Airtable Connector

It would be great If you could convince someone at Airtable (that I also love but NOT as much as Speckle) to embed live Speckle streams/commits (another icing on the cake)
:cake:

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I would second this request. An Airtable connector would be highly desirable.

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Hey @Kai_Zhu ,

Welcome to the community. Can you explain your use case for an airtable connector? How would you use it and what kind of workflows youā€™d enable with it?

Thanks for the response.

The way I see Airtable connector functioning would be very similar to the Excel connector. I.e. pushing data back and forth from speckle via tables.

Having that in Airtable allows for more powerful workflows compared to Excel due to its relational database capabilities.

+10000!

I was kinda sad for the industry to see an excel connector. Excel is the Sketchup of tabular data tools.

We are actively moving excel users to airtable, stitching databases together, as well as building out fully functioning web apps backed by airtable for its database. It is ver powerful and should be a no brainer to build a connector.

Iā€™d use airtable to

  • edit/add values to speckle object parameters
  • attach & query additional metadata and databases for speckle streams, branches, commits, & objects.
  • sync activity and events from speckle to airtable to trigger other workflows/notifications.

Itā€™s really an accessible path for non technical users to connect tables, build workflows, and visualize data.

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Itā€™s the entry-level relational database that people have been shoehorning into Excel for decades.

So Iā€™m hearing:

  • read & write (like new parameter updater more than the vanilla Excel connector)
  • automation
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Hey there,
some use cases from my side. Weā€™re using airtable as a room-database and starting to use it as ā€œelement-baseā€, so we add properties in airtable instead of adding them direct into the model (different disciplines adding information and with airtable we give them the access to a part of the data). At the moment we canā€™t live update the base and the connection is done in powerBI, with a direct connection we could update our lists direct and create all kind of reports.
Are there already any prototypes of a connection from someone?

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some thoughts againā€¦ maybe the connection shouldnā€™t be airtableā€¦ it should be make or automate, then we can create connections to any base and tool we need and speckle get the first ā€œnocoding-solutionā€ in AECā€¦ of course some of us like codingšŸ˜ƒ. and of course we need then the ā€œupdateā€ button in the archicad-plugin toošŸ˜ƒ.

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Which Automate are you referring to @Manuel_Emmenegger ?

Are you already using Make for aec data?

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@jonathon thank you for asking
zapier, make, microsoft power automate

no, weā€™re using airtable / softr at the moment and import then some properties back to archicad with an excel. solutions on the market like drofus are maybe a good example to understand, what Iā€™m thinking about. Weā€™re creating room-tables in airtable (before a model is existing) and classify then the room with all the information we got from the building owner. 2nd step is generating the rooms in CAD and now we can connect the database with powerBI/ speckle/ airtable (similar to ifcTracer, but maybe in the future faster, easier and webbased;).

Problem: What happens when someone delete a room in the CAD or in the databaseā€¦ with a connection we could update the database.

2nd case: There is a lot of information in the room, which comes not from the architect, when we can import all this information much easier to the modelā€¦ we donā€™t need again excel-imports.

Whatā€™s your opinion about these thoughts? Are there better ways to achieve that?

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Not to deviate this request for an Airtable connection too far, but some of what you are describe fits a lot of what we are looking to achieve with Speckle Automate.

We announced this in November at SpeckleCon23 and have been in closed beta since with Specklers adding functions and building automations with them.

Interfacing with external solutions has been a strong component of the submissions and suggestions so far.

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I totally support the Airtable request! We have been using Airtable in a similar manner to @Manuel_Emmenegger (By the way, Iā€™d love to exchange some ideas with you Manuel) connecting several databases in Airtable with our Archicad models and custom-scripted GDL objects to automate the geometry generation and documentation process.

You can check this article from our blog: GDL, CSV & Automation ā€“ A case study on signage package creation ā€“ Enzyme APD Blog

Airtable Rocks! Speckle Rocks! Its like seeing two friends you like dating :slight_smile:

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Hey @j.beneitez and others here,

I was just checking the Airtable API, and I canā€™t seem to find a way to create custom Data Integrations.
They do offer an API Sync integration, but only in the Business & Enterprise plans.

This means the integration should instead exist as a Speckle App that pushes/pulls data from Airtableā€¦

:point_right: Alternatively, please use this form to suggest Speckle as an official integration:

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You are right @teocomi - which is why I am working on a demos with Speckle Automate as a push / pull with Airtable. :sunglasses: :blue_heart:

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Thanks @teocomi and @jonathon for your response! I sent already a request to Airtable.

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