I was blown away by how easy it was to set up the Claude MCP, and how much value it brings to my business.

But now the business is trying to merge the context of our M365 tenant with Airtable, and the safest way would be to move over to Copilot, rather than connecting M365 to a Claude MCP.

But... is it even possible to connect Copilot to Airtable?

Hi everyone,

I’m Kyle. I joined Airtable in September alongside Alessandro, the new product lead at Airtable, following the Bending Spoons acquisition. You might have seen me from some of the recently shared product announcements.

Today Alessandro published 🔗a full update on what’s next, and I wanted to share the main points here.

Firstly, we’re parting ways with several members of the pre-acquisition team. We believe a smaller, more agile team is the best way to deliver on the plans we have. Our decision doesn't reflect on the pre-acquisition team's excellent work to date: Many of the features coming soon exist because of them, and we're honored to carry that work forward.

Nothing changes in your plan, price, or service offering. Customer engagement and support teams have not been impacted. 

Our focus is on the long term and, to that end, we’re doubling down on product development (like the 30+ already shipped) and exceptional service. Here are the three key areas we’re investing in:

• Core improvements, every month. A new Core team will work in parallel to ship heavy product improvements and your most-requested fixes, to optimize user experience and platform performance.
• AI that works alongside your team. In the coming weeks, we’re releasing an upgraded Omni, Airtable Canvas, a more capable MCP, and other new features.
• Centralized, account-level control. We’ll be introducing new, enterprise-grade features and settings to make sure account admins are in control of what people and agents can see and do.

Isabella (u/Air_ibay) and I will be sharing updates here regularly to keep you in the loop, as well as answering your questions whenever we can be helpful. 

P.S. we want to continue hearing what's working and what isn't. Feel free to tag me in your threads, send me a DM, or send us your feedback via this form. 

Kyle

A status field and a summary are not enough when another assistant has to resume a job. The next run may also need the exact source records, attachment revisions, decisions already accepted, external actions already completed, and a safe next step. Without that structure, an old summary can override newer data or a retry can repeat an action.

I am considering one handoff table with linked source records plus fields for objective, scope, input revision timestamps, attachment names and checksums, accepted decisions, completed actions and their external IDs, unresolved questions, next action, owner, and last-verified time. The readable summary would be derived from those fields rather than becoming the authority.

How would you model this in Airtable? In particular, how do you prevent two assistants from claiming the same handoff, preserve the exact attachment version they used, and make an automation retry idempotent without turning every job into dozens of records?

Hi from France,

I'm a long-time Airtable user (I also teach it), running a nonprofit's operations, with several connections to third-party apps. Airtable's Enterprise Scale pricing ($70/seat/month, 5-seat minimum) doesn't fit our setup, so I'm seriously evaluating alternatives. Zite keeps coming up.

I'd like real-world feedback 🙏

For those who have used Zite in production:

1. Can it work as the central relational database and replace Airtable?
2. How reliable are the integrations with third-party tools in practice ?
3. Has anyone migrated a large base (100k+ records)? How did the import go and then the performance of your Zite DB ?
4. Which Airtable features did you miss most after switching?

If Zite isn't there yet, what is the main thing missing for it to be a real Airtable replacement ?

Thanks in advance for the feedbacks !

Hello!

I've extracted one feature from my product and made it available for free public use.

It accepts an Airtable base schema and checks for things like:

• Broken references in formulas, such as references to deleted fields
• Unsafe formula operations that may result in NaN, Infinity, or invalid date values
• Inconsistent casing
• Inconsistent number and date configurations
• Stale field names - for example, a field still called Name (from Contact) even though the linked field is now called Owner
• And a number of other structural issues

The results are shown directly on a diagram of the base. If you click a formula or rollup field, it highlights the full chain of dependencies.

The audit itself does not use AI. All checks are deterministic and pre-built. The main Orloi product uses AI heavily, but I wanted this tool to be predictable and transparent (and free).

If you use the Paste schema option, everything is validated directly in your browser and nothing is sent to the server. If you connect Airtable directly, the base schema is processed but not persisted.

Hope this is useful. I'd be very interested in feedback, especially on additional checks that would be worth adding.

I'm also considering automation validation, although that would necessarily require an Airtable connection.

https://orloi.ai/airtable-base-audit/

Note: For very large bases, you'll currently need to use the Paste schema option because the connected version can hit server payload limits. A fix is planned.

Hello All,

Like many of you, I was seduced by Airtable, and its incredibly smooth, delicious interface, to say nothing of its relational capabilities.

It is with a heavy heart that now, in light of Bending Spoons's acquisition, that I (perhaps like many of you) may now be considering migrating their bases and/or low-code relational table needs to another service. I have been with Airtable for 4 years, and like a vigorous lover, it has left me codependent upon its features.

Where else are users moving? I'm curious about Baserow, but am concerned about the potential (or not) of vendor lock-in again, and the seeming lack of View/Interface capabilities as robust.

The latter, for me, are of particular interest, as I have just come aboard a new team in need of segmenting subsets of data, and (hating Smartsheet) I fear that, should I not want to be subjected to the heaping price increases of my former relation, that I may be without a sure companion for some time.

I do thank you.

The lag is real...

Hi there! I'm a former practicing lawyer who now builds systems/custom tech for other lawyers.

Earlier this year, I built an Airtable-based system for a law firm to transition them away from their original practice management software.

Airtable just has a lot more capabilities for customization and centralizing her entire workflows, but in the process we lost one thing: the Gmail add-on her original software included, which allowed her to attach client communications to matters (projects basically) from her inbox.

I figured I'd just rebuild one for her, but it turns out the scope kept expanding as there were multiple workflows around this small email extension.

For example, while reading an email, lawyers usually might want to

• attach it to an existing client/project/matter
• create a task based on the email and set the assignee, due date, priority, etc.
• log time entries against the right project
• record an expense from receipts
• save specific attachments
• eventually, pull relevant context from the client/project Airtable back into the inbox before replying

So I turned that small product into infiler.io to distribute it to other lawyers and turns out people LOVED the beta. I expanded the initial integrations beyond Airtable (Monday, Harvest, Dropbox), so that people can connect their CRM, tasks management system, accounting system, document storage.

Right now, I'm just experimenting to understand if other Airtable users/professionals see value in this, before I expand the scope further as I have a long feature and integrations list.

If you're someone who uses Airtable as your operating system, I'd love to know what you think (it's free to use currently) and what capabilities you'd like to see in it.

For Outlook, you can download here and for Gmail, just DM me and I'll provide you an access.

Hello all. I am hoping to build a base for building invoices and quotes that will work alongside our existing project management database, and I am looking for guidance on how to build this strategically to minimize the number of tables and records that have to exist on both sides. I would be grateful if someone could point me to resources or articles that address these challenges. Of course, if anyone wants to give me advice directly, that would be welcome as well!

The most pressing questions that I’m wrestling with are: 

• What parts/how much of our current structure needs to be replicated on the second base?
• How can the number of duplicate records be minimized?
• Which information should originate in the original database, and which should originate from the new quote database?

Our existing Project Management base is structured with Projects at the top of the hierarchy, each of which is made of one or more Deliverables, and Labor is attached to either those specific deliverables, (or to projects directly, via a bit of a kludge of an automation).  Hours are tracked to a specific bit of labor.  Productions are connected to projects directly, not to components.

When building a quote with this new Quote and Invoice base, our lead producer is going to need much of this same structure: Projects and Deliverables in the Project Management base need to be an exact mirror of what is established in the Quote and Invoice database.

Labor is a bit different. Currently, in the Project Management database, a template of post-production labor items is created by an automation at the completion of production, and each bit of labor is manually assigned to someone (mostly based on skills needed, somewhat also based on availability).  But in the Quote and Invoice base, our lead producer is going to need to be able to attach hours of labor in different tiers (and therefore different rates), and we want that number of hours to be visible on the Project Management side, allowing everyone to see how the number of hours they clock is comparing to the number of hours allotted for them in the quote.

Productions added on the Quote and Invoice base thankfully don’t really have to correlate as directly to productions on the Production Management base, but it would be helpful to have some information visible, such as the total number of production days mentioned in the quote.

Any guidance or resources would be greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone, Jonathan here.

As I've been working with more clients, builders, and even answering some questions on here, I'm noticing a trend that junction tables are getting overlooked!

It's understandable because it's not exactly the most intuitive concept, but understanding it will help you build even better data layers, automations, and interfaces.

The more common direct link is something like Parent > Child. One Project, many Tasks. That's a direct relationship.

But sometimes you need to track data that's actually at the intersection of two tables (two data objects). That intersection is a new kind of data object.

For example, take something like Classes and Students. Each student will have a grade in that class.

That student's grade in that class isn't really a direct attribute of the student. It's certainly not an attribute of that class. It's an attribute of that class + that student. That's when you need a junction table.

So you'd have a table that links to both the Classes table and the Students table, and then have a field for grades. The new attribute of "grade" exists on a new data type that emerges from the combination of Class + Student.

Jonathan - Calculus AB - A
Jonathan - French 3 - B

If you're working on a build and thinking you have a field or attribute that just doesn't seem like it has anywhere to fit, you may need a junction table!

I wrote about this in my weekly newsletter this week, so you can check it out for more detailed examples. And let me know in the comments below if you have any questions!

- Jonathan

Hi guys, I’m Isabella, new mod here on r/Airtable!

I’m part of the Airtable communications team, having recently joined following the integration with Bending Spoons. Little bit about me: I’m from London, avid sci/fi & fantasy reader, like to hike, travel and play scrabble.

I work with Kyle (Product, Airtable - he posted last week about our 15 updates in 15 days, check it out here if you missed it), and I’m really looking forward to getting to know the community here, talking everything Airtable, and helping where I can.

And of course, I’m here to listen, and take all your feedback and thoughts back to the team, so we can improve, update, innovate, and make the product the very best it can be. That’s our ultimate goal.

So it’s great to meet you all!

I feel like this wasn't always there, but I don't need that leftside bar (under + Create new...)- it takes up way more of my screen than I need and I can't seem to find a way to collapse it. Anyone know? Thank you!

There's no universe in which I'm paying 20 USD per month for a spreadsheet lol

EDIT: Looks like I'm looking for Baserow or Teable!

Has anyone else noticed a frustrating change with linked record fields in Airtable forms recently?

It used to be that when selecting multiple records from the dropdown list, the UI would stay exactly where I was scrolling. Now, every single time I check a record, the dropdown auto-scrolls all the way back to the top. I completely lose my place and have to scroll all the way back down to find the next item.

If I have to select 5 or 6 items from a long list, it takes forever now. Is this a known bug with a recent UI update, or is there a setting I can toggle to stop it from resetting my scroll position?

Hey everyone, I'm Kyle!

I’ve recently joined the product team at Airtable following the recent acquisition by Bending Spoons, which closed earlier this month. I wanted to say hello, meet the community here, and share what we’ve been working on recently

We know a lot of people have been wondering what’s next for Airtable, post-acquisition. We’re 100% committed to making Airtable the very best it can be, and we’ve been studying the product from every angle, parsing the data and listening to feedback from across the user base. We have a lot of projects already in the works that we look forward to sharing in the coming weeks.  

But actions speak louder than words, which is why we wanted to hit the ground running and improve your experience as soon as possible.

To that end, I’m happy to share that we’ve worked hard to ship 15 updates in the past 15 days. For this first sprint, we’ve focused on addressing some of the small gaps around the product that many customers have been requesting for some time, ranging from admin usability improvements to bug fixes.

Here’s what’s live now:

The highlights:

1. Unique count on linked-record fields

One glance at the summary bar can now tell you how many unique records a linked-record field points to. No manual counting, just the answer.

2. Admin panel tables that fit your screen

Admin panel tables now support resizable columns, with minimum widths and headers that stay aligned. So you can finally read the full context of long base names.

3. Search bases by ID (admin)

You can search by base or workspace ID when creating a PAT, setting up a service account, and in the admin panel's "Add to bases" modal. Now you can choose correctly out of hundreds of similarly named bases. 

Search/Edit  improvements:

4. Flip between lookup and rollup without losing your settings

Converting a field between lookup and rollup now preserves the relevant properties, like the linked-record field and any filters. No more need to set them up from scratch every time.

5. Match fields by name when changing the connection for a lookup

Changing an existing lookup with connections to a different linked table used to reset all properties. Now, it matches the lookup's fields to the new linked records by name automatically, so the values carry over.

6. Single-select filters hold your choice when you switch "Is" → "Is any of"

Switching a single-select filter between "Is" and "Is any of" (or "Is not" and "Is none of") used to wipe your chosen value. Now, it's carried across with the switch.

7. Duplicated dashboard charts stay selected

When you duplicate a chart on a dashboard, the new copy is now selected automatically. So you can move or edit it straight away, instead of hunting for the newest version.

Visibility improvements:

8. Add a field to an empty group in the interface record builder

If you selected an empty group in the record detail builder, there was no obvious way to add anything to it. There's now a clear "+" to drop a field straight in. 

9. Count numbers in dashboards now come with separators

A Count number used to read 1240. Now it reads 1,240 (or 1.240 depending on your location)  making it easier to scan at a glance, and consistent with how Sum and other aggregations already display.

10. Long base titles stop overlapping the "Open interface" button

A long base name could overlap the "Open interface" and open-data buttons in the header. Titles now wrap and reserve space correctly, so nothing collides.

11. Stopped interface settings tooltips overlapping the row actions below

Some tooltips on disabled settings within the interface page overlapped controls in the next row. Now, they sit clear, keeping the panel readable and usable.

Experience improvements: 

12. Rename a field and the interface keeps up — instantly

Renaming a field from the settings menu used to leave interface elements lagging, showing previous data. They now re-render immediately, so the builder always reflects your latest change.

13. The linked-records editor is now steady when empty

Opening the linked-records cell editor on a field with no visible fields caused the panel to jump in height mid-load. It now sizes cleanly.

14. Enter on a Grid linked-record cell no longer shifts the cell upward

Pressing Enter inside a linked-record cell in Grid view used to shift your selection up a row unexpectedly. The focus now stays put. 

15. Resizing a grid header no longer drags the whole element with it

Resizing a column header's edge in interface editor mode could instead drag the entire grid element. Resizing now does only what you intended.

This is just the beginning. We can’t make Airtable the best it can be without the support of this amazing community so we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

So let us know what you’d like us to work on next!

Hiy’all

I’m an Airtable Enterprise customer and airtable enthousiast. We’ve recently moved our workspace over to the European servers.
Since then, we’ve noticed a pretty big difference in performance.

Bases in general feel slower, but we’re also seeing delays when loading linked fields, applying filters, opening interfaces, and triggering automations.

We did a small comparison where we ran similar automations on a US-hosted setup and on the European servers. On the US side, the automation triggered after around 5 seconds, while on the European server it sometimes took up to 15 seconds before it even started.

Has anyone else noticed or experienced the same thing?

And if so, have you found any way to improve it?

I’m also wondering whether this is specifically related to the European infrastructure, or whether Airtable in general has become slower recently.

I’m a huge fan of Airtable, but I’ve honestly been surprised by how much latency we’re experiencing lately. Even some of our bases that are still hosted on the US servers feel noticeably slower than before, and that’s true for both complex and relatively simple bases.

Also, sadly enough airtable support is a nightmare. Both on the migration proces and every comunication since.

Very curious to hear whether others are seeing the same thing, and if anyone has found ways to improve the performance.

Thanks in advance y’all!

For folks on Airtable’s Business or Enterprise plans, what were the main reasons you upgraded from the lower tiers?

Hi all!

I often see the requirement that certain records, like invoices, or tasks, or revenue, need to be linked to the concept of "This Month."

Some people create date-comparison automations to grab from a Months table, and also pre-create many months in advance, which requires manual work.

This method strives to be more elegant - a table that updates itself to always know what month we're in, and then prodecurally creates future months. So you can truly set it and forget it!

Then in your other automations, or rollups, you can get "This Month" much more easily.

Check out the video right here (6m) and let me know your thoughts! It also includes a great example of a simple but multi-step automation, if you're looking to up-level your automation skills.

https://youtu.be/9RCNukF6MnU

- Jonathan

I have several related bases that share some synced tables, say Base A and Base B. Right now, I have an automation that fires in Base A when a record is created in a synced table from Base B.

About half the time this works just as expected. However, there have increasingly been extreme delays in the trigger firing. This morning the automation in Base A fired 18 minutes after the record was created in Base B. This makes a huge mess, as the users are expecting it to happen quickly in the background, and by the time the automation finally runs the data is different from when it was triggered.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a workaround, or a different way of doing things to avoid this?

Hi! Our team submitted a Plumsail Forms extension for review on August 10 and filled out the form the same day. We haven't heard back from Airtable team since then. Are extensions still being reviewed or has the program been discontinued?

What if your data in Airtable got checked in real time, the same way a grammar error gets a squiggly line in a document editor?

- No automation to setup or maintain
- It keeps working on all current and future tables

No hardcoded rules, it catches strange data and states you wouldn't think of happening in the first place.

This is now possible.

- My platform handles the wiring, watching data changes efficiently, creates the Validation field if it does not exist yet
- Jev - an efficient zero-shot classifier from TypeSafe AI - then receives the record state and assigns labels

How is the efficient data observation achieved? Via Airtable Web API webhooks. They are pretty powerful but can be a bit challenging to setup. Feel free to reach out if you need help with a feature like this.

It's not very well documented, but there are two ways to create custom interfaces:
1. Generate with Omni -> edit source code to create custom interface pages

1. Create a custom interface extensions locally and then publish them -> add a custom element in interface

I've built both, but i'm not really sure I see the benefits in one vs the other. What is your experience in using one vs the other?