, disbursements and various information on the latter with labels and categories, etc... then make average and addition calculations and relate this data and extract this data to create data analysis graphs (although on this point there is other ways to do it). In the end, fairly standard things and I hope to evolve little by little on this software based on my progress, my ideas and the possibilities they offer me.

Indeed, as I am creating my very first business and as I am alone for the moment, and as in any case I am curious about everything and I want to understand things, I must initially use various software alone, including Airtable and/or excel, or even Google Sheet (for internal accounting monitoring) and I sometimes do other things such as for example connecting my bank's digital application to Airtable using Make in order to have the receipts and disbursements directly in Airtable (or excel) and do other things like that. It's nothing extraordinary and I think I can manage on my own, but since I'm quite alone and overwhelmed by everything I'm going to have to do in the early days of my business, I'm not worth spending too much time exploring alone these software and I want to use them for their main function, each according to its type. This is why an AI assistant, an AI companion integrated into different software would always be very valuable in my case, and in general, to save time and gain confidence, like the copilot integrated into Excel which allows tell him what you want to do and he accomplishes the task.

However, I have not yet tried Airtable but I have only heard good things about it and as I am cautious by nature and do not know, perhaps wrongly, if I will be able to perfectly do everything I want to do in Airtable (but it seems that the handling is simple), I just said to myself that it would be great for beginners and even for experienced ones, that certain software, like the copilot in Excel, integrates these as often as possible. AI companion which allows not only to ask questions, but even more to carry out a task for you after having clearly described your needs to the AI ​​assistant.

So, in any case with certain software like Excel which is not easy without training, this can be of great help. Your API is undoubtedly simpler to use and this would perhaps not be useful for your API (which I have not yet tried) to create basic databases, and ultimately my message is that I doubt my abilities to be able to do certain things and that I said to myself that most software today, easy or not, because this is relative because some have a little more difficulty with computers, should ideally integrate these AI assistants, such as the Excel copilot, because it can help when you are stuck and even in certain cases it can open up perspectives. I recently asked the same question to the Make software employees because here too, I am dreading having to use this software, but I know that it is essential that I use it to automate certain things (for example, connecting my bank in line which now offers integrations with Make to Airtable and many other possible things).

In conclusion, I wrote to you maybe a little without thinking, because I imagine a lot of APIs like yours could integrate these AI assistant solutions, AI agents, but they do not do it either because they judge that everything the world can get by on their API without an AI assistant, or they cannot integrate these AI agents for financial reasons, agreements, rights with AI companies. So this possibility of integrating AI into different software is something that interests me because even if some software does not require a companion, an AI assistant, for others like Excel it is clearly useful. But I don't know at all if this would be useful on your software which I haven't tried. But as I am not extremely talented, I told myself that whatever happens, for people like me an AI assistant could only be beneficial, or even for more advanced people to do more complex things or open up their perspectives. .

Sincerely.

I’ve been using Airtable for a while and found it to be super helpful when organizing data and projects. It’s flexible, and I like how you can create different views to make things look how you need them. I’ve also recently started exploring Airtable IA, which adds a nice layer of automation to make things easier. It helps me stay on top of tasks without getting too bogged down in the details.

If you’re using Airtable with Outlook, I’d recommend checking out copilot for outlook. It makes managing emails and calendar invites much smoother, especially when juggling a bunch of tasks in Airtable. I’ve been using it to automatically update my Airtable base with meeting info directly from my Outlook calendar.