Documenting use of Airtable in the OR docs

[Paul Mackay]

What do people think about adding a section about the use of Airtable to the official docs? Would this help make adoption and reuse of this technique easier? Or at least linking to a separate doc about it? 

Are there any reasons against doing this?

Thanks,

Paul

[Mike Thacker]

I'd like to see a full description of how Airtable is used.

We found the limits on numbers of records made AirTable infeasible and wrote a tool to feed an API output into Googe Sheets. It's just one way but not subject to the constraints we found with AirTable. 

Mike

Mike Thacker Porism Tel / Signal / WhatsApp: +44  7976 295 784 Bon Marché Centre, 241–251 Ferndale Road, London, SW9 8BJ, England mike.thacker@porism.com | porism.com

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[Paul Mackay]

Hey Mike,

Sure, I can imagine the constraints could be an issue. But for small scale use it has some UX advantages. Perhaps same could be true for Google Sheets, but that might need a sheet with some scripting?

Perhaps the question could be generalised, is it worth having a Patterns section or similar that could document ways of using tools like these?

Notion might also fit into this category, when their API opens up (likely fairly soon).

paul

[Rob Redpath]

I'd like to see this, for sure - and a Patterns section in the docs sounds good. We introduced the concept of non-normative documentation in HSDS 2.0 so it's much easier to add/change/rearrange guidance concept between standard versions now.

I think the docs could form a really good starting point for documenting how people create and use data that uses HSDS, so that we can avoid re-inventing the wheel and we can understand each others' approaches, constraints etc. I'm really grateful for the way Mike and the OR-UK team have shared their work at https://openreferraluk.org/ - I'd hope that anyone else adapting OR for a local context could learn a lot from the process they've gone through and seeing what at least some of the possibilities are.

Rob

[Devin Balkind]

What content would be appropriate?

We have a bit of a history/context post here:  have posts about Open Referral + Airtable here: https://sarapis.org/delivering-open-referral-solutions-with-airtable/

And here is a more technical explanation along with a list of all the differences between the template and Open Referral: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UGDf-1HaEraDvEr8slo-rSJje2e81D9w5oYmuHZ547Y/edit#

Happy to help with this - just need a bit of guidance about next steps.

[Paul Mackay]

IMHO a useful way to structure a pattern on this would include much of what is in the "Human Service Data Standard (HSDS) 2.0 Airtable Template" document, perhaps with a writing style that is more neutral as part of the HSDS documentation. There might be a consistent structure to a pattern that could emerge over time, e.g.

Summary

How to use - this could include the bulk of the "Difference between the Airtable Template and HSDS" section

Examples

See also

etc

In a See also section it would be great to link to both the documents you mention Devin, as refs on how the use of Airtable came about.