Table of contents
Airtable Integration Overview
A lot of real work happens inside a base that nobody outside the team ever opens — a pipeline, a content calendar, a hiring tracker, an inventory sheet. WorkSights makes that work visible.
When Airtable is connected, WorkSights ingests record changes, comments, and structure changes — fields and tables being added, renamed, or removed — across the bases your admin chooses to watch. That activity sits alongside everything else your team does across Slack, email, calendar, and your delivery tools, giving you a single continuous view of how business is actually getting done.
For connection steps, see Airtable Setup.
How Airtable Activity Appears
Airtable notifies WorkSights the moment a change happens. Those notifications are processed and posted to the timeline within about 20 minutes. Each activity entry shows who acted, what they acted on, and what changed, in plain language rather than raw field names.
Activity titles follow a consistent format:
- Acme Corp in Deals > Created
- Acme Corp in Deals > Updated — Stage: Proposal → Won
- Deals > Changed structure (added field: Region)
- Acme Corp in Deals > Comment added
Where a changed field holds a short value, the title names it directly, for example "Stage: Proposal → Won". Longer text, attachments, and list-type fields show just the field name, not the value.
If someone changes more than 25 records in one table within five minutes — pasting a column, running a bulk update, importing a CSV — WorkSights folds that into a single activity, for example "Updated 140 records in Deals", rather than one entry per record.
Airtable activity appears in two categories: Task, for record and structure changes, and Comment, for comments.
What WorkSights Receives
Record changes
Records created, updated, or deleted in a watched base, attributed to the person who made the change. This is the day-to-day work in a base: a deal moved stage, a task marked done, a candidate advanced.
Comments
Comments left on records. Collaboration and review on a record is often where the real discussion happens, not in the fields themselves.
Structure changes
A field or table being renamed, added, or removed. This shows who is building and reshaping the team's bases, not just using them.
Collaborators
Airtable collaborators on your watched bases are matched to WorkSights people by email address, so activity is attributed to real people without anyone mapping accounts by hand.
Integration Page Overview
The Airtable integration page has a Bases tab, where you choose exactly which bases WorkSights can see. After connecting, it lists every base your admin granted, grouped by Airtable workspace, each pre-ticked and each with a status. Nothing is subscribed until you review the list and click Save — seeing the full list before anything is ingested is the point, and a pre-ticked list keeps it to one click for the common case.
- Watched — WorkSights is receiving this base's changes in real time.
- Starting — just added; ready within minutes.
- Not watched — unticked, so nothing from this base reaches WorkSights.
- Watched (limited) — WorkSights can't register a live notification on this base right now, so coverage comes from a periodic catch-up sweep instead of real time.
- Needs an Airtable Creator — the connecting admin can see this base but isn't a Creator on it, which Airtable requires to turn on live notifications.
- No webhook slot free — this base's notification slots are already used by another app.
- No longer visible to a connection — the admin who could see this base disconnected or lost access.
- Error — something went wrong; WorkSights retries automatically.
A base seen for the first time since your last save carries a New tag. Saving applies your selection, and changes from newly watched bases start arriving within a few minutes.
A Users tab shows Airtable collaborators on your watched bases, matched to WorkSights people by email.
Data Access and Privacy
WorkSights connects to Airtable using OAuth 2.0. Three things are true of every connection:
- Read-only. WorkSights never creates, edits, or deletes anything in Airtable. The only thing it sets up is Airtable's own change notification on each watched base, and it removes that notification when a base is unticked or the connection is removed.
- You choose the bases. Untick a base and WorkSights stops receiving anything from it. The consent screen in Airtable also lets you limit which workspaces and bases WorkSights can see at all.
- WorkSights keeps the activity, not the base. Tables and records are never copied. What's stored is the activity: who did what, when, and a short title which may include a changed field's value, such as a deal stage. Long text, attachments, and file contents are never put in a title.
Troubleshooting
A base shows "Needs an Airtable Creator" or "No webhook slot free"
- WorkSights still gets a periodic, catch-up view of these bases rather than real time: changes are picked up on an hourly sweep and credited to whoever a "Last modified by" field in that table names, if the table has one, plus any comments. Deletes and the previous value of a changed field aren't visible this way.
- For "Needs an Airtable Creator": ask a Creator on that base to connect their own Airtable too, or raise the connecting admin's access.
- For "No webhook slot free": this is a hard Airtable limit shared across every app connected to that base — contact us if you see it.
Someone's Airtable work isn't showing
- Most likely their Airtable email doesn't match their WorkSights email — check the Users tab. Or the base they work in is unticked on the Bases tab.
I can't connect Airtable
- Only Admins and Executives in WorkSights can connect Airtable.
Viewing a base or record doesn't show as activity
- Correct. Airtable only reports views and reads through its Enterprise audit log, which almost no team has. WorkSights sees edits, comments, and structure changes — not views.
We see changes but not older history
- Correct. There's no backfill. Activity starts from the moment a base is watched, not from before.
A comment doesn't show up on its own
- A comment is picked up the next time WorkSights sees that record change. A comment with no accompanying edit is collected on the next change to that record.
A deleted record's title just says "a record"
- Airtable tells WorkSights a record was deleted but no longer tells us its name once it's gone, so the title falls back to a generic description.
A new base isn't appearing
- It should appear within a day, sooner if you reconnect. Check that Watch new bases automatically is on, and that the connecting admin can see the base in Airtable.
An admin who connected has left or disconnected
- Bases only they could see stop being watched, shown as "No longer visible to a connection." Bases another connected admin can also see keep working.