Airtable

Airtable is a spreadsheet and database hybrid for building collaborative applications with little or no code. The Send data to Airtable webhook action sends data from a recipe to an Airtable automation, which then creates or updates a record in your base. This article covers setting up the Airtable automation, adding the action to a recipe, and mapping the data in Airtable.

The action is in the free plugin, and no account connection is needed inside Uncanny Automator; the two sides are linked by a webhook URL. You need an Airtable account, and a free one is sufficient.

Create the Airtable automation

Airtable’s side takes a few steps to set up, and Airtable’s own guide, Airtable automation trigger: When webhook received, always has the current instructions. In outline:

1. In Airtable, create an automation that starts with the When webhook received trigger.
2. Copy the unique webhook URL the trigger shows. This is the address your recipe sends data to.

Leave the automation open. You finish it once the recipe has sent Airtable a test.

Add the action to a recipe

1. Open the recipe at Automator > Recipes, or create one from Automator > Add new recipe, and add its trigger; see Creating a recipe.
2. Click the + at the end of the flow. In the picker, type Airtable in the search box and select Airtable, then Send data to Airtable webhook.
3. In the Set up step, paste the URL you copied from Airtable into URL.
4. Check the Request method. The field opens on POST; keep it, because Airtable accepts only POST requests. Below it, Data format is set to x-www-form-urlencoded; select JSON, the format Airtable’s own instructions use. Airtable accepts up to 100 kB per request.
5. Leave Authorization empty, and leave the Headers row that the action adds (Accept, application/json) as it is. These fields are for destinations that expect credentials or extra details in the request header; Airtable identifies your automation by its webhook URL.
6. In Body, click Add pair for each piece of data to send. Key is the label Airtable will see, Data type is the kind of value (Text suits names and email addresses), and Value is the data. For dynamic data, click the ∗ button at the end of the Value field and pick a token: common tokens such as the user’s first name are available in every recipe, and trigger tokens such as a course title come from the recipe’s triggers. The token appears in the field as a labelled chip, such as User first name.

7. Click Test. The Test step offers two tests: Validate data format, which is optional and shows the exact payload the action will send without sending it, and Send webhook, which sends a real request to Airtable. Run Send webhook; when Airtable accepts the request, the test shows Test passed. This sample tells Airtable the format of the data the recipe will send, so you can map it in the next section. Token values are not replaced during a test, so the placeholders arrive in Airtable as written. See Testing triggers and actions.
8. Click Save changes. You can click Save without testing instead, but Airtable then has no sample to map until the recipe runs for real.

Map the data in Airtable

1. Back in the Airtable automation, confirm that the webhook trigger received the test.
2. In the Run actions section, click Add action and choose to create or update a record.
3. In the Properties on the right side of the page, map the incoming webhook data to the correct table and fields in the Configuration section.

Turn everything on

Turn on the automation in Airtable. In the recipe, make sure the action and the trigger are On, then switch Recipe on in the top bar. Trigger the recipe once with a real example and confirm that the Airtable record is added or updated as expected.

Related: Send data to a webhook, Testing triggers and actions, Managing tokens