Skip to main content

It’s a big day here at Airtable. Today, we’re sharing a bevy of new tools so teams of all sizes can accomplish more using Airtable. 🚀


We’ll share a few posts here in the community to cover all of the features that are officially launching today. To start, I have some exciting updates about new Sync functionality below.


External source syncing



External source syncing enables automatic—and continuous—synchronization from approved sources. Once that data is brought into Airtable, many new possibilities emerge. For example, marketing teams can sync in a list of top accounts from Salesforce for campaign planning.


With this feature you can now sync data from Google Calendar, Jira Cloud, Salesforce, and Box. If your company relies on any of these services, this feature can contribute to some massive time savings by removing error-prone manual updates.


Salesforce


Automatically pull a business object (contacts, leads, accounts, etc.) report from Salesforce into a table on an ongoing basis via Airtable Sync. This is currently in closed beta for Enterprise users; if you have an enterprise account, contact your CSM for details on how to get access to the closed beta.


Google Calendar


Send Google Calendar event information directly into your Airtable marketing base. Use this to sync content or campaign calendars that are managed in Google so marketing teams can action the data in Airtable.


Learn more about Google Calendar external source sync →


Jira


Sync Jira issues found in filters to an Airtable base. This is helpful for tracking issues, teams, projects and more using a single Airtable base as your source of truth.


Learn more about Jira external source sync →


Box


Send Box file information (URL, attachments, etc.) directly into an Airtable view. This is typically used by marketers who are tracking their content pipeline in Airtable and are collaborating with a design team who is hosting their creative using Box.


Learn more about Box external source sync →


Multi-source sync



We’re also making it possible to sync multiple external or internal sources right into one view. We’re calling it multi-source syncing, and it’s a streamlined, enterprise-ready way to aggregate, monitor, and execute against critical information. It’s perfect for complex collaborative tasks, like transforming data from different teams into a consolidated company roadmap or creating executive rollups of communications activities across business functions.


Learn more about multi-source syncing →

Wow! Huge improvements! :cowboy_hat_face: 🏇 🙌


Question: When syncing external sources to a destination table in Airtable, can you edit those records within the destination table in Airtable? Or, does this act identically to syncing internal sources, where we can only edit the data from the source?


This works just like syncing from an internal source, where data is edited only in the source.


This works just like syncing from an internal source, where data is edited only in the source.



Great, thanks for the clarification! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

Will the Salesforce integration be available on other plans as well when it’s out of Beta?

Will the Salesforce integration be available on other plans as well when it’s out of Beta?



As of today, it’s going to be an enterprise feature once it’s out of beta.


As of today, it’s going to be an enterprise feature once it’s out of beta.


Too bad, we’re a small company but we do use SF and this could have been useful to us.

Too bad, we’re a small company but we do use SF and this could have been useful to us.


@TFP I agree that it would be nice for this Salesforce syncing to be opened up to Pro Plans as well.


I know this isn’t what you were hoping for, but Airtable’s automations do have some limited Salesforce integrations right now. You can create or update records in Salesforce, based on an Airtable trigger.


Also, you can create your own advanced custom syncing process between Salesforce & Airtable by using Integromat’s excellent Salesforce & Airtable integrations:






p.s. I am a professional Airtable consultant and a Registered Integromat Partner, and the Integromat links contain my personal referral code. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert consultant to help you with custom syncing between Salesforce & Airtable, please feel free to contact me through my website at ScottWorld.com.

@Jason It seems like the “sync source option” as described in this support article is not available. Was this feature removed?


The support article says this:



The Sync source option allows you to see where the synced data is coming from. When this option is toggled on it will populate your destination table with a new field that shows the name of the view source that each record in the synced table comes from. When you create a new sync, this option will default to being turned on.


@Jason It seems like the “sync source option” as described in this support article is not available. Was this feature removed?


The support article says this:



The Sync source option allows you to see where the synced data is coming from. When this option is toggled on it will populate your destination table with a new field that shows the name of the view source that each record in the synced table comes from. When you create a new sync, this option will default to being turned on.




We’re investigating a bug that may be related to this - I can update you here once we know more!

Hi @ScottWorld,


This turned out to be a feature that didn’t make the launch, but will be available in the product soon after some more internal testing. Sorry for the confusion!


We’ve also removed mention of it in our support article for now.


Thanks for the heads up!

Hi @ScottWorld,


This turned out to be a feature that didn’t make the launch, but will be available in the product soon after some more internal testing. Sorry for the confusion!


We’ve also removed mention of it in our support article for now.


Thanks for the heads up!


Thanks for the clarification, @Jason!

@Jason I see you discuss the external sync to Salesforce being an Enterprise feature above…what plan types will have the ability to sync to Box after beta ends? Will that also be open only to enterprise plans? I had been looking at Box already, and love the idea of syncing to one of my bases, but if this will be only available to enterprise plans after beta, I don’t want to waste the time on it. Thanks!

@Jason I see you discuss the external sync to Salesforce being an Enterprise feature above…what plan types will have the ability to sync to Box after beta ends? Will that also be open only to enterprise plans? I had been looking at Box already, and love the idea of syncing to one of my bases, but if this will be only available to enterprise plans after beta, I don’t want to waste the time on it. Thanks!



Great question! The Box sync functionality will be available as a pro plan feature.


Great question! The Box sync functionality will be available as a pro plan feature.


Fantastic! Thank you!

Will the box feature eventually have the ability to pull images from box into an attachment field in Airtable? I can pull everything about the image except the image itself at the moment.


Our team is actually working on this functionality right now. From my understanding, a thumbnail image of the file (not the raw file itself) will be able to be generated in an Airtable attachment field.

Too bad, we’re a small company but we do use SF and this could have been useful to us.


Agree - this would also open up a huge not for profit market to airtable. Many nfp’s are on salesforce due to no license fee but find it difficult to make automations and use the data to its fullest - airtable fills that gap for us - but only after effectively zapping huge data sets over which has cost implications.


As of today, it’s going to be an enterprise feature once it’s out of beta.


Shame … huge opportunity in the non profit space missed by this. Using airtable as a staging table and internal tool app could massively change how non profits use airtable to increase impact.

@Jason

This is huge and I love this improvement.

I am implementing this or trying to implement this immediately; however, when I do this for my Google calendar, ranging from 2 months ago to the under of the year, only 2 events show up - one ranging April 23-27, and one on April 26. Why would the other entries, especially the ones for next week, not be appearing?

@Jason

This is huge and I love this improvement.

I am implementing this or trying to implement this immediately; however, when I do this for my Google calendar, ranging from 2 months ago to the under of the year, only 2 events show up - one ranging April 23-27, and one on April 26. Why would the other entries, especially the ones for next week, not be appearing?


@Jason I got it figured out - had a moment of confusion

Reply


Terms & Conditions