During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help ‘all-inclusive resorts’ in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send certificates via email.
What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Republic, and Barcelona, processing over 30,000 tests the day after New Year’s Eve. Using Airtable, an Airtable extension called miniextensions.com, and tools like Docusign, Make, Sendgrid, and Twilio, the solution ended up supporting over 1 million tests. I handled all technical aspects, support, and training myself.
Since the solution was meant to be temporary, I prioritized speed and reliability. Airtable’s relational database capabilities were crucial, especially compared to spreadsheets, for managing multiple linked tables and automations. Airtable also offers a REST API and a pretty amazing self- actualizing database schema that can be copied into tools like GPT or Claude for added context. You can build powerful tools with its scripts, interfaces, and automations.
That said, Airtable is best for use cases with fewer than 250,000 records per month. Above 100,000 records, the web platform’s performance can suffer, though there are workarounds. It’s perfect for small to medium-sized businesses needing custom API integrations for CRMs or internal tools.
On a related note, today I built a cool Airtable automation using ChatGPT and custom scripts. By filling out a corporate email in a form, the system scrapes the web for details like company name, address, phone, fax, and more, which then populates the CRM automatically. I’m still experimenting and plan to make a YouTube video about it soon. Here’s the loom video I sent to a friend about it: https://www.loom.com/share/b9ddbefbdce5434da378667fc2079d00?...
This is very impressive considering the real-world complexities surrounding it, but you've taken that complexity and turned it into a fairly simple work-flow with minimal coding. I've been developing software professionally for nearly 20 years and I find these kinds of projects to be fascinating. I started out my career with a mixture of coding and non-coding "integrations" (hacks) with other software. Over the years I've fallen in the typical "how can I build this from scratch" trap, but in many cases - as you've proven - that's not always the best decision. Kudos and thanks for sharing!
This is great and I look forward to your YouTube video. It is intriguing to me since you went you choose existing tool and piped the entire workflow vs to build the entire thing from scratch in Python, for example.
In the demo Loom video, the part where you are scheduling an appointment, it looks very calendly like but it is not. Did you build the entire UI and UX yourself?
What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Republic, and Barcelona, processing over 30,000 tests the day after New Year’s Eve. Using Airtable, an Airtable extension called miniextensions.com, and tools like Docusign, Make, Sendgrid, and Twilio, the solution ended up supporting over 1 million tests. I handled all technical aspects, support, and training myself.
Since the solution was meant to be temporary, I prioritized speed and reliability. Airtable’s relational database capabilities were crucial, especially compared to spreadsheets, for managing multiple linked tables and automations. Airtable also offers a REST API and a pretty amazing self- actualizing database schema that can be copied into tools like GPT or Claude for added context. You can build powerful tools with its scripts, interfaces, and automations.
That said, Airtable is best for use cases with fewer than 250,000 records per month. Above 100,000 records, the web platform’s performance can suffer, though there are workarounds. It’s perfect for small to medium-sized businesses needing custom API integrations for CRMs or internal tools.
If you’re interested, I wrote a brief case study about the project here: https://rashidazarang.com/covid-testing.
On a related note, today I built a cool Airtable automation using ChatGPT and custom scripts. By filling out a corporate email in a form, the system scrapes the web for details like company name, address, phone, fax, and more, which then populates the CRM automatically. I’m still experimenting and plan to make a YouTube video about it soon. Here’s the loom video I sent to a friend about it: https://www.loom.com/share/b9ddbefbdce5434da378667fc2079d00?...