Your guide to building in Airtable

Welcome to Airtable! This guide covers all the ins and outs of building in Airtable, from your very first base to a fully automated and integrated solution.

First, what is Airtable?

With Airtable, you can build powerful, custom databases and applications to support your team’s most important workflows.

In practice, this might look like a content calendar, a product roadmap, an event schedule, a company goal tracker…or all of the above! Airtable is flexible enough to handle workflows big and small, and to grow as your team’s needs evolve.

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We know that creating an “application” or “database” can sound like a tall order, but we promise that with this guide, a little effort, and Airtable, you’ll be creating your own tools in no time.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s possible with Airtable:

  • Manage your work from end-to-end

  • Quickly generate polished, ready-to-share visuals

  • Give stakeholders the context they need

  • Align your teams around a real-time, single source of truth

People use Airtable to do everything from tracking job interviews to managing large-scale video production, and thousands of companies use Airtable to run their most important business processes every day. So how does one platform help accomplish all that? Learn more here.

Get ready to take action!

Along the way, we’ll share examples from some real-world team workflows—and we encourage you to build your own base as you go. It’s a useful way to learn, and, as you follow along, you’ll create the foundation for your workflow in Airtable.

This guide will take you through everything you need to build your first fully functional Airtable base and workflow! Follow along with the eight stages of this guide—and if you’re already familiar with Airtable, choose the stage that feels the most relevant for you.

Go ahead and explore each stage below:   

1. Create your database

Building in Airtable starts with capturing your data. In this stage, get a crash course on the fundamental basics of what Airtable is and how it works—and start creating a tool that’s designed for your work.


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Explore stage 1 here

2. Design your workflow

Investing early time and effort into improving your team’s workflow can help you reach your goals, and speed up your workflow, in the long run. In this stage, map out your workflow and learn how you can optimize it with Airtable.


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Explore stage 2 here

3. Give your team the right context

Now that you’ve got your workflow running smoothly, it’s time to make sure that the most important information is easy to find. In this stage, create the right entry points for every stakeholder to plug into your workflow.


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Explore stage 3 here

4. Set your team up for success

If you’re working with a team, effective collaboration is essential to your work. In this stage, learn best practices for bringing your team in to your new workflow, and making day-to-day teamwork as easy as possible.


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Explore stage 4 here

5. Automate your work

Save yourself time and effort by automating tasks that might otherwise take up half your day. In this stage, find opportunities for automation in your workflow and speed things up with computations, conditions, and formulas.


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Explore stage 5 here

6. Extend your workflow

With the core of your workflow up and running, it’s time to go the final mile. In this stage, use apps to customize your base even further—adding in real-time reporting, custom visualizations, and third-party tooling.


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Explore stage 6 here

7. Connect data across tools

Your business-critical data needs to be shared between teams and tools. In this stage, learn how to automatically sync information across bases, and from outside services like Jira or Google Calendar.


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Explore stage 7 here

8. Build (even more) on Airtable

Got something really specific in mind? With a bit of code, the sky’s the limit. In this stage, explore options for everyone from beginner coders to experienced developers.


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Explore stage 8 here

Keep this page handy as you create and evolve your team's workflow in Airtable. You probably won't learn everything on this list in one sitting, but rather come back to add and expand your workflow as your team's needs change.


About the author

AirtableOur mission is to democratize software creation by giving everyone the power to create—and not just use—the tools they work with every day.

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