Automators 24: Automating with Airtable

Episodes
21

Just needed to pat myself on the back - finally got my Airtable and SignUpGenius to do more than just move contact names around - and I am so proud of myself!

(I use Airtable to manage a large event calendar and SUG to allow people to sign up for those events - we have 3 classes of residents and a faculty and I need one from each class and one faculty, I want them to be able to get automated reminders and trade, I use Airtable as a master database and I want it to match / be able to keep track of things there.)

Also, if youā€™re NOT a programmer (like me) and hate the iOS interface for entering new records, you can create a form Airtable view with a URL, put that link somewhere you can trigger it, and add records a little more quickly that way, which is how I add records on the go sometimes.

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22

See if this example helps. I put together a coupe of quick techniques that you could use to build your dictionary.

Perhaps consider posting things like this as a separate topic next time as it doesnā€™t seem to be directly related to discussing the episode and it just gets lost in the noise of the rest of the discussion otherwise.

23

Thank you for your help. My apologies.

24

Excellent show!

Airtable.
I like it.
Just finished co-building a setup for a company. Nathalie Collins and I build a workspace that houses 12 bases. The ā€˜main baseā€™ currently is at roughly five thousand records, and growing. The bases cover every aspect of the business, from customer data, purchases, accounts receivable, staff, equipment maintenance, invoicing and more. All without Zapier or Shortcuts. Airtable is rock solid and just works!

25

Iā€™m relatively new to Airtable. Iā€™ve been setting up various databases (I believe theyā€™re called bases). I know there is certain tables within the base you can have them pull from other tables. But can you have a certain table pull from a completely different base? Hope this makes sense. I want to create a master tracking template I use to track various clients and then use that information to populate certain other bases. Hope this makes sense. Thanks

26

Airtable doesnā€™t support cross-base queries.

27

Thanks - I appreciate it. Configuring different views also seems to do what Iā€™m looking for.

28

How interesting. Iā€™ve recently returned from Spain, in fact, from several of the cities you have listed :wink:

29

Thanks for suggesting Jeremy- always good to hear about new podcasts :+1:

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30

We have been living here for 9 months and love it. :slight_smile: I hope you enjoyed your trip!

As far as Airtable goes, I am still using this to planā€”ideally of course this would have been done before leaving, butā€¦:woman_shrugging:

I think the workflow could use some nailing down still but in case anyone wants to do anything similar or can take any inspiration from it:

I first set up a table for the cities we wanted to visit, with start and end dates. I used the calendar view to help plan these.

From there I created a table for accommodation and one for transport (linked to the cities). Because itā€™s a multi-stop trip with so many moving parts, I went and found accommodation and transport options first and then aimed to book them all at once. My favourite part of using Airtable for this part was that I used the accommodation dates to flow into the transport table so I felt pretty confident when booking that I wasnā€™t missing any days. (I did make one tiny little time zone mistake that cost me an extra day of accommodation in Singapore, but ah well.)

(I did all the above manually but mostly just because of time constraints and because this is the only such trip Iā€™m planning for quite a while, but I think there would be even more room to reduce error by adding in some automation! I did use Shortcuts and the Airtable API to generate a few Omnifocus tasks to plan activities etc.)

For the itinerary/activity planning part I have set up a Shortcut that takes a location shared from Maps, prompts me to add some extra info (opening/closing times, cost, notes etc) if I have it handy, and adds it to an ā€˜Activitiesā€™ table. Once Iā€™ve got a list of ideas, I export the table into csv and import it into a ā€˜My Mapā€™ in Google Maps. That gives me an idea of where everything is. Then from there I use the calendar view again to roughly map activities to days, and make sure the opening hours etc all work. I can then subscribe to that calendar.

Then I leave and ignore all my plans! :laughing: But at least I have an idea of where everythingā€™s at and what Iā€™m not doing. (Like, this is my last chance to go to this museum while Iā€™m hereā€¦am I okay with skipping it, or not?)

In a perfect world I would love to have a maps solution that synced up with Airtable. (I suspect if I were willing to pay for the pro plan the ā€˜Mapsā€™ block in Airtable could do this.) And in a really perfect world, it would be something like Mapstr, with the ability to filter perhaps based on the day I have assigned, and I would be able to use the built-in opening times etc. Currently using the ā€˜My Mapā€™ functionality of Google Maps means that I donā€™t get to see the actual Google Maps entryā€¦just the info I have added. I would rather not have to add all that info and just see Googleā€™s info, I think. (Plus I have to go into it manually relatively often if I want it to show up, which is a bit of a drag.)

I think in addition to that it would be helpful if I had a shortcut to pull the next dayā€™s plans (with opening hour details, etc) into a note of some kind. Totally possible with the API, I just havenā€™t got around to it. Being subscribed to the calendar is good but all you get in the note is a link to the Airtable record which doesnā€™t seem to work brilliantly on iOS.

Gah. Looks like another rambling post from meā€¦Kaitlin out. :slight_smile:

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31

Hey guys, coming back to Airtable and iOS Shortcuts, I was trying to upload a file from my phone to an Airtable base.

  1. First step was to save the file to an iCloud destination folder (Save File action).

  2. Then Iā€™ve used the Get Link action to fetch an iCloud public URL to that file.

  3. Although, when Iā€™ve used such URL into the corresponding dictionary field, Iā€™ve realized Airtable will download the html file of the iCloud landing page that prompts for a confirmation before downloading the actual file. Hence, no actual file gets uploaded.

Same happens if I switch to a Dropbox file and get a public link from that provider.

Any ideas on how to make this upload work properly?

32

Cleaning up my own mess: just a small change on the Dropbox link made the trick:

PNG image
PNG image828Ɨ531 33.7 KB

That said, previews show a generic image but download just fine. Looking at Airtable discourse forums, it seems to be a general problem.

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33

Try Dropshare instead. If comes free with Setapp and the pro/premium subscription isnā€™t bad either. When you upload the file to Dropshare cloud, youā€™ll get a share link (get the full link) that works with Airtable.

I use Integromat to take care of the uploading of files for me. I save the Dropshare link to a link field and then Integromat uses that link to upload the file to Airtableā€™s attachment field.

Of course, the newest version of Airtable app lets you upload files to Airtable directly from Dropbox too (from inside your Airtable app).

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34

When you upload from Dropshare link with Integromat, the image/pdf preview image is perfect.

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35

Maybe too late but I only just now stumbled upon this thread.

I noticed that Rosemary uses method ā€˜Getā€™ in her ā€˜get content of urlā€™ action while you use method ā€˜Postā€™.

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