Two-way sync is cool. It is also limited to workspaces that are on a business plan or higher. Here are some tips that apply to building in Airtable for all plans.
- If you struggle with writing formulas, study the Airtable Formula Language as if it were a foreign language (which it is!). Writing in a foreign language is hard--you know how to describe what you want in your native language, but struggle to find the right vocabulary in a new language. You don't have to think about grammar in your native language, but mistakes in punctuation, spelling, and word order in a new language can render your message incomprehensible. Fortunately, the Airtable Formula language has a manageable vocabulary and simple (but strict) grammar. So, study the Formula Field Reference. Don't just skim to find the function you want, but take the time to read the description of every function, understand each parameter, and figure out how the example input/output works.
- Decide if you want to become an expert at building in Airtable, or if your abilities are better spent in other areas. If you want to be an expert builder, that's great. Join the community, ask questions, and share your experiences. But if you would rather put your time elsewhere (like the main point of your business), that's fine too. Hire a consultant (or an employee) who can deal with the details for you. This tip goes double if you want a script or a complex third party integration.
- When maintaining a base, the field dependency checker helps you trace down how fields are used. The field dependency checker is easy to access in Business and Enterprise Scale workspaces, but is actually accessible on all plans (including free!). But watch out because the dependency checker does not show how fields are used in extensions (like Page Designer) or third-party API usage (like Zapier or Make).
Two-way sync is cool. It is also limited to workspaces that are on a business plan or higher. Here are some tips that apply to building in Airtable for all plans.
- If you struggle with writing formulas, study the Airtable Formula Language as if it were a foreign language (which it is!). Writing in a foreign language is hard--you know how to describe what you want in your native language, but struggle to find the right vocabulary in a new language. You don't have to think about grammar in your native language, but mistakes in punctuation, spelling, and word order in a new language can render your message incomprehensible. Fortunately, the Airtable Formula language has a manageable vocabulary and simple (but strict) grammar. So, study the Formula Field Reference. Don't just skim to find the function you want, but take the time to read the description of every function, understand each parameter, and figure out how the example input/output works.
- Decide if you want to become an expert at building in Airtable, or if your abilities are better spent in other areas. If you want to be an expert builder, that's great. Join the community, ask questions, and share your experiences. But if you would rather put your time elsewhere (like the main point of your business), that's fine too. Hire a consultant (or an employee) who can deal with the details for you. This tip goes double if you want a script or a complex third party integration.
- When maintaining a base, the field dependency checker helps you trace down how fields are used. The field dependency checker is easy to access in Business and Enterprise Scale workspaces, but is actually accessible on all plans (including free!). But watch out because the dependency checker does not show how fields are used in extensions (like Page Designer) or third-party API usage (like Zapier or Make).
🙌 Kuvonne - I find the field dependency feature helpful too.
My favorite recent developer API feature is the "upsert" (update or insert) functionality on the update multiple records API endpoint. This can help make logic in code and no-code processes simpler and easier to maintain:
- Previously, if you wanted to update a list of SKUs from your ERP system into Airtable, you would need to (1) list records that are already in Airtable by listing all of them, (2) determine which records should be updated or created, and (3) finally update (based on the Airtable Record ID) and create those records using the two different API endpoints.
- Now, you can use the update multiple records endpoint and let Airtable know you want to update records based on a unique ID ("fieldsToMergeOn") and Airtable takes care of the rest.
- Now, you only need to write code to call one API endpoint, not three different ones.
My team has put together some examples at https://github.com/airtable-labs/upsert-examples/ on how to use the upsert functionality in various languages (Node JS, Python, PHP, Ruby, R) and with different source systems. PRs welcome!
