Software Dev Building First Airtable App Seeks Coach and Hand-Holder

[BananaShplit39]

hi all-

I have been in software and technology my whole career, but have hardly used Airtable at all. I understand data modeling, JavaScript, API’s, automation, etc. but I am smart enough to know what I don’t know - and I don’t want to invest time building out an Airtable app without someone watching out for best practices, shortcuts, and helping break through obstacles.

I have a client who wants to hire me to build out their system in Airtable. It’s a fairly simple database that will just have a few primary tables/data-types, but there will be a ton of fields to deal with. Once complete, we want to expand the system to use webmerge to produce documentation based on the data. But, that comes next :slightly_smiling_face:

For now, I would love to have someone who I can schedule a call with to:

• Look over my work and provide feedback
• help out if I get into a jam
• recommend approaches for getting things done in airtable

I think this is probably best handled on an hourly basis, but I’m open to anything. Solid communication skills are key, and also a willingness to deal with an Airtable newbie!

Any recommendations or offers much appreciated… thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I’d be happy to discuss some ideas with you, as well as getting a better understanding of how the Airtable will be an asset to your team and business. As a full time freelancer based in the U.S., I am very familiar with Airtable, Web Design, Zapier / Automations, Digital marketing and other online software.

Once we’ve discussed your vision and goals, I can then provide you an accurate price and timeframe to get the project started!

Schedule a free phone consultation via this link: www.wisedesign.co/schedule

To learn a little more about myself, please visit my website: www.wisedesign.co

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please do so here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eckline/

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,
Eric Kline

[Stephen_Cremin]

What’s language/framework do you plan to use, @BananaShplit39?

For example, I take very different approaches to working with Airtable in frontend code or command line utilities (where I’m generally importing AT as a one-off job, sometimes only at build time) than I do with backend (where I’ll have a supervised service that tracks changes to Airtable data at regular intervals).

I typically use functional languages: Elm on the frontend and Elixir on the backend. And one or the other for command line utilities depending on how important type-safety is.

[BananaShplit39]

Hi Stephen - I think you’re thinking more custom development than I’m hoping for. Generally, most of the functionality and interaction can happen within Airtable for this application. However, two significant integrations need to occur:

1. webmerge (or similar) to produce documents. This can be fairly straight forward, although there are a lot of fields to deal with.

2. creation of a simple portal/front end for clients - this will get a little tricky, but basically we want a portal where clients can log in and see details about their records, etc. it might be necessary to have them update a few things but that would be minimal. this ‘portal’ requirement is one of the main challenges of Airtable, from what I can see - once Airtable is a back-end to some other front-end, things can get strange i…e API limits and general clunkiness.

I am currently working with a client who is using webflow in front and airtable on the back (integromat in between). It works, and to my surprise it’s not all that hard to sync via Integromat. But as it grows it’ll get harder.

I can really see why stacker is so expensive - there is obvious need for something like that.