What a configuration could hand over
For a configurator that is a comfortable middle. Product ranges, add-ons and price tiers can live in linked tables that the configurator reads, and submitted configurations can be written back, so sales and production look at one source.
Products table
Product lines, size ranges and price tiers can be records in a table of your base, which the configurator would load them from.
Linked records
Add-ons could be linked to products through a Link to another record field, so the configurator would offer each line only the add-ons that belong to it.
Enquiries table
A submitted configuration can become a new record with the contact, dimensions, price and the link to the 3D preview, linked to the product it was built from.
Views
Sales and production could each have their own views over the same enquiries table, filtered by status or product line.
What we need to connect it
Access would run through a personal access token limited to reading and writing records in a single base, or through OAuth.
The mapping is built on internal field IDs, so renaming a field in the interface would not break the connection.
We need to know which tables feed the configurator and which table the enquiries should be written to.
For trials we recommend a duplicate of the base, so test enquiries stay out of the live data.
Worth deciding up front
- Airtable limits the API to five requests per second per base and writes to ten records per request. That is enough for a normal flow of enquiries, but the configurator would keep the price list in a cache.
- The number of API calls per month depends on the plan, and the free plan has a low ceiling. It is worth checking which plan your workspace is on before connecting.
- Field types need to match: price as Currency, dimensions as Number, options as Single select, so filters and totals work in the views.
Questions about this connection
Can we change prices in Airtable ourselves?
Prices would stay in Airtable and the configurator would pick them up on its next load. How often it reads is agreed according to how often you change the price list.
What if someone changes the table structure in Airtable?
Renaming a field does not break the connection when it is built on field IDs. Deleting a field or changing its type has to be discussed first, or writing enquiries would stop.
Other integrations
Put Airtable to work in your sales.
Tell us what you sell and how an enquiry is handled today. On the demo you will see the configurator, and we will go through which data could flow from it into your system.