Announcing the Airtable Platform

[Jason]

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
  
  

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:

• Scheduler App by @Kamille_Parks
• Image Markup App by @Amr
• Marked Preview App by @Leo_Lutz
• Eazyfields App by @Ronen_Babayoff
• Link Records by Fields App

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

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

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 →

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!

[Ryan_Durkin]

I just set up a sync between two airtable bases. I’m now adding data in one database and waiting for it to sync over to the other. Do you know how long it will take to sync? 10 minutes? 1 hour? 24 hours? I’d like it to be instantaneous ideally.

[ScottWorld]

It will sync every 5 minutes if you set it to automatically sync. You can also manually refresh it whenever you’d like.

[Heather_Hale]

@Bill.French - Have you ever planned a conference? :slightly_smiling_face:

Having planned, programmed, presented, produced embedded events in MANY conferences (and markets: AFM, NATPE (<<<I wrote a book on these two), CES, NAB, APCA, NACA, MENSA, you name the acronym, etc.)… it’s a shitton of work to do an ANNUAL conference :winking_face: much less quarterly or monthly!

There is marketing, programming, promotion, communication - so much planning (less so, now, thanks to COVID, in terms of venues, food, parking, etc. - but also people are zoomed out in 2020!

Of course you both have the right/great ideas but don’t for a second think that the “communication” or producing of a conference is any easier or changes less often than software! LOL!

Look at the world today. Who knows WHAT will happen to live events?! :winking_face:

And even virtual - I produce a broadcast TV talk show - and all THAT has been revolutionized in the last few months, too.

Just sayin’… :winking_face:

[Bill_French]

Heather_Hale:

Have you ever planned a conference?

No, I’ve spoken at 27 of them though and served on five content development committees. :winking_face: But I don’t think that matters per-se as I’m guessing your comments are in reference to this post.

Heather_Hale:

it’s a shitton of work to do an ANNUAL conference :winking_face: much less quarterly or monthly!

No doubt; no debate. I’ve seen how the sausage has been made from the first dBASE conference in 1986 to the most recent NVIDIA GTC event last week where I presented. The people - like yourself - work tirelessly to put it together and I’m pretty sure my suggestion for higher velocity events did not minimize the effort in any way.

Heather_Hale:

and all THAT has been revolutionized in the last few months, too.

Indeed, people trying to do their best work in the shadow of C19 are struggling to learn in the the new normal. But you used a key term in your message - revolutionized. Allow me to put a finer point on tech-transfer and learning velocity in the context of events and conferences.

Despite the legacy of annual event effort and the massive coordination required; despite the serious investment in planning and venue selection; despite the intense effort to corral the experts and produce the content to make an event truly successful for attendees – there is one aspect of the no-code movement that you cannot control.

The pace of demand for innovation, learning, and knowledge transfer has vastly accelerated for soccer moms, domain experts, consultants, and big-data integrators alike. The pace for everything information-related has fundamentally changed.

I don’t know much about the world of event planning and hosting, but I do know that people - Airtable users, consultants, and enterprises - are faced with new realities concerning the ways that they work and the speed with which they are pressured to learn and show results.

Successful knowledge transfer in a post-Covid world is far different than anything we’ve experienced pre-Covid and there are a few reasons this is likely the case. I’m sure others here may be able to point out some things I’ve missed, but here are three reasons that come to mind.

1. Workers at home - especially those involved in information sciences - are 20 to 50 per cent more productive depending on the studies you happen to believe. Higher productivity has been clocked by some organizations at almost 2x pre-Covide norms.

2. No-code platforms emerged in a promising way in 2017 but pretty much hit their stride in late 2019 just before C19. Now they’re cooking with gas and this community demonstrates the knowledge-demand trajectory in stark activity analytics.

3. On any given business morning, the experts of this forum wake up to an expanding array of questions that cannot possibly be addressed in a 24-hour period. Growth of the Airtable platform plays a part in this surge, but regardless - this suggests people are thirsty for knowledge to do their best work and that thirst is clearly time-centric.

My point is simple - I’m in agreement that the world has changed. The conference production world needs to change as well - perhaps significantly - to remain valuable to people who care only about the best way to learn and create solutions.

[Heather_Hale]

Yeah @Bill.French - agreed on all points.

I have been an independent contractor / freelancer, working from home (and/or remotely “in the field" (on location, at studios, on sets, at events - wherever the work was) - for 20+ years and there is no debate from me re: the efficiencies (and life balance) of home-based work.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to live events and/or boots-on-the-ground production, it’s being transmuted everyday.

It’s an exciting - and overwhelming/head spinning time! Everything’s changing so fast! I can’t even remember all the new software I’ve had to get up and running on just since March! LOL!

So yeah, all your points are well-taken.

Thank you!

:winking_face:

[Bill_French]

Heather_Hale:

So yeah, all your points are well-taken.

And thank you for inspiring me to clarify. It’s unfortunate I was censored for what appears to be a replication of your “sh*tTon” comment. There’s nothing there that I believe is censor material, yet they mandate some changes before it can be published.

[Heather_Hale]

Your post looks fine to me.
There’s a button you can click to view the temporary flag on - and it’s all there.
I’m sure they’ll release the hold. :winking_face:

[itoldusoandso]

Thanks. # 1) This helps a bit but still would like see option to create 2x size thumbnail in the grid view. I like the grid view to go through my items quickly. I got 500 records so using Gallery view takes time unless I use search or filter (too many steps). Just option to have double size thumbnails would be enough (or double size rows). No need to have so many options for row height as in the full version. Just standard and double size would work fine. # 2) By the way - when are you going guys to fix the record editing view. I have 350 fields in my table and the majority (300-320 fields) stay most time hidden. The issue is the record editing view on iOS shows all those 350 fields, regardless whether I have them marked as hidden or not. It’s unusable right now.