What is Airtable Canvas?

Canvas uses AI to build custom apps, reports, and presentations on your Airtable data. Describe what you need, review the plan Canvas proposes, and approve it. You get a working result on your real records, and you keep refining it in chat until it's right. You don't need coding or design knowledge.

Canvas is an Airtable product that runs on its own site, separate from your bases. You sign in with your Airtable account.

Canvas types

To choose a type, pick a template format under the prompt before you send your first message. The default is an app.

Choosing a canvas type

Start with what you're making:

• Something people use: Looking things up, updating records, or working through a queue. Build an app.

• Something people read: A summary or a story told with your data. Build a report.

• Something you present: Full screen, one point at a time, to a room or a call. Build slides.

If you're deciding between an app and a report, ask 2 questions:

1. Does the data need to be current every time someone looks? An app reads live from your base. A report holds a snapshot.

   1. Think of things like a month-end summary, a board update, or the figures behind a decision. These all output as a snapshot of a moment in time. A report keeps those numbers fixed after you share them, so you can show exactly what things looked like when the report was made.

2. Who needs to open it? Apps are limited to people with access to the base. Reports can go to anyone with the link, without signing in.

What teams build with Canvas

• A personal work queue: Apps know who's viewing them, so an app can show each person only their own records without any extra setup.

• Intake and review: One screen for submitting requests and another for working through them. Base permissions already separate the 2 audiences.

• A single view of an account: One screen that pulls together records from several linked tables.

• Scanning in the field: Apps can ask to use the device camera, so counting inventory or checking people in becomes a scan instead of typing.

• A guided process: Onboarding, a QA checklist, or a site inspection, anything where the order of steps matters.

How Canvas differs from views and interfaces

• A view organizes one table's data (filtered, sorted, or grouped) for people working in the base.

• Interface Designer builds pages by arranging and configuring preset elements. When a preset does what you need, it's usually the fastest option.

• Canvas builds what you describe instead of assembling presets, so its layouts and interactions aren't limited to the elements on offer. You can also attach a design system so results use your brand.

All 3 work from the same base data, and using one doesn't rule out the others. Choose Canvas when what you want doesn't exist as a configurable element in Airtable.

Prerequisites for using Canvas

You need a base where you have creator permissions. Canvas builds on real records, so the closer your base is to how you actually work, the more useful the first result will be. If you don't have a base yet, Canvas can create one for you. See Getting started with Airtable Canvas.

If Canvas isn't available to you

Canvas has to be turned on for your organization, and some bases aren't eligible even when it is.

• Your organization's settings: An admin has to allow at least one AI model that Canvas supports, and turn on Canvas. See Airtable Canvas and your admin settings.

  • Note that a workspace owner will also need to enable AI for the workspace for Canvas to function.

• Team plans: Canvas is rolling out gradually, so a Team workspace may not have access to it yet.

• Some organizations: Organizations under HIPAA compliance, with data pinned to a region, or using Enterprise Key Management (EKM) can't use Canvas yet.

• Some bases: Bases with an active sandbox and package development bases aren't eligible.

FAQs