We are loving Airtable so far and getting ready to add some new users for our company! We are hoping to put together a “style guide” or best practices guide so that we all keep our bases, options, etc. consistent. Do you know if a template for something like this exists or is there a way to create a base that would work like this for us? Or, what does your company do to ensure bases work efficiently?
Style Guide, Best Practices Handbook, etc?
That’s a good question. I don’t know that there is a singular standardized way of communicating/enforcing best practices through the platform. But there are a number tools that might help:
- Field descriptions
- Form helper text
- Required form fields
- View visibility & configuration
- View locking (with or without passwords)
- Permissions
- Blocks
Here are some admin standards that have helped me with complex bases:
- Use concise, full words for naming (rather than abbreviations) to keep bases easily readable
- Try to avoid creating views that require horizontal scrolling
- Also try to avoid grouping too many fields (3 max, but ideally 1-2)
- Favor views that are focused on the major tasks being done (such as importing, editing, project management) rather than multi-purpose views with tons of fields
- Assign people to the lowest permission level that they’ll need
- Encourage people to duplicate, then change views to “personal” by default
- Check who your billable users are monthly in case a user added someone to your base
- Use formula fields to combine/summarize a number of fields at once. For example:
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