2/18/2025 – BuiltOnAir Live Podcast Full Show – S21-E07

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In This Episode

Welcome to the BuiltOnAir Podcast, the live show.  The BuiltOnAir Podcast is a live weekly show highlighting everything happening in the Airtable world.

Check us out at BuiltOnAir.com. Join our community, join our Slack Channel, and meet your fellow Airtable fans.

Alli Alosa – Hi there! I’m Alli 🙂 I’m a fine artist turned “techie” with a passion for organization and automation. I’m also proud to be a Community Leader in the Airtable forum, and a co-host of the BuiltOnAir podcast. My favorite part about being an Airtable consultant and developer is that I get to talk with people from all sorts of industries, and each project is an opportunity to learn how a business works.

Kamille Parks – I am an Airtable Community Forums Leader and the developer behind the custom Airtable app “Scheduler”, one of the winning projects in the Airtable Custom Blocks Contest now widely available on the Marketplace. I focus on building simple scripts, automations, and custom apps for Airtable that streamline data entry and everyday workflows.

Dan Fellars – I am the Founder of Openside, On2Air, and BuiltOnAir. I love automation and software. When not coding the next feature of On2Air, I love spending time with my wife and kids and golfing.

Show Segments

Round The Bases – 00:01:40 –

Meet the Creators – 00:01:41 –

Meet Drew Whatley.

I’m an educator and tech enthusiast who started using Airtable to automate workflows as an over-burdened Museum Educator. I turned my handy utilization of a tool into a new full time role as a data specialist overseeing a social services database. I’m passionate about using technology intelligently to help make work more efficient in an often traditionalist sector.

Visit them online

Industry View – 00:01:41 –

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the Non-Profit Organizations Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your Non-Profit Organizations organization established in Airtable.

We'll explore using Airtable to gather, maintain, and share social service information, with a focus on the utility and advantages it can provide for non-profit organizations.

Click Here

A Case for Interface – 00:01:42 –

Explore Interfaces with “Large Table Management”.

Kamille will walk through how to use multiple detail pages to show all fields in a large table.

Full Segment Details

Segment: Round The Bases

Start Time: 00:01:40

Roundup of what’s happening in the Airtable communities – Airtable, BuiltOnAir, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Segment: Meet the Creators

Start Time: 00:01:41

Drew Whatley –

Meet Drew Whatley.

I’m an educator and tech enthusiast who started using Airtable to automate workflows as an over-burdened Museum Educator. I turned my handy utilization of a tool into a new full time role as a data specialist overseeing a social services database. I’m passionate about using technology intelligently to help make work more efficient in an often traditionalist sector.

Visit them online

Segment: Industry View

Start Time: 00:01:41

Airtable for the Non-Profit Organizations Industry

Learn all the ways you can use Airtable within the Non-Profit Organizations Industry. From pre-made bases, apps, automations, and custom bases, we’ll show you how to set up bases and get your Non-Profit Organizations organization established in Airtable.

We'll explore using Airtable to gather, maintain, and share social service information, with a focus on the utility and advantages it can provide for non-profit organizations.

Click Here

Segment: A Case for Interface

Start Time: 00:01:42

Large Table Management

Explore Interfaces with “Large Table Management”.

Kamille will walk through how to use multiple detail pages to show all fields in a large table.

Full Transcription

The full transcription for the show can be found here:

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Built On Air podcast, the variety show for all things Airtable. In each episode, we cover four different segments. It's always fresh and different and lots of fun while you get the insider info on all things Airtable. Our hosts and guests are some of the most senior experts in the Airtable community.

[00:00:26] Join us live each week on our YouTube channel every Tuesday at 11am Eastern and join our active community at BuiltOnAir. com. Before we begin, a word from our sponsor, On2Air. com. backups. Onto where backups provides automated air table backups to your cloud storage for secure and reliable data protection, prevent data loss and set up a secure air table backup system with onto air backups at onto air dot com.

[00:00:50] As one customer, Sarah said, having automated air table backups has freed up hours of my time every other week. And the fear of losing anything. Long time customer [00:01:00] David states, OntoAir Backups might be the most critical piece of the puzzle to guard against unforeseeable disaster. It's easy to set up, and it just works.

[00:01:08] Join Sarah, David, and hundreds more Airtable users like you to protect your Airtable data with OntoAir Backups. Sign up today with promo code BUILTONAIR for a 10 percent discount. Check them out at ontoair. com. And now let's check out today's episode, and see what we built on air.

[00:01:36] Dan Fellars: Welcome in to the built on air podcast, episode seven of season 21, getting close to the end of the season. Good to be back with everybody. Got a full house with us, Ali, Camille, and myself and special guest drew Watley welcome drew. Thanks for having me. Good to have you with us. We're going to learn more about drew and his story and background later on in the show.[00:02:00] 

[00:02:00] I'll first walk us through what we're going to be talking about. The built on air podcast is a hour long show every Tuesday. Keep you up to date on everything going on in this world. We start with our round the bases of all the news and updates and all the different communities and what people are talking about.

[00:02:16] Then we will shout out to our sponsor onto where and how you can sign up and get your backups going and then Drew will talk a little bit about him, hear his story and background and expertise. Then he's going to walk us through how he uses air table in his world of nonprofit and how air table can be used for that will show us his his base for organizing data.

[00:02:43] Then talk about how you can join our community and be a part of us if you're not already. And then finally, Camille is going to walk us through interfaces, how to manage large data within a large table, lots of fields, how you can break things up to organize better [00:03:00] a large data set. So with that, are around the bases.

[00:03:04] A couple things we'll talk about. First, there was one new update. This was one that was not leaked in our community or anybody. Probably not the most exciting of feature announcements. But if you are an enterprise user and you need to have your own custom legal terms that people need to agree to before they get access to your assume this Just on sign up.

[00:03:32] I don't think this is per base, but basically in the admin section, you can, you can add your own custom terms and services. And then the user has to agree to them as they sign up. So exciting. You guys all antsy to use that one.

[00:03:53] Kamille Parks: Sure. 

[00:03:54] Drew Whatley: I wonder if it relates to the portals, like trying to roll portals portals out, you end up with more [00:04:00] outside users in enterprise environments. Yeah, 

[00:04:04] Kamille Parks: because you, you can't have a separate terms or series of terms for external users as, as far as air table defines external users. So that would make sense.

[00:04:17] Alli Alosa: Absolutely. And with all like security compliances and stuff like that for larger companies, like the, the no code space has some catching up to do to like allow for a lot of those you know, audits that you might have to go through. So this is probably useful in those cases, which is very cool. 

[00:04:40] Dan Fellars: Yeah, that's my guess as well.

[00:04:42] I assume this will be part of the portal process as well. So anyways, if you need that, that's now available for enterprise scale and higher. Next one from LinkedIn. We talked about this last week. If right after the show, [00:05:00] actually. Yeah, right after the show you can go on over to Airtables community and Ben Green, who was on the show last week, will be leading a discussion for the marketing user group, Airtable basics to advanced interfaces for marketers.

[00:05:16] So kind of taking a live demo moving from just the data layer and then how you could migrate that into the interface layer. So that will be right after us. And next one, this is a little bit technical, but a little bit interesting came across this last week. So react is like the main platform or main UI library.

[00:05:42] That's very common in the development world and what air table uses for not only for its own app, but also for custom extensions. And the The team behind the, the, the software framework is getting rid of this create react app, which is kind of how you [00:06:00] manage things. And basically saying there's better alternatives to use.

[00:06:04] This is interesting because if you've built custom extensions, this is how Airtable custom extensions rely on this approach. So I'd be curious to see if they will migrate to something else. Because they have not done a whole lot of. They haven't given a whole lot of love to their custom extensions.

[00:06:25] So I'd be curious to see what they do. 

[00:06:29] Kamille Parks: Yeah. Separate from this in the community. I believe it was Justin was actively editing and extension and notice that Chrome's security. As they chrome keeps updating itself, it adjusts certain security flags, and one of them was required to develop an air table extension, just the way that they configured it, and it made it pretty difficult because it was like a moving target, and this, this seems like another moving [00:07:00] target for developing extensions for air table.

[00:07:03] It's, it's an external, external. Change in configuration, but that has direct impact on what you can do without figuring out some work around. 

[00:07:13] Dan Fellars: Yeah. So, yeah, and this, we also use this at onto where we were actually already in discussions of kind of doing a an upgrade. So this, this puts more pressure on that.

[00:07:25] So we'll be doing that on our end. So that's kind of interesting. There's just more details on alternatives you can go to if you're using. Create react app. Okay, next one softer kind of as they're evolving. There was a big write up in tech crunch about how they've evolved to be more than just air table.

[00:07:47] You can now use them. They've always, I think, or for a while they had Google sheets than maybe one other, but they're really expanding their, their sources. Tomorrow. Now you can go straight to Postgres [00:08:00] or I think my sequel. Bunch of other sources. So softer is definitely expanding beyond just their table 

[00:08:11] Alli Alosa: and they're adding their own tables as well eventually, which will be Really interesting.

[00:08:17] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Similar, Glide did that as well. Glide has their own Glide tables. 

[00:08:23] Alli Alosa: So Zapier now, and Stacker did a while ago as well. Yeah. 

[00:08:27] Drew Whatley: Yeah. I remember when JotForms added tables to their application, and I was just like, I already have a table. Like, I do that. 

[00:08:36] Alli Alosa: It 

[00:08:36] Drew Whatley: did make it a little confusing. 

[00:08:39] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how everything shakes out and how this plays out, but definitely It's kind of interesting how it used to be everything would try to work together and then you could piece it together and now everybody wants to be, which makes sense from a business standpoint, they don't want to be dependent on another business.[00:09:00] 

[00:09:00] As they, as they grow. So yeah, definitely interesting. 

[00:09:06] Alli Alosa: I've found it really useful in stacker to be able to create records and have like tables in stacker that don't necessarily live in air table. Just if it's like fields and fields as well, you can create fields within just stacker which is really nice.

[00:09:22] Cause like, if it's something that's like, Oh, it's, I need to just format this field specifically. Just for the purpose of displaying it on the portal, I clog up my base field, just in stacker, which is great. 

[00:09:36] Kamille Parks: So 

[00:09:37] Alli Alosa: that's kind of how this is going to work. I'm super excited. 

[00:09:39] Dan Fellars: Yeah. Yeah. The downside is, well, and by design that they like that because you're more locked into their platform.

[00:09:48] Can't easily switch. So, yeah, that's something to be aware of. Yeah. One more from this was kind of interesting. Last week we talked about some of the AI [00:10:00] builders and one of them that we mentioned was Bolt. I think Lovable was the other one we mentioned. And this is interesting. Somebody is trying to use Bolt, which is basically a AI UI builder, and they're trying to replicate the UI of Airtable.

[00:10:16] And they're like, Bolt isn't quite there. This right here shows you kind of what it's come up with. Not quite to Airtable's level. So it'd be interesting if like, if AI, if you could just say, replicate Airtable, and it builds the whole UI for you. I don't think it's quite there yet.

[00:10:38] They're making efforts. This is not built from the their AI. This is just a screenshot of their table. Yeah. Moving on to to the built on air community. This is a nice little trick from Russ talking about doing an AI [00:11:00] review of an outbound message in like your CRM system. So basically. Doing an A.

[00:11:06] I. Review of the email that goes out and A. I. Is actually finding grammatical errors in the email going out. So just kind of a nice little trick of like you could use A. I. To to quality control your, your, your data. And yeah, so that's a nice little trick there. One more. This was kind of cool.

[00:11:28] Charles, based off of last week's episode with Ben talking about how to use AI for writing your scripts, Charles built up the confidence to to put that to work. He used deep seek and used an existing script. I think this air table junction. I think that's in the marketplace. If I remember correctly, But it didn't have the ability to use a view to limit what was getting linked.

[00:11:56] And so he wanted to insert a view, so he basically just copied that [00:12:00] existing script and told AI, Enhance this to incorporate a view filter. And it was able to do that, so that's kind of cool. There's the code if you're interested. Alright here's one from Reddit.

[00:12:20] Airtable guide. So master source reference sheet. So somebody that does coding and shared kind of some, some quick master source details. So it goes through all the concepts, but then it gets into how to do things. So if you, if you want just kind of a cheat sheet. Or air table. This link will be available.

[00:12:42] It gets into even some code snippets. So if you just kind of want a quick reference guide to understanding air table, 

[00:12:52] Kamille Parks: that's nice stuff like the web hooks one. I feel like common enough where that just [00:13:00] that basic structure, you could probably adapt into a lot of different use cases.

[00:13:09] Dan Fellars: Okay, next one. This is from table forums. This is kind of interesting. So this is talking about air table forms and the nuance of it's kind of nice. It will remember if you, if you fill out a partial form, but you don't submit it, it will remember the information on your local computer your local storage.

[00:13:31] So then if you like close the tab and then come back to it, what you have already filled out will still be saved there. But there's this nuance where he's saying they have like, he has like a table listing in an interface and you click on a button and it takes you to this form and it will like, if you click on another record, it will pre fill some fields.

[00:13:57] But then it will remember the fields [00:14:00] that you had saved in your local storage, but those could have been to a different record. So you have like this mismatch of data and it's kind of annoying and you have to click the clear form to reset it all. I don't know if you guys ran into issues with that local cache.

[00:14:18] Kamille Parks: No, but now I'm worried. 

[00:14:22] Drew Whatley: I haven't run any issues with local cache on forms, but like a lot of embedded stuff. I wish there was a way to just turn off caching, like where I have a calendar view embedded in a website and it keeps remembering that I had flipped it to March at some point and I just want it to always be current.

[00:14:40] And I don't feel like there's a way to do that without filtering it through a different software. And yeah, I just, some of the caching. Operates in quirky ways that I don't seem to be able to get at

[00:14:54] Kamille Parks: for the form. Maybe if you have URL parameters, it should ignore the cash just [00:15:00] across the board. Just that, you know, you know, 

[00:15:04] Dan Fellars: running does for the fields that you have. You are parameters. I think in this case. There was like long fields, there was like a combination. 

[00:15:13] Kamille Parks: I would prefer it do one or the other.

[00:15:16] Like if it knows some of them are pre filled, just assume that the other field should be blank. 

[00:15:24] Drew Whatley: Oh, well, and I see Scott has Viewed this, so I'm sure he made the comment, which is one of the forever rules of Airtable is that go use, fill out. Yep. 

[00:15:33] Alli Alosa: And fill. Exactly. But fill out, actually I ran into a similar issue and fill out, but there is an option to shut off the storing of those.

[00:15:45] Partial submissions. And that's actually a good thing to note is that if you do have that on so it can be useful in some cases, but if you have it, if you have the toggle on, which it is on by default to allow users to resume their [00:16:00] submission, if they've left the form and then came back to it, if you make any changes to the form or it's still there, Ex rather to data that is being displayed in the form from other records.

[00:16:14] Like say it's a signup form for a an event and you show once they, once they select the event, you show in like a banner what the date of the event is. If you change the event date in the base, but somebody has a partial submission that they haven't submitted yet and they go to resume it. That's not going to show you the updated date.

[00:16:36] It'll only go back in time to where it was at when that person started the submission. So, it can cause big problems. 

[00:16:46] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. 

[00:16:48] Alli Alosa: Yes. 

[00:16:49] Dan Fellars: Very cool. So yeah, that's, and yeah, definitely the answer. Is fill out. It was interesting. He was, he asked chat GPT and they said, try, try add this URL parameter, but [00:17:00] that does not work.

[00:17:02] For air table forms. That's one of the things with with AI. It may give you suggestions that aren't true. All right, last one. I don't know if anybody else ran into this, I guess last week. There was a bug or something where ctrl F wouldn't wouldn't get you into the search box and apparently other people were running into this and So wouldn't bring up the search inside of a inside of a base, but it looks like it got fixed so if anybody sometime last week was not able to search your base They must have been playing around with something and overrode that, that short code.

[00:17:48] Alli Alosa: Oh, that would have driven me crazy if I noticed it, but I didn't. I, one thing I have noticed that's really driving me insane is I used to, if you double click on a field to like edit the configuration [00:18:00] and then rename it, I used to be able to just hit enter or return on my keyboard and it would save it.

[00:18:06] That, I can't do that anymore. 

[00:18:08] Dan Fellars: Oh, interesting. 

[00:18:09] Alli Alosa: It's driving me, it's really slowing me down. Cause I, I used to like, you know, type, enter, type, enter. And now I have to click the save button. And I'm like, 

[00:18:18] Kamille Parks: ah. There's also, I feel like depending on what interface page you're on, there's a search, there's search in there.

[00:18:29] But if you hit control F, it'll do like your browser's find in page. So like control F works, I think. It should work universally within the data layer, but within interfaces, it's, it doesn't quite play nicely with the cert blocks there. 

[00:18:49] Dan Fellars: Yeah, yeah, very true. But that does come in handy. Alright, that concludes our updates on everything going on this week.[00:19:00] 

[00:19:00] And if you are running your business on air table, best practice is to make sure your data is stored externally outside of air table and not rely just solely on air tables. Back up. That's where onto where it comes in. You can back up your data to box, Dropbox, Google Drive or one drive. And you can also back up all of your attachment data, all of your metadata, all of your record data.

[00:19:25] And also be able to restore it back into Airtable. So check it out onto air dot com, use promo code built on air for a discount and start backing up and rest easy knowing your data is backed up at night. Okay, with that drew make you big here. So give us a little bit of context who you are, what you're up to, what your background is and how you came into the world of Airtable.

[00:19:54] Drew Whatley: Yeah, certainly. So I'm Drew Watley. I'm the lead resource data specialist with [00:20:00] Opportunity Council in Bellingham, Washington. Opportunity Council is a community action agency. So it's a non profit started in the mid 60s to try to, as part of Like LBJ's War on Poverty. So it's really about delivering services to folks who are in need.

[00:20:14] So, but I've been working in non profit fields before this. I originally came to Airtable as an education manager at the local museum here. Because when you're doing museum work, you have like a hundred different hats. And I needed some way to automate my workflow so I could do all those, spin all those plates at once.

[00:20:32] And so, like, incorporating Airtable let me actually, like, run our docent program and book all our field trips and schedule all our field trips and, you know, thing on thing, track all of our attendance statistics, stuff on top of other stuff. I actually came to Airtable because I was overhauling our guide, like, our guided tours program and sign up genius.

[00:20:54] And I was looking for a very specific feature [00:21:00] in like being able to have our older leaning tour guides be able to sign up for multiple tours at once. And like all of the scheduling software I was running across like Calendly, you would have to like. Resubmit over and over and over again and I was able to build my own scheduling interface or scheduling set up with air table that they could schedule like five at a time.

[00:21:25] So that's what got me into air table. But I moved all of our tour bookings and field trips onto Airtable and in the process kind of became a little bit of like a local Airtable expert. And then it turned out that our local community action agency was hiring for an Airtable, for a database admin, specifically Airtable focused.

[00:21:47] And I was like, well, heck, I basically do that. So that's how I ended up in this role. 

[00:21:54] Dan Fellars: Did you have any formal technical training or background? 

[00:21:58] Drew Whatley: Nope, I have a Bachelor of [00:22:00] Arts in History and a Master of Arts in Teaching History. So, I just like tech things and I like tinkering around and Airtable is at that perfect layer of just, you can tinker around and figure out a bunch of really cool stuff to do.

[00:22:13] I still haven't yet made the jump into like learning JavaScript for the scripting components. I still kind of just like poke around there. But all the formula stuff the interfaces automations. Really make it an amazing no code, no code tool. And so I was able to get a lot accomplished.

[00:22:29] Dan Fellars: Any favorite kind of features or experiences working in Airtable? 

[00:22:34] Drew Whatley: I mean, just there's, I can think of a lot of different answers to that question. I will say one of the coolest ones I stumbled across was the URL checker script. If y'all remember that one where it will, because I keep a big long database of URLs and need to occasionally check if they're active.

[00:22:52] And so having that URL checker script that will just ping it and say if it's a 404 or not is super duper cool. That's a really [00:23:00] small one that I think is awesome. And yeah, just again, the ability to build out these systems in a way and make them all flow however I want to is super handy.

[00:23:10] But nowadays I kind of help manage the data side for a human resources directory or not human resources. That's the wrong term. Social services directory. It's a better term. 

[00:23:22] Dan Fellars: So real quick before we jump into that favorite or wishlist item, is there something you're like? I need Airtable to add this.

[00:23:31] Drew Whatley: I mean, there's a million, I mean, there's always a million things that you want. I really wish we could collaborate a little bit better without having to pay for as many seats because working in nonprofits, like I will say, Airtable's nonprofit discount is super handy. And I've used it at multiple different spots, but at the same time, a hundred and.

[00:23:50] 44. A seat is still prohibitive if you're trying to do certain things and the portals are still kind of prohibitive. So I wish there was some [00:24:00] ability to provide comment level seats without having to pay for every individual user. I mean, I get the economics and then another thing that we were actually just talking about before we went live is I wish the air table universe was a little bit like was maintained a little better.

[00:24:16] Because I, you know, I'm a, I work for nonprofits. We try to share. We don't hide, you know, date stuff away. So I want to put stuff up on the universe to share. And it's hard to search. It doesn't feel updated. It's not really like it just feels like hasn't been touched in 5 years or more. And so I really wish they put a little bit more oomph behind the universe sharing capabilities because as you know, this podcast and the community show, like there's a lot of really cool stuff that people who use Airtable like that make and they wanna share.

[00:24:51] But it's kind of hard unless you are in the slack for onto air or not onto air onto built on air. Yeah. Which is the plug for the Slack [00:25:00] channel. There you go. 

[00:25:01] Dan Fellars: Yeah. 

[00:25:02] Kamille Parks: Very true. 

[00:25:03] Dan Fellars: Awesome. Any questions, Camille or Allie, before we jump in? 

[00:25:08] Alli Alosa: No, I 

[00:25:08] Kamille Parks: totally agree, though. 

[00:25:09] Alli Alosa: The 

[00:25:09] Kamille Parks: universe needs some love. I put something on the universe recently, and I had to have a whole separate testing session to be like, What comes with a universe now?

[00:25:21] Because, you know, there's, interfaces are new, and automation's at a, at a Some point in time didn't come with it and it's it doesn't feel updated to your point. It's really not 

[00:25:35] Drew Whatley: and like I just learned because I've been trying to do some automations come with it, but they don't come turned on. Exactly. So, like, the, the user document I have that goes along with this whole thing.

[00:25:45] I'm going to show, like, the 1 of the 1st setup steps is turn on the automation.

[00:25:53] Dan Fellars: Awesome. Bring this back up. Cool. So as you mentioned, you've been in the [00:26:00] nonprofit world for a while and have some expertise on how Airtable works in that. So you're going to show us some of the tricks of the trade. Bring your screen up. Okay, you're on. 

[00:26:12] Drew Whatley: So as I mentioned, like I really do love Airtable's like nonprofit pricing plan, like 144 bucks.

[00:26:18] You get a lot of bang for your buck. That's 

[00:26:20] annual, not monthly, 

[00:26:22] right? 

[00:26:22] Dan Fellars: Okay. 

[00:26:23] Drew Whatley: Yeah. They charge it annually and they'll prorate it so they don't they don't give you the monthly option for non profit pricing or for the discount at least. The specific one I'll talk about today is kind of how we're upgrading the way we maintain and store data for our social service directory.

[00:26:38] So this is kind of the front end of our social service database. We work with a partner, Connect 2 1 1 who orchestrates the data out of Airtable and formats it. So this is. The whole idea is we keep a running tally of organizations and services that provide benefits to our local community.

[00:26:57] So the food, the local food banks, and you can click on [00:27:00] food banks and you can see all the food banks in our area. All of this is hosted on the backend in Airtable in this big you know, well, it's not that big honestly, but this multi table setup. And this is the version I inherited. Which is of a certain, like it works with the way all the data is supposed to be formatted, but it doesn't take advantage of a lot of what Airtable offers.

[00:27:26] And so over the last few months here I've been working with a couple of our developers to really take advantage of what Airtable, like implement, make sure it fits the same standard, but then using some of the advantages of Airtable to further the way this works. So we've kind of reformatted in order to help a whole segment of people because the other thing is a lot of this is for folks who do not have a lot of time and don't have a lot of experience beyond a basic Google sheet or Excel sheet.

[00:27:59] [00:28:00] Like I am kind of I have a luxury of having a role in which I can work on development of this, but a lot of people were sharing this with a lot of partners who are trying to maintain resource lists. Do it. An hour here, two hours the next week. They don't have time to dive deep into the way all these things are set up and orchestrated.

[00:28:20] And they're doing four other projects. So, this is kind of meant to be a really basic level, but then have some advanced level features, because I wanted it to have advanced level features. So it's kind of splitting the, splitting the baby there. So we added Interfaces to be able to control everything through interfaces because the previous version was only at the data layer.

[00:28:42] So just a simple, you know, dashboard hub. I really do like the dashboard concept that they added. I think it's really helpful for, you know, being able to communicate to partners really easily. So we've got all of our different links to the different pages here. Then we've got resources and we've got add, [00:29:00] edit, verify and import.

[00:29:02] So you've got different interfaces to add a new resource, to edit an existing resource,

[00:29:08] To do verifications because that's one other thing that we're really one of the big projects behind this is like trying to federate data about social services and feed it all into kind of a group that they can distribute it elsewhere so that like we're up in Washington State. But we're a local community in Washington State, and the idea is to eventually get to a point where we learn about our local resources, we input them into the system, and then it federates up to the Washington 2 1 1, the bigger statewide org for getting people connected with services.

[00:29:41] But part of that is communicating and tracking when we last made sure a service was available, so that information's not out of date. And so there's a whole verification workflow that's set up. And then there's also, and this is one of the more fun things to me this import version. [00:30:00] So, this whole standard is a data standard, so it, you know, breaks everything out into multiple tables of data objects.

[00:30:07] But again, we're working with a lot of folks who are used to just putting things on a single row in an Excel spreadsheet. So, we wanted to make it approachable and then be able to convert that into data. So, this is essentially a single row Excel spreadsheet. Where people can put the org name, the service, their description, et cetera.

[00:30:27] And then at the end, there's a transform button, and this is where I pulled in automations to generate all of the relevant data objects out of this one sheet. So basically, they put it all in, and when they click check button, when they checkmark it, then it pops it into all of the different tables where it should be.

[00:30:47] So it creates an org record, it creates a service record, et cetera, et cetera. So there's that. And that's one of the really approachable components. The other part that is really useful for [00:31:00] especially smaller groups is I added these search interfaces that people can just plug on to a web page.

[00:31:06] They can just embed it. Because you can embed Airtable interfaces these are three different versions just an overall. A list by the various providers, you know, organizations like the Poison Control Center or the Humane Society, you know, what does the Humane Society do? They do spay and neuter assistance.

[00:31:24] And then here is all the information for it. And then we also have taxonomies, like categories. So, you know, what community garden resources are there and all of these can be plugged in, can be, you know, searchable, although, as mentioned in the previous round in the base, if you try to control F with this embedded, it'll like, wig out a little bit on you but you can still use the search features and just embed this in a website.

[00:31:50] And that way, again, Less technical users can get the hurdle of getting this embedded on a web page once and they don't need to worry about [00:32:00] getting to the webmaster to update the links and update the information about like, because especially a lot of these are governmental folks too. And it's like, 4 months later, you finally get county it to come help you with updating this link.

[00:32:16] And now it's how the 1 you needed updates already expired. And so it's a easy way to plug that in and make it kind of go. Then if you go to the data layer you can see we've got all the different tables here. So that's all been a lot of like bringing people on board. The thing I really wanted was to be able to express a lot more specific granular data.

[00:32:37] Because when I'm thinking about this kind of stuff, a lot of it is like, you know, the library runs, you know, rents out rooms at these three different locations, but not at this fourth location. And it's hard, the way it's previously set up, it's hard to express that. Or like the hours are different at this library versus these other four libraries.

[00:32:58] And so we [00:33:00] were able to incorporate this service at specific location table that then Can use custom names and custom descriptions that like will import the generic one. But then if I don't like that, if it's something different, I can just type whatever I want in and it'll overwrite it. And so that's all formula based.

[00:33:19] So 2 1 1 Washington 2 1 1 is redundant. So I just want this to say Washington 2 1 1 instead of that combo. Come on, buddy. It's still syncing. Oh, oh yeah, of

[00:33:41] course, anytime you demo, it wants to, there we go so it can just automatically update names and titles. So I can change it. How tweak it. However, I want to tweak it, which is the like. special sauce from the data management perspective that I wanted. So, yeah. We [00:34:00] also use Airtable to run an event calendar.

[00:34:02] It's a really simple setup incorporating fill out forms to, like, you know, embed a calendar, fill out form to populate the calendar. And kind of do events because they're a lot more transitory rather than services which are ongoing. So we use Airtable a couple different ways, but this I think is, is really cool.

[00:34:19] I've been really working to try to make it approachable as well as powerful. And the reason I started. Talking about my complaints about the Airtable universe is because it is up on the Airtable universe. If you can find it I've had a heck of a time searching for it We can share the link. I will definitely put the link in some place If you are interested in it but It is up So, yeah

[00:34:50] Dan Fellars: What has what, what challenges, how, how has adoption been, have people been able to generally pick this up or have there been challenges with [00:35:00] getting people to adopt it? So 

[00:35:02] Drew Whatley: right now we're working with a partnership of like early childhood coalitions like, and what's been really interesting is we've given this older version to one or two groups that didn't really pick it up.

[00:35:17] Right. They, you know, the data was really messy. I actually transitioned their data into the new format two weeks ago. And it was like, I did a bunch of data cleanup because it was not properly formatted. it kind of showed there was a bit of an onboarding issue. And right now we're just finalizing this version.

[00:35:34] So I keep, and of course, this is the way of things. Like I always find new things to add. Like anytime I talk to someone, they're like, well, can we export the data to share with the bar? I'm like, yeah, I can build an export. So but we're kind of in the process of updating it. But like, I think.

[00:35:51] Bringing people on board has shown a lot of has given me a lot of ideas about the necessity of onboarding. We created like a [00:36:00] 10 page Document like Google Doc read me for this whole thing And I'm also like pretty hands on bringing people on at least initially to make sure that they Kind of get it because, you know, as like when you get into this and you can spend two hours, three hours digging through the base like you get it, but when you only have 15, 20 minutes here and there to interact with it, then it's like you need it really guidelined.

[00:36:27] And that's the reason for the interfaces to because the previous version didn't have any interfaces. 

[00:36:33] Dan Fellars: Gotcha. And then have you seen have you seen other like partners or something asking about this and like. Picking up their table themselves. 

[00:36:42] Drew Whatley: Yeah. I mean, you know, I mentioned that kind of the coalition we're working with.

[00:36:47] The other thing is, this is all part of a bigger a bigger push from open referral to create, as I mentioned, kind of this federated data. You know, data universe. So to get all of social service data in the [00:37:00] same format so that then it can be, it can be shared. And one of the things with Airtable is a lot of these human services formats.

[00:37:08] Prior to a couple of years ago with Airtable, like you would pay 10, 15 grand a year for bespoke systems of bespoke data systems to keep that data, verify it, you know and the fact that's a 144 bucks a year rather than 15 grand is a huge difference and makes it a lot more viable for, for folks and You know, that pricing is one part of it.

[00:37:33] The other element is because Airtable, it's online. So you've already made the jump from a siloed Excel document that just one person has that isn't online, versus Airtable, now the data is online and it's in a proper format. Then the next step is figuring out the APIs and the permission structure. to send the data up.

[00:37:52] But at least it's online. At least it's there and can theoretically be accessed as opposed to being in again, [00:38:00] somebody's, you know on somebody's C drive in a Excel 2000 file. Nobody looks at. Very cool. 

[00:38:11] Dan Fellars: Awesome. Any Any future enhancements, kind of road map or anything else that you're looking to add to it?

[00:38:17] Drew Whatley: Right now I'm just adding stuff whenever I meet with EC says, whenever I meet with partners I like, I'm just like, Oh yeah, we should add that, you know, we should be able to search by service area. So there's little tweaks here and there. This I'm, I'm hoping to kind of get pushed out and then I'm going to start looking at the categorization because our categorization we use is.

[00:38:35] pretty old. And it's not the greatest. And so I want to overhaul the cat organization, but that'll be a whole nother big bucket of worms. 

[00:38:44] Dan Fellars: Nice. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Drew. We'll move on. And so yeah, so the website in case, you know, it's pretty specific to, to your neck of the woods, but if people want to check it out, what's [00:39:00] the website?

[00:39:01] The 

[00:39:01] Drew Whatley: website is whatcomresources. org. And that's our directory. Social service directory. So if you do need something in Bellingham or one of the surrounding communities check it out. But then also again, if you want that kind of database system, it is on the universe and I will share it, you know, either in the chat or on the the slack channel.

[00:39:19] Dan Fellars: Sounds great. Thank you drew. Awesome. If you want to join our community with drew and many others, we have thousands of air table users in the built on air community. Join us built on air. com slash join. We'll get you in. It's free to join. Also sign up for our newsletter. Keeps you up to date on all the news going on.

[00:39:38] Also subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on all the socials. Love to have you as part of our community. Yay. Camille is going to walk us through interface design with large data fields. 

[00:39:55] Kamille Parks: Yeah. So this was. [00:40:00] This is kind of inspired by a problem that someone on my team at work ran into, in that the base he was building was very large and complex, and there was one particular table that had a trillion fields.

[00:40:16] AirTable's default maximum fields per table is 500, but the maximum number of fields you can display on an interface page, I think it's 200 for reasons unknown. So we didn't know that. We just assumed you could put all the fields on an interface and it would just be slow if you had 500, but that wasn't the case.

[00:40:37] So his problem was it had. You know, hundreds and hundreds of fields for a reason, and all of them were relevant, and he needed to show all of those fields in one way or another. So, there's a couple of ways that you could end up doing that. You could split a record into multiple records across different tables and that would, that would let you [00:41:00] segment your fields by, like, type or category or whatever breakdown would make sense.

[00:41:06] And while that works, we weren't Too keen on separating them into a different table for a variety of other reasons that had to do with how that data was connected to other bases in our ecosystem. So the question was, could we maintain 1 table with multiple record pages, depending on what information you wanted to see?

[00:41:29] And the answer was yes, but it did take a little bit of finagling in order to get it to work. So I'm going to do my best to explain the general process of what we did. So first things first, this, this base, this table has very few fields in it just for simplicity sake, but If I open up a particular record, you could see there's some information about this record that is related to a person, and some that are kind of like [00:42:00] finance related fields, and then some fields that are related to cars.

[00:42:05] So if I wanted to split this one record into multiple detail pages by its by the topic, I would want to break it down into those three different groups. So, one way to do that, if I go back to my data, what I've done is I've included a linked record field that links to itself. So there's an automation on an ongoing basis that just says whenever the self linked field is empty, go ahead and fill in the self linked field with its own.

[00:42:39] Airtable record ID to make sure that those are always lockstep. That way we don't have additional tables where I'm splitting up this one record into many records. I just have one record linked to itself. And because this is a linked record field, that means in interfaces, I can now start To [00:43:00] break up that interface that detail page.

[00:43:04] So if I scroll and I look at the list view, the thing that I'm first clicking on to open up one of the detail pages you can see I'm opening up something called record detail. And if I click into one of them as an example, I'd be able to rename this a little bit more easily. So I'm going to call this.

[00:43:23] Overview page, because we're going to end up making multiple different detail pages about this one detail. Page if that makes sense. So first things first, I need something to click on. So I'm going to get my self link here I'm just going to get it on the page and I'm going to say allow me to click into record details But I don't want to click into overview page.

[00:43:50] I want to create a new Layout so for this I'll say personal details and with [00:44:00] that, I can add just the few fields that have to do with the person. So all of these fields are relevant. And then I can

[00:44:15] just give some names along the way so I know what I'm looking at. And now I have at least in the working implementation, I can get rid of all those fields I added to that one detail page. I have this sort of broken out and this doesn't look pretty and we're going to make adjustments to make this work or at least look a little bit better.

[00:44:40] But that's the general idea that we want to go with. The next thing. To do would be, again, you want to plan out in advance how you want to break up your table if you're trying to do something like this. So I know what the next two I would want to do would be all the finance stuff. And then the car ones go into their [00:45:00] own interface page.

[00:45:02] And before I do that, I want to adjust this to be a view and I want probably a list view is probably the best I can get it. And what I have done is I've made a few helper fields. So The reason I've done this, and if I look at the data layer, just so we can see, these are just formula fields. They all say the same thing.

[00:45:28] Open personal details open finance details, open car details. So you can get an idea of how I'm going to do this for the other for the other groups as well. I did this because I wanted readable text that wasn't just the same name of the record again and any field could have done. However I just, I, I felt that this would work a little bit better if I said what I'm about to open.

[00:45:53] And if I take away the name your table, let me do that. [00:46:00] When we launched this implementation that I was describing earlier we were able to not have any title for this section. I don't think Airtable will let us do that anymore. So I think this has to say something, which is unfortunate. I just wanted this one line that says open personal details.

[00:46:19] And because this is a list view. This doesn't have to say helper one. I could just say open, for instance. So playing around with exactly what this looks like your mileage might vary and in terms of what you personally prefer. But what I'm going to do is now I can just duplicate this section.

[00:46:40] And instead of showing helper one, I can say helper two. So I have different text being displayed, and then my record details, instead of doing personal details, I want to do yet another layout, and I'll call this finance details. [00:47:00] And then, same thing as before, I'm going to pick the fields that are relevant.

[00:47:05] So card type, currency, stock. And

[00:47:15] then I would do that one more time for the car details and by doing this, it allows me to keep if I had more fields on this record, I would be able to keep just the ones that are, to like all the different segments of this record. So any high level fields that you'd want to show up top, but you can leave all like the specific details in these separate detail pages.

[00:47:45] So this would be just the car ones.

[00:47:55] Okay. So I think I have them all in here. And then the last thing [00:48:00] would be swapping out helper two for helper three. So if I publish this now, this is what it would look like where, if I open up a particular record, I'd be able to pick which segment of the record is relevant to me. So, if I want to open up the finance details, I can click this and just get, The finance related fields for that same record that we clicked on.

[00:48:27] So this is really useful. If you have a lot of fields, and I'm talking hundreds of fields that people still want to look at a lot of times. I have very complex tables with. Like 25 or so helper fields that someone never needs to see. But if you have a lot of fields that you do need to display on an interface, I do find that this is nice in that you can keep your data structure the exact same and with a little bit of finagling [00:49:00] control what the interface experience is.

[00:49:03] So, having Very specific display of what these fields look like. It's also helpful for permissioning. So if I go back into edit, depending on what plan you're on, you can conditionally hide these interface groups and instead show a different one. So if I'm a manager, for instance, versus just a teammate of somebody.

[00:49:28] I might want to have a different detail page design for managers than I do teammates. So I could conditionally hide. This section and instead have another one detail page. So there's a lot that you could do with doing something like this. But again, you're kind of beholden to what Airtable allow you to do in an interface, meaning you got to give each of these a name that is helpful for you.

[00:49:53] Otherwise, in my case, they'll all just say self link. 

[00:49:58] Alli Alosa: I love this. This [00:50:00] is, yeah. Super, super cool. It's so funny. A friend of the show, Alicia, came up with almost exactly the same hack and she had showed me this a while back and I was like, you should show this on built on air. I was like, great minds think alike.

[00:50:16] So shout out to Alicia. And also like, this is just so creative. I like it. Like I said a couple episodes ago, it's like bending Airtable to your will and linked record fields. 

[00:50:28] Kamille Parks: Yes, there's, there's so many different ways to do basically what I've done. You don't necessarily have to convert them into view like I did.

[00:50:37] You could have just left it at the field and controlled like the preview fields that are available. And I guess I'll just show that. Self link, I could just have left it like this, but if I changed the visible fields to, you know, first name and last name, and then renamed it on here as [00:51:00] personal, I could do that.

[00:51:02] And if you're trying to open or add new fields from inside of one of these groups doing it from here is a little annoying because Airtable assumes you only want. That field on the page once, but you can, if you do it directly within the group, you can add the same field again. So, same thing, it's just what visual do you prefer in this list kind of thing or in Airtable's kind of default.

[00:51:32] Drew Whatley: Rather than the popovers, can you use the list hierarchies to nest? a self linking record. I haven't ever tried it. 

[00:51:40] Kamille Parks: Well, let's just see. I will start with just this one. We're going to change it into a view again and click into here so I can get hierarchy. Interesting. Am I crazy? Is it not here? 

[00:51:55] Alli Alosa: I think it's probably because it do you have any other links to any other tables?

[00:51:59] Maybe it just now. [00:52:00] 

[00:52:00] Drew Whatley: Yeah. And I was thinking more on the top level, like rather than inside the popover, like having like your personnel and then drop down nested underneath to say the car details. 

[00:52:13] Kamille Parks: Okay. It doesn't want me to do that. So I could do nested records, but you could see that doesn't do anything.

[00:52:18] So air table doesn't like my attempt at doing what you're describing, but I do feel like that would be helpful. Because I think it's a little less janky visually than this because we're always only showing one record, right? If we had multiple records, it wouldn't look as, you know, silly, I guess, but Again, there's pros and cons because for each of these sections, you could add a description and this is rich text.

[00:52:43] You could have links and whatnot. Again, you can control which fields are shown here. So if I still wanted to say, show me the first name and last name, I could still do that.

[00:52:58] Alli Alosa: I wonder the [00:53:00] one thing that I'm still just don't understand why it's it is this way, but with the side sheet. detail layout. The URL is a base 64 encoded string. If you were to formulaically like try and get to this side sheet versus if you do the full page, it's just the record ID. So one, one thing you could do to get.

[00:53:27] Around this in a similar fashion is you had a table or even just several formula fields of the links to the detail pages that are full page. They have to be full page. That's the copy. You could kind of do something like that, but, 

[00:53:40] Kamille Parks: yeah, so yeah, I'm only sharing one tab, so it's a little difficult to see what you're describing, Allie, but so I'm going to try and do it.

[00:53:50] Do it along. So URL formula. That's what the URL I'm given when I [00:54:00] have the. interface page as a full page layout. So what you're describing would be something like this where you would put in the correct record ID, of course. And then for each detail page that you've made in my case, I have. For the overall, and then the three breakout ones, you would have a URL that takes you to the specific the specific one that takes you into that particular detail page.

[00:54:30] So I would call this URL one or URL two or give them more helpful names since I know what each one should be. But that's another way to do it. And then on the. If this were a button field on this page here, I could have just a couple of different buttons here and turn off click into record details.

[00:54:49] That's another way to do it. So you would click directly onto the detail page you want. Right. 

[00:54:54] Drew Whatley: Isn't that just perpetuating people having 700 open Chrome tabs though? 

[00:54:58] Kamille Parks: For sure.[00:55:00] 

[00:55:02] If you're going to have an implementation where you have that many fields, and again, this is all predicated on, you actually need to look at them. I can't stress that enough. There's so many, there's so many cases where I have 200 something fields and the people who are in there in the day to day, like doing their jobs, With that data, they look at about 10, but on the off chance that you do need all of them sometimes you might want different tabs just to keep it all straight.

[00:55:36] Cause there's a lot of, depending on what you're doing, there's a lot of information that goes into making up one object as far as air table is concerned.

[00:55:49] Dan Fellars: Sorry. Cool. Alicia, Alicia says, I wish air table would just introduce native tabs in these interface pages to save us the hassle of these workarounds. 

[00:55:57] Kamille Parks: Yep. There's a lot of [00:56:00] strides forward. I think Airtable makes in making interfaces pretty user friendly, but there are little things where I'm like, I shouldn't have to build this.

[00:56:09] This seems silly. And yet here we are. 

[00:56:15] Dan Fellars: It was very nice hack that self link the power of the self link have a whole show on secrets of the self link. 

[00:56:25] Kamille Parks: I want that to be the name of a session at a dare table. Yeah. 

[00:56:32] Dan Fellars: There you go. That would be a good one. You've got your next episode. Awesome. Thank you, Camille and Drew.

[00:56:39] Thank you for joining us. Glad you could be with us. Thank you everybody for joining us and we will see you next week. It'll be our final episode of the season, so be sure to join us. Next Tuesday at 11 a. m. Eastern, have a good week, everyone.[00:57:00] 

[00:57:10] Intro: Thank you for joining today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out our sponsor, Ontoware backups, automated backups for air table. We'll see you next time on the built on air podcast.