If you're ready to get better insights
into how your business is running, you are going to love the new
interfaces tool within air table. And specifically in this video, I'm going to be drilling into how
you can gain more insights from a particular record inside your database, but not feel excluded in working
in your database instead, have it all in that beautiful
interface dashboard. So if that's of interest stick
around and let's get into it, Welcome back to the channel. My name is
Gareth Pronovost. I own GAP Consulting, and I am going to help you save up
to 20 hours of your time every week using no code tools and automation. If that's of interest and you want to
learn more about how we help everyone achieve those kinds of amazing goals, you'll definitely want to check out
my upcoming webinar. Once a week, I hop onto a live webinar and I showcase
the building blocks of automation. So if you'd like to learn how to
leverage the powerful tool of a no-code automation, you don't want
to miss that free training. You can sign up using the link below
or visit me at Gareth Pronovost dot com slash webinar dash
registration. And listen, I realize not everyone can make
the live event. So of course, I'm going to send you a replay if you
sign up as well, but without further ado, let's hop into the actual
heart of this video. I'm showcasing the new
interface specifically. I'm looking at the record review. So
when you go to set up a new interface, there are three different
templates that you can start with. One of them is record review. One
of them is dashboard. By the way, we've already recorded something about
putting together a sales dashboard, check out that video. I'll
link to it up above somewhere. Then there's also the record summary,
and you can do start with a blank canvas. Now, in this case, I'm starting
with that record review, but before we get into it, let's
actually look at the underlying data. If you're new to the channel and you
might not have heard me say this before, but this is mission critical folks. You have got to have the proper data
structure in your database before you can start building all the fun
automations, all the fun interfaces, all of that stuff is secondary to proper
data structure inside of your air table database. It might sound
easier than it actually is. So let's go ahead and jump into this. We are looking at our project and we want
to drill into our projects and get an oversight of what's going
on with those projects. But the projects don't live in a vacuum, and that's the whole point of
using a relational database here. We have our projects, but you
see that they're linked to tasks. And you also notice that there are links
to clients. So in the client's table, pretty simple, we've just got a few different clients
with phone numbers over on the tasks table. We have a name for our task.
Of course, it's linked to the project. And then there's a person
in charge in this case. This is just an example database, but you could share this with everyone
else on your team who has access to your database. I also have a start date
and an end date for each of my tasks, and I have a completed checkbox. It's pretty straightforward
stuff for a standard tasks table. Now those are the three tables that
are going to come into play in this particular interface. So let's drop into the interface now and
take a look at exactly what we've got. This is pretty slick, and I'm going to go through each of
these different elements, one by one, so that you can add them
to your own interfaces. And so that we can all just get more
education around what these interfaces are truly capable of doing.
So on the far left, you'll notice I have the record picker
option and I can choose between my different projects. Now, the important thing to note here is that
everything else on this interface is tied to whatever project I've selected. So this is all driven by whatever
project I want to take a look at in that particular instance, as I
clicked through the projects, you notice all the other
stuff is updating as well. So pretty straightforward here.
The next part is our client. We can drill in and see who the client
is. That's connected to that project. Now, of course, the client is always going to be different
and it's tying to a different table and that's something that's
maybe not intuitive when you go. And you start to set up this
record review interface, because it says here in the description
that you can review details of many records from one table. But the truth is all the records in that
one table are connected to other stuff, and that's the whole power
of air table to begin with. And thank goodness we can still bring
all that power into our interface. So again, we're able to
link to the client here. You also have the ability to
see a project lead in this case. This is my collaborator field
type back in my database, and I'm bringing it out here so that I
can see who's in charge of the overall project. I'm also
looking at this overview. This is another field that
lives in my projects table. So I can see what the
overall project goals are. And then also the status of the project, almost all projects have some sort of a
status that goes and runs throughout the course of operation. And in this case,
we have a bunch of different status, pending approval development,
deployment, support, and completed. So you may have more than this
in your particular process, but I use a single select field for this
to track exactly what stage a project is in at any point in time. Now, for
the more fun parts I had attachments, and these are our assets for the project. And the really nice thing here is we've
got a little bit of a carousel and we can actually scroll through the different
photos that I've added to my database. Pretty slick. Also, I've mentioned
this in a previous video, but I love having
comments in the interface, the ability to see the record comments, whereas before we had to drill into
the record and look at those comments. Now we get them right
here on the interface, smack dab in the middle of all of
our work with this particular thing. I've also got tasks here.
And these, if you recall, our what's linked to
our project. So again, another linked relationship
showing up here, I can drill into these tasks and take a
look at what's going on inside of them. But a lot of that information
is already showing up here, and this is all stuff that I can
change or customize to my liking. Now, the last piece I've added
here is the timeline. And this is just showing us
a bit of an overall calendar view. It's not a true calendar, but yes, it's giving me an overview of what my
tasks are and where I am in the process. The really nice thing about this is
I've actually altered it to show me with color visualization, what tasks are complete and
which ones aren't in this case, all of these are showing a green,
but if I flip to a different project, you'll see that some of these tasks are
not complete and that's denoted by the red color here. So really
nice feature here. And again, I love all of the capabilities
that interface has given us. Let's jump into the editing portion of
this and look at how we set this all up, putting in the upper left. I
can go to edit this interface. This piece right here, again is a client, and this is a field linked to
or connected to the record list. Remember the sidebar over here on the
left is where I get to pick the project. So everything else on this interface
needs to be connected to that reference because otherwise these elements
won't make a whole lot of sense, because what we want to do is visualize
the data that's connected to that particular project. So make sure that
you're connected to your record list. And then you always have the ability
to either see an element in view only, or in editable mode. So if
you click it to view only, so it's going to be a read only interface, or you can give your users the
capability of editing this data. You also have some size options
here, default or pill. And lastly, you can choose to either
show a label or not. I like showing the label so
that I can see what that is. You don't have to go with whatever you've
named that field. That is by default, what that label will be, but you
can come in here and change it. Maybe you want to say customer
instead. And as I make those changes, changes show up on my interface. Also here with my project
lead very much the same. I've got attachment to a record
list. Don't forget to connect there. And if I want view only or edit
access here, I make that choice. And whether or not to
show a label and the size, similarly here I am an overview. Again, these are all elements that
live in my projects table. So all I have to do is add
access to that element. If you're not sure how to do that, check the bottom left corner and just
bring in the element that you need in this case. I'm just bringing in again,
connected to the record list. And I'm bringing in this particular
field, the field called overview. Lastly, same thing with status here. I've got my field called
status relates to the project, and I'm bringing that in here. Now for the more fun stuff
I have my assets and this
is where I'm bringing in my different files. I have an attachment field inside of my
projects table that I want to bring in here. So how do we do
that? Well, add element. If you're doing this from scratch bottom
left corner and inside of the option here of the record list. Again, we want this to connect to the actual
record that we're choosing from our projects on our left panel, inside of that you can scroll down and
you'll see all the different fields that live in that particular
table. In this case, my field is called assets
because of the field type, because it's an attachment field.
I have some different options here. You can install a carousel, which is going to be a number of different
images or attachments in one place. Or you can do the hero, which allows
you to kind of scroll through like this. I prefer the hero. So I went with that
here in this case now onto the next one, I've installed the record comments. Again, that's an element that ties to
the projects over here, tasks. This is a linked relationship, but
again, a field that lives in projects. So even though it's another layer deeper
in this case projects and links to tasks, I can still get access to
it right here. And then lastly, I have my timeline down here, and this is a little bit unusual because
it's looking at the timeline of the tasks. So if we drill into this just a
little bit more, you can see that again, connected to the record list. And I have to tell it where
this information is coming from. In this particular case, I can drill this down and you see that
I'm looking at the record list of those things that are connected to my
project in the tasks table, right? So it's that linked relationship
between projects and tasks. And that's how I can bring this
timeline in for my project. Then again, I set up all my different dates, settings, and the nice thing
about the timeline view, if you're new to the timeline view is
that you get a lot of customization in how you visualize those on the timeline.
So in this particular case, on the appearance section, I've said, I want to bring in the name
and the person in charge, and you can even add the Italians or the
underlining or the bold text that I've done here. I can include more
information here if I want. I can show whether it's completed
or not. I can show an end date, even though that's a bit
redundant on a timeline, but all of this I can make visible in
the actual displayed name of fields on the timeline. I liked
it the way it was before. Actually I don't even need person in
charge because you'll notice I grouped by the person in charge here on the left
and that my friends is done right here in the grouping section. So I've simply said, I want to group by that person as well.
So if I had multiple team members, I could collapse or expand
their particular tasks in association with a particular project. I know there's a lot to wrap our heads
around with the new interface tool. And I went quickly here. My goal was to showcase to you a lot
of the new functionality in a very condensed time. So I hope that you take this and really
run with it for your own interfaces and just build some really cool stuff
to help you run a better business. If you liked this video, please don't forget to subscribe to
the channel and give us a thumbs up. It really helps us with the YouTube
algorithm so that we can be seen by more, no coders, just like you. And I
will see you in the next week.
