Airtable

Opmerkingen: Our team uses Airtable as a centralized location to track our project progress. We've even hacked it as a CRM on occasion, and used it for event planning, reporting--anything that requires you to organize lots of information in a standardized way. The resistance to using yet another platform was strong at first, but once we got into it, everyone has become an Airtable advocate.

Pluspunten: When a co-worker recommended Airtable, I was predictably skeptical. Who needs yet another spreadsheet software I said, with an internal (ok, maybe external) eye roll. But this is no mere spreadsheet platform. It is the only one you will ever need. Ever. Again. The functionality that make it worth it to switch from Excel or Google Sheets might seem insignificant when you look at them on a features list. Colored labels, grouping, filtering, view options, etc. But you have no idea what a big difference they make! Airtable makes it possible to put in all the data you have, but the key to its success is it lets you filter it down to only the essential information you need to see to make the decisions in front of you. It's the database that actually helps with decision-making. And the more I use it, the more uses I find for it!

Minpunten: There are very few cons to Airtable. It's simple to use, and the potential is limitless. Once you start putting bases together, you just don't want to stop! One thing that is slightly non-intuitive is the relationship (or lack thereof) between different "tabs" of data. Read up on those before you go that route. You can also start getting out of hand pretty quickly with creating lots of different views, but nothing a little intentionality can't address. We trained our entire team on using Airtable for project management, and it's been the best decision we ever made.

Opmerkingen: Overall I am a super fan of Airtable - first discovered, fell in love, and told everyone I knew about Airtable 3-4 years ago, IIRC when they first appear on Product Hunt. Build a whole bunch of bases to manage my person life (book list, financial trackers, a large inter-linked base to track 3D printing activities for a local maker space etc.). Stopped using it for awhile because I was focusing on my day job for a few years, before coming back to do side projects and businesses. Ended up build a tracker for my subscription business, with automated renewal and receipt email generation via Zapier. Airtable is not perfect but it made a non-coder me into someone who can create a solution that’s “almost there”. I always tell people - Airtable can’t do everything (like a fully customized software) but 80% of your need can be satisfied by Airtable with 20% of effort, broadly speaking. I also love their Customer Services - while it is no longer the Airtable 2-3 years ago where I just chat using the chat tool (Intercom or..?) and ask UX related questions as they come to me (simple questions, not too different from asking a coworker in your office) and even caught the CEO Howie Lou a few times; it is still a very well supported software/ company where the CS team actually know the system really well and does’t just shove canned responses in your face. Overall, lots of love for Airtable!

Pluspunten: Ease of use, basically a database without the complexity of being one. No more managing of tabulated data via spreadsheet or simple table in word processing software. I also like the fact that I can do data entry in expanded and table views (I have a base called “Ideas”, where each column correspond to an area of interest in idea generation, e.g. Problem, Market, Competition, Elevator Pitch etc. - which the preferred data entry method is in the Expanded Jew; where as for base such as my “Bank Transactions Tracker”, the table field is better. I also like how they aren’t just focusing on being American (yay to company that bother to cater to ALL date format under the sky) although for some other colum type they haven’t got down to it yet (telephone number etc.). Personally I am a big fan of the Pro feature Blocks, which I used to create performace dashboards for my freelance subscription business. The Blocks feature is the only reason I opt to pay, although I am paying mostly out of my credits accumulated during the earlier days of Airtable. Also like the community that’s building on top of it, forum is very active and lots of power users to learn from. Combine with with other IaaS tool such as Zapier and you get a really powerful tool.

Minpunten: Insufficient control (can be easy to make mistake such as accidental typing etc.), lack of data validation (upon data entry), and interface could use more customization (e.g. lots of empty/white spaces in Card views, can’t have multiple lines in field header etc.).