Notable companies like Medium, BuzzFeed, and Nike have started using Airtable to increase efficiency and cut costs.

So it’s clear that the tool’s superpowers are indisputable. But what is Airtable? What can you use it for and how can you elevate your experience with the platform? 

In this article, you’ll learn all about the cloud-based platform, its impact on data visualization, and how to maximize efficiency of the popular app.

What is Airtable?

Airtable is a hybrid database management system that mixes the intuitiveness of traditional spreadsheets and the power and functionalities of databases.

The Airtable app has many innovative features. Here are some basic components that users love:

• Various customizable field options, including barcodes and formulas; 
• Familiar spreadsheet-like interface;
• User-permission levels;
• Pre-made templates for plenty of personal or company-related task;
• Hundreds of integrations for datum management; 
• Easy and quick custom views, such as grid view, gallery view, Kanban view or the traditional spreadsheet.

What is Airtable used for?

With several advanced features, Airtable is a powerful no-code tool that helps businesses and departments of all sizes and use cases stay organized and collaborate on projects.

Here are some examples of how big and small teams can use Airtable to improve your business:

• Calendar: Create a table to manage timelines with different calendar views;
• Project management: Assign tasks and project deadlines, or set up status updates;
• Marketing campaign management: Create a content plan, email marketing campaign and more;
• Product launch: Use collaboration features to stay organized and connect your product and marketing teams;
• Bug tracker: Maintain datum governance and identify potential malfunctions.
• Event planning: Manage locations, ensure vendor lock-in, an store photos.
• Product catalog: Build an e-commerce platform, manage sales, and share barcodes.
• Job hunting: Add columns to organize data on your job search, and remind yourself to follow up.
• User research: Support customer relationship management and monitor sales by capturing vital information and storing scripts.
• Inventory management: Track inventory
• Employee resource directory: Create an employee directory sorted by department, with team members, phone numbers, attachments and more;
• And much more!

There are so many ways to visualize your datum with Airtable.

To get a better view of what's possible with the cloud-based tool, here are the most popular Airtable templates used by different departments and teams.

Databases vs. Spreadsheets

You might be wondering if its worth switching to Airtable from Excel or Google Sheets.

After all, the traditional spreadsheet is a reliable, good practice. Do the datum management benefits of a tool like Airtable make it worth the effort?

Before we get to the answer, let's break down the differences between a spreadsheet and database.

What is a database?

Databases make it easy to store, manage, and retrieve your data. 

Some of the differences between a spreadsheet and database are:

They’re at the heart of most applications we use on a day-to-day basis. 

Facebook, for example, has databases of users, groups, posts, events, and more.

Banks also have their own databases including client names, account numbers, and invoices.

There was a time when you’d need a coding background to create a database, and plenty of technical skills to use it, but that’s not the case now that no-code databases like Airtable exist.

And Airtable's advanced functionality means you can manage projects for any use case.

You can populate your Airtable databases manually, by syncing or importing from external files, or by gathering information through Airtable forms.

Airtable offers the flexibility of advances features

If you want to learn more about the differences between Airtable and Google Sheets, you can read this article.

Is Airtable a relational database?

Short answer: yes. 

The ability to link records from one table to another is one of Airtable’s most powerful features. This creates a relationship between those two tables, meaning that Airtable qualifies as a relational database.

For example, imagine creating a database for your soccer club. These are some of the tables you would likely need to manage data:

• Teams
• Players
• Coaches
• Games

All of these tables will be related to at least one other table.

A team consists of players and coaches. A game consists of two teams. In Airtable, you would create a link for each of those relationships which would make populating each table even easier.

What are the benefits of Airtable? 

Airtable makes it easier for you to interact with your data, while at the same time enabling programmatic management of your data. Some of the benefits of Airtable include:

• Powerful collaboration capabilities that allow users to assign tasks and share project statuses, as well as making it easy for collaborators to find and share relevant data. Users can also assign roles to collaborators and define various levels of access.
• A spreadsheet-like interface makes it easy for users with previous experience with tools like Excel and Google Sheets to onboard and take advantage of Airtable’s powerful database.
• Pre-built templates make it incredibly easy for new users to hit the ground running. All you need to do is copy one of Airtable’s many available templates and import your datum.
• The customizability of the platform allows users to access their data using different views including grid, Kanban boards, calendar view, form, and Gnatt. You can then add additional customization rules to your data and create your own Airtable actions.
• Automation capability removes the need for doing repetitive tasks. By configuring custom trigger-actions to automate workflows, you and your team save time and optimize project management.
• Extensive data-tracking lets each team member easily track and report on changes in individual tables and records, making collaboration more efficient and transparent. 

Airtable key terms

As a beginner, the vast amount of must-know Airtable terminology can be overwhelming.

We dug through the most common use cases and queries to define those must-know terms.

Here's what you need to know to start using Airtable effectively. 

Tables

Tables are fundamental Airtable features. Similar to spreadsheets, we create tables to store and manage data.

Typical Tables are in a grid view. They have columns, rows, and fields (which we'll get to in a minute).

Bases

Bases are a basic feature in the Airtable app. They are collections of Tables that you can sort and manage. This lets you organize data by category, department, or designer.

For your base views, Airtable offers existing templates like Content Calendar, Project Tracker, Event planning, and more.

Of course, bases can also be built from scratch. Think of Bases like "projects" in project management. For every new project you start, you'll likely create a new base.

A different way to think of Bases are like the folder on your computer that holds different files.

Workspace

A workspace is a collection of Bases in Airtable. Think of your Airtable workspace as a different team or department. For example, your Marketing department might own one workspace, while your Sales team has permissions for another.

To expand on our earlier example: If Bases are folders that hold Excel files, a workspace would be the hard drive that holds those folders.

Views

Views are a powerful Airtable feature that allows you to configure how you view the data in each table.

• The Grid view is probably most familiar because it is almost exactly like a spreadsheet.
• The Calendar view can be useful for Tables with dates, like deadlines.
• The Gantt view may be helpful if items have start and end dates, it shows them in a timeline.

Fields

Fields are the cells in spreadsheets and Tables.

This is where the individual pieces of data are kept. Fields can do more than just hold text.

Currently, Airtable has 29 field types, including Single-line text, Long text, Attachment (which can be used to save images, audio, and other files), and Date.

Records

Just like with databases and spreadsheets, records are the rows of Airtable.

Apps

Airtable apps are one of Airtable's more unique features.

Apps extend Airtable's functionality significantly. It's a bit like the App store on your phone.

Automations

Just like apps, automations are an advanced feature that extends what's possible with Airtable. As the name suggests, Airtable automations allow you to automate tasks based on your data.

You can have Airtable take action based on various triggers such as when a new record is added to a view, or when a record changes. Automations will save time by automating repetitive tasks and reducing the margin of error that occurs when they’re done manually.

You can learn more about Airtable automation with Gareth Pronovost's tutorial on Airtable's amazing feature.

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How do I create with Airtable?

Let’s go over some of the basic steps of beginning your creation process with Airtable.

You’ll learn how to create a workspace and build your first base.

Create a workspace

When you open up your homepage, you can see all the workspaces you’re a part of.

To create another workspace, all you need to do is go to Workspaces on the lower left-hand side of the screen, click on Add a workspace, give it a name, and you’re done! 

Now you can go ahead and build and add some bases.

Build a base

There are a few different approaches to building a new base on Airtable.

To get started with your first base, head over to your homepage> Add a base.

Here you can choose to import your work, check out some templates, or restart from scratch. 

Check out the video below for a more in-depth tutorial.

Airtable integrations

You can synchronize Airtable with popular apps and automate repetitive tasks. Using automation, you can:

• Sending emails using Airtable
• Syncing Airtable to Google Calendar
• Updating records based on changes in other applications
• Sending messages in Slack/Microsoft Teams
• Scheduling tweets
• Registering payments using Stripe
• Managing files with Dropbox/Box

Empowering Airtable with Softr

Now that you know the ins and outs of Airtable, you can start using it to easily manage your data.

If you want to present your data in a more customized way, or share your data with people that aren't in your Airtable workspace, or outside of your organization, you can use Softr.

Softr is an easy-to-use no-code platform that turns Airtable bases into powerful business apps, such as client portals or internal tools.

Softr offers a way for you to authenticate your end-users, control access to your content and data based on conditional rules like roles, logged-in status, and subscription plans.

If you're using Airtable for inventory management, you can use a template to build a beautiful, secure frontend. Or maybe you'd like to build a custom Sales CRM, there's a template for that too!

Learn how DCW Cost Management used Softr to turn their airtable base into a powerful centralized portal that saves time for every employee.

Design your perfect solution with the Airtable-Softr duo

Airtable’s spreadsheet-database hybrid solution allows you to streamline processes, workflows, and projects while easily creating a powerful database without writing a single line of code. 

• Some ideal use cases include
• Content calendars 
• Resource directories 
• Bug trackers 
• Event planning 
• Job hunting
• Project management

And if you have a use case that isn’t offered by the platform, you can fill in the gaps by upgrading your Airtable experience with Softr.