Bases, tables, fields and records

Airtable has a small vocabulary. Learning it properly makes everything else easier.

The building blocks

• A workspace contains bases and controls who has access.
• A base is one database for one area of work, such as agency operations. It contains tables.
• A table holds one kind of thing: clients, projects, tasks. It looks like a spreadsheet tab.
• A record is one row: one client, one project.
• A field is one column: name, email, status, due date.

The key rule is one table per kind of thing. Clients are one kind of thing. Projects are another. Tasks are another. If you find yourself writing "Client 1, Client 2" columns or putting projects and tasks in the same table, you probably need another table.

The primary field

The first field in every table is the primary field. It names each record and appears whenever the record is linked elsewhere. Make it meaningful and unique. For clients, the company name works. For projects, a formula combining client and project name, such as "Northwind: Spring campaign", is often clearer than a bare project title.

Creating the agency base

Create a new base called "Agency operations" and add four tables:

1. Clients: company name, main contact, email, phone, industry, status.
2. Projects: project name, client, start date, due date, status, budget.
3. Tasks: task name, project, assignee, due date, status, estimated hours.
4. Team: name, role, email, weekly capacity in hours.

Do not add the links between tables yet. We do that in the next lesson.

Importing existing data

You can import CSV files or paste data from a spreadsheet. Before importing:

• Clean the data first: remove blank rows, merged cells and summary rows.
• Make column names clear and consistent.
• Check that dates are in one format.

After importing, review field types. Airtable guesses, but it often treats everything as text. Changing types properly is covered in lesson 4.

Record expansion

Click the expand icon on any record to see all its fields in a vertical layout, plus comments and the revision history. Comments let teammates discuss a record without separate emails, and the history shows who changed what and when, which is very helpful when something looks wrong.

Create the four tables and add at least five sample records to each.