Best Practices Advice

[Krista_Mahan]

We are loving Airtable so far and getting ready to add some new users for our company! We are hoping to put together a “style guide” or best practices guide so that we all keep our bases, options, etc. consistent. Do you know if a template for something like this exists or is there a way to create a base that would work like this for us? Or, what does your company do to ensure bases work efficiently?

[Zollie]

That’s a good question. I don’t know that there is a singular standardized way of communicating/enforcing best practices through the platform. But there are a number tools that might help:

• Field descriptions
• Form helper text
• Required form fields
• View visibility & configuration
• View locking (with or without passwords)
• Permissions
• Blocks

Here are some admin standards that have helped me with complex bases:

• Use concise, full words for naming (rather than abbreviations) to keep bases easily readable
• Try to avoid creating views that require horizontal scrolling
• Also try to avoid grouping too many fields (3 max, but ideally 1-2)
• Favor views that are focused on the major tasks being done (such as importing, editing, project management) rather than multi-purpose views with tons of fields
• Assign people to the lowest permission level that they’ll need
• Encourage people to duplicate, then change views to “personal” by default
• Check who your billable users are monthly in case a user added someone to your base
• Use formula fields to combine/summarize a number of fields at once. For example: