Using Extensions in Airtable

Staying on top of your workflow is much easier when you can quickly view, analyze, and take action on your data. 

With Airtable, you can expand the functionality of your base by adding extensions—and interact with your data in powerful new ways. 

What are Airtable Extensions?

Airtable Extensions plug into the workflow you’ve built in your base, but allow you to add extra functionality—like generating dynamic, at-a-glance summaries inside the base itself.

Extensions also allow teams to import information and engage with external services. Like everything you build on top of your base, extensions update automatically and are easy to adjust.

Explore Extensions

There are a wide range of extensions for almost any use case. Visualize your data with a Chart, import a CSV, or integrate with other services—like Maps or to send SMS. 

Let's explore a couple of the most popular extensions: 

1. Chart

The chart extension can generate bar, line, scatter, pie, or donut charts. 

These are useful when you want to track trends over time, or know the breakdown of different percentages in a group. You can customize your axes, how they’re ordered, and how they’re grouped. 

2. CSV import

CSV (comma-separated values) is still one of the most widely used and universally supported forms of data. 

If you need to pull in existing information, whether that’s from an email list, an Excel document tracking all your clients, or anything else, the CSV import makes the job easy.

Unlike Airtable’s regular CSV import, which imports your data as a new table, the CSV import extension adds new records to an existing table.

3. Org chart

The Org chart extension automatically generates a chart tracking the relationship between records—typically, these records correspond with teammates or collaborators.

4. Map

If your base stores a large number of client or customer addresses, you can use the map extension to see them. You can choose between three different types of maps.

5. Description

The description extension gives you the ability to take notes directly inside your dashboard, giving you a convenient place to communicate with your collaborators. 

It allows you to write rich text descriptions inside of other extensions, or almost anywhere on your base.

6. Pivot table

A pivot table is the perfect tool for looking at your data from different angles, as it lets you slice information across multiple categories. 

Pivot tables give you a top-level view of a large, number-based data set. For example, you can take your sales data, and use a pivot table to figure out how many sales were generated per month, or in each product category.

Take action: Add your first extension

Now that you’re familiar with what extensions are and how to use them, it’s time to add your own.

Once added, it’s time to configure your extension. Change their settings by selecting the gear icon in the top right corner of the extension.

For example, if you were making a chart of your editorial pipeline using the chart extension, you could leave it as a bar chart tracking the number of pieces at each stage of your workflow—or you could change it to a pie chart to see their relative percentages.