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‎Jan 09, 2025 10:56 AM
What I'm after *should* be easy. I have spreadsheets of information that I manage informally. The rows of each spreadsheet are records that would ought to filled & updated by outsiders. Obviously there's a limit to how much we can do via Google Spreadsheets -- I can't assign ownership to each row. So it seems like this is where people upgrade to AirTable.
So here's the things I need, beyond what I see in the demo tool:
- It's a fair assumption that the first row is the field name. The second row is my description / help text. Can the import tool support that?
- Data is often never as primitive as we like. Is a map type supported? This could be edited through the form.
- I need to broker access to each row. I'd like to click on each row, "assign to group", and then email the owner of that group; they can then manage access for others who would update that row. How would they be charged? I imagine I should have to pay something for that access, but not $20/month, maybe $1.
- Maybe they mis-entered a field value, and our fancy AI validation didn't catch it. As the app (and total data owner) I want to one-click a field and send a note to the row owner, saying for Field X, you wrote Y, but we're looking for Z, and here's the link to update it.
- Data definitions evolve with time. Let's say I (as the app owner) wishes to change a field definition or add a new field. We all know how maddening that is in the SQL world, but, in my ideal world, I want a notification going out to data owners like the above. (example: I'm doing a vendor comparison sheet, and I'm keying in pricing details in text, and eventually convert it to a map)
- Export the data structure so that data owners can supply their data directly via JSON. 🙂
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‎Jan 10, 2025 07:49 AM
@JonnyGarf
Regarding question 1:
- Your row 2 help text would be used when initially setting up Airtable's fields. When creating each one, you'd click "Add description" and paste in the help text.
- In Google Sheets, you'd delete row 2, and then download as a CSV. In Airtable, the CSV import extension will match your CSV's row 1 column names to the Airtable table's field names the best it can (column and its corresponding field named identically is the easiest way). But you can also manually match them.
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‎Jan 10, 2025 08:42 AM
thanks, that's helpful!
Now to get insight for the rest of the questions.
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‎Jan 10, 2025 12:41 PM
2. There are no direct map field types, but one could say that the key-value data points could be translated to field-value pairs instead. Hard to know if this would suffice without a clearer understanding of the full scope of the project.
3. The cheapest option Airtable currently has for guest seats is $8/month. Using a third party tool like Softr would likely allow you to distribute management and access permissions in a closer manner to what you're looking for.
4. You can definitely create automations and/or extensions for this.
5. Afaik, there is no system built into AT for this. There might be functionality/tools for this in the Enterprise plans that I'm not aware of though.
6. I think you'd need to bring in third party tools to handle this.
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