Introducing Airtable Blocks
Here at Airtable, we’ve long believed that people and organizations can do powerful things when given the ability to build their own custom tools easily.
From small town fire departments to studios handling post production on major motion pictures, we’ve seen teams of all shapes and sizes achieve more when they’re empowered to work the way they want — not the way their software demands.
Starting today, you can take your bases (and, dare we say, your work) to the next level with Airtable Blocks.
Blocks are modular apps that live on top of your Airtable bases. From map, chart, and timeline, which introduce new ways to visualize your work, to Google Cloud Vision, translate, and send SMS, which help put it into action, blocks not only enhance your existing Airtable use cases, but also introduce completely new ways of building your own app workflows.
For Carol Li, Worldwide Post Production Specialist at Netflix, “Airtable Blocks has been a powerful addition to an already powerful product. The entire Blocks platform has allowed us to surface mission-critical insights in real time as our business evolves — adding an extra layer of operational efficiency to our team.”
Airtable Blocks has been a powerful addition to an already powerful product. The entire Blocks platform has allowed us to surface mission-critical insights in real time as our business evolves — adding an extra layer of operational efficiency to our team.
—Carol Li, Worldwide Post Production Specialist at Netflix
An infinitely recombinable Lego kit for your business
We’ve always thought of Airtable as a Lego kit that enables you, the creator, to build your own workflows (with a friendly, end-user-customizable database at its core). Blocks takes this to a new level, with a completely new set of Lego parts that instantly add a level of connectivity and interactivity to the space of possibilities you can build.
Take, for instance, our Vision block. For the first time, non-programmers can leverage the immense power of Google’s Cloud Vision AI technology in their own dynamic ways.
For example, UK-based digital creative agency (and early Blocks beta customer) This Here used the Vision block during the most recent New York Fashion Week to analyze and automatically tag hundreds of photos taken and posted on Instagram by the influencers with whom they work. They were able to apply these rapid insights to help their clients — major fashion brands — better understand which characteristics led to the highest engagement during this key moment in the season.
With the same Vision block, Insomniac Events, producer of the largest multi-day event in North America, supercharged their lost and found management process. The power of the automatic tagging functionality allows them to quickly capture key information about each lost item (color, type, brand, etc) and then surface it in real time at the event site to reconnect concert-goers with their belongings even faster.
Each block introduces new superpowers
Each block opens up powerful new possibilities for your workflow. For fast-growing unicorn startup Thumbtack, one block — page designer — helped to automate an extremely time-intensive manual process: creating labels for each team member’s lunch that detail ingredients, allergies, and more.
I can’t say how much time and work we’ve saved by not having to build our own software.
— Dana Berge, culinary coordinator at Thumbtack
“Blocks has become the answer to our labeling problems, enabling us to go straight from an entered record to a printed label without any manual effort,” said Dana Berge, culinary coordinator at Thumbtack. “Together with Airtable’s database functionality, Blocks has solved our problem. I can’t say how much time and work we’ve saved by not having to build our own software.”
Mix and match to take your workflow to the next level
Each block on its own extends the power of the information and processes captured in any Airtable base. The real power, however, comes when you use them together.
Carnival Cruise Line uses blocks to manage onboard talent with ease. They employ the world clock block to acknowledge the different time zones in which their ships operate, the timeline block to visualize how different shipboard positions are scheduled across their fleet of 26 ships, and both the chart and summary blocks to quickly get a pulse on crucial KPIs for the program, such as the number of current openings available, the amount of onboarding new hire team members, and the percentage of filled opportunities in relation to the total opportunities available.
“With the addition of Airtable Blocks, visualizing key performance indicators has never been easier for us! Since assigning blocks to many of our KPIs, our overall transparency has improved, which has then allowed us to identify and address challenging areas with quicker response time,” said Julian Clarkson, Casting Supervisor, Musicians & Pro DJs.
Get started quickly with Blocks blueprints
Want to jump right in? We’ve put together a few resources to help you hit the ground running. First up, we’ve introduced a new series on the blog: Blocks blueprints. Each blueprint takes a common use case and gives you a step-by-step walkthrough of how a combination of blocks can help take that workflow to the next level.
The first three blueprints are available today: event planning, project management, and editorial calendars. We’ll be introducing more blueprints in the coming weeks, but please drop us a line if you’d like to see a specific use case blueprint: blueprints@airtable.com.
We’re also introducing a new webinar series. The first session, which covers a high-level introduction to the blocks platform, kicks off on Thursday, March 22! Reserve your spot now.
Oh, the bases you’ll build!
The 27 blocks available today are just the beginning: over the coming months, you can expect to see new blocks appear regularly. Sign up to get updated for each new block we launch!
Blocks are available starting today for our Pro and Enterprise customers. We’re so excited about the platform, though, that we’re opening up Blocks for all of our existing users so everyone can try them out until March 31.
We can’t wait to see what you’ll build! Questions? Ideas for new blocks? Drop us a line here.
Taking Airtable to the next level
Today, we announced an exciting step for Airtable as a company: we’ve raised $52 million in Series B funding. In the coming months, we’ll be using this capital to invest in a significant expansion of our platform and new offices across the US, and to deliver on our long-term mission to democratize software creation. We’re thrilled by everything that the more than 30,000 organizations using the Airtable platform have been able to build so far, and we can’t wait to introduce you to what’s next.
Interested in joining Airtable on this journey? We’re hiring.
Originally published at blog.airtable.com on March 15, 2018.
