Keep records in a table

A table keeps records your team works with, such as clients, orders or tasks. It lives in your workspace, and your chats and pages can read it and add to it.

Databases

Tables are kept in databases, as Airtable keeps them in bases. Your workspace starts with one, named after it, which holds the tables you already had. Press All databases in the left menu to see them all, and New database to start one with its own name, colour, mark and guide. The guide shows the first time someone opens the database. A star keeps a database at the top of your own menu, and Pin for everyone puts it at the top of the Databases page for the whole workspace. From Airtable brings a whole base in as a database.

Make a table

Fields

Each column is a field with a type, so HTO Labs knows what goes in it: Text, Long text, Number, Checkbox, Single choice, Several choices, Date, Person, Files, Email, Web address, Phone, and Link to another table. Press + at the end of the header to add a field. Open a field’s menu to rename it, change its type, move it, or delete it.

A link shows in the other table too: link a job to a client, and the client lists the job. Change it on either side and both change. A link can allow one row only, or offer only the rows of one of the other table’s views. Show a field from in a link’s menu brings in a field of the rows it links to. Deleting a link asks whether to delete the other side too, or keep it there as the linked rows’ names.

Find and sort rows

The bar above the table searches the rows, and Filter and Group show only the rows you want, in groups. A field’s menu sorts by it. Save a way of looking at the table as a view with New view, for example “Open orders”. The ··· menu downloads the rows you see as a CSV or Excel file.

Boards, calendars and timelines

Layout in the bar shows the same rows another way, and the view keeps it. A Board has a column for each choice or person: drag a card to another column to change it, or up and down to put the cards in your own order. A Calendar runs each row from its start to its end date; drag it to another day, or drag its end. A Gallery shows the first picture in a Files field as each card’s cover. A Timeline draws each row as a bar in lanes, by days, weeks or months; drag a bar or either of its ends to change its dates.

A form lets people add rows without seeing the table. Make one with New form in the view menu, choose the fields it asks and which are needed, then Copy the form’s link. Everyone in your workspace who opens the link can send it, and each sending adds a row.

Who sees a table

A table is shared like a page. Press Share to open it to the whole workspace or only to the people you add, as Owner, Can set up (fields, views and rows), Can edit (rows only), Can comment or Can view. Everyone else in the workspace gets what the workspace gives them: its editors can set the table up, and everyone else can comment. The person who made a table owns it, and only owners delete it. A table holds up to 100,000 rows.

The ··· menu’s Who may add and remove rows narrows who adds and removes rows, and Edit field’s Who may change it who changes one field. A table’s owners always may.

To show a table to people outside the workspace, open Share, then Publish. Choose This view, a form of the table or the whole database, then Publish to the web or Publish with a code, or For one email domain, so only people who show they have an email there open it. Visitors see only that, read only, on its own page; a form’s answers are new rows. For a view you choose whether visitors may copy and download its rows, and whether a row shows every field when it opens. New code and Unpublish stop the old link at once. Only the workspace’s owners publish.

To keep a table here in step with a view somewhere else, choose Add or import, then Synced from a view. Pick the workspace, database, table and view, which fields come, how often it syncs (every hour unless you choose) and whether rows removed there go here too. What comes from the view changes only there; add fields of your own beside it. Sync now syncs at once, and its menu stops the sync, leaving an ordinary table.

Tables in chats and pages

Ask a chat to make a table, read one or add rows, for example “Make a table of our clients with their contact person and next meeting”. A chat reads a table straight away, and it asks you before every change. A page can show a table too. The first time it wants to, HTO Labs asks you.

Still stuck? Write to us, and a person at HTO & Beyond answers.