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Airtable · Foundations
Build a base your colleagues can actually use.
What you’ll end up with
One finished base. An orders table and a clients table joined by a link you made, a per-client order count, two rollups you can explain, the junk rows gone, one spelling for every product, and a view shared by link.
11
hours in all — about 8 guided, 3 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Airtable. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Airtable. There’s no payment and no card required.
From two raw files to a finished base
0170 min
Get the data in front of you
The orders export is in an Airtable base of your own, and you have read two numbers off it that tell you what the file actually contains.
02120 min
Make the fields what the data actually is
Airtable now holds the money as money, the dates as dates and the units as numbers, and you have a total for the order book that you could not get before.
03120 min
The rows that should not be there
The export's closing note and the order that was recorded twice are both out of the table, and the order book's total has moved by the value of the one of them that carried a value.
04110 min
One spelling for every thing
Every product is one product and every channel is one channel, and the channel field will now only accept the three that exist.
05120 min
A second table, and the link between them
The client list is a table of its own, every order points at the firm that placed it, and each firm carries a count of its orders that Airtable keeps up to date by itself.
06125 min
Totals per firm, and a link a colleague can open
Every firm carries what it has spent and when it last ordered, and the firms that matter most are in a view of their own with a link you can send to somebody who has no Airtable account.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Airtable runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Airtable.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
None. The Airtable Free plan covers every control this course teaches. There is no card, no trial clock, and nothing in this course stops working when a trial would end.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers Airtable, in your browser.
- A computer with Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari — Airtable runs in the browser and nothing is installed
- A free Airtable account, created at airtable.com before session one; the sign-up needs an email address and nothing else
- The two export files downloaded from this course's own files page and findable on your own computer: orders.csv, which holds 422 rows, and clients.csv, which holds 24. Every start file this course names is on the same page
- Nothing you build in this course is private once you share it. The invented firm Ravenhill Supply Co. is invented, and both files hold invented data, because the last session ends with a link anyone holding it can open. Never put a real customer list through this course.
- The Free plan holds 1000 records per base. Both exports together come to 446 records, which leaves the base most of its allowance for your own work.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Start with two raw exports from a plumbing wholesaler's order system and finish with a working Airtable base — two tables that know about each other, a total and an order count for every client, and a link you can send a colleague that opens without an account.
An Airtable base holding an orders table and a clients table, joined by a link you made, carrying a per-client order count and two per-client rollups you can each explain, with the export's junk rows and repeated order gone, one spelling for every product and every channel, and a saved view shared by link — the link being the thing your completion record points at.
How a session works
- Open Airtable
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Airtable and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 11 hours in all·about 8 guided·about 3 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Airtable Foundations — build a base your colleagues can use
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The base you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Load a comma-separated export into a new table and check that everything arrived · Read the type Airtable gave each field and change it to what the data actually is · Find the rows an export brought in that are not records — a closing note, an order recorded twice — by counting rather than by reading · Bring a column to one spelling per thing, and hold it there with a field type that only accepts the list · Model a second table and link it to the first, and prove from the record counts that every name matched · Get a total and a count per record without writing anything · Save a view for a particular reader and share it as a link, knowing exactly who can open it
What was built
An Airtable base holding an orders table and a clients table, joined by a link you made, carrying a per-client order count and two per-client rollups you can each explain, with the export's junk rows and repeated order gone, one spelling for every product and every channel, and a saved view shared by link — the link being the thing your completion record points at.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Airtable Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the base you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Airtable when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Airtable?
Airtable is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Ravenhill Supply Co. sells copper, fittings, radiators and boilers to plumbing and heating firms across four sales regions. Two and a bit years of orders, a little over four hundred of them, and a list of the firms that placed them.
The owner has asked a question nobody can currently answer: which firms are worth an account manager's time, and which are only frequent. Order counts are known. Order values are not, because the money column came out of the order system as text and every attempt to total it has failed.
There is no system. There are two exported files, a shared spreadsheet nobody trusts, and a meeting on Friday.
Your job is to build the base that answers it.
Do I need to know Airtable already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 11 hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 8 hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Airtable runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Airtable Foundations is Foundations in Airtable. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Airtable. All the courses →