Airtable

Avantages

Interface utilisateur visuellement attrayante
Systèmes de suivi des tâches flexibles
Beaucoup de modèles de projets à choisir

Inconvénients

Potentiellement déroutant sans instructions
Autorisations utilisateur limitées
Interface Anglais seulement

Avantages

I like this software so much that I pay for it monthly, and I don't consider 25 a month "cheap" for me. But it has been so useful that I can't imagine not having access to all the features.

It's complicated to say what I like most because that entails an explanation of what it does. It basically combines spreadsheets with databases and then allows you to view your data in a multitude of customizable ways. And share just the parts you want to share, or all of it. You can also add collaborators or have clients input information directly through forms. You can take all of this and embed it on your website or on facebook.

The various views can be a gallery of photos, or a more standard spreadsheet, or you can output it to lists like an address list, or set it up to print labels of just the records you want to include.

You can use it for project management and production queues, keeping track of vendors or clients, sorting and updating inventories. It's really brilliant to the point that I've moved away from other spreadsheet programs, task management systems and photo gallery software in favor of using Airtable.

Inconvénients

It's not perfect! There are a few things I haven't figured out how to do or it's fairly clunky still. But much of that is my own lack of skill in certain areas. I'd love to utilize API but I'm still too much of a novice to really figure it out. Once I do, though, I feel like it will take my website to another level.

One of the features is the ability to take a group of records and output it into a format you create. It would be great if there were some templates available for this sort of thing, but I'm not even sure how that could be implemented. It could just be my own laziness!

Avantages

While there are a lot of things that are great about airtable, these are the ones I love the most:

1. Flexibility to do everything from project management, sprint management, and GTMs.
2. Ease of use: This is like using excel sheets so creating a new task project is basically hit enter and start typing. Obviously, the features are 10 times better on airtable.
3. The different kind of views that I can have is also brilliant, the calendar view, kanban view and my favorite.

Inconvénients

I think the only place this tool lacks is in just pure documentation. While you can write long form content here, it doesn't feel natural or intuitive. I really wish they improve the long form text field with rich content formatting and more.

One more thing which is a pain is the mobile app. Feels like an MVP but the viable is so low. I can't even add comments via the app. Quite sad.

Avantages

The fact that basically all database applications I tried were basically meant for enterprise-level businesses, and generally required a steep learning curve to even set up. I only needed basic database functionality, and to be able to easily edit single or groups of entries. AirTable solved this perfectly. Also, the team over there seem to be constantly adding on new functionality, which I see and realize that could solve problems I did not even realize I had. The best part is just how easy it is to use. I have some people on my team that are far from tech-savvy, and with a quick overview, they were even able to utilize it.

Inconvénients

Their forms have a bit to be desired, but that is mostly just the appearance when I send them out. Also when sorting and filtering, it requires 3 or so clicks, when I think they could make it one.

Avantages

When I first started to use Airtable, I came away deeply frustrated with it's usability. It's sometimes slow, straightly obtuse to use and has many "pending features" that would be extremely helpful for some of the simplest of tasks.

However, there came a time when I had to organise a league table for a tournament over the internet, and all of sudden, Airtable clicked.

What Airtable is good at is creating a database of entries for a specific use, so for example, making an internet registration form where a user can enter data and "register" their interest in a particular thing is so quick and easy to do.

I created an application form which auto stored the data into a highly organised table that I could then use however I wanted (I created a league table from the registered users with ease and shared the results of the league as the scoring progressed) - all via the internet, I don't know of a way that I could have achieved this without AirTable, Google Docs would have been a possible solution, but Airtable allows you to add attachments easily (so images, etc) as well as allowing you to manipulate (And hide) data in any way you can think of using Rollups and Lookups - two of it's most powerful features.

Once you get used to it, Airtable becomes useful, and I can see myself using it again and again when I want to organise a very specific and distributed task on the internet.

Inconvénients

Don't think this is Excel in a different disguise, it's not, it's not as adaptable and not as powerful as Excel. You couldn't use it to track a project or manage a holiday system or anything like that, but creating a full customer list for a newsletter? Yep, easy, that's the kind of thing it DOES do really well.

It could use a few more features on the free tier of the software (the paid tier unlocks "blocks" - which is a strange name for plugins, which allow you to view the data in different visual ways but ultimately it's not as well integrated as it should be and therefore has a limited use)

Another thing is that Airtables mobile interface is woeful compared to it's desktop version, and for some reason you can't access the desktop website via mobile. I have no idea what compelled them to make this decision but it's something they need to address in the future. The mobile layout is next to useless.