In addition to their own basic functions, more and more applications offer the possibility of linking other applications from the outset. For example, you can link your time recording directly to your CRM and see how much time has been booked for which customers. These integrated automations are also available in the table and database tool Airtable. For example, you can have a notification sent to you when a value in a cell changes. But this Airtable automation is not only quite straightforward. There is also much more possible.
When it comes to integrated automations, Airtable is at the forefront. In the Grid View in a Base, the word Automations is emblazoned in the top right-hand corner.
If you click on these, you will directly receive suggestions for small but very helpful automations. You can send a Slack message when an entry changes or create a new entry when an event is created in your Google Calendar. There is also the option to create a custom Airtable automation.
To do this, you select a trigger, for example: a new entry is created or updated, an entry fulfills certain conditions or simply according to a defined schedule. Then you select the spreadsheet that is affected and can add conditions. For example, if the field "Name" contains Peter. Then you define the action to be carried out. And this is where it gets really comprehensive.
You can access GSuite, Office356, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce or Jira directly with your Airtable Automation. You can create a calendar entry, schedule a social media post, update a Salesforce entry or simply send an email. All directly from Airtable. If you want to try Airtable, start here with our affiliate link.
Benefit:
The benefit of such small software connections is obvious: you save yourself the clicks of doing it yourself. Instead of generating the same email over and over again, Airtable simply does it for you. Such conveniences become even more effective when they happen regularly and frequently. So you can save yourself a few minutes each week. But besides this obvious benefit, Airtable Automations offer even more advantages:
As easy and quick as it is to create your own Airtable Automation, it unfortunately also quickly reaches its limits. The limit here is the number of applications supported on the one hand and the number of actions to be performed on the other. Approximately ten applications are supported directly in Airtable. That is not all that much, to say the least. And sometimes only one action is available per application, such as "send an email". This is also very limiting. So you might like to be able to connect your Pipedrive CRM, a widely used software, with Airtable. But via the built-in automations, only Salesforce is supported as a CRM. And let's face it, that's already the Champions League. So the solution is called...
One of Airtable's greatest strengths is not the different views, the numerous templates or the infinite links between them: it is the API. An API (Application Programming Interface) is a programming interface provided to us by Airtable. And it allows us to connect Airtable to thousands of other applications that also have an API. This is how powerful Airtable automations are created, with almost no limits.
You read programming interface and think "oh dear, this must require extremely good technical knowledge". Don't worry, fortunately that's not the case.
Because that's exactly what platforms are for, linking software via the API. Zapier and Make are our favorites here. They come with an interface that does not require any coding skills. Here, too, the process is very similar to that of the integrated Airtable automations: you select a trigger, can assign conditions and then a defined action is executed.
The Advantage:
Make and Zapier support thousands of other applications and offer countless possibilities to define triggers and actions. So instead of just sending an email in Outlook, you can create an email as a draft, delete a mail, move it to another folder, search for a message, output attachments or download them. The functions are therefore much more comprehensive than with the integrated Airtable Automations.
If you want to get to know the tools, you can register for free here for Make and here for Zapier.
In addition, the previous examples have been very simple and only two-step: a trigger in this software causes that action in a second application. Process completed. Of course, there is much more to it than that.
For example, we recently created a huge Airtable database for a client that combines countless automations:
Countless pieces of information are compiled in the database. Customer data, orders, team members, addresses, product information and much more. This information is automatically entered from the corresponding channels. But the great thing is the information that goes out:
For example, an individual invoice can be generated for customers via a button in Airtable. This button is connected to the accounting software lexoffice. Various information is collected from different places in Airtable, such as master data but also the individual services including quantity, unit and price per unit. This data then generates a legally compliant invoice and is automatically sent to the correct email address of the customer.
These few clicks take a few seconds.
This example should show what is possible: namely almost everything. In our eyes, a database is useful for almost every company. This does not necessarily mean that your team works with it a lot, but rather that important information can be brought together and then used in a targeted way. Automation platforms like Make and Zapier are excellent for this. They offer an interface on which applications can be linked.
However, programming skills are definitely useful. At the latest when an unclear error message is displayed and Google doesn't know what to do. That's why we implement not only Airtable Automations but also numerous other automations for companies. Together we find individual solutions that are flexible and scalable. Feel free to contact us without obligation if you would like to learn more.
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