Airtable - Slack Engine
Slack
- Used by ~900K companies
- $2.3 billion in revenue
Airtable
- Used by ~430K companies
- $204 million in revenue
How many companies use both Airtable & Slack?
We might optimistically assume 430K * 0.186 = 80K companies using Airtable and Slack
Can we offer a premium
Airtable - Slack integration?
Thread - Comment sync:
Once an Airtable record is matched to Slack message
we could sync thread messages to airtable comments
(one way or two way)
Allows creating quick notes without leaving Slack.
What Airtable currently offers
What Airtable currently offers
What's missing on Airtable side
Buttons can only
update (current) record:
There's no way to make "Assign to me" button work. There's no way to work with the Slack user identity.
What about tackling it from the other way? What can Slack workflows do?
We can set up workflow with incoming webhook trigger:
We can send message...
But the button logic is also limited here.
Branching is available in "Business" only
(might mean $8 to $18 / mo / u upgrade).
Open link can potentially trigger incoming webhook that can handle GET + Redirect (Make, N8N, Pipedream...)
Buttons logic: limited and non-trivial
Different case: Airtable sends message. Slack workflow triggers on emoji reactions.
We can react to emoji on a message in a channel:
But then, the actions are limited. No generic outgoing webhooks, no zapier, make, n8n action. Airtable actions are basic (and it does not load fields for me)
What about Zapier?
We can react to emoji on a message in a channel:
But finding "matching" Airtable record can be non-trivial (it depends).
Matching Slack Identity to Airtable identity also non-trivial.
What about Zapier?
Syncing thread replies as comments is possible.
We can react to message, check if it's thread reply, find parent message, find airtable record, add comment.
But searching for the matching Airtable record can be non-trivial.
And matching user identity is non-trivial.
It's also slow (multiple server round-trips)
What could Powersync offer?
- Thread messages - Airtable record comment sync
- Identify current user - "Assign to me"
- Identify via email address + potentially explicit mapping UI
- Advanced WYSIWYG no-code message composer
- Workflows based on emoji reactions (alternative to buttons)
- Maybe: updating slack messages of airtable records and keeping them up to date
- Maybe: assigning to other people via tagging them in the thread ("assign @susan")
What could Powersync offer?
- Real-time performance: by effectively storing metadata (airtable record id - slack message id pairs), we can eliminate middle steps
- And also amount of API requests needed per each comment / reply
Why use Slack more with Airtable?
- Slack generally provides better notifications
- Notifications customizable per-channel (mobile, desktop...)
- Channels can be muted / unmuted as desired
- Some Airtable users are unhappy about Airtable comments
- Sync would allow to move communicaton to Slack more, but with papertrail still available in Airtable
- Companies are using Slack already
Challenges - Slack rate limit
This is already a challenge with Airtable integration. Apparently Airtable on its own does not try to "throttle" requests to prevent hiting the rate limit, instead user will see an error.
Challenges - Slack rate limit
- Powersync can't magically do more than 20 requests per minute but...
- It can do smart scheduling, to delay some messages not to hit the limit in the first place.
- Bulk multiple messages into one message (probably not a good idea, threads would be confusing)
- Could be opt-in for high-volume
- Even if the rate limit is hit, Powersync would wait the required duration (30 sec) and then try again.
