Airtable and ClickUp Workflow: Streamline Your Processes

Quick… tell me how many of your tech pieces integrate together? How often do you feel like you are constantly opening up new tabs and trying to remember the name of that new software you just bought that’s supposed to “change how you do business?”.

Yes, that is a common occurrence in the field of small business. While we are super lucky we live in a time where there are SO many different types of technology out there that small businesses didn’t have access to 10 years ago, the sheer amount of it can be overwhelming, let alone trying to manage it.

This is why understanding your process and streamlining will optimize your productivity in surprising amounts.

I hear from so many clients that they want an “all in one” tool, and I get that, it feels as though things will be simpler if you can get everything you want or need from one tool

The fact is, that it’s impossible to find one tool that does everything you want and need it to do. Every business is different.

One more time for the people in the back…. EVERY BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT. That means, that there is no one tool that can handle EVERYTHING you want it to. It’s best to find tools that “play nicely” with others, otherwise known as integration

A little process mapping, a little understanding of what your business is actuallly NEEDING to reach it’s goals will go a LONG way to save you money, time, and best of all stress.

So, let’s figure out out how you can revolutionize the way you work with systems that integrate.

What are the benefits of integrating your systems?

You can greatly improve the management of your business workflow and enhance team collaboration by integrating the tech systems you utilize every day in your work. Connecting different systems increases data accuracy and accessibility, and enables better decision-making. It can also boost productivity (yay!) and therefore the effectiveness of your team.

By process mapping, you can start to streamline business processes, project management, and customer relationship management through system integration. While this article isn’t about process mapping specifically, I would be reticent to NOT mention it, as the process steps, the documents and information points involved are all vital parts of your business and need to have easy access wherever they reside.

What does it mean to Streamline Your Processes?

Streamlining your processes means optimizing workflow for maximum efficiency. By mapping out and identifying and eliminating bottlenecks or unnecessary steps, you can save time, reduce errors, and increase productivity.

It also improves collaboration, communication, decision-making, and project completion. Integrating your tech systems, such as Airtable and ClickUp, can be a game-changer for streamlining your processes and optimizing workflow. By connecting these systems, you can reap numerous benefits that will enhance your business management and team collaboration.

The Power of Integration: ClickUp and Airtable

So in the essence of streamlining, I have found through many projects in my corporate and consulting career, that the key pieces of how your business runs is within HOW you do your tasks, where the information lies (WHAT) that the tasks either need to be completed or is the deliverable of that task and also WHERE documents and files live.

The two biggest components of these really are the HOW and the WHAT. (the WHERE is a whole other blog post… but for the sake of brevity, I will shoutout to Google Drive and Dropbox)

The HOW of your business is the steps you need to take in order to get something done. You can also refer to these as TASKS. This is where ClickUp, or any other project management software, steps into the business and not only can you create your tasks lists, but you can also categorize them in a way that makes sense for your brain and your team.

I could go on about the aspects and features of ClickUp that are awesome for business owners, especially ADHD business owners, but I’ll let this blog speak for that at the moment.

The WHAT of your business is the information and details that the HOW of your business creates. This includes links to important websites or software, a client list and all their details, and assets created for clients as WELL as yourself.

This is where I believe the usage of tools like ClickUp starts to get a little convoluted. I have come across so many individuals and clients who keep the WHAT of their tasks inside the HOW. This means, that Designs are uploaded and messages sent in subtasks of a task of a folder of a space. They also use the somewhat limited database functionalities of custom fields to create spreadsheets. While I’m a HUGE fan of custom fields in ClickUp, creating a database that should ideally be created in a tool that can analyze through different views is arduous and clunky.

Let’s be honest, it’s frustrating as heck when you can’t get it to do what you REALLY want.

Let’s let ClickUp be what it is, a PROJECT MANAGEMENT tool with some cool extra functionalities that assist in the HOW things are done.

Airtable is possibly the only tool of its kind in the small business world (yes there are competitors, I see you SmartSuite) but Airtable truly stands out in it’s information management capabilities. It takes the concept of info management to a whole new level, offering a powerful and versatile platform for organizing your business data, links, and graphics.

Unlike ClickUp, which primarily focuses on task lists and project management, Airtable is designed as a dynamic database that allows you to structure and categorize your information in any way that suits your needs. In my humble opinion, there is no comparison when it comes to the ability of housing information, comparing it with other information, and automating based on the information’s criteria.

Imagine having your client list with all of their information, as well as when they purchased from you, how much money they have given you, what types of products/services they have purchased, and the deliverables from those services combined with your current tasks for that client, when the next projects or tasks are due.

All of your information in one place, but with tools that do their specific thing EXTREMELY well.

Pretty dope! (I’m showing my age here, I know. 🧑‍🦳 )

Benefits of Integrating ClickUp and Airtable

So you are starting to understand why it’s important to have tools and systems that do specific things very well, but don’t see how integrating clickUp and Airtable will help, especially if the whole aspect of the integration takes more work.

Firstly, the power of a unified view of projects, tasks and data cannot be overstated. This is a large reason why many clients look for an “all in one” type of software in the first place. In order to have a “second brain” for their business operations, they don’t want to go to multiple places to find it.

Secondly, with an integrated view, none of the information will need to be entered in twice. As someone who spent many years in looking at data and information, I can’t tell you how much DIRTY data is out there (yes, data can be dirty… dirty dirty data…. I digress). When I say dirty, I mean that there are 3 instances of the same information, with different details attached to each one. Although there are many reasons why this can happen, some of it is simply because the information is entered into 2 different systems 2 times.

No offense to you perfectionists out there, but every time information is touched by a human… the higher the chance of that information is wrong.

Automation is the magic sauce that makes my heart happy. I don’t necessarily mean automation BETWEEN the two programs, I mean the automation that is innate to each of the programs. ClickUp has been building on their automations over the last few years allowing for conditional logic, and Airtable has a REALLY decent internal automation system that can be used to send emails, update information between different tabs and a variety of other things.

This allows for simpler automation between the two programs using tools like Zapier because you are only pulling over specific information, not an additional 100 fields. As someone who is up to her knees in automation daily, this makes life MUCH easier in the long run.

Lastly, the increased efficiency and productivity by leveraging the best features of both tools is a huge benefit to the integration of these two tools. For example. I have a use case where I run my CRM out of Airtable (you can check that out here if you are interested in the template for this.) While I have some of my processes automated (calendar appointments turn into leads), I always check it every day to make sure all details are filled in and the leads don’t need to be moved to the next stage. Instead of having each of these as a task in ClickUp to check, I just state “Check CRM and update as needed” to my daily task list. If needed, I can have a video or SOP on how that’s done if/when someday I pass it off to a VA or salesperson.

So let’s just agree to agree. It’s time to matchmake these two tools in your business and get the best of both worlds.

How Does the Integration Work?

Integration by definition means to seamlessly share data or workflows between two software that allow for better and more enhanced functionalities of both tools.

This means that there are really 2 ways to integrate the tools, either to pass information or data between them using APIs (a computerized set of rules and protocols for interacting software applications) or actually using and/or providing the information in 1 tool to the other where it’s needed for the workflow.

This is important to know when integrating Airtable with ClickUp, mostly because a lot of the situations where integration is desired, are really just wanting to see the information in the other tool, not necessarily changing the information.

The simplest and most straightforward way to integrate ClickUp and Airtable is to simply embed an airtable view into ClickUp using the embed code from Airtable.

The second way would be to involve a third-party tool, such as Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat) to transfer vital bits of information needed for specific workflows from one tool to the other.

Continue reading for more information on when this is most applicable.

Streamlining Business Workflow with ClickUp and Airtable Integration

Remember the explanation about the HOW and WHAT of business tasks? This is important to remember when finding the best places and WAYS to integrate two tools together. Because ClickUp provides the ability to embed snapshots of other tools into it’s interface we will be considering that our MAIN point of entry into all of the information and tasks.

Scenarios: Embed Airtable view into ClickUp Task or View for Customization

Many of the requests I have received in my work have been to pull information over from Airtable and make it visable within ClickUp so project managers can assess the completeness of a task or project or know at a glance the completion of said tasks.

This is as simple as adding a view with the Airtable information to the project itself. There are some examples below.

• Group programs – embed an Airtable database of the members, their progress, their payments and how much time they have left as a view in the “activities” that must be completed.
• Content Calendar – While ClickUp has some cool key features, nothing can overshadow airtable’s capabilities to capture all sorts of Content information, making it super-simple to reutilize for different needs in the future. You can have the steps to CREATE the content in ClickUp, and have the team update the airtable with all of the pieces needed for publishing. Embedding the view makes it super-simple to see what is not yet completed.
• CRM – While many businesses utilize a CRM such as Hubspot, Dubsado, or Close, I have found that having a CRM built for you in Airtable not only gives you more power over the aspects you need, it also give you more visibility and ownership to nurture those leads. Also, having a CRM where you can embed the information into ClickUp is almost worth it in itself (interested in my CRM template? Check it out here)
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To find out exactly HOW to embed airtable views into ClickUp, check out my Youtube