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Announcing the Airtable Platform

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Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

apps

Hello Airtable Community! :wave:

We have a lot of exciting news to share today as part of our launch of the Airtable Platform. I’ll share some high-level details here in this post and also direct you to our other announcement resources that include more specific information. Most importantly, I’d recommend reading the official announcement from our CEO, Howie Liu where he covers each of our major new platform features:

  • Apps (renamed from blocks) and the Airtable Marketplace
  • Automations
  • Airtable Sync

Airtable Marketplace

A new apps marketplace for creators like you

Previously, you’ve used Blocks to customize Airtable with pre-built functionality like maps and Gantt charts. Now, with the launch of Airtable Apps, we’re renaming Blocks and expanding the platform’s capabilities by enabling creators to build their own apps fully integrated with Airtable.

We’ve also just launched a new Airtable Marketplace where you can browse and install apps created by Airtable, our partners, and creators like you. Today, you can access more than 50 available apps! And along with this, we’re excited to announce an official pathway for any developers to submit their custom app to the marketplace.

We believe that a strong developer ecosystem can solve broader, deeper problems and help teams tailor the entire Airtable experience to their specific operational and business needs. To demonstrate this, I want to highlight five apps that have been built by fellow community members:

Lastly, here’s a short video about creating your own blocks.

Ready to explore? Visit the Airtable Marketplace at airtable.com/marketplace →

Airtable Automations

Create powerful workflows with automations

Automations allow you to configure custom trigger-action workflows directly within your Airtable base. This will help your team go faster by creating custom notifications, automating redundant work, and integrating seamlessly with your favorites tools.

Many of you have already been testing Automations, and we’re pleased to share that it’s now officially available to all Airtable users.

Learn more about how to set up an Automation here

Airtable Sync

Share information across your network with Airtable Sync

The ability to share information between bases has been a top feature request from Airtable customers. Now, you can set up a table to be automatically synced from one base to another. This also means you can now link records between bases! :tada:

This brand new feature will open up countless possibilities, allowing you to create a single source of truth across multiple teams, workflows, and bases.

So, how does Airtable Sync work?

  • A view share link allows data to be synced by other teams. With the link, other teams can instantly sync data without needing to deal with exporting and importing data.

  • A view from one base can be used as a synced table in another base

  • You can manually or automatically update synced tables

  • A synced table is read-only and can be used without impacting the original data source

Browse our support articles that cover more in-depth functionality →

Have questions?

If you have a question or feedback about this launch, my colleague @Taylor_Savage and I will be responding in this topic throughout the day today. You may also want to check out a related update for developers: Custom Blocks update: Apps, SDK v1.0.0, and more.

We’re looking forward to seeing everything this community will build with these new features!

68 Comments
Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

@Justin_Barrett Coming soon, but I just removed the reference for now. Thanks!

Bill_French
17 - Neptune
17 - Neptune

@Jason, @Taylor_Savage and team - a wonderful leap forward on many dimensions.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

@Bill.French Appreciate the kind words! Our platform team did an amazing job here.

Kamille_Parks
16 - Uranus
16 - Uranus

Shout out to @Michelle_Valentine for helping me through the process of getting Scheduler on the Marketplace!

ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Very exciting announcements today!! Great job!! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: :raised_hands: :clap: :tada: :confetti_ball: Woo hoo!!!

Funny, I was in the recording studio all weekend long, recording 26 Airtable training videos, and just yesterday I had this line in my script: “Blocks should really just be called ‘apps’, because that’s what they are. Blocks are tiny little apps that we can install inside of Airtable to give us extra functionality, such as importing records.”

Looks like my Nostradamus skills are still intact! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: And now — I’m off to redo the training video! Lol.

Bill_French
17 - Neptune
17 - Neptune

They did, and more important (perhaps) is the unleashing of the market to expand with innovation, clever add-ins, and new services – all driven by incentives that encourage the freedom to establish great solutions for personal and business activities.

These steps are significant technical milestones that I (and many others in this community) have encouraged for years. But they also represent the opening of business-friendly floodgates that will likely take Airtable to far greater heights and success.

Long ago I wrote -

Please build features that help us help ourselves.

It appears you have. The greatest gift is often as simple as a fishing pole. Airtable market expansion and its ability to address hundreds of domains of expertise are about to begin and I predict it will be a great story.

Now, if we could just get you folks to open-source all the original blocks, a growing community is ready to make all of those features better as well. :winking_face: No pressure; next week is just fine.

Bill_French
17 - Neptune
17 - Neptune

Bad timing, eh? This is precisely why we need a developers partners program so you don’t get blindsided like this.

And they can be giant ones as well. But you are right - they’re apps not unlike Lightning apps in Sales Force and I’m sure many other similar approaches.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Glad we’re in sync on that (pun intended) :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Agreed! Really excited for the launch of community-built apps and everything that will come after them.

LukaszWiktor
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This is huge! I can’t wait to build an app. :slightly_smiling_face: