Auditing of columns and views in a large table

[Edd_Read]

Hello,

We have an Airtable base which has grown organically over the course of many years, including a number of different users. The main table now has nearly 350 columns, many of which are no longer being used, but it’s not clear exactly which. Similarly, there are hundreds of views that have been created over the years.

We’re looking for a way to audit which columns are used (i.e. which columns contain data which have been modified in the last few months) and which views are used within the organisation.

We can obviously survey our users, but we’re wondering if there are any clever tricks for inferring this information?

Cheers
Edd

[kuovonne]

When auditing a base I check for

• editable fields with no values in any records
• single line text fields that clearly are old backlink fields leftover when a linked record field in a different table was delete
• accidentally created fields with default meaningless names
• fields that look like they were created by duplicating an existing field
• default fields created when the table was created
• calculated fields with invalid configurations (these have a red triangle)

You can also use a last modified field to see when a field was last changed. Sort by this field to quickly get the most recent date.

Finally, many people find my Field List app useful when auditing the fields in a base.

[ScottWorld]

In addition to Kuovonne’s suggestions, you may also find this app helpful:

On2Air | Airtable Apps for Your Business Operations – 3 Jun 20

On2Air: Schema | On2Air

On2Air: Schemas generates a diagram to visualize your Airtable base structure and track changes to meta information for all tables, view, fields, and relationships. Understand and view your Airtable base configuration at a glance.