Coda Project Part 1: Bringing Data into Coda

For the past couple of years, GAP Consulting has managed all of our ongoing leads, projects, payments, etc. (basically our entire business) from an Airtable database. I hope this comes as no surprise, seeing as this is exactly how we help our clients. As I mentioned in an email from a couple of weeks ago, we realized that we essentially help create low-code apps for our clients. To accomplish this goal, our software needs are two-fold: (1) a tool to organize the data and (2) a tool to automate processes. To date, we use Airtable and Zapier to fill these roles, respectively.

Well, as I announced earlier this year, we are embarking into new territory with the inclusion of a new software: Coda! In order to truly vet the capabilities of Coda, I decided to embark on a (potentially) aggressive project... I'm trying to recreate the functionality of our Airtable/Zapier set-up inside Coda and I'll be filming a short video series that walks through the functionality. There's a steep learning curve for me here (I'm still relatively new to Coda) but thankfully I have the support of my team who has been developing in Coda for several months now (thanks team!)

Anyhow, this is the development of Part I: Bringing Data into Coda. In this video I walk through how I've built two tables (Contacts & Consultations) and integrated my calendar app, Calendly, to bring new schedules into the database. Then (and this is my favorite part) I have a specific section of my Coda Doc that shows me specific detail about my upcoming/current consultations.

One other thing that I really love about this is the ability to build automation directly inside of Coda. So, while I still use Zapier in this solution to bring data into Coda, I also built an automation in Coda to better parse out new consultations. It's my early observation that, while Coda automation will not entirely replace the need for Zapier, it will significantly reduce the amount of 'tasks' that my Zapier account uses to complete the same amount of work (essentially, Coda will do some of the heavy lifting for Zapier). I'm excited by this, because Zapier plans increase in cost with the number of tasks you use - thereby saving some money on automation!