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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
Josiah_Richards
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

@Jason any update on this? Kindly

WilliamPorter
9 - Sun
9 - Sun

I believe the conference organizer (Chris Dancy) has said that he’s hoping to record everything. Didn’t sound like a confident commitment to me but crossing fingers…

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

@Josiah_Richards At this time automation actions can only create records in the same base where the automation is located.

For the screenshot you shared, the workflow there would be:

  • Trigger the automation when a record matches a condition
  • Create a record in a ‘Tasks’ table in the same base
  • Sync that Tasks table to a separate base (if desired)
M_k
11 - Venus
11 - Venus

Hi @Jason

Thank you so much for these great features!

I was so excited, I had to wait for things to cool down before responding.

Thank you to the platform team and all of Airtable, you all did a terrific job.

Well done!

Mary Kay

itoldusoandso
10 - Mercury
10 - Mercury

I like it. Now I think this better justifies a subscription. Never understood the concept of blocks. Blocks is too IT’ish lingo. Now please get your hands on the iOS app. It has basics covered but but interface needs work. For instance thumbnail size in grid view. Can’t see thumbs on iPad mini. Why not allowing set row high per view as I can do that on the web and desktop. There used to be a note on iOS saying “this feature is not available”, in the latest update you removed that text but still nothin changed.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Thank you @M_k, I’ll be sure to share this with our team!

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Glad you like the new features @itoldusoandso!

We recently rolled out gallery view on iOS, so I’d recommend seeing if creating a gallery to view those thumbnails would be helpful.

Chris_Parker
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This is really cool and it’s been great to build on top of it.

I built a PTO system a few years ago with Azure’s low-code solutions. I couldn’t have done it without those tools (Azure Functions and Logic Apps) but it was fairly rushed and is a maintenance nightmare. It’s kind of a black box that only I know how to fix.

I started building a v2 using Airtable and Azure early last year, that would have brought some significant improvements, but it got shelved for a while. I’m picking it back up now and these new Automations with Scripts has completely changed what I’m doing. It’s now even easier than before.

I think the team did an excellent job in executing this. It’s quite polished already. Really exciting stuff here.

Jason
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

@Chris_Parker This new scheduler app may help out in building your PTO system!

Chris_Parker
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Thanks for sharing. I’m wary of installing 3rd party Apps though. I haven’t done much research on them.

The PTO accrual happens on the 1st and 16th of every month. What I did was create a field that is 1 on those days (0 on others) and a view that includes records when that value is 1.

I setup a trigger for the Automation to be when a record enters that view. Working well so far during my development!