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Base Design

Need help with your Airtable base design? You've arrived at the right place.

  • 3,293 Topics
  • 8,117 Replies
3293 Topics
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SarahVFRFNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Dependencies in parallel

Hi everyone, I’m setting up a project management base with dependencies between tasks. I have two questions: In some cases, task 2 can begin before task 1 ends, but the completion of task 2 does depend on the completion of task 1. There will simply be some overlap in when both start (e.g. parts of task 2 can be started before task 1 begin, however until task 1 is completed, task 2 cannot be fully done). I have set up the dependency as Task 1 → depends on → task 2. However, this then shows up as an error: Task 1 begins before Task 2 ends. Is there a way around this? What happens when you have some dependencies in the same table that are predecessors and some that are successors? Thanks a lot in advance!

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GulfViewCabinets
GulfViewCabinetsNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Google Calendar Sync Issue: 1-day all day events with no times span 2 days instead of 1

We recently updated our AirTable interface to sync directly with our google calendar. We deal with scheduling out many projects across multiple calendars with subcontractors and we use all day events to do so. When I tried to sync our calendars without incorporating times, all of our all-day events were extended out by one day (ex: All Day Event on 7/8/25 in Google Calendar would translate to Start/End: 7/8/25 → 7/9/25 in AirTable when times are excluded). I’m assuming that this stems from Google Calendar and AirTable having different “all day” time functionality. Is there a way to fix this? Here is the result I’m looking for:All Day events syncing from Google Calendar to AirTable exactly as shown on Google Calendar (ex. All Day Event on 7/8/25 in Google Calendar has a Start/End Date of 7/8/25 → 7/8/25 on AirTable) No times in the date fieldPlease keep in mind:We are currently on the Teams plan for our level of permissions. We are not using automations for any of our date creation. We

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ScottWorld
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bitstreams_redKnown Participant
asked in Base Design
How to normalise after import

Please excuse the long explanation..I have a spreadsheet showing some factories producing a number of products. For the sake of the example, let’s assume that the factories are the primary records and the products that they produce need to be split out in to a linked table.So the source spreadsheet looks like this:Factory City Country Product Acme Tools Denver USA Spanners Acme Tools Denver USA Screwdrivers Western Hardware Paris France Spanners China Supply Shanghai China Hammers China Supply Shanghai China Screwdrivers  I can create and import this spreadsheet in as a new table called Factory.But I don’t want duplicates in the Factory table. I want to have a Products table that would look like this.Product Factory (linked) Spanners Acme Tools Western Hardware Screwdrivers Acme Tools China Supply Spanners Western Hardware Hammers China Supply  This obviously works fine, and the Factory table would only have 1 row per f

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Mike_AutomaticN
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Paradise_ParcelNew Participant
posted in Base Design
"Block" the Airtable Preview Link when sharing base

I am looking for a way to change the way that my shared Airtable base can be shown as the preview when sharing the url, instead of the generic “Airtable, everyones app platform” being shown. I frequently share the base, and people aren’t opening the base, or are wary to because they dont know what Airtable is. Please tell me there is a way to have a different preview shown? Do I need to first embed it in my website? I am open to paying, or outsourcing but I am just not sure how to start! Uploading: Screen Shot 2022-06-08 at 9.32.46 AM.png… https://airtable.com/shrbYQAOhU8YNsK99

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ScottWorld
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adehaan86Inspiring
asked in Base Design
how to Interface button go to form?

Trying to figure out how to have the Interface “Button” When clicked it will go to the form I built? Do I use external URL?

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TheTimeSavingCo
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Matt_Kennedy1Known Participant
asked in Base Design
Omni - Data Loss?

I’ve been playing with Omni.  I asked it to merge two multi-select columns.  It created an AI field, which didn’t solve my needs.  I asked it to undo and it could not.  I can’t find one of the merge fields. I’m pretty sure I didn’t delete it.  Which makes me think Omni is not super safe in terms of preventing data loss.Maybe I am imagining things.  Has anyone else accidentally blown away data while using?Thanks!

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Mike_AutomaticN
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Ariella_MessingNew Participant
posted in Base Design
Employee shift attendance tracking

Hi, I’m fairly new to airtable and having a hard time setting up what I think should be a relatively simple base. I have a staff of about 40 individuals. They only have access to the share views of two of my bases, if that is relevant (so anything they do on airtable has to go through forms). The 40 staff are each assigned between 1 and 4 shifts a week. Each day is divided into 4 shifts of 6 hours, so we have 28 shifts per week. The number of staff members assigned to a given shift varies. Right now I just have a base with two tables: staff names and shifts (listed as mondayshift1, mondayshift 2, etc.). Staff members fill out a form and select their shifts so that the resulting tables fill in. What I would like is a way to track attendance and then later, set up automations (for emails) if someone misses a shift. I was thinking I would create a form for them to fill out when they clock out, with name, shift, and then one optional question (long text). Shifts do not change from week to

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Mike_AutomaticN
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Chef TarikInspiring
asked in Base Design
Print layout from the interface

Hi  Dear Community I’m facing issues with the print layoutJust 2 days ago everything was smooth and today I hace noticed this issue with the printing layoutIt does’nt som th complete information here a copy  

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ScottWorld
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Daniela_FernandKnown Participant
posted in Base Design
Form view won't let me add a New record for a linked Table - attendance and

Hi, I need an attendance tracker for nonprofit organization that organizes different extracurricular activities throughout the year. I'm working on a generic form that the coordinators of each activity would use to report the activity, time, description/impact, and attendance. The attendance is linked to a table that compiles the beneficiaries of the different activities that are run by the Non-profit. We already have some beneficiaries or previous participants in this table and so some of the attendees are already in our records, but when we have new attendees, I would like to be able to generate a new record from a form. I am able to add a new record in the grid view, but not in the Form. I have already tried to use the link to the form, not the form builder view and it was still not allowing me to add a new record. Is this even possible? or am I missing something? The objective is to be able to have a beneficiary registry or a complete list of beneficiaries to report to ou

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ScottWorld
tiramisu
tiramisuNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Terrible new UX - please change it back to the old one!

Please change back your UX to the old one. The new one is so washed out its difficult to use!!!

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ScottWorld
Erica_Gamet
Erica_GametNew Participant
posted in Base Design
Is the new pastel look permanent?

I came back to my bases tonight to find the header colors all muted pastels. Some of us rely on the color to differentiate bases. Also, the contrast is much lower on the tables and the text on them… less accessible and more difficult to read. On interfaces, it’s still the same vibrant color… can we not retain that color in the Data view? Am I missing some setting that got changed? Also, the info in the far left (icon, help, notifications) is taking up more horizontal screen real estate. Maybe I’m the only one, but having huge changes for no benefit seems to be a bad idea for productivity. End of rant. For now. 😁

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Julie-PeriniNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Timeline: by year but not specific date

Hello! I am organizing a large amount of photographs. I often have the year but not the specific date. I would like to use Timeline view to see all these photos in their rough year-by-year order. Suggestions? The DATE field makes me list day-month-year. Thanks!Julie

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abderrahim_dibParticipating Frequently
posted in Base Design
Feedback on the New Airtable Design: Less Comfortable and No Sidebar Resizing

Hi everyone,I wanted to share some feedback regarding the new Airtable design.The new interface feels less comfortable to use, mainly because of the extensive use of bright colors and white across most of the page, unlike before. It feels tiring on the eyes during long work sessions.Also, I noticed that the sidebar can no longer be resized, which reduces the flexibility we previously had.Is there any way to switch back to the old interface, or at least adjust the colors and sidebar size to make it more comfortable?Thank you.

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Sergei_RasKar
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SebastianMNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Commenting Broken after Update

Hello,I made a CRM with interfaces that my company uses (all mobile). There must have been an update because the UI looks different. The primary concern is that when someone tries to comment on a record within their interface, it says “an error occurred” , backs out of the record to the interface, and then when you go back in to the record to click comments there is no comment. I nor anyone else at the company have touched the CRM and it was working perfectly up until this “update” - Also there are a few other issues that have popped up. Is there an explanation or a possible fix to this?

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Allen_WixtedNew Participant
posted in Base Design
Base Design for Analytics

Hi All, Struggling to get the following functionality into a base and hoping you can help a novice here. We are attempting to use Airtable to track & visualise AWS logs for interactions with our service. I the graph above I have outlined a rough schematic on what we are aiming to achieve however we are running into issues with tracking on a daily basis. I’m not sure how to structure our base so that we can gain the ability filter by day, see which products were trending, measure performance based on view count and feed that back to the client’s tag. Ideally we want to enable our clients to change a date field and see the product list re-order as such, with views, revenue etc following. We can populate the records via an API, we are just struggling with the base design.

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Mike_AutomaticN
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Matt_Kennedy1Known Participant
asked in Base Design
New Base Colors - No!

I've never been fussy about colors, but the new options for base themes are a big step backwards for me.  The old bright, bold, cheery, energetic & fun colors that made the Airtable experience feel enjoyable and different from your average boring, serious database, have been replaced by: A) a dark, dreary version (my green base now looks exactly like Excel - uugh) or a mushy pastel version (were people asking for more 'washed out' low contrast header options?).The fun bright colors were part of Airtable's experience (and brand) for me.  Is there a way to bring them back for my workspace?  

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LAMOSENew Participant
posted in Base Design
Shopify line items?

Hi guys, I am new to this… I am trying to sync my Shopify orders to airtable. If customer order 2 times, how can I separate the 2 items to 2 records instead of all jam in one? We used to manage it on GoogleSheet with zapier, and they have a function of creating multiple lines, how I can do that in airtable? Thanks xoxo

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Mike_AutomaticN
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endoftether100New Participant
posted in Base Design
TOTAL NOVICE - HAVING A TOTAL MARE!

I have spent 3 weeks importing data, setting things up, and I feel like I’m going backwards! I am trying to create a Project Tracker type base, with various functions and autonumbers, as well as a User friendly form. I have been using ChatGPT as help, but now I’m in a total pickle and have lost the will to live!!!Are there any experts out there who can just do this for me?!!!

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ChiPuppetFestNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Is there a better way to design my base? Database of Shows to be used in multiple processes for a Puppet Theater Festival

Hello!We have been using Airtable to great success as part of our curatorial process (choosing puppet theater productions from around the world to appear in our annual festival.) Now we would like to use Airtable for other processes like - assessing financial feasibility of each show, documenting production needs for shows that will be appearing in the festival, and archiving information for shows that have appeared in the festival. We also have many venues, many artists, and many countries that the artists are from and we want to track all of that easily as well. We often use forms to get info from artists directly into the Base.  The way I am planning on doing it is with - 1 Base with 4 Tables (Shows, Venues, Artists, Countries), and the Shows table has over 100 fields that are used for various stages of the workflow. And I plan on making lots of views so that people at various stages of the process only have to see the data they need.  (I had originally had two different tables with

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TheTimeSavingCo
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caseycanNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Syncing more than 20 sources into one table

In my setup, each of my clients has their own base and interface. They can submit support tickets through their interface, and those tickets feed into a synced table in my team base. I just got my 21st client and it says I cannot add any more sync sources to my support ticket table.I have the support tickets going to a second support ticket table right now, but our support team doesn’t get them in their support ticket feed. I thought maybe I could create an automation that copies the support tickets from the second table into the original support ticket table, but that won’t work because I can’t create an automation to create a record in a table synced to another source. I thought about creating a new base just for support tickets and then syncing that back to my Team Base, but then my team can’t edit the records once they get to the team base.  Is there another way to create a table that syncs all of my clients’ support tickets into one table in my team base that my team can edit?

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TheTimeSavingCo
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jmlsmNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Social Media Calendar to Clients

We are a marketing agency that manages social media calendars for many clients. We love the platform for building the calendars and sharing amongst our team BUT sharing the calendars to the clients for approval is an actual nightmare that I can't solve. 1. We have too many clients to add them as paid collaborators and not be super cost prohibitive2. They can comment but would love for them to just be able to use the direct toggle to click approved to streamline.How are you delivering your social media calendars to your clients? 

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Mike_AutomaticN
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cpospisilNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Is there a way to create a calendar using two dated fields?

right now I have two calendars for my inbound and my outbound dates. I want them both to be on the same calendar

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Sean_Lake1
Sean_Lake1Inspiring
asked in Base Design
Two tables, need to be in one

Good day.I have a “whole” staff table, with various “statuses” SOWs, Guests, and FTE.  However, a newer table was linked to the base, with “special” contractor statuses.  I need to have these “added” to the above Full Table, along with their statuses, etc.  The whole needs to be the final source as it’s used across bases.  How might I go about this?  

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Sean_Lake1
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Le Village by CA MilanoNew Participant
asked in Base Design
characters limit in "long text" questions

Hello community, I created a DB to collect startup informations through a form.To impose a synthesis, I need to set a certain limit of characters for “long text” question.I can not find a way to do it with Airtable form, so I am integrating a different tool.Nevertheless, it’ll be more practicle for us to stay inside Airtable.Any suggestion ? Best regards,Marco

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Mike_AutomaticN
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ndandavatiNew Participant
asked in Base Design
Limit Single Selecion Field While Maintaining Formatting

I have a decent sized based we’re using as a CRM. Every entry is tagged with a representative’s name in a single select field. Over time, some reps have come and gone, and I don’t want to have their names available to select for new enteries, but I don’t want to lose the data of who made previous entries. What I really wish I could do is toggle certain single select options on and off, but I don’t believe I can do that without losing the formatting that we have now, which is helpful. Anyone know a way around this? Screen shot below of what I’m trying to achieve. I do not want to use an interface to resolve this problem, as my team typically does not use interfaces that are built for them! Thanks for any advice you all might have! 

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