What is Airtable’s Omni AI?

Omni is the AI assistant built into Airtable. It helps you build apps, research the web, analyze data and documents, create and update records, and answer questions - all through natural language conversation. Both builders and end users can use Omni to work with the core functions of Airtable.

Omni keeps improving as the AI models it runs on improve. Omni takes on bigger, multi-step jobs: it plans the work, carries it through from start to finish instead of handling one request at a time, and tells you what it changed along the way.

How to turn on or disable Airtable AI

To turn on or off your Airtable AI workspace settings:

1. Open your Airtable account page.

2. Select the workspace where you want to turn on or off AI under the “Workspace settings” section.

3. Navigate to the “Workspace AI permissions” section.

4. Toggle on or off the “Turn on Airtable AI for all bases within this workspace” setting.

Accessing Omni in Airtable

From a base:

1. Open the base where you want to use Omni.

2. Click the Omni icon on the upper-left corner of the screen.

From an interface:

1. Open the interface where you want to use Omni.

2. Click the Omni icon in the lower-right corner of the interface.

From the homescreen:

1. Open your homescreen.

2. Click + Create in the lower-right corner of the page.

3. Click Build an app with Omni.

Understanding Omni’s capabilities

Using plain language requests, there are several ways to use Omni. The options below are some common examples of how you can use Omni to work more efficiently in Airtable.

1. Ask

   1. Ask Omni a question about the data in your base.

   2. Ask Omni to search the internet for an answer to a question you have, or to pull what you need from a webpage you link.

   3. Upload a file and ask Omni about it - for example, which people in a spreadsheet aren’t in your contacts table yet.

2. Analyze

   1. Have Omni read all of the data in a table or field to find patterns, themes, and insights.

   2. Have Omni turn your data into a report you can share.

3. Build, create, or edit

   1. Tell Omni to create or update parts of your base:

      1. New tables, and table names and descriptions

      2. New fields and changes to existing fields - this includes traditional field types as well as AI fields

      3. New records, and updates to or deletions of the records you point to

   2. Tell Omni to create interfaces.

      1. AI-generated interface elements: When you ask Omni to build an interface or interface element, it creates custom visualizations and layouts using AI. For more details, see our AI-generated interface elements in Airtable article.

      2. Traditional interface pages: Omni can create native interface pages built in Interface Designer, such as list layouts. It cannot create Gantt or blank page layouts - these must be created manually.

      3. Dashboards: Omni can add pages with the charts and numbers you care about, like deals by stage and total pipeline.

   3. Tell Omni to create a new automation, update an existing one, or explain what your automations do. Omni leaves a new automation turned off so you can review it before you turn it on.

   4. Have Omni pull out the key points from a document that you upload and then add those key points to a long text field in your base.

Omni always asks you to confirm before it deletes records, tables, or pages. It leaves publishing an interface and turning on an automation to you, because those steps affect everyone who uses your base.

What’s new with Omni capabilities

With improved capabilities, Omni can now:

• Carry out multi-step requests - Omni plans the steps, completes them in one conversation, and tells you what it changed.

• Turn files into tables - Upload a spreadsheet and Omni reads its structure, suggests how to organize it, and builds the tables and fields. This is still rolling out, so not everyone has it yet.

• Work with your files - Omni can read PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, CSV, JSON, Markdown, plain text and code files, and Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Where available, it can also read images. You can upload up to 10 files at a time, up to 10 MB each.

• Delete tables and interface pages - Omni confirms before deleting.

• Read and add record comments - Ask Omni to catch you up on a record’s comment thread, or to leave a comment.

• Help debug an automation - Omni checks the automation’s setup and the records it runs on and points you to the likely cause. Omni can also look at recent runs of a turned-on automation to find the step that failed and the type of error.

• Fill out and submit a form - Point Omni at a form and it fills in the fields and submits it for you.

• Undo its own changes - Ask Omni to undo records it added or deleted, fields it created, changed, or deleted, a table it deleted, and changes it made to pages and automations. Learn more in the Post response considerations section of this article.

What works differently with enhanced capabilities

• Create or change view filters

• Change the fields on an existing form - with enhanced capabilities, Omni can create a standalone form and fill out and submit forms, but it can’t add, remove, or reorder fields on a form yet

• Add, remove, or move charts and numbers on an existing dashboard, or change a chart’s type - with enhanced capabilities, Omni can edit an existing chart or number but rebuilds the page for these changes

• Undo creating a new interface or page

• Look up Airtable help articles to answer how-to questions (Must enable internet search for this to function)

• Create AI fields other than AI text fields. With enhanced capabilities, Omni can create AI text fields, and this is still rolling out.

What Omni can’t do yet

These aren’t supported yet:

• Create a new base from a base chat – When you chat with Omni inside a base, it works only on that base. To build a new base with Omni, click + Create and choose Build an app with Omni from the Airtable home screen.

• Write or edit script steps in automations – Omni can set up the rest of the automation, but you'll need to write the code in any script step yourself.

• Enhanced capabilities aren’t available when you use Omni on a published interface page. You can use them while building and editing interfaces in your base.

Tips for best results using Omni

• Describe the task you want Omni to accomplish and give it as much context as possible.

• Add any rules that will provide guardrails for Omni.

• Provide any data or benchmarks that might be relevant to your request.

• Include any formatting instructions to drive consistency in the AI output.

• Give Omni specific instructions about what data it should access or which part of your app it should build or update.

• Use standard Airtable terminology to help prevent confusion.

• When building tables from a spreadsheet, upload the file and describe the structure you want rather than asking Omni to reshape a table you already imported. Name the tables you expect and say how rows should map - for example, “Create three new tables - Assignments, Students, and Tutors - from the attached CSV, and populate them with the data in that file.”

  • Creating a table and filling it with data can be separate requests. If a new table comes back empty, follow up and ask Omni to populate that specific table from the file you uploaded.

  • A CSV export includes only one tab of a spreadsheet. If your source file has several tabs you want Omni to use, export and upload each tab separately.

  • If you only need to move data into Airtable as it already is, importing is more reliable than asking Omni to do it. For more details, see our Importing third-party data into Airtable article.

  • For a very large migration - like tens of thousands of records or a complex multi-table restructure - consider contacting your Airtable account team before you start.

• If a request doesn’t give you the result you expected, try rephrasing it with a more specific ask.

Understanding Omni’s permission access

When Omni interacts with your Airtable app, it will mirror the same permission settings of the user interacting with it. This means that:

• Omni can only perform actions that the user could perform in the base or interface

• Omni only has access to the data within a base or interface that the user can see

• Field and Table permissions can also prevent Omni from making changes

Adjusting Omni AI settings

To access Omni’s settings:

1. With Omni open, click the dropdown icon ⌄ next to the name of your chat. If you have not renamed the chat, then the name will be “New chat.”

2. Click Settings.

From the settings menu, you can adjust various settings for Omni at the app level:

• Enable Omni in {Your base} - Toggling this option off will turn off Omni in your base as well as interfaces. You must enable Omni in your base to allow it to be used in any interfaces.

  Any Owner or Creator of this base can turn this setting back on, so it isn't an enforced restriction. To turn Omni off across your whole organization in a way collaborators can't reverse, an admin can disable it in admin panel instead. For more details, see our Settings - Airtable admin panel article.

• Enable Omni in interfaces - Toggling this option off will turn off Omni in any interfaces that are part of your app.

• Allow Omni to create, update, and delete data for interface-only collaborators - Lets people who only have interface access use Omni to change records.

• Allow interface-only collaborators to upload attachments - Lets people who only have interface access upload files to Omni.

• Customization - There are two text boxes you can use to set guardrails or give Omni more specific instructions of how to respond or build in your Airtable base:

  • What context should Omni know about your organization or app?

  • What preferences should Omni consider in responses?

• Internet access - Toggle this option on to allow Omni to utilize internet resources when answering questions or pulling data in from external sources. When toggled off, Omni will only utilize information in your Airtable base to answer questions and generate content.

After adjusting Omni’s app-level settings, be sure to click Save before returning to your base.

Renaming or deleting an Omni chat

1. With Omni open, click the dropdown icon ⌄ next to the name of your chat. If you have not renamed the chat, then the name will be “New chat.”

2. Click Rename or Delete.

   • If you are renaming, then type out a new name and press Enter/Return

   • If you are deleting, then a confirmation modal will appear. You’ll need to confirm by clicking Delete chat.

Preventing development of custom code

To prevent development of custom code:

1. Open your admin panel.

2. Click Settings.

3. Click Integrations & development.

4. Click the arrow icon to the right of “Prevent development of custom code.”

5. Toggle the button next to “Prevent development of custom code” to “ON.”

Post response considerations

After Omni has completed its response to a request, you will see several additional options appear.

• Undo icon - This option appears in responses where Omni built or updated something in your app. Use it if the results were unexpected and you want to undo the actions that Omni performed.

  • You can also ask Omni in the chat to undo its changes. Omni can undo records it added or deleted, fields it created, changed, or deleted, a table it deleted, and changes to pages and automations. It can’t undo edits to existing record values, or creating a table, interface, or page. It only undoes its own actions in the current conversation, not changes you or other collaborators made.

  • The Undo icon doesn’t appear when Omni created an interface or page in that response.

• Checklist icon - Click this icon to show the steps that Omni took to respond to your request. This can help you improve a request or see what Omni may have missed.

• Thumbs up/down icon - Share positive or negative feedback about Omni’s response. Clicking the thumbs down icon opens a short form where you can describe what went wrong. This feedback helps us improve Omni over time.

• Follow-ups - Omni generates suggestions for additional requests you could use to improve or gain insights into your app.

Omni limitations

• Cannot create views or change view filters. Omni can rename a view or update its description.

• Cannot set up table syncs.

• Cannot export data.

• Omni sometimes struggles with certain calculation-based queries. However, Omni can summarize a table, including sums, averages, medians, minimums, maximums, and counts, grouped by a field.

• Cannot configure base or workspace permissions.

• Cannot create record templates.

• Cannot rebuild or replace an entire table, automation, or dashboard element that it did not create itself.

  • Omni will only restructure or overwrite something it built. If you ask it to rebuild a table that already existed, it declines with a message like “To preserve existing data, I can only edit entire tables that I recently created. Request to create a new table or create, edit, or delete existing columns instead.” and leaves the original table untouched.

  • To move forward, ask Omni to create a new table instead, or ask it to create, edit, or delete individual fields on the existing table - both are supported. If Omni keeps declining after several attempts, start a new chat and describe the structure you want from scratch.

• Cannot create Gantt or blank page interface layouts

  • Omni can build a timeline page that uses a Gantt-style layout

• Cannot create a new base from inside a base conversation. Click the + Create and Build an app with Omni option from your Airtable home screen to have Omni help build a new base/app.

• Working with attachments in custom extensions - When Omni creates a custom extension that handles attachment fields, attachment cells cannot be set using raw base64 data directly. If you encounter a “Lost connection to the server” error when saving attachments, the extension may need to be updated to use one of the supported methods:

  • Provide a publicly accessible URL to the file

  • Upload the file via the Upload Attachment API (supports files up to 5 MB), then write the returned attachment object to the cell

  • If Omni generates code that doesn’t work for attachments, ask it to revise the implementation using one of these supported approaches.

FAQs