Configuring Airtable Automations: The Easy Way

Getting more done on Airtable means more tasks, more checklists and these days you have less time to achieve it all. But worry not, this is where Airtable Workflow Automation comes into the picture, to help you. It is the process of converting large & repetitive manual Business Processes and Workflows into faster and smoother Digital Workflows. 

Airtable Automations allows automating tasks with tools, and technology to achieve your goals efficiently, consistently and accurately. With Airtable Automations, you can build custom, Automated Workflows to generate reports or perform other repetitive steps. You can do a lot of that through Airtable’s Graphical User Interface or use JavaScript to build your Custom Flows and Integrations, too. When Airtable Automations provide such benefits on a regular basis, they become much more effective. As a result, you’ll be able to save a few hours every week. The more you can Automate Data entry and Data consumption, the more useful your Airtable Bases will become.

This guide will help you create Airtabe Automations for your repetitive tasks on your Airtable Base with simple to follow through steps.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Airtable
• Airtable Automations: Get More Done
  • Advantages of Airtable Automations
• Key Features and Functionalities of Airtable
• Guide to Create Automations in Airtable
  • Setting up Airtable Automations
  • Testing Airtable Automations
  • Adding Airtable Automation Actions
• Understanding Automation Run Limits in Airtable
• Conclusion

Introduction to Airtable

Airtable is a Spreadsheet-Database Hybrid that combines the best of both worlds. While working with Databases might seem intimidating, Airtable with its No-Code Tools gives you the power to work on a Relational Database with a Spreadsheet UI. You don’t even have to learn SQL queries. Airtable is simple, user-friendly, and allows anyone to quickly create and work on a Database.

With Airtable’s powerful Remote Collaboration and Project Management Tools, Airtable is a valuable tool for many businesses, owing to its intuitive capabilities. You can use Airtable to manage work, like updating Content on Channels, Marketing Campaign Management, Tracking and Organizing Inventories, Event Planning, Bug Tracking, and much more.

Airtable comes with a useful set of templates to collaborate with. There is a large selection to pick from, and they can handle almost any type of project you may have.

Airtable Automations: Get More Done

Airtable Workflow Automations can help you centralize, speed up and take control of your Workflow. You can customize and create your own Airtable Actions like:

• Send emails using Airtable
• Sync Airtable to Google Calendar
• Update records based on changes in other applications
• Send messages in Slack/Microsoft Teams
• Schedule tweets
• Register payments using Stripe
• Manage files with Dropbox/Box
• Create a post-action for Facebook Pages
• And many more!

Custom trigger-action processes may be configured right inside your Airtable Base using Automations. By automating repetitive activities, boosting communication efficiency, and lowering the total margin of error, you and your team can save an immense amount of time.

You can also stay on top of incoming requests with tailored notifications. Configuring Airtable Automations will send you notifications on your workspaces, like Slack, to help you stay updated and take necessary actions.

Advantages of Airtable Automations

Airtable Automations come with a lot of user offered advantages:

• Airtable Automations adapt to your changing demands. Even if the amount of data rises over time, they remain stable.
• They can also help optimise your processes, for example, if it is discovered during the construction of Automation that a prior process is inefficient, you can recreate and optimise new processes.
• You avoid doing the unpopular legwork; because copying and pasting are probably not one of your favourite things to do, Airtable Automates it for you.

Key Features and Functionalities of Airtable

• Integrations: Airtable has built-in support for many popular apps and a robust API. You can use Airtable to connect with Asana, Box, Google Drive, Basecamp, SMS, Salesforce, Zendesk, GitHub, Trello, and even Social Networking Apps like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• Simple yet Powerful Database Tool: Airtable is undoubtedly by far one of the most user-friendly Database Management tools you’ll ever encounter. With simple-to-use UI, No code tools, Collaborative Workflow, diversity of templates to manage projects and Automations, you can stay on top of your game.
• Airtable Apps Marketplace: You can analyze, enrich, and take action on your data with Airtable Apps. With features and functionalities of Gantt Charts, Pivot Tables, Time-tracker, Page designing app, URL Preview, and Jira Cloud, you can even remix Open-Source apps and customise them to fit your own Workflow. 
• Collaboration Tools: Airtable collaborators can be given specific permissions that determine what they can and cannot edit in a Workspace or Base. With the right permissions, you can ensure that only certain people are permitted to change the information on your Airtable Base. 
  • Owner/Creator: Owner/Creator has full access to the database, including the ability to add, delete, modify records, lock and unlock views or move Workspaces from one place to another.
  • Commentor: Commentor can access and view the entire database, but can only comment on records. They cannot make any changes.
  • Read-only: Readers can only view the database and records, but cannot make any changes or add comments.
• Pricing: Airtable offers four different plans:
  • Free: Free plan includes unlimited bases and important features such as 1,200 records and 2 GB of attachment storage per Base, with Grid, Calendar, Kanban, Form, & Gallery views. 
  • Plus: Plus plan shares the same features as the free plan, but in addition, it offers 5,000 records and 5 GB of attachment storage per Base, 6-month revision & snapshot history, 1 synced table per base and a custom automatic table syncing.
  • Pro: Pro plan includes unlimited apps, 50,000 records and 20 GB of attachment storage per Base, 1-year revision & snapshot history, Personal & Locked views with field & table editing permissions.
  • Enterprise: Enterprise plan comes with unlimited Workspaces per organization, 100,000 records and 1,000 GB of attachment storage per Base, 3-year revision & snapshot history, and additional essential features like SAML-based Single Sign-On, Enterprise-wide Admin Panel, Salesforce external source syncing and much more.

Guide to Create Automations in Airtable

• Setting up Airtable Automations
• Testing Airtable Automations
• Adding Airtable Automation Actions

A) Setting up Airtable Automations

Here’s how you can start working with Airtable Automations:

Step 1: Go to the upper right corner of your screen and select “Automations.”

Step 2: To get started, choose any of your available templates from the preset collection of mentioned Automations. You can still customize each Trigger and Action within the template. 

Creating Custom Airtable Automations

If you’d rather build an Automation from scratch, click “Create a custom automation” to get started. You may rename the Automation or add a description right away to make it easier to understand what it does.

Step 3: All Automations start with a trigger that will prompt subsequent actions, so next, you will need to click “Choose a trigger”.

Step 4: If you choose the “When a record enters a view” trigger, you must also select a view. This view should ideally be one you generated particularly for this Airtable Automation. You must also choose your preferable table for this Automation.

Step 5: If you accidentally selected the wrong trigger or want to test a different trigger type for your Automation, you may change your trigger type by selecting another choice from the “Trigger type” menu.

B) Testing Airtable Automations

Testing your Airtable Automation Workflow is critical to ensure the action is performed correctly every subsequent time the Automation is triggered.

To test your Airtable Automations:

Step 1: Choose “Run test” to fetch a test record and its values.

Step 2: When the test is finished, the results will be presented, including the test record values that prompted the Automation. If you come across a problem while testing, Airtable Automation troubleshooting guide may be of assistance.

C) Adding Airtable Automation Actions

After you have successfully configured the testing results, you need to define the Automation Action. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1: Click on the “Action type” drop-down to add your Automation Action.

Step 2: This step involves choosing your Action. In this case, we will select “Send an email“. After selecting this action, you will be able to add recipients, a subject line, and the message body for the first time.

Step 3: The content in the message’s body can be a combination of static text and data from the triggering record. To add values from the triggering record, click the blue and white + symbol. You may also access and pull more data by clicking the “Field values” drop-down arrow.

Step 4: You may modify four more parts of the Automated Emails you send by clicking on the “Show more choices” drop-down arrow, which includes “CC“, “BCC“, “From name“, and “Reply to“.

Ensure to Test your Airtable Action

To ensure that the process is successful, test it. Again, testing each stage of the Airtable Automation process guarantees that your Automation will function properly. To examine the values being retrieved from any records linked to your Automation, click the drop-down menu next to the test result. 

During testing, if you find a need to make a change to the table by adding or altering fields, you can do that by simply modifying your table entries. Retest all the stages to ensure that your changes are properly reflected in the Automation’s settings.

Understanding Automation Run Limits in Airtable

You can add up to 25 Automations to an Airtable Base if you like. You may also build up to 25 Actions in Single Automation.

The current run limits on Airtable Automations are as follows:

Workspace Plan	Automation runs (per month, per workspace)	Automation run history	Notes
Enterprise	500,000	3 years	–
Pro	50,000	1 year	–
Plus	5,000	6 months	“Send email” action can only email collaborators on the base, not arbitrary email addresses
Free	100	2 weeks	“Run a script” action is unavailable

Conclusion

This easy to follow guide presented steps that you can enact to enable your Airtable Workflow Automation, hence saving you time and resources to engage on more important tasks. Airtable Automations run depends on your Workspace plans and can be modified according to your growing needs.

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