Skip to main content

Hello! I’m new to Airtable and could really use guidance on structuring a base to serve as the central hub for our content production and management. Currently, we use Asana for task management and Airtable as a content calendar, but the workflow between them is clunky and inconsistent. I’d like to consolidate everything into Airtable in the name of consistency, efficiency—and my sanity.

Current Workflow Challenges

  • Articles: Articles are manually brought into Airtable only when it’s time to promote them, not immediately after being published. However, articles are often updated later (e.g., older articles being rewritten or reviewed). This creates inconsistencies because updates in Asana don’t always sync back to Airtable.
    • Rewrites: Older articles that need rewriting go through a full workflow in Asana (essentially the same steps as creating a new article).
      Reviews: Recently published articles will get a second review a few months after publication. This review process is managed in Airtable but in a separate base, adding complexity.
      Using Zapier to automate moving records between Asana and Airtable is an option, but it feels like an unnecessary workaround if everything could just live in Airtable.
  • Podcasts: The workflow here is simpler. When a podcast episode is published, the associated newsletter and promotional reel are published on the same day.

Goals

  1. Consolidate everything into Airtable as a single source of truth.
  2. Streamline task management and ideally eliminate the need for Asana.
  3. Track and manage the full content lifecycle, including creation, updates, and promotions.
  4. Ensure tasks and workflows are easy for team members to interact with, using Airtable Interfaces if needed.

I plan to have three managers accessing the base (content manager, podcast manager, and myself) and use Interfaces for contributors (video/audio editors, writers, graphic designers, etc.) to update fields, attach assets, and check off tasks.

Questions About Base Structure

  1. Content Table:
    1. Should I create one table for all content (e.g., podcasts, articles, newsletters, etc.) and use views to segment them?
    2. Or is it better to have separate tables for different types of content (e.g., one for podcasts, one for articles)?
    3. If I go with a single table, how would this impact task management?
  2. Task Management:
    1. My idea is to have a tasks table and a task templates table to generate recurring tasks. Would it make sense to create separate task-related tables for different content types (e.g., podcasts vs. articles), or can everything live in one?
  3. Workflow Automation:
    1. Are there best practices for automating recurring workflows or generating task templates in Airtable?

I’m looking for a simple structure that’s easy for both contributors and managers to use. If you’ve worked on a similar project or have ideas for the most efficient setup, I’d greatly appreciate your insights!

Thank you!

Yes, you would typically want to keep all of your content in one table, unless there is some compelling reason to separate the content. (Simply filtering would not be a good enough reason).

With multiple tables, you would likely end up with an inefficient & redundant database that would end up creating vast amounts of unnecessary work for you and your team.

While you could use views to segment your content, using interfaces would be even more efficient & powerful, because interfaces give many more ways of filtering content than normal views do.

Yes, you would want to create a tasks table and a task templates table to generate tasks. Just like above, you would not want to separate different content types into different tables.

You mentioned Zapier in your post above, but if you require external automations, I would STRONGLY recommend against using Zapier. Make is INFINITELY more powerful & customizable than Zapier, yet Make is SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER than Zapier. I wrote an entire post here comparing Make vs. Zapier. 

Hope this helps! I have created many advanced content production systems for clients, so if you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld 

re: Content Table: Should I create one table for all content (e.g., podcasts, articles, newsletters, etc.) and use views to segment them? Or is it better to have separate tables for different types of content (e.g., one for podcasts, one for articles)?

Hmm, how many distinct fields does each type of content have?  If they mostly overlap, e.g. they all only have an 'Assignee', 'Due Date', 'Notes' fields for a simple task management system, then you could use a single table, yeah

If each type of content has very distinct field types (and thus different workflows), e.g. maybe Podcasts has 'Guest', 'Host', 'Studio', and Newsletters have 'Call to action link', 'Open rate' etc, then it might be worth considering keeping them in different tables instead, does that make sense?

If you're not sure, just stick'em all in one table for now and see how it goes; if it's an issue it'll become pretty apparent and you can split them out later if needed!

---

re: Content Table: If I go with a single table, how would this impact task management?

I'm imagining each Task record in the Tasks table would be linked to a single Content record, so this should be fine?  Do you have any specific concerns about this?

---

re: Task Management: My idea is to have a tasks table and a task templates table to generate recurring tasks. Would it make sense to create separate task-related tables for different content types (e.g., podcasts vs. articles), or can everything live in one?

A single tasks table makes sense here as the fields should be the same for each task, regardless of what type of task it is

---

re: Workflow Automation: Are there best practices for automating recurring workflows or generating task templates in Airtable?

For task templates, check out Record Templates: https://support.airtable.com/docs/using-record-templates-in-airtable

Similar to using the Task Templates table you mentioned, but are easier to set up and you can put in relative dates easily

If you could talk more about the recurring workflows bit I'd be happy to suggest something!  If this is in relation to the second review of articles, you could try using a formula field to calculate the second review date using the 'DATEADD' formula with the article publishing date, and then use an automation to trigger off of that formula field?

Thank you for these suggestions.  

I'm struggling with an automation - can't figure out why it's not performing as expected. I would be super grateful for any input / solutions. Thanks in advance for your help. 

You can view a testing base here: https://airtable.com/appvus4mpIsM95P1S/shrcfwha5Sx1NEui9/tblM14K1tnORLbItG/viw5UJ3Ap5GhYSjcX

Please see the Content, Tasks and Task Templates; and the view titled "Podcasts (To Do + In Progress)" in the Content table, specifically.

See screenshots for the automation logic. The idea is that when the podcast status on the Content Table is updated to "In Progress," the automation will generate a set of tasks for that episode. The automation looks for records in the Task Templates table under the Podcast View and creates duplicates of those records in the Tasks table.

For some reason the automation is creating extra records in the task table and I can't figure out why.

I also can't figure out why the date dependencies I have set up for "Start Date", "Deadline", "Duration" and "Predecessor" work as expected in the Task Templates table, but when the automation creates the records in Tasks table, those same dependencies no longer work. To see what I mean, if you look at the Start Date, Deadline, Duration and Predecessor in the Task Template table, you'll see the dependencies are working. But if you look in the Task table, you'll see the first 7 records are the random ones being creating that I can't figure out why. And if you fill in a date for Assets Uploaded, the date dependencies no longer work. It seems like the date dependencies don't work because of the extra records being created.

Here is the automation logic:

When a record matches a condition
Content Table
Status is In Progress
AND Content Format is Podcast
AND DEV | Task List Generated is "unchecked"

Update Record
Content Table
DEV | Task List Generated to "checked" - NOTE: I'm using this checkbox to prevent the automation from creating duplicate tasks in the episode status moves in and out of In Progress.

Find Records
Task Template Table
Based on View "Podcasts" - NOTE: I've also tried to use Conditions here

Repeat for each in List of Record
Create Record
Tasks Table

Reply


Terms & Conditions