Hi,
I’m looking for a file-linked or import-only table so that we can regularly push data from our CRM into our Airtable project management app without having to manually re-import the CSVs every day.
It would be nice if we could schedule import or cause the re-import/update to be triggered whenever the CSVs are changed.
-Donald
@Katherine_Duh: How are you getting the CSV import block to remember your field mapping for future imports? That only seems to happen for me if I don’t need to import a CSV with a different set of field names afterward.
My main request would be if AirTable would let you actually save a mapping of field names, so you could load it later, saving time and preventing errors. I don’t need a full automation of CSV import, but that would help greatly.
Zapier doesn’t solve the issue for me because the size of our CSVs is too large for their 100/record/time rate limit, and we don’t have a Plan to cover the number of Tasks/mo. that would be needed.
Do AirTable staff ever review and reply to feature requests?
I’ll look into this further. For now, I don’t have much familiarity with the Scripting Block, since I’ve never developed in Javascript except for display-layer on websites.
Note that I had started working on a mapping between a SQL database and my AirTable Base using the server-side node.js API prior to Scripting Block being released, but my data model has changed since then, so it would be ideal if I could define and save some kind of mapping - like you can when doing a CSV import in Salesforce, or setting up a Zapier Zap to import to AirTable from Sheets.
It’s really not that different. The biggest change is to learn the interfaces into your Airtable tables, records and fields. There are basic functions that allow you to read the records and access the field values. Once you get those basics down, you are just doing every-day javascript stuff to create the process and perform the steps for the app.
Yes, when you install your first script block, you will see the documentation which includes a number of good examples.
@Bill.French: Thanks - I did see some of the examples in the scripting block, but they looked fairly basic, and I didn’t see one that would interface into the CSV import block, or else create a way for me to do CSV imports. But I may need to look harder.
Well, CSV imports are achieved typically by reading the file from a web location (like Google Drive) or from a field that pulls in an attachment via an Airtable form. There’s no way to access existing blocks from the script blocks so you need to write the block in a way that performs the entire process.
I’m pretty sure you could read the CSV documents from a field in a table and then perform an import into another (or same) table.
and… the entire table/field schema is accessible in script blocks so you could create detailed mappings and then sustain those mappings in – wait for it – Airtable itself. :winking_face:
Ok, I did see an example that lets you pull the schema via Scripting Block. So yes, I could create a meta-table so that others besides me could revise the mapping.
