Show and Tell

When using a form, you can pre-fill linked fields in forms by using the Record ID for the record you want into a single line text field instead of the actual name, then use Zapier, IFTTT, or (my personal favorite) Integromat to update the linked field with that record ID. I realize it’s cumbersome, but you just have to have it, it works. I do this for several of my forms.

For anyone interested in Airtable scripting, I’ve added a few new posts to my blog: 3 ways to loop Getting the unique values for a field Creating a record Creating many records Enjoy!

To All The Volunteers: I would like to give a shoutout and a thank you to all the volunteers that go above and beyond, to help the Airtable members. Even with your busy lives, you still manage to find time to help. I, for one, am grateful for the many times that I received such great help. Thank you, Mary Kay

Hi all, Been using Airtable since 2018 and keep discovering awesome things everyday. One of my other ventures is building apps with no code web database tools. One of the new Airtable tools I found recently is a service called table2site (posted here before) which allows you to build websites using Airtable as your CMS. I built a site called NoCodeStudio and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Right now it’s focused mainly on Knack and Tadabase, and web design tools, but I’m planning to add Airtable resources as well. I’ll just stick this here to get it out of the way… NoCodeStudio is a community oriented collection of resources, tools, tutorials, builders, and more - specifically for no-code web database apps like Knack and Tadabase. Visitors can also submit new resources via an Airtable form. Thanks for checking it out - https://nocodestud.io And don’t forget to look a

I’m looking at learning more about Airtable and using it for my small business. This platform seems promising however a sales rep from another company (Quick Base) had pointed out the following limitations of Airtable. Airtable Limitations (according to a Quick Base rep) Limited Data Set Support: Airtable has a data limit of 50,000 records (rows) that organizations can quickly outgrow. Basic User Permissions Means Weak Data Security: Airtable has a basic user permissions security model that allows anyone invited to a workspace to view all of the info in that workspace. In addition, anyone needing to add or modify records requires Editor access which includes the ability to change and delete tables and views that may be needed by other users Lack of Reporting: Airtable lacks the ability to create reports that can be shared with management and others. Viewing tables

I’ve seen a few posts in recent weeks from people asking about how to get started with Airtable scripts (e.g. here and here). I think people are, rightly, seeing the scripting block as a powerful piece of functionality and for non-coders it can be a struggle to know where to start (I know from bitter experience!). It is all there on MDN, but even the first sentence is putting up barriers: ==== JavaScript ( JS ) is a lightweight, interpreted, or just-in-time compiled programming language with first-class functions. =

With the recent launch of the Scripting Block, we’ve been excited to see all the handy things created with it (and cool to say that @openside won a contest with this nifty script also!). So we made a central resource to host ALL the user-created scripts (code + description + source) for the scripting block and put it here. It had to be done. :woman_mechanic: Here are a few screenshots: You were wishing for a central place to find all the script-block goodness, admit it. :slightly_smiling_face:

I use tags to highlight some characteristics of records in my table. In this dataset I want to highlight whenever I have a “Stale Deal” and/or a “New Customer.” I want to use multi-select options because they’re easy to filter and chart. However, I don’t want to manually tag each select option, because there’s a formulaic way I can assess these characteristics: ‘New Customer’ = Deal Count is one ‘Stale Deal’ = Time since last inquiry is > 30 days. I’ve tried to do this via a formula and isn’t pretty to write, read, filter, or chart by. So, why not replace that formula with a script? Works like a charm: Link to the base here. Happy Scripting! /* Calculations: 'New Customer' = Deal Count == 1 'Stale Deal' = Times Since Last Inquiry > 30 */ // Loa

Hi everyone, I’ve a request, my situation is : I have a table with my customers database with name, phone number, etc. I attribute to each of them a partner. And I have a table for each partner. So I would like to know if it’s possible to put each customers in the right table of the corresponding partner automatically (using only the customer’s table) and how? Thanks a lot in advance!

When a record has multiple date fields, sometimes you’d like to know which date is the earliest. In the below example, each record is a social post that has different live dates for different channels. I’d like to know the earliest live date across all three channels. I could do this in a formula, but the ‘LIVE DATE’ field is also used by other teams, so I’d rather calculate the date with the below script (plus the awesome batchAnd script to do this for more than 50 records): Example Base Here // 🌸🌸 👇Add all the date fields you need here 👇 🌸🌸 let fields = ['Instagram Date','IG Stories Date','Facebook Date','LIVE DATE'] // Let Airtable know which table and views records you want to use let t

It’s a quiet Saturday in my office and while I should be working on a client’s project, I found myself intrigued reading the various responses to Airtable customer requests for help from consultants. Some of them had me chuckling and others were simply boring. A few even triggered yawns from time-to-time despite being hopped up on Black Rifle Coffee. This post is yet another tell, and no show. Just a few tips from an old dude who’s written about 41.8 million lines of code. I’m an analytics guy, so yeah - I pretty much know how many lines of code I’ve written since 1978. Being this old and this “seasoned” in the fine art of crafting software, I get away with saying stuff that might come off as crude or insensitive. But, my candour might also help you avoid some blind spots. Feel free to push back on these highly opinionated p

Hello All, I am looking for a good article that explains what a Airtable base is? When I look at https://airtable.com/pricing Records per Base seems to be the main difference between Free, Plus and Pro? That leads to the question, what is a Base?

Hi Is it possible to add a condition to trigger an action (like hyperlink redirection, e-mail, …) after changing the data from a specific field? Cheers, Marcelo

Just posted a 7 Wonders scoring app built in Airtable to Airtable Universe. Airtable

Hi everybody, I use Airtable as a CRM to track all my contacts and interactions. It is pretty neat that I am able to open up a contact in expanded view and view a list of interactions I had with this contact. However, I had to manually click into each individual interaction to view the information I needed. The entity-relationship is as follows: Each Contact may have multiple Interaction Each Interaction has 4 key fields namely Date, Method, Notes, Next Steps My objective was to put all my interactions for each contact into a single column for quick viewing. To set this up, I did the following steps: In the Interactions table, create a new column named “Interaction Summary” with ‘Formula’ as the column type. Create your formula as follows and customise according to your needs: Formula: “\n” & CONCATENATE("[",DATE

If you’re like me, you like to catalog things. Like, perhaps, your movies. And you’re going to want to sort them by title. Which is no big deal… until you get to all of those movies that start with “The.” You don’t really want all of them in a lump in the T section, right? You’ve gotten spoiled by programs like iTunes that somehow ignore the word “The” when sorting. Thanks to Airtable’s formula columns and string-handling capabilities, you can achieve the same effect. Let’s say you’re storing your movie titles in the Name column. All you need to do is: Look at the first four characters of the title. If the first four characters are "The " - chop them off, then add “, The” to the end of the title. Otherwise, just return the title as is. This function: IF(LEFT(Name, 4) = "The ", RIGHT(Name, LEN(Name) - 4) & “, The”, Name) does just that. Sort on this column, and you’re all set. Hide the column if you don’t feel l

With all the live-streaming meetings that my family currently has, I wanted a one week rotating calendar, where I could enter all the events for a week and the events would always show up for the current week indefinitely, without creating any new records. Then everyone could subscribe to the shared calendar in their favorite calendar app. Here is a simplified version of the base that I created. Airtable

Hey everyone, Just wanted to share with you a base that I have been working on that would match between volunteers and cases during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Please check out the video below. This base can be used by any organization/community that is looking to automate a part of there efforts to help their fellow humans during these hard times. There is still a lot that can be done and Im sure you guys with much more experience than me in Airtable would have many useful insights on how to make it better. One of the things that I cannot solve is when someone wants to use the base they would have to redo all the zaps. Maybe it would be better achieved by Script Block ? Looking forward for your feedback. BR, Mo

Hello all! Wanted to share something we’ve been working since early last year: the first and only (so far!) Airtable-themed podcast in the world. :world_map: The BuiltOnAir podcast in a sentence: we get amazing people on the show to talk about what they’re making, why they use Airtable, then demonstrate actual databases they’ve built. In addition to meeting a fellow enthusiast, as the audience you get to see real examples of Airtable at work or play, demonstrated by the creator themself. While many of the examples are actual use-cases from internal systems in their businesses, you’d be surprised how many guests share a database they built to keep track of their house plants. It’s fun. Each episode dives into the following :woman_mechanic: Who the guest is and what made them attracted to using Air

Here is a strategic vendor selection tool that I created a while back. Some of you might find this useful when comparing a number of potential vendors for a project or as a supplier of goods. Enjoy! Airtable

In light of these unprecedented times, we’ve been amazed to watch our Airtable community and champions rally, creating COVID-19 related bases in efforts to support individuals, industries, and local communities. To ensure we can circulate these resources as broadly as possible, our team will be creating a catalog of resources for re-use in our Community Mobilization category in Airtable Universe. If you’ve created a base you think others might find useful, you can share that base with us, along with best practices for use, by mentioning @airtable in your social channels (Instagram & Twitter) or by sharing the base directly right here in our community forum. You can also post the base in

Hi Everyone :wave: We tried to look for a good way to edit existing records using forms, and couldn’t find a good one. So, we wrote down all the things we didn’t like about the existing implementations and tried to make the best possible solution, so here we go: miniExtensions

Hello! We’ve all been busy enjoying the holidays, but it’s a new year and it’s the best time to get your finances in order—whether for your business or your household. We’ve seen great things come from the community forum and we want your help make better budgeting tools in Airtable. If you’ve got a great idea, please share it with us! Here’s what you need to know: Show us a great way to use Airtable to create a budget (or anti-budget). You don’t have to be an Airtable expert. Check out this template and guide for a helpful starting point. For extra credit: we’d love to see bases that use linked records,

With schools closed and many students switching to school-at-home, it can be difficult for both students and their parents to keep track of all the assignments and live online classes they suddenly find themselves having. This base blends time-tested practices used for years by many school-at-home and homeschooling families with the ease of Airtable’s available-on-any-device technology. It leverages calendar views, search block, summary block, and fun emoji to make it easy to see what needs to be done. Perfect for students who can now get Airtable Pro free for two years. This planner is simple enough that a middle school student has used it independently, yet it is powerful enough for high school and beyond. For elementary students, parents should plan to set up the assignments, but even young students can check off their own assignments. For pre-readers and emerging readers, just use emoji for

The Hidden Side of Script Block Development Script builders are forever optimists. When they hear statements like this, it’s like a red cape to an angry bull. It would be nice if the app did this simple task. We hear these words and our synapses begin to spark. Soon after the request sinks in we fly into action with every belief that indeed, it’s going to be as simple as the user described and it will undoubtedly and magically emerge from our fingers before we can type - this is a complete and utter distraction that I should have ignored. Every human on this planet is able to sing pitch-perfect just like Brittany Spears - in their mind. Likewise, developers have no trouble envisioning and writing an entire BUG-FREE program cerebrally and seemingly in seconds. Your butt hasn’t even touched the chair and you’re already writing the first lines of code, anxious and eager to see your foregone [requirements] co