Airtable boasts a wide range of features that make it the perfect database for no-code and low-code automations. 

One of the simplest but most effective of these features is the ability to create linked records. 

Linked records let you establish a 2-way relationship between records in different tables. It’s a great way to associate two related pieces of data - like connecting project managers to all of the clients they’re working with. 

Once you’ve got a linked record in place, you can also add lookup fields, so you can see additional detail from the record that you’ve linked. 

In this post, we'll show you how it all works step by step.

Creating a Linked Record

Before you create a linked record, you’ll need to have two tables within the same base.

In our example, we’ll be linking our “Project Managers” table with our “Clients” table. Since they’re both in the same “Tutorials” base, we can do this with a linked record field type. 

To create a linked record, start by adding a new field. 

Then, select the option that says “link to another record”. 

Choose the table that you want to link to. In our example, we’ll choose the “Clients” table.

Airtable will then give you a couple of options: “Allow linking to multiple records”, and “Limit record selection to a view”. 

Linking Multiple Records

If you check “Allow linking to multiple records”, you can associate each record with multiple others. For example, this would allow you to associate one project manager with as many clients as you’d like. 

If your data should only support a one-to-one association, then you should turn this option off. Otherwise, you can leave it on.  

Limiting Record Selection to a View

Checking “limit record selection to a view” will ensure that you can only choose records from a specified view. Once you’ve set your options accordingly, create the field. 

Now, you can reference a record by just clicking on this linked field and selecting one of the options that comes up. 

Once you’ve linked one record to another, you’ll see the association in both tables. In our example, you can see a “Clients” field in our Project Manager table, and a “Project Manager” field in the Clients table.

Note that if you change the names of the linked table, the new name will not update in the other table. So if you change your “Clients” table to “Customers”, the Clients field in the Project Manager table will still be called Clients.  

Adding Lookup Fields

One of the most practical benefits of creating linked records is the ability to add lookup fields. Lookup fields let you display additional fields from your linked records. So instead of just seeing the name of the record, you can see any other attributes that you’d like to add. 

In our example, we’ll add lookup fields for the client’s email address, and their project type.

To add a lookup field, add a new field and select “Lookup”. You can also click on the linked field and select “Add Lookup”.

If you have multiple linked records in this table, you can choose which linked record you’d like to use. Then, choose the field from the linked record that you’d like to include. 

In our example, we’ll start with Email, then we’ll add Project Type in the same way. 

Note that lookup fields populate automatically, and can’t be edited directly. You’ll have to update the record in its original table instead.

You can add as many lookup fields as you like to see all of the data you need in one place. This is also super handy if you’re automating with Zapier or Make.

Using Linked Records and Lookup Fields in No-code Automations

If you’re a no-code automation builder, linked records and lookup fields can be a vital tool to have at your disposal. 

With linked records, you can put all of the data an automation needs in a single table, so you can gather it all with just one trigger or search step. For instance, we can quickly put together a Zapier automation that runs every week to send an email to one of our Project Manager’s clients.

We’ll use “schedule” as a trigger, so the automation runs every Monday at noon.

Then, we’ll add an Airtable step to find our project manager’s record. We’ll search the “full name” field for “Sarah Smith”, and test the action.

Now that Zapier found this record, we can use every field in future steps.

When we add a Gmail step, we can retrieve the client’s email from Sara Smith’s Project Manager record. No need for an additional search step in Zapier. 

And if we ever need to update the client’s email address, we don’t need to manually update it in the Project Manager record. It will happen automatically once we update the clients table. 

Use Airtable as Your Automation Database

Airtable is a great spreadsheet app for building no-code automations. Tools like linked records make it easier to build and maintain efficient Zaps and scenarios in Make. 

If you’d like to learn more about using tools like Airtable to support your no-code and low-code automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Airtable and Google Sheets are both popular tools for storing and organizing your data. But while these two spreadsheet apps may look quite similar at first glance, a closer inspection reveals some key differences that set the two apart. 

In this post, we’ll take a look at how both apps let you display and organize your data, how well they support no-code automation, pricing, and more. 

Field and Data Types

First, let’s look at the available field types in both apps. Airtable features several customizable types for each field. You can use standard short text and long text for generic data like names or labels, but they also provide email fields, URL fields, phone numbers, formula fields, single and multi-select fields, checkboxes, and a whole lot more.

Linked Records in Airtable

There’s also one particularly useful field type that you should definitely know about if you’re considering Airtable: linked records.

Linked records let you reference a record from another table.

For instance, let’s say you have a table with all of your personnel, and a separate table with all of the clients you’re working with.

With linked records, you can easily create two-way associations between each of your team members and the clients they’re working with.

You can also use Lookup fields to include additional data from the linked record. For example,  you could add in fields like project due dates, or the client’s email address.

Linked records get updated automatically whenever the original is updated, so you don’t have to worry about them getting out of sync.

Few Options for Field Types in Google Sheets

In comparison, Sheets doesn’t really offer many different field types.

You can use formatting options to make sure numbers are correctly laid out as currency or dates, but this doesn’t change the field type. 

As part of a recent update, you can also turn fields into “People Chips”, which are objects that reference someone’s Google account. 

But that’s about all that Google Sheets offers for diverse field types. 

If you’re looking for the convenience and versatility having different field types affords, then you’ll probably want to check out Airtable.

Organizing Your Data with Custom Views

Now, let’s compare how both apps let you organize your data.

In Airtable, you can create several customized views to choose how your data is displayed.

You can use precise filters to determine which fields or records are hidden, and you can use different view types to display your data in different formats and layouts. 

You can stick with a basic grid, create a gallery of image attachments, make a kanban board for your team’s tasks, or make an interactive form for people to submit data - among other options.

On the other hand, Google Sheets doesn’t have many options for how you display your data. You can create and save filters for your columns, but setting them up isn’t nearly as intuitive as Airtable’s filters menu. 

And there are no built-in tools to reorganize your data into visually engaging formats like galleries or Kanban boards.

If you’re strictly working with simple numerical data, the limited display options in Sheets likely won’t be an issue. But if you’d like to create different views and tools with a diverse and dynamic dataset, then Airtable will probably be the better choice. 

No-code Automation Support

Next, let’s talk about one of our favorite subjects at XRay: no-code automation.

Building no-code automations in Airtable

Airtable includes native support for some simple automations. If you’ve ever built no-code automations, the interface for Airtable’s automations will be very familiar and easy to use. 

You just need to pick a trigger - like a new record getting added to a specified view - and configure the actions you’d like to run whenever the trigger happens. 

For instance, you can automatically send messages in Gmail or Slack, create issues in Jira or Github, create additional records in Airtable, and a lot more.

Supporting Zapier and Make Automations with Airtable

Airtable is also a great app to use with no-code providers like Zapier or Make.

Linked records let you use Airtable to build flexible datasets for your automations, while the extensive view options give you easy ways to trigger your automations. And because Airtable generates a unique ID for every single record, it’s easy to find and update any given record with your automations from any automation provider. And if you ever reorder or rename your columns, the automation providers can still locate the records by using the same ID. 

Automation with Google Sheets

In comparison, Google Sheets isn’t nearly as well suited to automation. 

Sheets doesn’t have any built-in no-code automation tools, though you can use macros or Google Scripts to build some automations if you’re familiar with their syntax. However, like most popular SaaS tools, Google Sheets can be automated with apps like Zapier or Make. 

That being said, Sheets isn’t as convenient of a tool for no-code automation.

Without views and forms, you don’t have as much control over triggering your automations. And since every cell is identified by its row and column, rearranging a spreadsheet will produce unexpected results in your automations. 

Data could be retrieved from -or added to- the wrong cell, making your automation work incorrectly. And worst of all, it could take a long time before you notice the issue, as the automation may not return an error - even if you rename or rearrange the columns. 

If you’re trying to choose a spreadsheet app to use as a no-code automation database, Airtable is the clear winner. 

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Handling large datasets

Most of our comparisons so far have given a clear edge to Airtable, but this next category is something that Google Sheets handles much better than Airtable.

If you’re dealing with very large datasets, Google Sheets is likely the better choice. 

A single spreadsheet in Google Sheets can hold up to 5 million cells, while each base in Airtable is limited to 50,000 rows for Pro accounts, and 250,000 rows for enterprise users. 

So if you’re working with millions of records in a single database, Google Sheets is certainly a better choice than Airtable. 

However, if you’re using datasets that are that large, you may also want to consider enterprise-caliber databases like Google Cloud, AWS, or Postgres instead. There are even no-code enterprise database tools like NocoDB, Backendless, and Xano - but we won’t be covering those apps in detail in this post. Just bear in mind that all of these options will be more expensive than the free Google Sheets.

Pricing

Speaking of price, let’s finish up by comparing the pricing options for both apps.

Google Sheets Pricing

Google Sheets itself is totally free to use. You just need to make a Google account to start creating spreadsheets. Every free Google account comes with 15 gigabytes of cloud storage. 

Of course, spreadsheets don’t take up a lot of space, but if you do need more than 15 gigabytes, you have a couple of options.

For businesses, Google Drive offers 2TB of storage for $12 per user per month.

For individual accounts, Google One starts at $2 per month for 100Gb of cloud storage, and goes up to 2TB for $10 a month.

Airtable Pricing

Airtable offers a free plan which can be great for individual users, but does have its limitations. It only supports 1,200 records per base, 1 extension per base, and doesn’t have any snapshot history - among other restrictions.For a pro plan that unlocks nearly all of Airtable’s features, you’ll need to pay $20 per user per month. 

If you want every feature that Airtable has to offer, like 3 years of revision history and on-premises Jira and Salesforce syncing, you’ll need to contact Airtable for an enterprise plan. 

These are annual contracts that can cost upwards of $10,000 per year. But when your entire organization runs on Airtable, it's well worth the cost, security, privacy, and enterprise-grade support. 

If you’re just looking to make some small databases for individual use, you can easily use either app for free.

However, if you plan to work with large databases with hundreds of thousands of records, then Sheets will definitely be the cheaper option. 

Choosing the right app for your team

Ultimately, Airtable is easily the better choice if you’re looking for a spreadsheet app that supports your automation efforts.

It’s also better if you’re just looking for an app that gives you flexibility and control over how you arrange and display your data.

Of course, if you’re already comfortable with Google sheets and its formulas, or if you have a huge dataset to work with, sticking with the totally free app may be the better choice. 

For many, Google sheets is also a familiar testing ground to prototype your ideas. 

At XRay, we prefer Airtable for its extensive automation support, but we can also see the value in using Google sheets as well - Especially to clean or re-organize messy datasets.

If you’d like to learn more about choosing software for no-code automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Testing your no-code automations is an essential part of the building process. With most no-code platforms, you’ll need to build your automations around test data from the very start, and you always need to confirm that your automations work correctly before sharing them with your team or your clients. 

 In this post, we’ll explain why testing is so important, and we’ll show you how to test your automations in no-code platforms Zapier and Make. 

In the world of no-code automation, testing isn’t optional

Testing your automations isn’t just a best practice. To put it simply, testing is not optional in automation apps like Zapier and Make. You need to use test data to even build the automations in the first place. 

Using test data to build automations

For instance, if you want your automation to run every time you add the ‘URGENT’ tag to an email, then you must have a message in your inbox with the ‘URGENT’ tag. 

When you test the trigger, Zapier or Make should find that email and return a long list of relevant data which you can then use to build the rest of the automation.

If your trigger step finds nothing when you test it, then that’s a sign that something wasn’t configured correctly. 

Without test data from your trigger, you will have a very difficult time building your automation. In many cases, it won’t even be possible at all, since you won’t be able to reference the data that you want to manipulate in your automations. 

Testing automations before delivery

Much like traditional software, no-code automations need to be thoroughly tested before they’re ready to use for everyone. The last thing you want is for your critical automated workflow to perform hundreds of inaccurate actions before you catch the problem. 

Unlike software development, testing your no-code automations is just as simple and intuitive as building the automations themselves. Apps like Zapier and Make both make it easy to test your automations, and we’ll show you to use both step by step. 

How to test automations in Zapier

In Zapier, you’ll be prompted to test every step that you build with a clearly labeled button, but it looks a little bit different based on whether you’re testing the trigger or the actions.

Testing triggers in Zapier

Once you’ve configured your trigger for the first time, you’ll see a button that says “Test trigger”. Just click on it to grab your first round of test data.

You can then see the information that Zapier found. In our example, we’re looking at an Airtable record that was added to our specified base and table. 

If your trigger step found several pieces of data, you can just click on the dropdown that says “Record A” (or B, C, etc.)  to choose a different one. 

In that same menu, you can also click on “load more” if you don’t see a record that you think should have been found, or if you’ve created new data to test with since the last time you ran a test in Zapier.

Once you’ve reviewed the test data and confirmed that everything looks right, you can click on ‘Continue’ to add an action to your automation. 

Testing actions in Zapier

In our example, we’ll create a simple step that sends a brief message in Slack with the name of the new contact in our directory. 

Once your Zapier action is configured, click on “Continue”, and you’ll see a button that says “Test Action”. 

Before you click on that button, bear in mind that testing a step in Zapier will actually perform that action, and it will do so immediately. 

In our case, clicking on “Test Action” would send a Slack message to the designated channel right away. 

Testing your automations safely

When you’re testing your automations, always make sure that your test data is safe to use. You probably don’t want to send a bunch of test messages to clients, leads, or other contacts. 

If you need some fake data just to test with, we’d recommend checking out Mockaroo. It’s a great free resource for creating a CSV or XLS file with any data type you want - names, fake company names, dates, even numbers formatted like IP addresses. 

Alternatively, you can also just alert your client or your team that you’ll be testing the automation, and that they may see some messages or alert pop up that they can disregard. 

Once you’re all set to test, just click the button and your configured action should happen immediately. In our example, we see the Slack message pop up shortly after clicking on the “Test” button.

We can also see additional data about the message that was sent in Zapier. 

If your automation is configured how you want it after testing, you can click on “Publish” to turn it on. 

Testing automations in Make

Now let’s take a look at testing an automated scenario in Make. 

Testing an automation in Make is a little different, as Make gives you the option to test the entire scenario at once. But first, let’s just start with testing the trigger.

Testing triggers in Make

Once you’ve set up your trigger module, click OK to close the configuration window. Save your changes, then, right click on the trigger module. 

You could select “Run this module only” to run it, but you’ll get the most consistent results by selecting “Choose where to start” first. 

Then select “Choose manually”. From here, you can just pick a specific piece of data to use as you’re building your automation. 

With a piece of data selected, you can right-click again and select “Run this Module Only”. You should see a number appear over the trigger module. Click on it to see the data retrieved by the trigger, and confirm that Make found the correct data.

Testing actions in Make

When you add an action module, you can test that module alone by saving your changes, right clicking on the step, and selecting “Run this module only”. 

However, depending on the integrations you’re using, you might see some unexpected results when you test one step at a time in Make.

If your action module uses data from previous modules, you’ll be prompted to provide that data manually instead, which might make it hard to tell if the automation will actually work correctly when all of the steps are running in sequence. 

In many cases, the safest approach is to test the entire scenario by returning to the trigger step, choosing a starting point manually, and then clicking on “run once”. 

It can be a little tedious, but it gives you the most consistent and reliable test results. If you’ve seen some of our Make and Integromat tutorials on our blog or YouTube channel, you may have noticed that we typically use this method to test.

Just like with Zapier, testing a step or a scenario in Make causes it to run, immediately creating, updating or deleting data as you’ve specified, so make sure that it’s safe to run your automation with the test data you’re using before you start testing. 

Performing live tests with your Zapier and Make automations

With both Zapier and Make, we’d recommend running a live test before you consider an automation complete.  With a live test, you won’t use either app’s testing functions; instead, you’ll just perform the actions required to trigger the automation and confirm that it runs correctly in real time. 

Live tests in Zapier

In Zapier, publish your Zap to save it and turn it on. Then, perform whatever action you’ve specified as your trigger. 

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In many cases, nothing will happen immediately. Most Zaps only run on 5 or 15 minute intervals, depending on your subscription plan. Just wait for a few minutes, and you should see the configured action occur. 

Live tests in Make

In Make, you can configure your trigger to run as often as you’d like (though bear in mind that this will use data, which will count against your monthly limits). Then, click on the “Save” icon to make sure all of your changes are committed, then click on the “On/Off” switch to turn the scenario on.

Perform the automation’s trigger action, and your scenario should run as configured. 

Once you have a successful live test, you can let your team or your client know that the automation is ready to use. 

Building effective, reliable automations with thorough testing

Testing no-code automations in Zapier and Make is a necessary step to ensure that your automations are functioning properly and delivering the desired results. 

By taking the time to test your automations, you can identify any potential issues and make any necessary adjustments before they impact your business. 

If you’d like to learn more about no-code automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

AI is making huge leaps forward every day. 

Gone are the days of simplistic chatbots that could only echo what they were told without any semblance of context or interpretation. 

Right now, there’s a free AI tool that can simulate realistic conversation, draft entire essays, compose poems, and even try its virtual hand at writing code. 

In this post, we’re going to tell you about ChatGPT, an AI tool that’s going to completely change the way you write content for your company. 

It’s called ChatGPT, we’ll show you how to use it to quickly write blogs, social media posts, and more. 

A Free* and Powerful Chatbot Tool from OpenAI

ChatGPT is a tool developed by OpenAI. It uses natural language processing powered by GPT3 to create an extremely sophisticated chatbot. You can ask ChatGPT questions or give it prompts in plain language, and get stunningly realistic answers in return.

Right now, ChatGPT is totally free to use. Just go to the link in the description below to try it out and give it as many prompts as you’d like. It can be a little slow at times due to heavy traffic, but there are no strict limits on how much you can use the tool for now.

We don’t know when OpenAI will start charging for ChatGPT, but it’s extremely likely that they will at some point. 

Given that it may not be freely available for much longer, we strongly encourage you to make an account and start exploring ChatGPT right away, before it’s locked behind some kind of a paywall.

Rapidly generate ideas and break writer’s block

One of the great things about using ChatGPT for writing content is that it can help to take some of the pressure off of coming up with ideas on your own. 

If you're feeling stuck or uninspired, or if you’re just too busy to brainstorm a long list of ideas, ChatGPT can help spark your creativity and provide new concepts to explore.

For instance, you can give ChatGPT a prompt like: write me ten motivational tweets about productivity, and it will respond accordingly with ten short statements about productivity.

If you take a look at the results, you’ll see that they’re pretty well written messages.

Several examples caution readers against aiming for perfection, like #8: “Strive for progress, not perfections. Small wins add up to big success over time."

Others focus on more practical tips, like #4: "If you want to be productive, start by setting clear goals and breaking them down into manageable tasks."

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If we leave these Tweets as they are, they’re maybe a little bland and vague, but they’re a great jumping off point. 

We can just add a quick tip about using a task management app to #4’s recommendation about breaking up larger goals into smaller tasks, and it’s a solid post. 

And ultimately, even if you reject a large part of ChatGPT’s output, it can be a valuable exercise to determine what you don’t want to write.

Diversify your content and your writing style

Of course, you shouldn’t just stop with one prompt. A key advantage of using ChatGPT is that it can help to diversify your content. By using ChatGPT to generate text, you can cover a wider range of topics, ideas, and styles, which can help to keep your audience engaged and send exactly the right message. 

Earlier, we asked ChatGPT to give us ten motivational tweets about productivity. We can just swap out “motivational” for “funny”, and we get a few jokes about productivity formatted like Tweets. 

Many of these center around the theme of trying to be productive, but ultimately struggling to get anything done, like #2: “Just spent an entire hour organizing my to-do list... and now I have no time to actually do any of the tasks on it #priorities"

#4 follows a similar pattern: “Tried using the Pomodoro Technique to increase my productivity, but all it did was make me really good at playing with a kitchen timer #fail"

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Tweet #3 takes a slightly darker turn: "Productivity tip: if you want to get things done, just pretend the world is ending tomorrow and you have to save it #motivation"

Comedy writers probably don’t have much to fear from ChatGPT – yet – but these aren’t half bad. 

If you’re struggling to come up with a few funny or silly comments to lighten up your company’s social media feed, this is a great way to get the ball rolling. 

Write more content in less time

The output of ChatGPT isn’t perfect. We wouldn’t recommend blindly copying and pasting your content directly from the chatbot – especially if you’re asking it to write code. 

Its linguistics model is highly advanced, but it can still spit out some awkward or incorrect sentences, and very frequently, it will be a little bland and straightforward. 

Instead, think of it as a tool that you can use to speed up your writing process. Use ChatGPT to generate more ideas, more outlines, and more content overall in less time

Let the chatbot shoulder the burden of generating long lists of posts, or creating an outline, or just drafting a conclusion to a post that you’ve already nearly finished. 

If you’ve ever written and edited content, you know how difficult it can be to write something and polish it all on your own.

ChatGPT gives you decent brainstorms and rough drafts to start from in a matter of seconds - as long as the servers aren’t overloaded by everyone playing with this awesome new toy. 

With ChatGPT, you can spend less time writing line after line of copy, and more time editing for tone, for precision, and for style. 

Ultimately, ChatGPT is like any other workflow automation tool that we work with at XRay. It’s not about replacing people; it’s about letting them do more with their time. 

AI isTransforming the Workplace

The advances that we’re seeing these days in AI are extraordinary. No matter how you feel about AI, there’s no doubt that this tech is going to disrupt and transform the way that we all work. 

Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Explore this amazing tech for yourself, and start using AI tools to do better work in less time. 

If you’d like to learn more about boosting your productivity with workflow automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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A few simple calculations can be the difference between a perfect workflow automation and a frustrating tool that doesn’t do what you need it to. 

Make (formerly Integromat) gives you an extensive selection of math operations that you can use in any text field in your scenarios. 

You can use these functions to add numbers, round off a decimal point, find the average value in a set of numbers, or even generate a random value. 

In this post, we’ll show you how to perform each of these functions with short, step-by-step tutorials. We’ll use a Slack module as an example, so the result of every function will be sent as a Slack message. 

Add numbers together

With the “sum” function, Make will calculate the sum of every number you enter between the parentheses. Here’s how it works:

• Open any text field in your scenario

• Select the X¹ symbol to access math functions

• Click on the ‘sum’ function to add it to your selected field

• Enter the numbers you want to add together, separated by semicolons

• Alternatively, you can enter an array of numbers to add together

• Run the module to output the sum 

Round decimal values to whole numbers

Make’s “round” function will round any number with a decimal point to the nearest whole integer. For example, 3.7 would be rounded to 4, while 7.23 would be rounded to 7. To use the round function:

• Open any text field in your scenario

• Select the X¹ symbol to access math functions

• Click on the “round” function to add it to your selected field

• Enter the number you want to round between the parentheses

• Run the module, and the output will include the number rounded to the nearest integer

Find the average of a set of numbers 

Make lets you easily calculate the average of several numbers with this simple function. Just enter an array of numbers or values separated by semicolons to calculate the mean. For example, the average of 5, 6, and 7 would be 6. 

• Open any text field in your scenario

• Select the X¹ symbol to access math functions

• Click on the “average” function to add it to your selected field

• Enter the numbers that you want to use, separated by a semicolon

• Alternatively, you can enter an array of numbers 

• Run the module to output the average

Generating a random number

Generating a random number can be a useful technique for many automated workflows. To create one in Make, all you have to do is use the prebuilt variable called “random”. Here’s how it works:

• Open any text field in your scenario

• Select the X¹ symbol to access math functions

• Click on the “random” variable to add it to your selected field

• Run the module to generate a random number between 0 and 1

Generating a number between 0 and 100

In many cases, it will be more appropriate to generate a whole number between 0 and 100 rather than a decimal value between 0 and 1. To do that, you just need to multiply the “random” variable by 100 and round the result. 

• Open any text field in your scenario

• Select the X¹ symbol to access math functions

• Click on the “round” function to add it to your selected field

• Add the “random” variable between the parentheses of the “round” function

• Click on the green multiplication symbol to multiply the “random” variable by 100

• Run the module to check your result

Build more advanced scenarios with math functions

Using Make’s math functions will let you build more sophisticated automations that transform your data and respond effectively to different circumstances. The functions in this post are just a sample of what’s available; try exploring the rest to discover everything you can do with these tools.

If you’d like to learn more about workflow automation with tools like Make and Zapier, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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For startups and growing companies, managing your team’s data and documents can be a headache. Scattered resources in Google Drive, Slack, and everyone’s personal devices make it difficult for everyone to find what they need to get their work done. 

In this post, we’re going to take a look at two web tools that can help you to organize and access your company’s critical information: Notion and Airtable.

Both of these apps are great solutions for managing your company’s data and resources, but they each fill a somewhat different niche.

In this post, we’ll explain the relative strengths and weaknesses of both tools, and I’ll share my thoughts on which use cases are best suited to each app.

Notion and Airtable: Key Use Cases and Differences

First, let’s take a look at the overall differences between the two tools.

Create rich text documents and simple databases with Notion

Notion is a piece of software that is all about creating documents. It has extensive formatting and styling options for your text, and a huge array of blocks that you can add to any document. 

If you want to create user guides, or an employee handbook, or a training curriculum, or any text-based resource, then Notion is a great app to do it in. 

Notion also allows you to create tables and databases which can include some impressive features like linked records. 

Build versatile, functional databases in Airtable 

Airtable, on the other hand, is essentially a highly sophisticated spreadsheet app. It’s somewhat similar to Google Sheets or Excel, but with far more features for organizing and using your data. 

For instance, you can use filters and views to display any subset of your data that  you want; you can use form views to let your team or your clients easily contribute to your database; and you can use automations and extensions to build workflows around your data.

Using Airtable and Notion together

With complementary strengths and weaknesses, Airtable and Notion work great together. By creating your text documents in Notion and managing your data and automations in Airtable, you can get the most out of both tools. 

However, dividing the two into distinct use cases isn’t always so straightforward. Notion can also create databases, and you can create interfaces in Airtable to give context to your data.

And in many cases, you may prefer to consolidate everything into a single app. 

So let’s dive into the more specific distinctions that really set these apps apart from each other and explore how you can use them in your workflows. 

Interfaces and structure

First, let’s compare one of the primary aspects that you’ll interact with in both apps: their interfaces and visual organization. 

Notion’s interface

Notion’s layout is highly customizable and modular. It allows for almost endless nesting of your data and documents. Any page or table can be nested within another page.

This kind of flexibility allows for nearly any organizational system that you want to create, but it can make it difficult to quickly surface a specific piece of data. 

It might also be overwhelming for first time users since you never really know how deep things are nested.

Airtable’s layout and structure

In comparison, Airtable has a more strictly defined organizational hierarchy. All of your data is stored in individual bases. Each base can contain several tables, and each table can be organized into different views that sort and filter your data. 

The workspace holds bases, bases hold tables, tables hold records, and records have fields. That’s it; no nesting, no changing the existing hierarchy.

Comparing interfaces

Notion’s customization makes it great for creating specific, guided paths with your documents, while Airtable’s more standardized layout makes it much easier to search for data. 

Notion’s search functions can help you to find whatever you’re looking for, but if your databases have over a thousand records each, its indexing will likely make it hard to sift through any redundant or similar entries. Making search slow and less useful. 

Again, the key distinction between these two apps is that Notion’s interface makes it more ideal for creating docs for people to read, while Airtable is better at organizing databases and analyzing data.

Formatting and styling text in Notion and Airtable

In terms of formatting and styling text, Notion easily has the advantage over Airtable. You can add headings, dropdown toggles, background colors, columns and more to customize the layout of any given page. 

By contrast, an Airtable spreadsheet is mostly just a typical spreadsheet - albeit with a little more color and visual depth. In a standard table, you’re limited to a single font and no significant style options. However, you can color code records based on rules and add rich text to a Long Text field.

Airtable’s interfaces offer you more choices for customization, but these only exist as separate views to explore your data. 

If you need lots of options for visually formatting information for your team or clients to read, then Notion will probably be the better choice.

Workflow Automation in Notion and Airtable

Any SaaS tool can be used for automation, and that certainly includes both Notion and Airtable. You can easily automate data into and out of your Notion pages and Airtable databases using tools like Zapier or Make, as you can see on XRay.Tools. 

However, if you’re not already using third-party automation tools, then you’ll find that Notion and Airtable aren’t on the same page when it comes to native automation abilities. 

Airtable includes some pretty useful features for building automations right within the app. 

Its native automation capabilities aren’t as widely integrated as what you’d find in Zapier or Make, but it can still write scripts, build if-then flows, and automatically send information to popular apps like Slack, Gmail, and Salesforce.

Notion, on the other hand, lacks any built-in automation features. You can still automate Notion using other tools, but it doesn’t offer those capabilities right out of the box. 

Reports and analytics

What if you want to look at reports and analytics about all the data that you’re creating and storing?

Airtable has reporting features for generating visualizations via their extensions library, such as the “Charts” extension developed by Airtable themselves. It’s also pretty easy to set up a data pipeline into more robust reporting software like Tableau or Google Data Studio if you’d like more control over the details.

Notion, on the other hand, simply does not have any natively supported reporting. There are third-party add-ons available, but these focus on ‘views’ of individual pages, not necessarily analyzing the data points of your Notion workspace. 

For instance, they won’t let you see the number of records changed, or meta-statistics about your team's usage or project completion statuses. If reporting is essential for your team, then you’ll probably want to use Airtable.

However, you could also use Notion and Airtable together. 

Connecting Notion to Airtable for reports

At XRay, we actually built an Airtable-based analytics system for Notion. We manage all of our tasks and projects in Notion using a custom system of templates and automations. Then, to view analytics and reports on our tasks, we turn to Airtable. 

By connecting the two, we know how many tasks were created per project, when, and by whom. 

We know how many tasks were completed, we know who is assigning tasks and what percentage of tasks are completed before their due date. 

Note that neither Airtable or Notion will natively give you these granular usage analytics, but it is possible to create a system that can capture how your team is working, not just providing them a structure to work within. 

If you want to get usage analytics for your Notion workspace, just click here to schedule some time to talk. 

Pricing plans in Airtable and Notion

No software comparison would be complete without bringing up the issue of price. 

Airtable’s pro plan costs $20 per user per month, while Notion’s Team plan costs $8 per user per month. These plans include all of the features that both apps offer. There are also enterprise plans available for both tools, but you’ll need to talk to their sales teams to get a quote. 

You don’t need a seat for everyone on your team

At only $8/mo, Notion is obviously the more affordable option.However, It's more likely you’ll want to pay for more of your team to access and contribute to Notion. With Airtable, it’s common for a smaller subset of your team to need edit access to your bases. 

Depending on the skillset and needs of your team, a combination of both tools may be the most affordable and appropriate option for you. 

In any case, you don’t necessarily need to pay for a seat for everyone on your team with either app. Both apps let you control permissions on a granular level, and offer alternatives to granting full edit access.

You can just share an Airtable form view with people who need to contribute entries to a database, or share specific pages in Notion rather than adding another seat to your workspace.

Ultimately, if price is a major concern, Notion will clearly be the better choice, but neither app is prohibitively expensive for a small team. 

Using Notion and Airtable to support your company

To sum it all up, if you’re looking to create verbose documents primarily intended for people to read, then Notion’s probably the better choice. If you’re looking to create large databases, particularly for use in automation, Airtable is the better pick.

However, both apps do work well together. The two are not mutually exclusive. For many companies, the best choice will be to adopt both and use each one as needed in specific circumstances.

If you’d like to learn more about web tools that can help your company to be more productive, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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With dozens of  platforms that support thousands of popular SaaS tools, the possibilities with no-code automation are nearly endless.

However, confirming that each app in a given workflow is supported by your preferred provider can be a tedious process.

To help streamline automated workflow design, we’ve created a resource called XRay.Tools.

XRay.Tools is a free search engine that we at XRay.Tech have built to help people automate their workflows.

It lets you search for the apps you use every day to discover what you can automate within them.

In this post, we’ll give you a detailed overview of how XRay.Tools works. 

Search for your frequently used web tools

To get started, just open up your browser and go to www.xray.tools. 

Right at the top of the page, you’ll see a simple search bar. In this search bar, you can enter the name of any app that you’d like to look up. 

For instance, if you search “Google”, you’ll see results for apps like Google Ads, Google Chat, Google BigQuery, Google Calendar, and more.

In our example screenshot below, we’ve selected Google Calendar to add it to our toolbelt.

We also use Airtable frequently at XRay, so we’ll add that app as well. As you can see in the image below, adding a new tool doesn’t replace the old one. You can keep adding as many tools as you’d like to create an accurate selection for your workflow. 

At a glance, we can see that both Airtable and Google Calendar have automation support in Zapier, Make, and Workato. To get more detail, we can just click on this button that says “View Automation Abilities” for either app.

View automation abilities for your apps

When you click on “View Automation Abilities”, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of every trigger, action, and search that you can automate with your chosen app.

Automation Abilities: Triggers

If you’re not familiar with these terms, triggers are the events that launch your automation.

Each automation includes a single trigger that kicks everything off, and it usually gathers some key data as well. 

For instance, if you used the ‘New Record’ trigger listed for Airtable, Zapier would start the automation whenever a new record was added to the specified base. 

The trigger step would include all of the data in the Airtable record itself, as well as some metadata - like when the record was created and the record ID. 

Automation Abilities: Actions

You can use all of the data gathered in your trigger step to perform automated actions.

“Actions” is a general term that refers to basically any event that automation providers like Make and Zapier can automatically perform with your app.

Typically, you can automate nearly any action that you would perform manually in your software. You can create or update objects, draft and publish posts, copy documents, etc.

Unlike triggers, an automation can include as many actions as you’d like. 

As you can see in the example pictured below, Zapier, Make and Workato all offer pretty similar actions for Airtable, but there are a few differences.

For instance, Make and Workato both support automatic deletion of records, but Zapier does not.

Automation Abilities: Searches

Finally, XRay.Tools also indexes  “Searches”. 

Searches are automated steps that find data. 

With a search, you can look up an object by its name, its ID, or some other attribute. Like actions, you can include several searches within a single automation. Searches are a useful way to find additional data that wasn’t included in your automation trigger. 

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Planning your no-code automations

By checking the available triggers, actions, and searches for each app in your toolbelt, you can plan your automations before you start building. You can figure out which providers support the actions you want to automate, and choose your platform accordingly.

And if none of the providers have the options you’re looking for, XRay.Tools can help you to find an alternative app instead.

For instance, If you’re looking to automate your CRM, you might find that Hubspot has automation capabilities that Salesforce is missing, or vice versa.

XRay.Tools can be especially useful if you’re building automations for a client. Just ask them to search for all their SaaS tools and to send their toolbelt to you, so you can see everything they’re working with.

They can just click on “Get Shareable Link” to copy a URL that will save all of the tools currently searched. 

With a single link, you can see all of the apps that your client wants to work with, so you can start designing automated workflows right away. 

Search thousands of tools supported by 3 of the biggest no-code providers in the industry

XRay.Tools has indexed thousands of the most popular SaaS tools available, but we’re still adding more. If you can’t find your software in XRay.Tools, just click on “Request [your app] as a new tool” to let us know. 

You can also add the tool as a temporary placeholder. This won’t let you see any of the available triggers, actions, or searches for the app, but it will at least let you include it in your toolbelt for reference, when shared.

Currently, XRay.Tools supports three prominent automation providers: Zapier, Workato and Make (formerly known as Integromat). 

We plan to add support for more providers soon, and if there’s a specific automation app you’d like to see included, just click on the button to request it.

Get in touch with XRay

XRay.Tools is developed by our team at XRay.Tech. As workflow automation specialists, we want to make it easy for everyone to explore automation and discover ways to improve their workflows.

If you’d like to chat about starting a project with XRay, or if you’d like to join our Workflow Study, you can click on the buttons at the bottom of the page to get started. 

A resource for no-code creators

If you’re a builder planning an automation, XRay.Tools is a great place to start. It lets you see every event you can automate with every app in your toolbelt. It quickly gives you an idea of what’s possible, and lets you confirm your software’s automation capabilities before you start building. 

XRay.Tools is totally free and doesn’t require an account. Try it today, and let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

If you’d like to explore more tutorials and resources for building no-code and low-code workflow automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Make is a highly versatile low-code automation platform that gives you a wide range of tools to build automated workflows.

In a recent tutorial, we gave a brief overview of how you can use functions in Make to reformat your automation’s data or perform useful calculations with it.

In this post, we’ll take a look at a few specific text functions available in Make and share step-by-step walkthroughs for using them.

All of the functions in this article can be accessed by selecting a text field, and clicking on the “A” icon.

Capitalizing Text and Changing Case

Using consistent capitalization can ensure that your automation produces easily legible text, and will help your automated systems to find and use the correct data.

Make offers several options for changing the case or capitalization of a piece of text. 

Capitalize capitalizes the first letter in a string of text. “hello world” would become “Hello world”. 

Startcase capitalizes the first letter of every word in a string, so “hello world” would become “Hello World”. 

Upper changes the entire string to uppercase letters, while lower converts every character to lowercase. 

All of these capitalization functions work in essentially the same way, so you can follow the steps below to use any of them. 

How to Use Capitalize, Startcase, and other Capitalization Functions

• Select a text field in any Make module

• Click on the “A” icon

• Click on the function you want to use, such as “capitalize”

• Enter the text that you want to capitalize between the parentheses

• When you test the scenario, you should see correctly capitalized text

Replacing Text

Automatically replacing text can make your workflows more versatile and precise, or let you update a snippet of text without having to edit the original document. 

How to Find and Replace Text in Make 

• Select a text field in any Make module

• Click on the “A” icon

• Click on the “replace” function

• Before the first semicolon, enter the text that you want to edit

• Before the second semicolon, enter the text that you want to replace

• After the second semicolon, enter the text that you want to use as a replacement. 

• Our example will replace “Old Company” with “New Organization”. Note: this function is case sensitive

• When you test the scenario, the output should contain correctly replaced text

Finding the Length of a String

Finding the length of a string can help you to set a character limit, or warn users if they’ve exceeded one. 

How to find the length of a string in Make

• Select a text field in any Make module

• Click on the “A” icon

• Click on the “length” function

• Enter the string that you want to find the length of between the parentheses

• When you test the scenario, the function will output the length of the string

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Build advanced automations with text functions

Using text functions in Make will enable you to build more precise and flexible automated workflows. If you’d like to learn more about functions in Make, stay tuned for our future posts about date/time functions and calculations. 

If you’d like to learn more about no-code automated workflows, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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When building no-code or low-code automations, a few simple calculations or reformatting steps can go a long way towards producing the right results.

Whether you need to reformat a lengthy timestamp into an easily read date, capitalize every name in a list, or run some mathematical equations, you can find all of the functions you need in Make (formerly known as Integromat). 

In this quick tutorial, we’ll show you where you can find all of Make’s functions and we’ll show you a couple of examples of how to use these functions. 

Accessing functions in Make

Formatting text and numbers in Make is very simple, and you don’t need to add any special module to do it.

You can format your data within any module in Make just by accessing the functions tabs. 

For example, you can see a Slack module in the scenario pictured below that sends a message to a “tutorials” channel.

When you click on a text field in any Make module, a window pops up. 

By default, the window opens to a tab labeled with a star. In this tab, you’ll find all of the data gathered in previous steps in the scenario.

Function categories and tabs

Each of the other tabs in this window contains several functions that you can use to reformat text, process dates and times, run mathematical calculations, or perform other useful actions.  

All of the functions are grouped into broad categories.

Under the gear, you can find general functions. The X with an exponent denotes math functions.

The tab with the letter A contains text functions. Under the Calendar icon, you can find functions for working with date and time.

The icon that resembles a table contains functions for working with arrays. Finally, the curly brackets include some variables that refer to the scenario itself, like the scenario’s URL. 

Using a function in Make: Capitalize

Now let’s take a look at how you can use these functions. 

For example, open up the text functions and examine the “Capitalize” function.

When you hover over any of the functions, you’ll see additional details describing the function along with some examples.

If you want to use the function, just click on it  to add it to the active field. Then, insert the data that you want the function to use within the parentheses. 

With the “Capitalize” function, you just need to insert the text that you want to capitalize inside the parentheses. 

In our example pictured below, we want to make sure that everyone’s first name is capitalized, so we’ll enter the “first name” data block between the parentheses. 

Once you’ve added your Capitalize formula, save your scenario and run it once to test your setup.

When we test our example scenario and check Slack, we can see that the message sent with the name properly capitalized.

Using a function with arguments: Add Days

Some functions will require you to provide additional data or parameters.

For instance, you may want to add 3 days to a date in your scenario. 

Under the Date and time functions (calendar icon), choose “addDays”. 

When you click on it, you can see that it inserts the function into your active field, along with a semicolon between the parentheses. 

When a function includes a semicolon, that typically means you’ll need to insert data before and after the semicolon. 

You can usually find instructions for how you need to complete the function along with examples when you hover over the function in question.

In this case, you’ll need to insert a date before the semicolon, and the number of days you want to add after the semicolon. 

In our example, we’ll insert the date retrieved in our trigger (October 12th), and we’ll specify that we want to add 3 days by adding the number “3” after the semicolon.

When we save and run the scenario to test it, we can see the correct date in the Slack message - October 15th. 

Experiment with more functions in Make

Now you should be all set to start using functions in your Make scenarios. If you want to know more about any particular function, just hover over it for details and try it out. We’ll also post some additional tutorials soon with walkthroughs for specific functions.

If you’d like to learn more about building no-code and low-code automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Keeping a database up to date can be a tedious task, and missing or out-of-date entries can make the database less useful to your team as a source of truth.

In this quick tutorial, we’ll show you how to use Make (formerly Integromat) to automatically update existing database records. With an automated workflow like this, you can ensure that your databases stay current without having to add extra tasks to your workload. 

Updating a Notion Database item

In our example scenario, we’re going to automatically update our “Clients” database record every time that there’s a new meeting notes doc created for them in the “Meeting Notes” database.

The module pictured below watches the “Meeting Notes” database for new entries. 

You can check out our previous tutorial here for more information about setting up these “Watch database items” modules. 

Providing an ID for Your Database

Next, we’ll add an “Update Database item” module. 

In the “Database item” field, we need to provide the ID of the parent database that the item is stored in. 

Whenever you need to provide the ID of a Notion Database or Database item in Make, you have a couple of options. 

You can either enter the ID as a static value, or you can retrieve a dynamic ID from a previous module. 

The approach you choose will depend entirely on the context of your automation. If you always want to update the same database item with your automation, then it’s fine to just copy and paste the ID directly from the URL bar. 

If you want the automation to update different database items, then you’ll need to make sure you can dynamically retrieve that ID in a module before you can use it. 

Using the “Watch database items” module along with a filter can be a great way to do that, and we’ve covered that module in a previous tutorial.

In our example, our automation will only run for “FakeCo” in the client directory. To do that, we’ll add a filter after we finish setting up this second module.

In our example, since we’ll be updating the same database item, we’ll just enter it as a static value. 

You can find the ID by opening the database in Notion, and copying the string of text between your workspace name and question mark V. If you don’t have a workspace, the ID will start after Notion.so/

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Providing an ID for the Database Item

Then, enter the ID of the specific database item you want to update. Just open the item as a page in Notion, and select the characters after the last hyphen in your record’s name. 

Once you paste that ID into your Notion module, you can start filling in every property in that database as needed. 

If you leave a property blank, Make will leave that property as-is. If you enter data into a property, Make will overwrite the existing data with whatever you entered. 

Since our “Latest Meeting Notes” field is a Relation, we can enter the ID of the meeting notes doc retrieved in our first module. 

This will replace the current relation to last week’s meeting doc with a relation to this week’s meeting doc. We’ll leave all of the other fields blank to leave them as they are.

Adding a filter after the trigger

Before we can test the scenario, we just need to add a filter after the trigger module. The filter will make sure that this module only runs for the “FakeCo” client. 

We’ll set it so the “Name” of the “Clients” property must be equal to “FakeCo.”

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Now that we’ve added the filter, we’re ready to test the scenario.

And we can see that the record has been updated with a relation to the latest meeting notes doc. 

Keep your databases current automatically

Updating Notion databases with Make is pretty simple. All you need is the right IDs, and you can update any records you want automatically. 

If you’d like more no-code tips and tutorials, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Automating your document templates is a great way to save a little time and create consistency with a simple task that you perform every day. 

Adding a few simple variables to a Google doc will let you use that document as an automated template for automation platforms like Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat). 

By just filling in a form with all the values you want to insert into your variables, you’ll be able to generate new docs in a matter of seconds. 

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to format the variables in Docs so that Zapier or Make can recognize and use the variables.

Then we’ll show you how to set up simple automations that actually create new documents, using either Zapier or Make.

Creating variables in your Google Doc

To create an automation-ready variable in Google Docs, you just need to enclose the text of your variable in two sets of curly braces. 

For example, in the doc pictured below, we want to change “John Smith” into two variables: First Name, and Last Name.

We’ll replace “John” with {{firstName}}, and we’ll do the same with “Smith” and {{lastName}} 

Formatting your Google Docs Variables

If you plan to use Make or Integromat to create documents, then you can use any format you want for your variable names.

However, if you’re using Zapier, we’d recommend avoiding hyphens, spaces, or other special characters in your variable names. 

Variables with spaces and hyphens aren’t currently recognized and supported in Zapier. They have supported these characters in the past, and they may update this later, but leaving them out of your variable names is the safer choice for now.

Preparing your doc for automation

Add all of the variables you want to your document. In our example, we’ll add several variables to our Meeting Notes documents like {{date}} and {{clientName}}

Once you’re finished adding all of your variables, copy your document ID. The ID can be found in the URL bar. It starts after /d/, and ends at the next forward slash. 

You’ll need this ID later when we build the automation. 

Building a Zapier Automation

Now let’s see how these variables work in practice. 

First, we’ll demonstrate how to make a simple Zap that creates a Google Doc from a template, then we’ll show you a similar scenario in Make.

We’ll create a Zap that uses our example doc as a template. When it triggers, it will automatically make a copy that fills in all of the variables with actual names, dates, etc. 

Creating the Zap

First, you’ll need a trigger step that gathers data to insert into the variables. In our example, we’re using a simple Airtable form to collect the information. 

Then, add a Google Docs step to your Zap. Choose “create a document from template”.

Click “continue”, and log into your Google account. 

Paste your document’s ID that you grabbed earlier into the “Template Document” field. Give your new doc a name, and specify the folder where you want it to be created. 

Mapping your Google Docs Variables in Zapier

Then, you should see all of the variables that you created as fields. If any of them are missing, just go back to your template and make sure that every variable has two sets of curly brackets and no spaces. 

Map each piece of collected data to the appropriate variable, and test your Zap.

You should see a new doc in the specified folder, with all of the variables replaced with real data. 

You can also look for the “alternate link” in the Zapier output to find the doc’s URL. 

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Building a Make Automation

Creating the Make Scenario

To automatically create a document from your template in Make, start by creating a new scenario.

Just like with Zapier, you’ll need a trigger module that can gather data to replace your variables with. Once again, we’ll use an Airtable form in our example, but you can use any application that collects the necessary information.

Mapping variables with Make with Tags

With the trigger set up, add a new Google Docs module and select “Create a Document from a Template”.

Under “Create a document from a Template”, select “By mapping”.

Copy and paste your Google doc’s ID into the “Document ID” field. 

The “values” field is where we’ll identify and replace our variables. 

Click the “add item” button to add a new Tag. Tag is the term that Make uses to describe variables in Google Docs.

Create Tags for Each Variable

In the field that says “Tags”, enter the name of your first variable exactly as it appears in your doc, except without the curly braces.

Then, in “replaced value”, enter the data from your trigger that you want to use. 

If possible, make sure the names for your variables are similar or identical in both sources. It’s much easier to map all of your variables when they’re clearly named. 

Repeat this process for every variable in your doc. Then, run the scenario to test it. 

You should see a new doc with each variable replaced by the appropriate data. 

Save time and make your work more consistent with templated docs

Now you’re all set to create automation-ready templates with your Google docs. It just takes a few minutes to set up, and then you can create error-free documents in seconds with either Zapier or Make.  

If you’d like to learn more about building no-code workflow automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

The repeater module in Make (formerly Integromat) lets you repeat actions in your scenario as many times as you specify.

Essentially, it’s a tool for building loops within your scenarios. This could be useful for sending out repeated reminders, creating several similar pieces of data, or any other situation where you need to repeat an action multiple times. 

If you’re looking to loop through the contents of an array or list, you’ll probably want to use the iterator instead. Check out our tutorial on using the iterator in Make here.

Setting up the repeater module

Create a scenario with a trigger and an action

Before you add a repeater, you’ll want to build a scenario that has a trigger module and at least one action module. 

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In our example, our scenario will run whenever it receives a webhook, and will send two Slack messages. The first will say “First repeater message”, while the second will say “Second repeater message”. 

If we run it now, we’ll see both of those messages appear in Slack - just one time each.

Add a repeater from “Flow control”

To add a Repeater module, click on the green “Flow control” icon and select “Repeater” from the list. 

Place your repeater module before all of the actions that you want to repeat. We’ll place ours before both of the Slack modules, so they will both be part of the loop. 

Click on your repeater module to configure it. You’ll see two options: “Initial value”, and “Repeats”.

“Initial value” is the number the repeater will start at. This defaults to 1, which is what you’ll usually want to use. 

In the “Repeats” field, you can set how many times the loop will repeat. The default is 3, but you can choose any number you’d like. 

(Optional) Adjust the Steps interval under “Advanced Settings”

There’s also one more option that you can access by clicking on “Show Advanced Settings”.

The “Steps” field lets you determine how much your initial value will increase each time the loop runs. 

If you leave your “Steps” value at the default of 1, then the repeater will generate the number 1 with your first repetition, the number 2 with your second, three with your third, and so on. 

But by changing the value, you could have the number increase by any amount you want. You could even use negative numbers to subtract from your initial value with each repetition. 

For instance, you might want to send out reminders at 5 minute intervals. So you could set the initial value to 15, then set the step to -5, and send a message every 5 minutes using those values. 

Configure and test the repeater

For now, we’ll just keep things simple. We’ll start at 1, and increase by 1 each time, with 4 total repetitions.  We’ll also add the “i” value from each repetition into our Slack message, just so we can see how it increases each time. 

When we run the scenario, we see 8 messages. Both of the Slack messages got sent 4 times, with the ‘i’ value increasing by 1 in each loop iteration of two messages. 

That covers all the basic info you need to know about the repeater module itself. But what if you want to include an action in this scenario that doesn’t get repeated?

How to add actions outside of the repeater loop

In many scenarios with a repeater, you may also want to include actions that only run once. There are two simple ways to add actions that only execute a single time. 

Add actions before the repeater

First, you can just add the actions before the Repeater module. Anything that’s placed before the Repeater in your diagram will only run once. 

For example, we’ll add another Slack message before the repeater that sends the message “This module runs before the repeater”. 

When we run the automation, we can see that we got our “before’ message only once, while the subsequent messages still repeated as intended. 

Add actions after the repeater loop with a filter

Your second option is to place the action after your repeated modules, and use a filter to prevent the scenario from executing the action until the repeater has completed. You can check the screenshots below for an example.

We’ll add one last Slack module at the end of the scenario, and the message will simply read “This module runs after the repeater”. 

Then, we’ll add a filter right before this module. We’ll give it a label that says “Repeater Finished”. In the “Condition” section, we’ll specify that the i value from the repeater must be equal to 4 for the scenario to continue. 

In other words, the scenario will only continue past this filter if the repeater has run 4 times, raising the initial value (or i) up to 4. 

Note: If you’ve changed the initial value or the step value, make sure to consider that when you’re setting up a filter like this. 

We’ll run the scenario one more time, and we can see one “before” message, 4 repeated pairs of messages, and just one “after” message. 

Build efficient automations with repeater loops

Now you should be all set to start adding repeaters to your Make or Integromat scenarios. They’re easy to implement, and they’re a simple way to add useful loops to any of your automations. 

If you’d like to learn more about building no-code automations, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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At XRay, we strive to build reliable automations that you can count on for your day-to-day work. 

However, bugs and errors are an inevitable part of any software. From time to time throughout your XRay membership or project, you will encounter some issues with your automated workflows. 

In this quick post, we’ll explain how you can report those errors so we can get your automations working again as quickly as possible.

Provider reported errors

For most technical errors, you won’t actually need to do anything at all. 

These kinds of errors can happen for any number of reasons. One of the apps used in your automation might have been down when the automation tried to run, or the automation might have received text in a field that needed a number. 

Whatever the specific reason, if a step of any automation fails to run due to a technical issue, your automation provider – like Zapier, or Make.com – will spot the error. Every automation that we build will be configured to relay these error reports and notify us automatically whenever something goes wrong.

You’ll see these notifications pop up in Slack or your email inbox, and our technician team will address the errors as soon as they can. 

If you have any particular questions or concerns, you can always send us a message. But whenever you see an error reported automatically, you’re not required to take any additional steps. Our team’s already on it.  

User reported errors

However, not all errors will be reported automatically. 

In some cases, you may experience automation issues that don’t show up in our automatic reports. 

Again, these errors could happen for several reasons. It might be down to user error. Someone using the automation may have provided inaccurate or incomplete data. In other cases, the automation may run successfully, but may be configured incorrectly. 

We’ll usually catch configuration problems while we’re prototyping and testing the automation, but you may want to refine the automation further once you see how it works in the real world. 

Whatever the exact cause is, the end result is that while your automation technically ran correctly, it didn’t produce the outcome you needed. 

When this occurs, all you have to do is fill out the Membership Feedback form, which you can find in your Workflow Dash. Alternatively, you can send us a message in our shared Slack channel to give us a heads-up.

Whichever channel you use to contact us, just be sure to provide some detail and context about what’s happening. The better we understand what you’re trying to do and what’s not working, the quicker we’ll be able to investigate and solve the problem. 

Reach out to XRay when your automations need some fine-tuning

The vast majority of the time, your automated workflows will operate exactly as intended. But when you do encounter bugs or other issues, we’ll do everything we can to get your automations up and running quickly.

Just reach out to us whenever something isn’t working as expected, and we’ll figure out what’s going on. 

If you’d like to learn more about working with XRay, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

No-code automations should fit seamlessly into your workflows, letting you accomplish more without having to drastically change your setup.

With a platform like Make (formerly known as Integromat), you can build automations with tools like Notion that you use for everyday work.

In this post, we’ll show you how you can trigger Make automations whenever you add a new page in Notion, update a database, or add content to a page. And once you have your automations set up, you’ll be able to trigger them by just using Notion as you normally would. 

Watch databases or pages

First, let’s take a look at the “Watch databases/pages” module. Like all of the modules we’ll cover in this post, this is a trigger module, so you can use it to launch your scenario in Make.com or Integromat. 

Using it will make your scenario run whenever a new page or database is either created or updated in Notion. 

Configuring the “Watch databases/pages” module

You can choose whether it will run for databases or pages, but the module itself doesn’t let you distinguish between updates and new items. But don’t worry - we’ll also show you how you can handle that with a filter instead. 

To set up the module, just choose whether you want to watch databases or pages, and enter an optional query if you’d like. The “query” field is just a simple keyword search, and won’t be as useful as adding a filter after the trigger. 

Then, set the item limit, and run the scenario once to grab some data. It will search through all of your databases or pages, so it may take a few moments. 

Now, you can use the data it retrieves in future steps in the scenario. In our example, we’ll send a Slack message with the name of the page and its URL. 

Use filters to control when your scenario runs

If you’d like to narrow the scope of this trigger, add a filter right after the trigger. 

If you only want to complete this scenario for new pages, not updated pages, you can just add a condition that the Created Time must be equal to the Last Edited Time. 

Conversely, you can just swap that to “not equal to” if you want the automation to run for updated pages only. 

You can also use filters to grab pages with a certain title, a specific contributor, a particular tag, or any other property that you want to search for. 

In our example, we’ll add a condition that the title should contain the text ‘Tutorial Test’. 

When we turn the scenario on and create a Notion page called “Tutorial Test Page 1”, we see a Slack message appear, showing that the scenario ran correctly. 

And when we update the contents, we don’t get a Slack message, since the filter stops the automation from continuing. 

Watch database items

Next, let’s go over the “Watch database items” module. With this module, you can trigger your Make automation to run whenever you add or update items in a specified database. 

Configuring the “Watch database items” module

First, add a new Notion module, and select “Watch database items”.

Choose whether this module should watch based on created time, or updated time. 

If you choose “created”, then this scenario will run whenever you add a new entry to the database. If you choose “updated”, then the scenario will run whenever an entry is updated OR created.  

Then, enter the ID of the database you want your scenario to watch. 

To find the database ID, open your database in Notion. In the URL bar, your database ID starts after your workspace name and ends right before the question mark. If you’re using an individual account and don’t belong to a group workspace, the ID starts right after Notion.so forward slash. 

Paste your ID in, and click OK.

Adding additional steps

Run the module once to grab some test data, and then add another step.

In our example, we’ll just send a Slack message to notify us that a record in the database has been updated, and we’ll include a link to the record in question. 

When we turn on and test the scenario, we can see a Slack message appear just as intended.

Note that you can add any actions you’d like here. Make will retrieve a comprehensive list of data about each record that it watches, including all of its properties. You can send that data to Airtable, to Trello, to Basecamp, to Hubspot - any app that’s part of your workflow. 

Watch Page Contents

Finally, let’s take a look at the “Watch Page Contents” module. This module will trigger your scenario to run whenever you update the content of a specified page. 

Configure the “Watch page contents” module

Add a new Notion module, and select “Watch page contents”. There’s a little quirk in this module that may be updated later, but for now, the “Page ID” field doesn’t actually let you specify the page you want to use by entering its ID.

Instead, you’ll have to pick the title of your page from a list, so make sure that the page you want to use has a unique title. 

Then you can set the limit for how many items you want to process each time the automation runs. 

Keep in mind that this module is looking for content blocks in Notion. Each paragraph, or each heading will be treated as a separate content block. 

So if you keep the default limit of 2, it will only be able to process 2 pieces of content since the last time the automation checked the page. Depending on the workflow you’re building, you may want to raise this limit to make sure that the scenario will process all of the content that you need it to check. 

Once you’ve set your item limit, click OK, then run the module to get some test data.

Adding additional steps

Then, you can add any actions you like. 

We’ll add a Slack module that sends the text of the content block as a message. This automation will send us a Slack message for every content block that gets added to this page. 

If you want the automation to run under more specific conditions, you can add a filter after the trigger. 

For instance, we can make it so the automation will only continue if the content that it finds is a heading. In our example, we’ll set a condition that the “Type” property must contain the text “heading”.

Now, we’ll turn the automation on, and we’ll add both an H3 and a paragraph to our test page.

A Slack message appears for the H3, but not for the paragraph, just as we intended. 

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Automate Notion pages with Make to build seamless workflows

Now you should be all set to start building Make scenarios triggered by your Notion docs and databases. Everything we’ve covered here is just a starting point, of course. 

We encourage you to add whatever steps you’d like to build the perfect automation to support your workflows. 

If you’d like to learn more about no-code workflow automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Uptime is understandably a concern for many companies who are exploring workflow automation. You need your automations to run whenever you call on them, or they won’t be very helpful to you and your team. 

In this video, we’ll define precisely what we mean when we talk about automation uptime, and we’ll give you an idea of what kind of performance you can count on with XRay’s automated workflows.

Defining Uptime

First, let’s start with a definition of uptime, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page. 

We define uptime as the percentage of the time that your automation works as designed when it runs - or when it’s supposed to run.

For example, let’s say you have an automation that sends a welcome email to each new client you sign. The automation triggers whenever you mark a deal as “Closed/won” in your CRM. 

In the last 3 months, you had 20 clients sign. The automation ran correctly 18 times, ran with errors once, and didn’t run at all for one client. 

With 18 out of 20 runs working correctly, that would count as 90% uptime for that automated workflow. 

Out-of-scope use cases don’t count against uptime

One situation that shouldn’t be counted against uptime is when your automation encounters scenarios it wasn’t designed to handle.

To continue with our example scenario, let’s say you sign a client, but they’re not in your CRM, so your “Welcome email” automation doesn’t run at all. 

You might have wanted it to run, but unless it was designed with that use case in mind, there was no way it could have run. 

Since the automation is working as intended, we wouldn’t count this situation against uptime. 

To try and make sure that your automations consistently support all of your daily workflows, we’ll do everything we can to address the most common edge cases that you might encounter.

However, there will always be occasional situations that nobody could have predicted which your automations won’t be able to handle.

Downtime is often caused by the services your automation depends on

One aspect that does count against uptime is when the various services your automations leverage are not working correctly. 

Even the largest, most widely-used services available periodically experience some downtime. You might recall Facebook going down for a while due to a new bug in their code. 

If the cloud servers your apps rely on are down, or if your CRM is down, your automation probably won’t work as intended. 

This is part of uptime and downtime, since it prevents the automations from working as designed, but it’s not something an automator can control. 

And ultimately, while downtime from web services will impact your automations, it also would have prevented you from getting the work done manually. 

If Google Drive is down, you won’t be able to access it, and neither will your robots.

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To summarize, uptime is the reliability rate of your automation, excluding scenarios it wasn’t designed to handle. 

You might experience downtime due to bugs in the automations themselves, or due to problems with the software and services they rely on. 

From time to time, you’ll also likely run into situations that your automation simply wasn’t designed for. 

So with all of that in mind, no automator can guarantee perfect, 100% uptime. But what should you realistically expect?

XRay’s Uptime Targets

At XRay, we aim for 95% uptime or higher for each completed automation.

This rate applies to each automation individually. An automated workflow might consist of several automations, so the uptime rate for each workflow will inherently be a bit lower. 

If even 1 out of 10 automations isn’t working correctly at any given moment, the end-to-end workflow won’t run correctly. 

As your workflows evolve throughout your membership, you will notice that most of your automations run smoothly the vast majority of the time. Only a few automations will emerge to be consistently problematic for a while. These are typically the automations that deal with the most complex or unpredictable aspects of the workflow. 

Most automations, once configured and used properly will continue to operate as intended. 

Maintain uptime while expanding your automated infrastructure

Ensuring that your automations continue to operate reliably even when you’re adding new workflows is one of our main responsibilities, and one of the key benefits of working with a professional automator. 

Once your automated infrastructure is established with a few workflows, adding a new workflow isn’t just like starting over from the beginning.

It needs to fit into the existing workflows without compromising their consistent, correct operation. 

This is something that can be very difficult to manage on your own, but when working with XRay, we can ensure that your automations will work as designed in nearly every instance. 

Uptime metrics don’t tell the whole story

Though we strive for high uptime for all of our automated workflows, we recommend caution when using uptime as a key metric for your organization’s automation efforts. 

Of course, reliability is obviously important. The vast majority of the time, your automations should work exactly as intended whenever they’re supposed to run, and that’s what we provide at XRay. 

But if you’re not putting uptime and downtime into context, these stats can be misleading. With a manual process, you often have no idea what your uptime really is. You don’t know if every signed client got a welcome email, or if every online purchase was logged in your inventory. 

And worst of all, sometimes you can’t even find out. 

With manual systems, you often have to wait for catastrophic errors to occur before you discover a problem. 

When you automate your workflows, you gain much more visibility into your processes and data. As a result, you’ll see all sorts of trends, insights, and events that previously went unnoticed - and that includes flaws and errors in the system. 

We’ll do everything we can to ensure 95% or higher uptime, but it’s often best to focus on the results anyway. 

Is your team able to get more done? Are they able to spend more of their time on making critical decisions? Are your clients happier with the work you’re doing and the support you’re providing? 

When you build an automated workflow, the goal is to improve your process and its results. The concrete outcomes of your automations and the value they deliver matter much more than any one metric. 

Use reliable automated workflows to get better results

When you work with XRay to start auxtomating your workflows, you can count on them to perform as expected the vast majority of the time. Inevitably, you’ll run into some errors from time to time, but the results for your company will be far better than what you were able to accomplish with manual work alone.

If you have any questions at all about how we build and maintain automated workflows at XRay, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

If you’d like to learn more about XRay’s approach to workflow automation, be sure to check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Loops are an extremely useful technique for any no-code and low-code automator. 

Using loops will let you perform the same actions several times with each item in a dataset. A loop will let you do things like send an email to every address in a list, or update your inventory database for each line item in a receipt. 

And if you want to integrate loops into your Zapier automations, you can do it all by just adding a single step. 

In this post, we’ll show you how to add a line item loop step by step. We’ll also give you some tips for working with the other types of loops that Zapier supports: text and numbers. 

Adding a “Looping by Zapier” step

First, you’ll need to create a new Zap and have a trigger set up to grab some data that you can work with. 

In our example, our trigger watches an Airtable base for new records, and we’ve made sure to include some arrays and lists that we can build a loop with. 

To add a Loop to your Zap, just add a new step and search for “Looping by Zapier”. Under the Events menu, you’ll see three options. You can create a loop from Line Items, from Numbers, or from Text. 

Each of these options works in more or less the same way, but we’ll take you through each one individually. 

Looping with Line Items

Start with an array

To create a loop from line items, you need to have a piece of data that’s already subdivided into several components.

In other words, your data will have to be formatted like an array.

In our example trigger, we’re grabbing each new entry to an airtable base, which contains some linked record fields. In Airtable, a linked record field with multiple entries is treated as an array, so this will be perfect for the example. 

We’ll enter one of the linked fields — Fruit Names — into the second field under “Values to Loop”.

In the first field, you need to enter a label that you want to use for this data. We’ll call it Fruit Name. 

Next, choose whether or not you want to trim whitespace. This defaults to “True”, and you’ll usually want to leave it as is. 

Configuring your loop

In the “Loop Iteration Counter Start” field, you can pick where the Loop will start counting. 

If you set this to 1, then the first iteration of the loop will be called Number 1. 

If you set this to 2, then the first iteration of the loop will be called Number 2, and so on.

Note that setting this number to 2 won’t skip the first item in your array; it will just label the first iteration as “2”.  You’ll usually want to leave this as 1, but there can be instances where setting it to another number can be useful. 

Finally, we have this option for “Maximum number of Loop Iterations”. Setting a maximum will make sure that your automation will stop running even if you’ve accidentally created an infinite loop, and will stop it from consuming too many tasks in your Zapier plan. 

Ideally, you should set this number to be the same size as the dataset you’re going to loop through.

If you’re using an app like an airtable, you can add a field that counts how many records are in your linked field, and use that number as your limit. Otherwise, you can simply estimate and set this number to be just a bit higher than your expected number of items. 

Testing the loop and adding actions

Next, test the loop. If you see multiple loop iterations like in the screenshot below, then your loop worked as expected. 

Any actions you add after this step will be performed once for each item in the loop. In our example, we’ll add a step to send a Slack message. 

Our message will show us the iterator number, then the name of the item being processed in each loop. Note that these should change for each loop iteration. Even though they only show one value right now, they’ll change as the loop runs. 

We’ll get one Slack message for each item in the array, so we should see four messages when the automation runs.  

However, when we test this step, we only see one message. 

When you run a test in Zapier, the test will only execute the loop once. 

If you want to see how the whole thing will run, you’ll need to turn the Zap on and trigger it. 

For our example, that means we need to add a new record to our Airtable database once the Zap is published and switched on. Then, when the Zap runs, we can see all 4 Slack messages appear.

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You can’t add actions after a loop

When you’re structuring your Zaps that use loops, just bear in mind that any action you add after the loop step will be part of the loop.

If there’s anything that you only want the automation to perform once, make sure it happens before the Loop step, or add a filter that will only be fulfilled after a certain number of runs in the loop iterator. 

For instance, you might add a filter that will only let the automation continue if the loop iterator is equal to 6, so those steps will be skipped in every iteration until you’re on the 6th iteration.

Regardless of which approach you use, just make sure that you take a moment to plan how your automation will work when you start implementing a loop. 

Now, let’s take a quick look at the other options for creating a loop: text and numbers. 

Create a loop with text

Creating a loop from text is very similar to creating a loop from line items, but it lets you work with any list that’s formatted as a piece of text. 

With these loops, your data doesn’t have to be in an array. You just need to have items separated consistently - like with a comma or a semicolon. 

Enter the character that splits up your list into the “Text Delimiter” field, and fill in all of the other fields the same as before. 

Test the loop, and you should see each item separated into its own loop iteration. Performing actions with this loop will work exactly the same as performing actions with a Line Item loop, so you can refer back to that section for more information.  

Create a loop with numbers

Now let’s look at creating a loop with numbers.

This is a bit different from using text or line items. Instead of always looping through every item in a dataset, a numbers loop will simply run as many times as you specify. 

With a numbers loop, you have precise control over how the loop runs. You choose the iteration number that it starts and ends at, and how much the iteration number increases with each run. 

For instance, you can have your iterator start at 2, then go up by 3 each time, up to a limit of 11.

We’ll set up our loop with those numbers, then edit our Slack message, so it will just tell us the current iterator number. 

We’ll turn on the Zap and add a new record to trigger it, and we see four messages in Slack: 2, 5, 8, and it stops at 11. 

If you’re trying to perform more complex operations with your loop, using the “Numbers” event might give you the flexibility and control you’re looking for. 

A simple way to build more powerful Zaps

And that’s all you need to get started. Setting up a loop in Zapier is pretty simple, and it can be a great way to process lists and arrays and turn them into useful, time-saving automations. 

If you’d like to explore more automation tutorials, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

For XRay, a key part of any successful engagement is enabling our members and clients to be fully self-sufficient.

We’re happy to help automate and refine your workflows for as long as you’d like to work with us, but we know your long-term plan will usually be to manage your automations on your own. 

To ensure a smooth, successful transition for everyone, we plan for offboarding from day one with a few key strategies. 

First, we build your workflows on your accounts whenever possible. Second, we train your team to operate and maintain your workflows. Finally, we provide free software for managing and accessing your workflows in one convenient place.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these components of offboarding. 

Building automated workflows on your accounts

From day one, we’ll build everything that we can in your accounts instead of our own. If you don’t have accounts for automation platforms like Zapier or Make.com, we’ll create them for you.

By sharing login credentials through a password manager like Lastpass, you’ll have full control over our access to your accounts, and you can revoke access at any time if you wish. 

Building automations in your accounts makes for a smooth transition, with very little data that actually needs to be transferred.

However, there is one key exception to this rule.

Sharing our Airtable infrastructure

Most of the workflow automations that we build require an Airtable database to manage the flow of information.

When we start building your automations, we’ll typically use our own Airtable account to build your operational database. We do this because the features included in Airtable’s enterprise plans are often essential for building no-code workflows, but an Enterprise plan doesn’t come cheap. 

You could be paying up to $15 thousand a year for the subscription, and we don’t want you to have to make that kind of commitment to Airtable upfront. 

Instead, we’ll host your data on our Airtable account for as long as you’re a member. When you’re ready to offboard, you can either purchase your own Airtable subscription, or you can start a maintenance plan with us to keep access to our Airtable infrastructure at a lower price.

Ultimately, you won’t have to worry about a complicated migration process when you end your XRay membership. The automations we’ve built will already be stored in your accounts, and we’ll walk you through your options for maintaining your Airtable database. 

Workflow documentation and training

Of course, offboarding isn’t just about moving data.

Having access to all of your automations and data won’t do you much good if you and your team don’t know how to use them. To make sure you can operate your workflows with or without us, we’ll provide you with all of the documentation and training you need. 

Our documentation will include flowcharts, process pages, and video walkthroughs. 

The flowcharts will give you a detailed visual overview of an entire automated workflow. They’re great for seeing exactly how data will move between your apps and how each person or department gets involved. 

The process pages consist of simple, non-technical written instructions for using each workflow. They’ll explain how to conduct the workflow, and will link directly to any key apps or resources involved.

The video walkthroughs will demonstrate the workflow from beginning to end, so your team can see exactly what they need to do every step of the way.

Training your team to manage the automations

All of this documentation that we’ve outlined is primarily focused on using the automations, rather than maintaining them behind the scenes. 

Once you’re no longer working with XRay, you’ll probably want to have someone on your team take over the maintenance of your automated workflows.

We’ll meet directly with anyone who’s responsible for the technical aspects of the automation to explain anything they need to know.

Alternatively, you can sign up for an XRay maintenance plans for continued support at a lower price than a full membership. 

At XRay, we want to ensure that everyone on your team is enabled to keep using their automated workflows, even after your membership ends. With thorough documentation and training resources, you’ll be able to keep using your automations without needing to consult us. 

Using XRay Workflow to access your workflows and their resources

To easily access all of your automations and documentation, we’ll set you up with XRay Workflow, our own software for managing and sharing resources. 

XRay Workflow lets you save any web content as a pin. With pins, you can access web sites and web apps, save and copy text with a click, create markdown documents, or even launch automations. 

We use XRay Workflow to deliver every workflow that we build for our members. You’ll see every resource you need to use your automations with full context on a single board.

Accessing your automations and documentation through XRay Workflow is totally free, and you’ll continue to have access to the app even after your membership ends. 

Some optional premium features, like publishing public boards, will require a small fee. However, these features won’t be necessary for accessing the workflows that we’ve built for you. 

With XRay Workflow, you and your entire team can easily manage your workflows and the critical resources you need to accomplish them. 

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Preparing for a seamless transition

At XRay, we don’t want to trap our members into being reliant on us. By building on your accounts, providing training and documentation, and giving you free lifetime access to XRay Workflow, we make sure that your team can keep using your automated workflows when you decide to move on. 

If you have any questions about offboarding or other stages of the membership lifecycle, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask. 

If you’d like to learn more about how we design and build automated workflows for our members, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Moving a database from Airtable to Notion is a pretty quick and easy task - unless you’re dealing with linked records in Airtable that you want to preserve in your new Notion table.

A quick CSV export and import will let you migrate most field types from one app to the other, but it won’t keep any linked records you created. 

In this post, we’ll show you how you can automatically replace all of your linked records from Airtable with Relations in Notion. You can do it all with just a simple scenario in Make.com.

Just follow along with this tutorial to build and configure your automation. 

Exporting and importing your data

Export from Airtable

To begin, you’ll need to export your Airtable base as a CSV, and import it into Notion. 

Click on the name of your view in the left side of the toolbar, and select “Download CSV”.

If you have linked records, make sure to download a CSV from the referenced table, as well.

Import to Notion

Then, import your database into Notion. 

To import the CSVs as inline databases, create a database first. Open the database as a page, then click on the three dots in top right, and select “merge with CSV”.

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If you want to create a standalone database instead, click on import in the left hand menu, and select CSV.

Cleaning your database

Once you’ve imported your data, you’ll need to do some quick manual cleaning of your database. Delete any blank records, and fix any field types that were set incorrectly.

As you’re doing this, you’ll probably note that your linked field has been set to Single Select or text. 

You can repair this connection and preserve the reference with a simple automation in Make.com, but you’ll need to import the referenced table for your linked records first. 

Even though the links weren’t preserved, make sure not to delete the field - we’ll need it later. 

Create a “Relation” field in Notion

Export the linked database from Airtable, and import it to Notion the same way as before.\

Then, in your first database, add a relation field that references your second database. A “relation” in Notion is basically the same thing as a Linked Record in Airtable.

 Check the box that says “Show on [your second database]” to make sure it’s a two-way relation; otherwise, this process won’t work. 

Filling in the relations field - manually or automatically

If you only have 10 or 15 records, you can probably just go ahead and fill in the relation field manually.

But if you have a dataset with dozens or hundreds or thousands of records, that would involve a lot of tedious, error-prone work. 

We’ll show you how you can fill it in with a simple automation in Make.com.

Using Make (Integromat) to automatically fill in the Relation fields

For those who aren’t familiar, Make, formerly known as Integromat, is a no-code and low-code automation platform. It lets you automate actions in web apps with a simple user interface. 

If you have coding experience, you can also write custom scripts and API calls in your automations, but you won’t need any code for this automation. 

Adding Make as an Integration to Notion

To get started, you’ll need to add Make as an integration to Notion, and ensure that your database is shared with Make. 

You can check out our earlier blog post about creating Notion pages with Make for detailed integration steps.

Once the integration is set up, just follow along with this tutorial to configure each module. 

Configuring the Make scenario

Trigger module - Watch Records

First, we have a trigger module that will watch records in your first database. In our example pictured below, that’s our “Client Directory” table.

Add a Notion module, and choose “Watch Records”.

In Notion, copy the string of characters after your workspace name and before the question mark to get the database ID from the URL bar. 

Note: On a personal account, this string will start after Notion.so, since you won’t have a workspace name.

Click ok, and run the module to grab some test data. To do this, right click the module, select “Choose where to start”, “Choose manually”, and pick a record. Then, click “run once”, and you should see some test data here.

Second module - Search Objects

In the next module, Make will search your second database for a record that matches the text from your broken linked field. 

Add a Notion module, and choose “Search Objects”. Provide your second database’s ID, which you can find the same way as the first database’s ID. 

Then, in the filter section, select the field that you want to search for, like the record name. Set this to be equal to the content of the broken linked field.

In other words, this search and filter will look through your second database for the title of the record that was supposed to be linked to the first database. 

Third module - Update a Database Item

Finally, our third module will update the relation field in your first database with a reference to the record that you want to link. 

Add a Notion module, and choose “update a database item”.Enter the ID of your first database. For “database item id”, check the switch that says “map”, and enter the database ID retrieved in the first module.

Then, find the relation field in the list that appears below. Make sure that the “map” option is checked again, and enter the Page ID retrieved in the second module. 

You can leave all of the other fields blank. By leaving them blank, Make will just leave the content as it is - it won’t delete anything. Test out your scenario again, and you should see your chosen record update with a relation to your other database.

Run the automation to update every record 

If everything looks good, go back to your automation and run it again. This time, set the item limit to however many items you have in your database. It may take a little while to process every record, but it will be much faster than going through every entry manually. 

Migrate your Airtable data with a simple automation in Make

And that’s it! You’re all set to migrate your Airtable database to Notion and convert all of your linked records to relations. If you have several of them, just repeat this process for each field. 

If you’d like to learn more about no-code and low-code automation, just check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

This article was written by Exalate. 

Teams using software to manage their projects store large volumes of business data. This data is vital, but hard to access without using the application that created the data in the first place. 

When multiple teams use different platforms, much of their data might become inaccessible to teams using different software. Using an integration to share information between these various platforms can greatly benefit all teams and the organization as a whole.

Getting different platforms like Jira and Salesforce to communicate is hard but with the right software, you can share data effortlessly, transforming the reach of your teams and letting each part of your organization complement the others.

Why You Need a Jira Salesforce Integration 

With the right integration solution in place, teams can easily decide when and how they need to make specific data accessible to one another through a Jira Salesforce integration. 

Here’s a common use case: sales data (including new feature requests) is useful to a project planning team, and the information on new features can be useful to the sales department. 

Moving data automatically allows everyone to work together more closely, without the need for manual data transfer or meetings.

How to Integrate Jira and Salesforce in 6 Steps 

Here’s how to set up this integration. 

Step 1: Install Exalate on Jira

The first step is to install Exalate on both platforms. Let’s start with Jira. Navigate to the Atlassian Marketplace and type “Exalate”. You’ll see a few options appear. 

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Pick “Jira Issue Sync & More”. Click “Try it free” and follow the guide to install it.

Step 2: Install Exalate on Salesforce

Next, set up Exalate on Salesforce. You can find the Exalate Connector in the appexchange marketplace.

If you require expert help to set up or customize Salesforce, you might want to hire a Salesforce developer from Toptal. Toptal specializes in connecting businesses with top-tier developers to ensure your Salesforce setup is done efficiently.

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Click “Get It Now” and follow the prompts to install it.

Step 3: Connect Jira and Salesforce

Now that Exalate is installed on both ends, you can create a connection between the two, starting from either side. Go to the connection screen and click “initiate connection”. You can set up 2 types of connections, basic or script.

Follow the prompts for either one. You will then see your connection listed in both platforms.

Step 4: Configure Your Connection Rules

If you click the edit button on a connection, you’ll see several tabs. Click “Rules” to edit your connection rules.

Connection rules let you choose how fields are mapped from one item to the other. Exalate allows both teams to control how items are sent from their own platform, and to choose the mappings for incoming items.

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These can be added to, deleted, or commented out to be used later. If you want to map a field to something other than the default, you can change it accordingly. 

Perhaps you want to assign a specific person to items on your system, so you could replace the incoming issue.assignee = replica.assignee with issue.assignee = “Mel Henderson”.

If you have coding experience, you can get fancy and combine fields, add a prefix to an incoming value, or use conditional logic to assign values. There is plenty of scope to get creative.

Step 5: Set Up Triggers to Control When Exchange Happens

Triggers determine when items are synchronized. Essentially, they’re conditions. Click the “Triggers” tab first and click “Create Trigger” next.

On the screen that pops up, enter a query that matches the items you want synced. You can use triggers to sync all tickets of a particular type, or pick out specific values.

In Jira you use Jira Query Language (JQL). In Salesforce it’s Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL).

After that, you can add a note to let you know what the trigger is for. Don’t forget to click the “Active” control. When you’re done, click “Add”. 

You can create multiple triggers, too.

Step 6: Start Synchronizing Tickets

Now that your connection is ready, it’s time to test it. Create an item that matches the triggers you set previously. Start synchronization by clicking “Bulk Exalate” on the triggers list, then check to see if your item has moved from one platform to the other.

If not, check your sync rules carefully to make sure they cover the item you created. It’s common to make a mistake when you’re new to the system.

Once it’s working as intended, you can go back to work. Any items you create will be shared automatically with your other team.

What are some of the Most Common Use Cases? 

There are many scenarios where synchronizing data can help.

For example, let’s consider a development team using Jira to work on new features. The sales team, who work in Salesforce, keeps tabs on what customers are asking for. Tickets dealing with requested features can then be synced into Jira’s system so developers can see them and decide whether or not to add them to the product. 

Conversely, the synchronization can also automatically send Salesforce information about which features the developers are working on, and when they are expected to arrive, making it easier for the sales team to inform their leads about upcoming features.

In another scenario, developers might design custom software for enterprise clients. The sales teams can collect specific product requirements or feature requests from key clients residing within Salesforce. For instance, this can be logged as Cases belonging to a key Account or Opportunity.

The sales team could then pass this information to the development team, leading to useful insights for designing custom software tailored toward those clients.

As a final example, let’s imagine that an organization is using Jira as a goal-setting platform, while their sales team is tracking their metrics on Salesforce.  By syncing goal-related Jira tickets to Salesforce, they could easily monitor everyone’s progress toward their goals. You can sync goal-related tickets so that they are kept up to date in both Jira and Salesforce. Then everyone can easily monitor progress towards their goals.

Make Informed Decisions with Up-to-date Data 

Integrating software platforms sounds hard, but it doesn’t have to be. The right tools make it easy, and with Exalate everything happens automatically. The setup process is quick and straightforward, and allows you to take complete control over what’s shared, and when.

With your integration in place, your teams have more information at their fingertips and can make better decisions. That can only benefit you.

If you want to know more, check out Exalate and learn how it can help connect your teams.

If you’d like to learn more about building no-code and low-code automated workflows, check out the other posts on XRay's blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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If you require expert help to set up or customize Salesforce, you might want to hire a Salesforce developer from Toptal. Toptal specializes in connecting businesses with top-tier developers to ensure your Salesforce setup is done efficiently.

As a manager or executive, you want to see everyone in your organization thrive in their role. 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen, and you’ll often see people on your team struggling to contribute at the level you expected. 

In many cases, your team’s struggles are all about workflows. More specifically, they’re related to how you’ve defined and documented the workflows that they perform on a daily basis. 

In this post, we’ll explain how you can set up precise, context-rich workflows to let your team get the most out of their everyday efforts.

Scattered and vague workflows make your team struggle with their assignments

When people on your team aren’t living up to their full potential, it’s not always a question of talent or motivation. In many cases, people simply don’t have the resources they need to succeed at their fingertips. 

If you’re not careful about assembling accurate documentation and keeping it up to date, your team may be sifting through old and misleading information as they try to figure out what to do. 

As companies continue to adopt more SaaS tools every year, it can be a challenge for a new hire to sort through all of the apps and resources that they need in order to complete each individual task. 

In short, when people have to spend too much of their time figuring out how to use your company’s specific systems, they’re going to find it difficult to deliver great work. 

Turning workflows into tangible objects

So what’s the answer? How do you enable people to do their jobs better?

At XRay, we’ve found great results in turning workflows into objects.

For most people and organizations, a “workflow” is just an abstract concept. It describes a set of actions to perform, or a list of tasks and goals to accomplish. But it’s not usually something that exists in one place; it has to be pieced together from a dozen or more disparate sources.

To complete a workflow, you usually need to sift through various pieces of documentation, solicit advice from coworkers, open up several apps, and figure out the parts that are undocumented or out of date. 

This haphazard process frequently leads to inconsistent performance and results. In some cases, people on your team might be doing great work that goes unnoticed and unused because it wasn’t submitted to the right channels for review or saved in the right place.

So instead of leaving your workflows scattered and vague, we encourage you to start turning them into more tangible objects. Every workflow should have clear, concise directions and readily accessible resources.  Your workflows also need to be repeatable, so that anyone with the right skill set or background can adopt them right away.

How to design a workflow

There are three key components of a workflow as an object: flowcharts, user documentation, and easily accessible resources. 

Demonstrate the bigger picture with flowcharts

Flowcharts serve as simple visual documentation that demonstrates the entire workflow. They show how data moves between various apps, departments, and channels at your organization.

Flowcharts illustrate the big-picture context of each workflow, so each user can see how their piece fits into the complete puzzle. 

We love using Lucidchart for Flowcharts. Check it out for an easy way to build robust, detailed charts. 

Provide context and instructions with user documentation

User documentation consists of concise, step-by-step instructions for how to perform the workflow. The documentation should cover what forms to fill out, what links to use, what decisions need to be made, or any other necessary information. 

In most cases, your documentation should be non-technical; anyone in the relevant department or role should be able to understand and follow these docs.

At XRay, we recommend using Notion for documentation. It’s got lots of options for formatting each doc, and adding database attributes to keep track of your information. 

Compile all necessary resources into an accessible location

All of the apps, files, links, and other resources that someone needs to accomplish the workflow should be easy to find and access. When your team has everything they need in one place, they’ll be able to minimize context switching and interruptions.

They’ll be able to maintain their focus as they work, and they won’t interrupt other team members just to get access to the resources they can’t easily find.

To organize workflow and share resources with a single click, check out XRay Workflow. Read on to learn more about the software we’ve built to help you manage your workflows and their resources. 

Let your team focus on getting work done

With these three components in place, your team will be able to focus almost entirely on the work itself.

For instance, they don’t need to worry about how a presentation should be formatted, or where it should be saved, or who to notify - they can just focus on the content of the presentation itself. And as they find ways to improve the workflows, they can easily update the docs and resources to make the change official.  

Using XRayWorkflow to manage your workflows

Using apps like Notion to organize your workflows is a great start, but it still has its limitations. Ultimately, you’re still going to have to leave Notion to open up all of the various apps that make up each workflow. 

And as you add more pages to your workspace, it will be difficult to keep everything organized and readily accessible. This results in some significant context switching, which can burn minutes every hour and break focus.

At XRay, we’ve developed an app designed to be the home screen for all of your workflows. We built it to deliver, catalog, and perform workflows, and you can use it to trigger key automations too. 

With XRay Workflow, anything on the web can be saved as a pin.

You can save text and links to the tools you already use, or even embed websites and webapps. Everything you need to perform a workflow will be right there on one board, making it easy to visualize, share, and maintain the latest workflow for you and your team regardless of the tools you use. 

XRay Workflow is currently in beta, and you can sign up for free here. 

Give your team a boost with well-documented workflows

Workflows are the core of what we do every day. Equipping your team with well-documented, accessible workflows is the best way to ensure that they’ll live up to their full potential.

And if you’re interested in using XRay Workflow to manage your workflows, you can sign up today for the free beta. 

To learn more about designing workflows and automating robotic tasks, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

When you’re trying to get started with automation, it’s easy to get paralyzed by choice. 

Any app with an API can be automated with no-code tools like Zapier and Make, so your options are virtually unlimited. 

To help you launch your automation projects, we’ve put together our top 3 recommended starting points.

Let’s get started!

Method 1: Start with a well-defined, repeatable process

If you’re trying to choose a business process that’s suited to automation, you want to pick a workflow that’s already clearly defined, repeatable and consistent. 

A well-defined process

If your process is clearly defined, you should already know every step that’s involved in the process from beginning to end.

You should know every person or department that needs to be notified and when. Then, you can configure every step as needed in your automation without having to rely on guesswork or trial and error. 

If you automate a process that’s still vaguely defined, you may be codifying an ineffective solution that will hamper your productivity instead of boosting it.

Repeatability 

In addition to being well-defined, it should be a process that repeats  on a regular basis. If you only do something once, there’s obviously no point in automating it. 

Look for the processes that you’re conducting every day, every week, or every month. Even an annual process may be worth automating if it requires a lot of tedious tasks to complete. 

But you’ll see the most dramatic results from automating processes that you conduct frequently. Things like creating documents for daily or weekly meetings, onboarding new clients, or responding to inbound leads are all great processes to automate. 

Consistency

Finally, you should look for processes that are consistent - in other words, you should automate processes that happen pretty much the same way every time. 

No-code providers like Zapier and Make will let you add conditional logic to support different inputs and circumstances, but your automated processes should still be largely similar every time they run. 

For instance, when you onboard new clients, each one may have a slightly different project, but you’ll still probably follow a similar process every time.

You’ll create shared folders and documents, create Slack channels, make a project template in your task manager, and generate other resources. 

You can configure your automation to handle a few different project types to produce everything you need to get started with each client. Consistent processes like this are much easier to automate, and are a great place to start. 

If you have a consistent, reliable process that you’ve already defined in detail, then that’s a great candidate for automation. 

Method 2: Support the people on your team

If evaluating your processes isn’t revealing any clear opportunities for workflow automation, you may want to take a different perspective and think about helping a single individual at your organization first. 

Many companies have a talented employee shouldering a huge workload. One effective approach to automation is to start by helping out your overworked employee first. 

Build workflow automations that help make their jobs easier. In particular, you should focus on automating their robotic tasks - anything that essentially amounts to copying and pasting data or making documents from a template. 

By automating those tasks, you’ll let your rockstar employee focus more on creative, analytical, strategic and thoughtful work. 

You’ll amplify their output while simultaneously making their job less stressful. Once you’ve established some automations for one person, you can use them as a foundation for supporting a department - or even your entire organization.

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Method 3: Automate your sources of truth

If you’re not able to find any processes or people that you can kick off your automations with, you may want to think about data instead. 

What data and resources do you and your team rely on to do your work? These could be customer databases, pitch decks, an employee directory - any kind of data or asset that you use and refer to on a regular basis. 

Automate data creation and syncing

You can get started with automation by automating the ways you create your essential data. With automation, you can ensure that you capture every important piece of information as it’s created. 

You can also make sure it’s stored consistently and correctly, and that it’s easy to update as needed. 

You can create automations that funnel your data from several sources into a single database or document, or establish a single approved method for creating and updating data - like filling out a form or using one specific app. 

Automating your data will create reliable and accessible sources of truth. It will make it easier for everyone to do their job, and will reduce errors across the board. 

Focus on processes, people, and data to start automating

Workflow automation can be a daunting prospect. You can automate nearly any workflow and any software, so it’s hard to know where to start. 

Our recommendation is to focus on well-defined processes, employees that could use a hand, or on key databases that act as your source of truth. Whichever you choose, adopting workflow automation will give you and your team much more time for the work that matters. 

If you’d like to learn more about workflow automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Building no-code automations is an easy and effective way to save time on your everyday tasks. Even simple automations connecting a couple of SaaS tools can help you to get work done faster.

But as you go further with automation, you’ll find that the simple, linear paths that you started out with aren’t enough to handle the more complex workflows that you want to build in apps like Make (formerly Integromat). 

Adding paths with a router lets you build more versatile automations that can respond to a variety of different inputs and circumstances. 

With a router, you can change your automation’s actions based on different user responses, or have it perform different actions depending on the time of day. 

It only takes a few simple steps to add a router to your Make or Integromat scenario, so follow along and get started. 

Create a new scenario and add a trigger

First you’ll need to add a module that will act as the trigger for your scenario.

Your trigger module can use any app you’d like. In our example, we’ll use an Airtable module that searches for new records in this view. 

The Airtable base pictured below gathers responses from people who fill out a contact form on our website. 

The main field we’ll be interested in is “Service Type”. There are three choices for this field: Project, Membership, and Other. 

We’ll use routers to send a different message for each service selection. When you’re building your scenario, make sure you know which variable you’ll use as the basis for your separate paths. 

Once your trigger module is all set, test it to retrieve some data. 

Note: whenever you’re testing your Make scenario, always go back to the trigger module, right click, and select “Choose Where to Start”, then “Choose Manually”. Select the data you want to use, and then click on the Play button to run your automation. 

Add your router and filters

Next, add a router to split your scenario into two routes. Click on the “flow control button”, and select Router from the menu that pops up.

Click on the plus button to create two paths that your scenario can follow. 

To determine which path the automation will execute, you’ll need to add a filter to each path. Click on the wrench icon and choose “Set up a Filter”.

In our example, we’ll configure this route to run if the service type is set to Membership, so we’ll set the label to “Membership”, and set the condition to 1.Service Type - “Equal to” - “Membership”.

In the first field, make sure to use dynamic data from the trigger or previous steps. If you just enter a static value, you’ll get the same results every time, and your routes won’t work as intended. 

For the second route, our configuration will be almost identical, except we’ll swap out “Membership” for “Project”, so this path will run if the user selected “Project.”

Finally, we’ll add a third route that we can use as a fallback. Click on the plus sign in the middle of the router to add an additional path.

Then, click on the wrench to set up the filter.

Set the label to “Fallback” or “Default”, and check “Yes” underneath the text that reads “The fallback route”.

You can leave the condition blank. Your scenario will use this route if none of the other routes’ conditions are met. So if the user selected “Other”, or if we add new Service options without updating this automation, this fallback route will run. 

Adding Actions

Finally, let’s add some actions to the scenario. 

In the first route, we’ll add a Gmail module. We’ll set the email address provided in the contact form as the recipient for the message, and we’ll fill in a subject line and body text that describe the Membership service option. 

To quickly add actions to the other routes, we’ll just clone this module and replace the Subject line and Body with appropriate text. 

Once your scenario is complete, it’s time to test it out. When you’re testing an automation with multiple routes, make sure to test with a variety of data that will trigger each separate route to run. That way, you can ensure that each route works as intended. 

Building more versatile automations with routers

Now you’re all set to use routers in Make and Integromat. Adding conditional routes to your scenarios will make them much more versatile and useful in real-world situations. 

If you’d like more tips for building no-code automations with platforms like Make and Zapier, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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Workflow Automation is one of XRay’s main tools for designing effective workflows, and it’s a rapidly growing part of every industry. 

But many entrepreneurs may not be familiar with workflow automation, particularly when it comes to automation built with no-code tools. 

In this post, we’ll explain exactly what workflow automation is, why it can help your company, and how you can get started with automation. We’ll also show

Let’s get into it. 

Defining workflow automation

Workflow automation is the act of supporting any business process with automated actions performed by software. 

In some cases, an entire process will be automated end-to-end. In other situations, only certain tasks will be automated, while the rest of the process will still be conducted by people. 

Automating tasks at any scale

Workflow automation can operate at nearly any scale. On an individual level, you can automate a single simple task, like configuring your email to send an automatic reply at certain times of the day.

At an organizational scale, you can build an automated workflow to handle intricate and important processes, like client onboarding.

A workflow like this would perform tasks like automatically creating folders in Google Drive, creating channels in Slack or Microsoft Teams, provisioning accounts, and setting tasks in Asana, Monday, Basecamp or Jira - or whatever your task management software is. 

Workflow automation can help you accomplish a few simple, repetitive tasks; it can help shoulder a massive administrative burden for your organization; and it can do almost anything in between - if you thoughtfully design the way you work. 

A quick guide to no-code automation

You can create automations by developing custom software to perform the task, or by using no-code platforms.

Since most of us aren’t Python developers, no-code automation platforms let us build automated workflows without needing to write any code.

No-code tools make automation more accessible

Using a simple interface, they let you construct automations that typically consist of a single trigger and several actions. 

The trigger defines when the automation should run, and the actions define what it should do. 

There are several automation providers available dedicated to building no-code automations: Zapier, Make, Unito, Coupler, Automate.io, and Exalate, just to name a few.

No-code automation is much more accessible to people who aren’t familiar with software development, and it lets you prototype and build much faster. 

The benefits of workflow automation

So why should you automate? What’s the value of handing some of your critical processes over to the robots?

The benefits of automation can vary based on the specific use case, but there are four key advantages that every organization can gain from automation:

• Saving time

• Making your team enjoy their work

• Making your processes more consistent

• Easily tracking key data

• Let’s take a quick look at each of these benefits. 

Saving Time

Automation excels at quickly performing highly repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Depending on the process, a single automated workflow can save you up to several hours each week. 

At XRay, we’ve helped save clients over 6 hours a week with a lead handling workflow, and over an hour per client with an onboarding workflow. 

And that’s just the beginning. If your first automation is designed and built the right way, you’ll have the infrastructure in place to start building more - which means more time saved, and more robotic tasks accomplished. 

Make Your Team Enjoy their Work

For knowledge workers, automation isn’t the enemy. It’s not a threat to people and their jobs. Workflow automation supports people as they perform critical tasks, handling the tedious to-dos that nobody likes doing anyway. 

When your team no longer has to spend time on robotic tasks, they can devote more of their day to work that leverages their unique skills, making them more productive and more satisfied with their work. 

Automation makes work easier, and makes it more fun. When you give your people the superpower of workflow automation, they’re going to love being a part of your team. 

Create Consistency for your Business Processes

Automation makes your business processes more consistent.

Before you can automate a process, you have to clearly define how it works. When you conduct it manually, you can leave several steps ambiguous and rely on your team to fill in the gaps with their judgment and preferences. 

But when you automate the process, you need to define every action precisely so that software can carry out each step. While people will always make mistakes from time to time, your automated workflows will perform every action the exact same way, every time. 

There may be a few bugs to iron out, but your automations will have a much lower error rate than you could ever get from a person. 

Easily track key data

One of automation’s most useful benefits is something that many wouldn’t expect. On top of saving time and improving your operational consistency, automation enables you to gather key data about any process that you automate. 

The automation providers that you use will inherently keep a record of every time your automations run, so you’ll have a wealth of data regarding the automations themselves, not just the end result. 

It only takes a few additional steps to log that data in spreadsheets and export it to convenient data visualization apps. So if you’re looking for deeper insights into specific process performance, automation might be the best choice to capture these meta-statistics. 

Getting started with automation

If you’d like to get started with automation, there are several ways that you can begin.

If you’re interested in building automations for your own use, we’d encourage you to try building some workflows on Zapier and Make yourself. You can check out the other videos on our channel for all sorts of no-code automation tips and tutorials. Even just a few simple automations can help you to save some time and organize your work every day. 

If you’re interested in building automations to support your entire organization, you can reach out to a company like XRay to discuss your goals and your options. You can visit our website to learn more and schedule a call. 

Most automation providers also offer a list of certified experts and partners who can help you to build automations for your company. For instance, you can find Zapier’s expert directory here, or click here for Integromat’s list of partners. 

Enhancing your workflows with automation

Workflow automation is quickly becoming a vital tool for organizations of every size. It’s a great way to free up time for your team, make your processes more consistent, and start tracking your organization’s activity. With convenient no-code automation tools, it’s easier than ever to get started. 

If you’d like to learn more about no-code and low-code automation, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

After devoting weeks, months, or even years into a project, it’s an often frustrating fact that everything can still go wrong right at the last minute. 

All of the work that goes into a professional project will amount to nothing if it isn’t delivered correctly. 

If the client doesn’t know how to use what you’ve made, or if they don’t know where to find the resources they need, they won’t be satisfied with the work you’ve done. 

In this post, we’ll explain why delivery plays such a vital role in every project, and we’ll take a look at how you can approach delivery to ensure a successful handoff. 

Don’t Drop the Meal Before it Gets to the Table

Imagine that you run a restaurant. Imagine that your chefs have prepared a perfect meal, exactly as the customer ordered it.

They pass it off to the waitstaff, who bring it quickly over to the right table. 

Then, just before the server can put the dish down, they slip and the whole meal falls to the floor. 

It doesn’t matter how well the food was prepared in the kitchen; if it doesn’t get to the table safely, then you’re in trouble. 

You’re going to have to make the food all over again, repeating work you’ve already done and trying desperately to restore the customer’s experience. 

How to Ensure a Great Delivery, Every Time

This hypothetical story illustrates a concept that’s critical to any agency or other B2B companies: you need to make sure your delivery method is as good as the rest of the work you do.

Before co-founding XRay, CEO Tom Nassr ran a digital design agency called Checkmate.Digital for several years, along with a few other members of XRay’s current team. 

We’ve been in the agency world for a long time now, and these are what we’ve found to be the key traits of a successful delivery.

Easy Access to Key Resources

First, the client needs easy access to all of the work you’ve done. If they can’t find it, they can’t use it, and from their perspective, you essentially didn’t do it.

All of the files, assets, links, forms or resources that they need to use your work should be easily accessible. 

Documentation for the End Users

Second, the client needs to know how it all works.

A new website with a fancy CMS won’t do anyone much good if they don’t know how to actually upload content.

Including documentation with your project is always a good idea if you’ve built anything technical for your client. 

Documentation for Training

Third, the client needs to be able to train others on their team.

You don’t want the company to drop your product the second that they hire new talent or reorganize.

You need to ensure that they can teach others how to use what you’ve made. So when you’re preparing your documentation, make sure it’s suitable for anyone, regardless of their role or technical skill level. 

Keep everything organized

Finally, you don’t want the client to have to ask you to send material again. 

Of course, continued communication for new features, new pages or bug fixes is vital for a long-term partnership.

But when your clients are forced to ask you for links, resources, and training docs over and over again, it’s just a frustrating waste of everyone’s time, and it shows that your delivery process wasn’t organized well enough in the first place.

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To sum it up, delivery should be well-organized, with links and easy access to everything the client needs to utilize your deliverable.

You should include documentation so they can use the material, and train their team. 

And if it’s all working correctly, they’ll never have to ask you “where can I find this?” again.

XRay’s Delivery Solution: XRay.Studio

Using a combination of apps like Google Drive for file sharing and Notion for documentation can be a decent way to conduct delivery. 

But having different resources spread across various apps makes delivery messy. It’s exactly the sort of situation that causes clients to lose track of what you’ve sent them. 

And if you have clients on different software, your team will have difficulty keeping track of their own work. 

Building Our Own Delivery Platform

Since there weren’t any great delivery tools on the market that did what we wanted, we decided to build one ourselves. 

XRay.Studio is our own project delivery and workflow management platform. It lets you save links, embed documents and web apps, and share resources from all over the internet on a single board. 

Your training docs can be saved right alongside the client’s sign-in portal, or organized in a group with Google drive links for the assets they need to download. So instead of jumping between an email and a Notion page and a CMS portal, your client can just open up an XRay.Studio board and follow the process one step at a time. 

All of the information and context they need is right there, so they don’t need to switch between tabs or search for important files. Most importantly, it’s both a surface for your team to organize deliverables internally, as well as a surface that your clients can reference for all the material they need, regardless of the tools used to create it. 

Join the XRay.Studio Beta

XRay.Studio is currently in beta as we keep adding and polishing features. If you’d like to sign up for the free beta, just go to XRay dot Studio. 

You’ll get a 1:1 onboarding call and be all set to deliver your work like never before. We want XRay.Studio to be the perfect platform for sharing projects and workflows, so your feedback will be essential. 

And if you’re not interested in XRay.Studio, you can still follow the delivery tips that we’ve outlined in this post to make sure that you can carry your projects successfully over the finish line. 

Craft a Delivery process that lives up to your standards

Ultimately, there’s nothing more devastating than falling at the last hurdle. When you’ve put your best work into a project, you want to make sure that handoff is as smooth as possible. 

An organized delivery process with thorough documentation and easy access to key resources is a great way to ensure success. And if you’re interested, we’ve developed XRay.Studio to make delivery as impressive as the work you do.

If you’d like to learn more about designing and optimizing your workflows, check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.