BuiltOnAir

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Benjamin Green - Systems Integrator, Youtuber, Airtable Consultant, and co-host for the Clubhouse weekly meetup, “Optimizing your Business and Life”.

You may recognize Ben from various Airtable social groups - he’s been busy helping out many users since discovering Airtable just over a year ago. Since then, he’s started his own consulting business, Optimize IS, where he provides digital solutions to business owners frustrated with technology, and a youtube Channel where he breaks down common use cases and formulas for Airtable.

A recent graduate of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Ben was the president of his fraternity, and now boasts a degree in Information Systems and Operations. He also comes with a good amount of database experience stemming from Microsoft’s Access.

The base Ben demos for us today is his CRM. Here, he tracks his interactions with clients, time spent working on projects, payments made against invoices, and more. He explains how automation has helped his day-to-day workflow, from reminders to clients, to slack notifications when someone signs up for a session or is low on hours, to daily and weekly reports.

Check out the show notes for links to learn more about Ben and Optimize IS!

Optimize IS 

Ben Green - Systems Integrator

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

On today’s episode, we travel to Berlin, Germany to speak with Rupert Hoffschmidt, founder of ROY Kombucha! Rupert co-founded ROY Kombucha with his business partner, Fabio, after they both decided to leave their careers in the digital scene.

As he tells us all about the fascinating brewing and fermentation process used to make Kombucha, a fermented tea with a rich history, it’s clear to see how passionate and knowledgeable Rupert is about his work. He’s also very excited about the possibilities afforded by Airtable - which has helped him and his team stay on track with orders and production, allowing employees to record data right from their mobile devices.

The base Rupert demos for us today is his B2B Order Tracking Base - where he tracks orders placed from grocers, offices and other businesses. He tells us about the challenges faced by many Airtable users when first starting to build a base such as this; realizing he needed a table to track line items per order. 

Rupert has many plans for the future of his Airtable usage - including building out a fully automated ordering platform from start to finish.

Check out the show notes to learn more about Rupert and ROY Kombucha!

ROY Kombucha

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

On today’s episode, we travel to Bloomington, Indiana to chat with Chuck Beckett and Jar Turner of WFHB Community Radio. Chuck, IT Specialist and member of the station’s board of directors, and Jar, General Manager, both began their venture at WFHB by volunteering, and both are passionate about the sense of community provided by their station. 

When the pandemic hit, WFHB was forced to restrict access to the studios and became ever more reliant on technology - which of course is where Airtable comes to the rescue. The station largely relies on volunteers to do everything from DJing, news reporting, and even radio theatre.

Using Airtable’s new Sync feature, they are able to sync their volunteer calendar to several different bases, and securely share these bases amongst their volunteer base. Chuck calls this a game changer, and we have to agree.

Chuck demos his Calendar Server base for us today, which is available on the Airtable Universe. The base allows a user to enter a start date and frequency, and yields dates that can be used in a recurring fashion on a calendar.

One other project of interest is Chuck’s recently released app, called ORC. ORC is packaged into an Airtable base that is also available on the Universe, and employs the scripting app to output “pretty-printed” formulas - something formula loving users often find is missing from Airtable’s native formula editor.

Check out the show notes for links to learn more about WFHB Community Radio, and see Chuck’s bases on the Airtable Universe.

WFHB – Bloomington Community Radio

Recurring Events Calendar Server - Universe

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode Carri Craver walks us through the Covid-19 vaccine distribution center search tool she built powered by Airtable and Webflow. Using Airtable as the backend, Carri was able to develop a searchable website where users could find and share feedback on locations which provide Covid-19 vaccines in the state of Texas. Her setup involved an Integromat integration to sync records stored in Airtable as CMS collection list items in Webflow. The result was a user-friendly portal where visitors could quickly view business hours, appointment requirements, and general availability at a glance.

Since recording this episode, Carri helped launch a nationwide version of the Vaccine Finder through a partnership with Oracle. 

Find vaccine distribution centers in the USA here

Watch Carri’s segment on Good Morning America where she discusses the project

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View the video demo from this episode

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode Andy Cloke joins us to show off his excellent Airtable app, Data Fetcher. True to its name, Data Fetcher allows Airtable users to manually or automatically import data from any number of APIs directly into their bases. Andy talks about the development process for such a useful app and all the challenges it came with, such as making a wide-release app flexible enough to work for most users. He did so by implementing a robust user interface, which entailed anything from combining multiple pre-made components to creating his own page navigation system. We get a guided walkthrough of how one could set up the app as well as some examples of the app’s implementation. Speaking of wide-release, Data Fetcher is available now on Airtable’s Marketplace so you can try it out yourself. 

Sign up for Data Fetcher

Get the data Fetcher App from the Airtable Marketplace

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View the video demo from this episode 

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

On today’s episode, we speak with Tanay Pant - author, speaker, educator and head of developer relations at n8n - an up and coming automation platform that can connect Airtable to hundreds of other apps, and boasts features that Zapier and Integromat lovers will no doubt find impressive. Tanay has been in the technology world for years, and is known for his books “Learning Web-based Virtual Reality”, “Building a Virtual Assistant for Raspberry Pi”, and “Learning Firefox OS Application Development” - all published before the age of 22!

Tanay tells us about his diverse use of Airtable - both in his personal and professional life. He explains how Airtable and n8n work together - n8n offers an Airtable “node” with all sorts of options that allow the user to grab one or more records, then pass that data on to subsequent steps in the automation to be manipulated or used with other apps.

In the demo portion of today’s episode, Tanay shares two examples with us. The first is an app he built using Airtable, n8n, Typeform, and a product called Mindee that can extract data from an image. Tanay demonstrates how he can quickly and easily snap a picture of a receipt, and have that data flow to Airtable - vastly simplifying and streamlining the process of submitting expense reports.

The second demo shows us n8n’s creative use of Airtable as an internal tool to help on the back-end of their site. On a daily basis, the company needs to create JSON files for each application that they integrate with. They use Airtable to store each application name and build the JSON files with a nightly job.

Check out the show notes to learn more about n8n and Tanay, or follow him on twitter @Tanay1337.

Tanay Pant (@tanay1337)

n8n.io - Free and Open Workflow Automation Tool

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside.
Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com.

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode we’re joined by the co-founders of Sync Inc, Eric Goldman & Anthony Accomazzo. Sync Inc is a platform which lets users sync their Airtable base to a Postgres database to permit querying data using SQL. Eric and Anthony walk us through their journey as business partners solving problems, from a waffle-shortage at USC to one of Airtable’s key limitations: external querying. Born from the challenges brought about during their work founding AllTogetherLA, a non-profit helping the community of Los Angeles organize resources in response to the 2020 Covid Pandemic, Sync Inc. allows Airtable data to be accessed programmatically by an even wider range of other services via a real-time synchronization. Eric and Anthony demo the product for us, showing how you can set up your Airtable to Sync Inc connection in under 2 minutes.

Learn more about AllTogetherLA

Check out Sync Inc

Check out Retool, one of many platforms now (technically) compatible with Airtable thanks to Sync Inc

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View the video demo from this episode

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode we’re joined by cultural advocate, author, and operations specialist, Paul Matsushima. We begin with a discussion of how his background in non-profit work helping establish and expand Japanese-American cultural programs in the LA region led to him co-authoring a children’s book and creating a youth summer camp. We then discuss how his role as an operations specialist led him to use Airtable to quickly organize and automate reporting processes with the aid of Zapier to integrate with other productivity apps. Paul showcases two bases for us, the first being a ledger to track annual financial transactions and the second base being a CRM to track contacts, campaigns, and communications. We get a deep dive on both bases, which are available for public use on the Airtable Universe.

Get a copy of “Thank You Very Mochi” Paul Matsushima, Sophie Wang, and Craig Ishii. Illustrated by Jing Zheng

Paul’s First Base Demo’d

Paul’s Second Base Demo’d

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

On today’s episode, we speak with William Porter, owner and principal developer of Rucksack Technology, writer, and photographer. You may also recognize him from the Unofficial Airtable Conference thrown by Chris Dancy in September, where William gave a talk about Stacker.

William boasts decades of experience in tech, having started developing in FileMaker for law firms in the 90s. In recent years, he has also been very interested in new data-management apps, including Airtable. His knowledge of database development makes for a great conversation about the pros and cons of Airtable’s interface and inner-workings.

Over the years, William has written for tech publications such as the notable Macworld.com - and even reviewed Airtable as a “drop-dead-easy relational database management system” back in 2016. 

William shares a couple different bases with us today. The first is a house-hunting base, which he and his family used together when they were considering a move across their state of Texas. They were able to quickly record homes they were interested in, rate the ones they liked, and create a calendar of visits when it came time to book them.

In addition to his work in tech, William is also a photographer. The second base he shows us is home to his camera equipment - where he can track the items he owns, as well as items he wants to sell.

Rucksack Technology

William Porter (@williamporter) 

Articles by William Porter 

Airtable review: A drop-dead easy relational database management system

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BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com. 

Welcome to BuiltOnAir, a podcast and video series about all things Airtable. Each episode, we talk with someone active in the Airtable community to discuss their experiences and showcase an interesting way they’ve used Airtable in their work.

In this episode we speak with Jen Rudd, an expert in building and maintaining cross-platform systems. Jen helps teams identify how their software and platforms can integrate with each other by first nailing down what the desired outcome is. She explains how this approach leads her clients to systems that meet their needs much more so than out-of-the-box solutions offered by some all-in-one platforms. Jen also specializes in automating repetitive processes, and that’s exactly what she demo’s for us later on in the episode. Today’s Airtable showcase explores Jen’s base designed to track files and data across a placement agency’s application process, utilizing a Zapier integration to automatically send emails to applicants as they advance through the process.

Contact Jen at adeptinterfaces.com

Watch Jen’s session at the 2020 Airtable Users Conference

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View the video demo from this episode

BuiltOnAir is sponsored by Openside. 

Openside's newest product, On2Air Forms, is the Airtable forms solution you've been looking for. For a limited time, get On2Air Forms FREE when you purchase the On2Air Actions Zapier connector at openside.com.