AirTable is a dream to use
March 23, 2018

AirTable is a dream to use

Andrej Vrsansky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Airtable

We are an NGO which matches adult volunteers with children living in orphanages in Slovakia, Europe. One year ago, we chose Microsoft Sharepoint as our complex information system tailor made for our purposes. It was slow, inflexible and the team was frustrated by being unable to adjust it completely to our needs. We wanted to cover every process in our NGO starting with CRM for our volunteers, children in the program, donors and partners, through the selection process of each volunteer, quality and impact measurement, ending with importing all the received donations and controlling of retention and costs.

We even had Accenture advise us pro bono on how to improve our system. After many meetings and the understanding that what we want is basically impossible in a Microsoft environment, and after long hours of research and discussions, I found Airtable. Just for a try, I imported the most crucial data from Sharepoint to Airtable.

It felt like a miracle - it was easy to use, fast, provided all the features I needed and the user interface was just great. It gives both the table view and form view, and most of all, it is an idiot-proof system that instantly connects records from various "sheets" called tables in Airtable.

Now we use it for Tasks, Manuals, Events integrated with Google Calendar, CRM is integrated with Eventbrite - whenever any of our volunteers want a training we have the name in Airtable instantly, the records are instantly integrated with Mailchimp - different for our donors and different for other contacts, We have all the data from our volunteers using MS SharePoint native app, minutes from our meetings, all the data regarding impact and quality measurement, etc.

I basically made it all by myself and it I am not an IT geek, just a standard manager understanding computers a bit.

I recommend for basically everyone, and will stick with this app for all other projects I run.
  • Easy to link records - If I am at an event, I can link the attendees right on the trainings we organize, including their emails, attach a photo right from the cellphone, link a task I discussed with one teh attendees and set up another meeting with one of their collegues - all linked to this event, so I have all the information in context - the perfect feature is that even I there is no record to link, I can create a new record right away - I do not have to close the current record and look for it in a different database or sheet - everything is very easy and fast to link. This way the data remains structured and where it belongs, however it does not take long to record all the relevant data
  • Adjusting the system is idiot-proof. Whenever our staff gives me an idea how to improve the system, I do it right away - it takes seconds to make a new field, to change the order or to make simple calculations.
  • Blocks are a new feature for reporting purposes - covers basically all we need - it is instantly there and unlike other systems, if I find there is a mistake or need to update a record based on a report I see, I can do it instantly. If I click on a chart column, I see the records from which the column was calculated (the volunteers who are in a certain state of selection process e.g.). This is fabulous.
  • Integrations through Zapier are very easy to set up. I never ever worked with API in my life and I don't even understand what it is. And I do not really need to if I use Zapier. It does not have all the integrations I want, but all the basic needs are covered.
  • For developer who know how to work with API, it is easy to set us integrations with other services. Accenture helped us with integrating a Sharepoint native app with the system and our website developer integrated all volunteer applications right into Airtable. There are even notification alerts if a new record is made. Works like a miracle compared to traditional massive solutions that take weeks to set up.
  • In a base, I need to lock specific tables for specific people in the team. I want to have all the information in one base - I do not want everybody to see the budget and all the donors, however, I want to have one database of donors to be integrated with MailChimp. Either I need to link two bases or I need to set specific access rights fro every table.
  • Iphone app might have a calendar view, and block as well, also missing grouping would be great in a mobile app.
  • In charts, more series would be helpful - not just one line in a line graph, a pie chart would be nice too. Pivot tables might also allow more fields and options.
  • It would cost us EUR 10K to update our former MS SharePoint system to work faster and to have a better UI. Monthly fee of EUR 250 is a joke compared to that. Using a non-profit discount is great too.
  • The better and faster our psychologists can enter and use a wide range of types of data about children, volunteers, donors and partners, the more efficient they are and the less time they spend with the system - the bigger the opportunity to work with the kids and with volunteers - to do what they love and why we exist.
Intuitive, easy to use, fast, great for attachments (uploading in behind other processes - the app actually really works while it finishes uploads)
I think it works great for basically any scenario.

Due to common arrangement of budgets where months are in columns and not in rows, it is not entirely perfect for financial data, however it takes just a little to get used to different approach and works much better than common Excel views.

Airtable Feature Ratings

Task Management
10
Resource Management
10
Gantt Charts
10
Scheduling
10
Workflow Automation
Not Rated
Team Collaboration
9
Support for Agile Methodology
Not Rated
Support for Waterfall Methodology
Not Rated
Document Management
10
Email integration
Not Rated
Mobile Access
7
Timesheet Tracking
10
Change request and Case Management
Not Rated
Budget and Expense Management
8

Using Airtable

12 - Account managers, management, marketing, operations
  • Volunteer selection process
  • Received donations
  • Retention of recurring monthly donors
  • Budgeting
  • Information regarding the volunteers and children
  • Tasks
  • Events
  • Contacts linked to tasks, events, information, meeting minutes, communication
  • Communication of staff with third parties and clients - volunteers and children
  • meeting minutes in a separate table other than the meeting itself (the meeting is linked to the meeting minutes) with each record a new topic makes it comprehensive to link specific tasks to a topis discussed ata a meeting and directly set an owner and deadline to the owner as a result of the meeting. We stopped making minutes in word - which nobody really ever read :) great and simple innovation.
  • we needed a way how volunteers and the public would commit to attend our trainings - we were exploring the coding of our own mobile app for ios and android - however with airtable we were able to easily integrate eventbrite and create new event in eventbrite with attendees appearing right in airtable - no need for expensive tailor made mobile app anymore - saved tens of thousands of EUR
  • even better integrations
  • we use airtable for all our processes so pretty much nothing more can be done
compared to other products it is just fabulous.