AirTable for Exchange Tracking
Mar. 28th, 2021 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010A few people have expressed interest in AirTable (sponsor link, I get credits if you use my link) and how it can be used for Exchange tracking. So I've done a bit of a guided tour of how I have my exchange trackers set up.
This is my AirTable dashboard. Writing Nook is my pro workspace with the extra functions, but if I wanted a new base to use for my day job or something else, I can add them in easily. Writing Projects is the one we're going to look at today, Bangs Fests and Exchanges is the universal tracker I've been trying to get set up, and the three on the right hand end of the top row are individual fics I'm planning in there.
Airtable is like Excel on steroids. All your tables within one base can be linked together, and you can link in one other table on a basic account or as many as you like with a premium account. This is my Exchanges tracker. Each echange I'm interested in gets logged with all of its dates, targets, etc, and this table then becomes a source for the drop down in my project tracker table. This links the two tables together, so the wordcount target pulls through into the project table, and the words written, treat count and project names pull back onto this tracker. (Cunningly just offscreen). It is a bit out of date because I have 'Organise your WIPs' on my BFE 'Getting Shit Done' bingo card.
With a premium account, you can use the colour coding you set in this view in different ones. This is particularly useful with the calendar view and Gannt Chart view (another premium feature)
Time for some more pictures!
Main tracker in grid view:
Calendar view - colour coding is by current stage. I have it set to monthly at the moment, but there's also 2 weekly, weekly, 3 day and 1 day calendar options.
Gannt Chart view - Premium only option.
Form view - You can build your own forms to submit things to your tables. Unfortunately this doesn't currently work in the app, but they're useful to have
Project tracking:
I track all my projects in here, exchange and personal (even original fiction!) so I have various flags to tell it how to track them. The spiral at the top of the column means that it's an automated one. Start Date picks up the first time that project shows up in my Raw Tracker, Total Words gives the sum of words logged in the raw tracker. Then the Exchange tracker picks up counts of how many pinch hits and treats I've done for each exchange and the total wordcount. The exchange title is off to the right and shown in the second image. Project Board and Posted are URL fields so I can link in other bases or my AO3 postings to track them. I am bad at filling these in, same with the summary. For my concepts I like to flag them with a vague idea of how long they're going to come in. Oneshot is anywhere under 5k, Novella is 5-25k, Novel is above that. Time for pictures!
Raw Tracker
This is how I set things up at work, so I've done the same in here. It's a bit more complicated than usual because I have the Target table tied in, which is for tracking my Get Your Words Out totals. That column just means that I can use a rollup to see how many words I've done against target. All I really need is the date, project title, wordcount (this is a restricted field so I can't add letters by accident and break my formulae), whether it was a sprint or not, and the month for monthly total tracking.
Twe really useful bits of AirTable functionality are:
1. Links go both ways. So if I add a project to my project tracker it will be available in the dropdown in this table, but if I add a new project directly to this table it will be ready for me to fill in the details on the project tracker.
2. The views are all based on the same data set, just sliced and grouped in different ways. So my monthly roundup updates automatically.
Again, I have a form for submitting writing progress, as I do for submitting new projects. It's really easy to set up the form to add or remove fields you want to be able to submit, and with a premium account you can add your own formatting to it and make it pretty rather than having it as an AirTable advert. If you were using this for running an exchange, you could put the exchange banner on it or whatever you wanted.
Picture time?
Bit of a whistlestop tour, but feel free to ask if you have any questions.
This is my AirTable dashboard. Writing Nook is my pro workspace with the extra functions, but if I wanted a new base to use for my day job or something else, I can add them in easily. Writing Projects is the one we're going to look at today, Bangs Fests and Exchanges is the universal tracker I've been trying to get set up, and the three on the right hand end of the top row are individual fics I'm planning in there.
Airtable is like Excel on steroids. All your tables within one base can be linked together, and you can link in one other table on a basic account or as many as you like with a premium account. This is my Exchanges tracker. Each echange I'm interested in gets logged with all of its dates, targets, etc, and this table then becomes a source for the drop down in my project tracker table. This links the two tables together, so the wordcount target pulls through into the project table, and the words written, treat count and project names pull back onto this tracker. (Cunningly just offscreen). It is a bit out of date because I have 'Organise your WIPs' on my BFE 'Getting Shit Done' bingo card.
With a premium account, you can use the colour coding you set in this view in different ones. This is particularly useful with the calendar view and Gannt Chart view (another premium feature)
Time for some more pictures!
Main tracker in grid view:
Calendar view - colour coding is by current stage. I have it set to monthly at the moment, but there's also 2 weekly, weekly, 3 day and 1 day calendar options.
Gannt Chart view - Premium only option.
Form view - You can build your own forms to submit things to your tables. Unfortunately this doesn't currently work in the app, but they're useful to have
Project tracking:
I track all my projects in here, exchange and personal (even original fiction!) so I have various flags to tell it how to track them. The spiral at the top of the column means that it's an automated one. Start Date picks up the first time that project shows up in my Raw Tracker, Total Words gives the sum of words logged in the raw tracker. Then the Exchange tracker picks up counts of how many pinch hits and treats I've done for each exchange and the total wordcount. The exchange title is off to the right and shown in the second image. Project Board and Posted are URL fields so I can link in other bases or my AO3 postings to track them. I am bad at filling these in, same with the summary. For my concepts I like to flag them with a vague idea of how long they're going to come in. Oneshot is anywhere under 5k, Novella is 5-25k, Novel is above that. Time for pictures!
Raw Tracker
This is how I set things up at work, so I've done the same in here. It's a bit more complicated than usual because I have the Target table tied in, which is for tracking my Get Your Words Out totals. That column just means that I can use a rollup to see how many words I've done against target. All I really need is the date, project title, wordcount (this is a restricted field so I can't add letters by accident and break my formulae), whether it was a sprint or not, and the month for monthly total tracking.
Twe really useful bits of AirTable functionality are:
1. Links go both ways. So if I add a project to my project tracker it will be available in the dropdown in this table, but if I add a new project directly to this table it will be ready for me to fill in the details on the project tracker.
2. The views are all based on the same data set, just sliced and grouped in different ways. So my monthly roundup updates automatically.
Again, I have a form for submitting writing progress, as I do for submitting new projects. It's really easy to set up the form to add or remove fields you want to be able to submit, and with a premium account you can add your own formatting to it and make it pretty rather than having it as an AirTable advert. If you were using this for running an exchange, you could put the exchange banner on it or whatever you wanted.
Picture time?
Bit of a whistlestop tour, but feel free to ask if you have any questions.
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Date: 2021-03-28 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-28 08:34 pm (UTC)