Kaito S.
Sample Workload view is brilliant
Rolling up hours per person against capacity finally showed us who was overloaded.
Airtable for operations: databases, views and interfaces
Turn messy spreadsheets into a linked Airtable base with views, formulas, interfaces and automations that run your team's daily operations
Created by Marta Kowalska
- Updated August 2026
- English
- Beginner
What you will learn
- Design a base with linked tables instead of repeated data
- Choose field types that keep data consistent
- Create grid, kanban, calendar and timeline views for different roles
- Collect requests with forms that feed directly into your base
- Use formulas, lookups and rollups to calculate status and totals
- Build interfaces that give each team member a focused screen
- Automate notifications, recurring tasks and status updates
Course content
Thinking in databases, not spreadsheets
Views for every role
- Article: Grid views with filters, sorts and groups 9 min
- Article: Kanban boards for pipelines 8 min
- Article: Calendar and timeline views 9 min
- Article: Forms for requests and intake 9 min
Calculations with formulas, lookups and rollups
- Article: Formula basics 10 min
- Article: Lookups and rollups 10 min
- Article: Counts and progress tracking 8 min
- Article: Dates, deadlines and workload 9 min
Interfaces for focused work
- Article: Interface Designer basics 10 min
- Article: A team dashboard 9 min
- Article: Record review and approval screens 9 min
- Article: Permissions and sharing 8 min
Automations
- Article: Triggers and actions 9 min
- Article: Notifications that people read 8 min
- Article: Recurring tasks 8 min
- Article: A first look at scripting 9 min
- Article: Connecting Airtable to other tools 8 min
Running a healthy base
- Article: Reviewing your base design 8 min
- Article: Limits and performance 7 min
- Article: Documentation and ownership 7 min
- Quiz: Final check 6 min
Requirements
- Comfortable using spreadsheets
- A free Airtable account
Description
Many teams run their operations on spreadsheets that grew without a plan: a tab for clients, a tab for projects, names typed differently in every row and nobody sure which version is current. Airtable gives you the familiarity of a spreadsheet with the structure of a database, plus views, interfaces and automations on top.
What you will build
You will build an operations base for a small creative agency, covering clients, projects, tasks, team members and invoices. By the end, it will replace four separate spreadsheets and a lot of manual follow up.
- Tables linked together so information is entered once
- Field types that keep data consistent
- Views for each role: kanban boards, calendars, timelines and filtered grids
- Forms for project requests and time off
- Formulas, lookups and rollups for status, totals and deadlines
- Interfaces that give each person a simple screen for their job
- Automations for notifications, recurring tasks and status changes
Who it is for
Operations managers, project coordinators, office managers, freelancers and small business owners who manage work in spreadsheets today. No database or coding experience is required. We start with the ideas behind good data structure, then build everything step by step.
The free Airtable plan is enough for most of the course. Some features, such as certain automation limits, interface permissions and larger record counts, depend on your plan, and I point these out as we go. Airtable updates its interface regularly, so some buttons may have moved slightly since recording.
Who this course is for
- Operations managers and coordinators running work in spreadsheets
- Small business owners and freelancers organising clients and projects
- Team leads who want better visibility without custom software
Instructor
Marta Kowalska
Automation consultant teaching Zapier, Make, n8n and Airtable for real operations work
- 4.3 instructor rating
- 21 reviews
- 8,310 students
- 3 courses
- Sample
I help small teams remove repetitive work. In practice that means mapping how a process really runs, finding the copy and paste steps, and replacing them with automations and simple internal tools built in Zapier, Make, n8n and Airtable.
I teach automation as a craft with rules: start from the process, not the tool, design for failures, log what happens and document each flow so someone else can maintain it. I also cover the less glamorous topics such as API keys, webhooks, rate limits and data privacy.
Each course is built around workflows I have set up many times, like lead routing, invoice handling and onboarding checklists, so you can adapt them straight away.
Student reviews
Sabine K.
Sample Replaced four spreadsheets
Our agency now runs on one base. Linked records alone stopped the endless client name typos.
Precious M.
Sample Interfaces were the highlight
Our designers only see their tasks now, and the dashboard shows workload clearly.
Diego A.
Sample Great for non technical people
I had never thought about data structure. The one table per kind of thing rule made everything click.
Joel R.
Sample Formulas explained calmly
Formula errors used to scare me. The traffic light status example is now in three of our bases.
Anya P.
Sample Interface has changed a bit
Some buttons have moved since recording, but the concepts are solid and easy to follow.
Mariana L.
Sample Clear automation section
Recurring tasks and notifications saved our coordinator a lot of reminders each week.
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