Automations are now available on Airtable
Modern Makers - 09/08/2020
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Hi makers,
In the agenda this week:
⚡How to automate your tasks on Airtable
🛒 Adalo launched its component marketplace
🎓 Webflow unveiled Webflow University 2.0
Enjoy!
What a great surprise for Airtable users this week! We have indeed seen the introduction of a brand new feature called Automations. As this new feature’s name suggests, Airtable now allows you to automate certain tasks. Like a Zap on Zapier, an Airtable automation starts with a trigger, an element that will start the automation which can contain one or several actions.
On Airtable, there are two types of triggers: a new record (a new line in your database) or a new record within a view (one of Airtable's great strengths is that it allows you to create several types of views for the same set of data).
Once these triggers are activated, Airtable allows 6 different actions:
Send an email
Create a new record
Update a record
Send a Slack message
Send a Microsoft Teams message
Run a script
The scenarios are therefore fairly limited for the moment, but there is no doubt that this list will be expanded over the next few months.
Let's take a concrete example: you have a form on your website (made on Webflow for example) in order to collect leads for your product. Each time someone fills out the form on your site, the data is sent to your Airtable database thanks to an automation created on Zapier. You can then configure an automation on Airtable to receive a notification on your Slack account to contact this person as soon as possible. Or, you can study the person's profile, decide to contact them, click on a button in Airtable and an automatic email will be sent to this prospect to book a demo.
Airtable Automations is only available to PRO accounts (plan available for $20 per month) and Enterprise customers. I think this is a feature that justifies switching from a free account to PRO to unlock access to Automations. PRO accounts will have access to a very generous limit of 50,000 automations per month on their entire workspace. It is therefore easy to imagine that some Airtable users will deactivate some of their Zaps on Zapier in order to recreate them on Airtable.
Discover: Airtable Automations
🧰 Product
I told you about it in last week's edition, it's now official: the Adalo component marketplace is now launched! More than 20 components created by third-party developers are available for this launch. They include: a calendar, a Tinder-like swipe and integrations with third-party services such as Youtube, AdMob or Stripe.
This is great news since this marketplace will continue to grow as new projects are developed by the community, further expanding the possibilities offered by Adalo for the creation of mobile applications.
Discover: Adalo Component Marketplace
Zapier is now available as an add-on to Gmail. The added value of this add-on lies in the fact that you can automate a task and transfer an email and its content to the application of your choice, all with a single click.
Here are a few examples of possible applications:
Send an email to Slack (in DM or on a channel)
Turn an email into a new line on Google Sheet
Send the content of an email to Evernote
Read: Introducing Zapier's new Gmail add-on
⌨ Projects
A French project is once again highlighted on Bubble's blog this week. HackerHouse is a marketplace that offers rooms and living spaces for rent in communities, mainly for entrepreneurs and freelancers. In an interview with Bubble, Stéphane Bounmy, the creator of this project, talks about the origin of HackerHouse, its development on Bubble and the income generated by this project.
I find it very interesting that Stéphane, despite his full-stack developer profile, prefers to use a no-code tool such as Bubble, as the time savings generated are so obvious and considerable.
Discover: HackerHouse
🗣 Workshop
Arvid Kahl was invited this week to a workshop with Makerpad. Arvid created with his partner FeedbackPanda, a bootstrap business that he sold last year, just two years after its launch in 2017. This success (as well as the failures that preceded it) made Arvid want to start writing a book, Zero to Sold, released a few weeks ago. I am currently reading it and can only recommend it to those of you who would like to start their own business. Thanks to his developer profile, Arvid manages to cover all aspects of a digital business in a single book, which is rare enough to be highlighted. Some chapters are quite technical, but each of these chapters is full of valuable tips to avoid mistakes that could potentially kill your business.
I also invite you to subscribe to Bootstrapped Founder, Arvid’s weekly newsletter.
Watch: Taking Your Business From Zero to Sold with Arvid Kahl pt.1
⚒ Tutorials
This week, Webflow unveiled version 2.0 of its famous Webflow University, the ideal way to discover Webflow's main features and learn how to use this tool. Several courses are available and cover all the important aspects of Webflow but also the web designer’s role in general. I invite you to start with the Webflow 101 crash course (2h) and to take the Ultimate web design course (5h) that I took a few months ago.
This overhaul of Webflow University is only a first step: Webflow has already announced that two new lessons will be published on a weekly basis.
Learn: Webflow University
📦 In other news
The famous incubator Y Combinator (YC) has just published its content library (articles, podcasts, videos, essays...), an amazing collection of content for startups
It is now possible to clean up unused interactions on Webflow
As its name suggests, Social Media Icons is a collection of 280 icons related to social media tools (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc).
Looking for inspiration for your next project? Webflow presents several types of products that you could sell via Webflow's E-Commerce functionality
Stacker's turning one. In order to celebrate this anniversary, Stacker will announce 3 new features every day this week, we will follow this with attention
SpreadSimple (a tool to create websites from a Google Sheet) has added new languages to its service, including French, Spanish and Japanese
Video backgrounds are now available on Carrd
📖 No-code in the news
No-code: Why is it gaining traction? - SurveySparrow
Microsoft’s Low-Code/No-Code Approach: What You Need to Know - ITPro Today
That’s all for this week. If you like the content, don't hesitate to share it with your friends or colleagues.
I also invite you to send me your feedback on this content by leaving a comment below.
Have a great week,
Martin,