Collaboration: Can You Automate That?
Our Operations Manager on why Airtable is the key to streamlined collaboration.
If you’re a lucky small business owner, you have an incredible team of people who are enthusiastic, smart, insightful and full of ideas and opinions set to help your business succeed.
But this glorious scenario also poses a problem. How do you corral all of those incredible ideas and opinions (and alas, even some of the not-so-good ones), keep them in one place, streamline their implementation, track every step along the way and ensure all of these incredible and opinionated minds are on the same page and stay on deadline without losing your mind in a sea of chaos?
When it comes to collaboration: Katie, can you automate that?
Katie: Yes.
Airtable is the manager we would be if we had 18 arms, five brains, an infallible memory, and unlimited time and energy. Using a spreadsheet format — one as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional — Airtable allows collaborators to offer feedback on project drafts, manage deadlines, track changes, add assets such as photos and video, stay on budget, keep tabs on outcomes and much, much more, all in one handy, easy-to-follow place.
Their templates offer solutions for everything from event planning to project trackers to content calendars to user research and much more, and you can customize each database to house every last bit of necessary info. Or, build your own Airtable app from scratch and ensure it’s the very best fit for your project. Airtable can also be integrated with apps such as Eventbrite, Mail Chimp, Dropbox, and Twitter, and can automate notifications and redundant tasks. [Kicks back, puts feet up, enjoys this automation on automation.]
Katie says: “We recently ‘discovered’ Airtable while trying to find a solution for a client who needed conference attendees to fill out an extremely complicated form with conditional answers, as well as upload documents at the same time. Nothing fit the bill — until Airtable. Their form builder is unmatched and can be embedded directly into your Squarespace site. Then, all submissions are easily organized into a table that can be easily manipulated/organized however you'd like.”
