Visualize Task Notes with Airtable

Summary

Dendron loves integrating with other tools.

The Airtable pod can be used to Export notes from Dendron into Airtable. This tutorial will cover how to create Task Notes that can be viewed inside of Airtable.

Prerequisites

• This assumes you have an Airtable account.

  • If not, you can create one.

• Enable PodV2

Concepts

Pods

Pods are a set of plugins that help users synchronize their notes between Dendron and other tools.

Task Notes

These a special notes, created with the Create Task Note command, that contain include Custom frontmatter not normally included in notes by default (ex. status, owner, due, etc.)

Example:

Airtable bases

Airtable bases are projects made up of tables, records, and fields. A quick way of understanding these terms is to think of a spreadsheet or table.

Example:

• This is a table containing information about people. Multiple tables can exist in a base, similar to how multiple spreadsheet tabs can exist in a workbook.
• FirstName and LastName are fields in the table, like a column in a spreadsheet.
• Bruce Wayne is a record in the table, like a row in a spreadsheet.

Steps: Airtable setup

Add a base

• Login to Airtable
• Under My First Workspace, click Add a base
• Change the Untitled Base title, at the top of the screen, to Tasks

Create Personal.Tasks table

• Near the first Table1 tab, click Add or import -> Create empty table
• Title this table Personal.Tasks

Now let's create all the fields we'd like to use for tasks.

For more information about how new fields are created and can be customized, feference Getting started: Tables, records, and fields - New fields.

• Leave the default Name as-is
• Leave the default Notes as-is
• Delete Attachments by clicking the drop down for the field, and selecting Delete field
• Leave the default Status as-is
• Add field: Description
  • Field type: Single line text
• Add field: Priority
  • Field type: Single select
  • Options:
    • H
    • M
    • L
• Add field: Owner
  • Field type: Single select
  • Options:
    • bob
    • alice
• Add field: Type
  • Field type: Single select
  • Options:
    • type.art
    • type.chore
• Add field: Due
  • Field type: Date
  • Date format: ISO (2022-02-03)
• Add field: DendronId
  • Field type: Single line text

Steps: Dendron setup

Update .gitignore

In order to avoid accidentally storing API keys, for service configs, inside of your git repository:

1. Open .gitignore from the root of your workspace
2. Add pods/service-connections
3. At a minimum, your .gitignore should look like the following:

node_modules
.next
.dendron.*
build
seeds
pods/service-connections

Airtable pod service connection configuration

1. Run the Export Pod V2 command
2. Select New Export
3. Select Airtable Export
4. Select Create new Airtable Connection
5. Name the id personal.airtable
6. Hit Enter, you should now see an editor for svcconfig.personal.airtable.yml open.
7. Obtain your API key from Airtable by following Airtable docs: How do I get my API key?
8. Update the configuration to match the following:

# description: configuration ID
# type: string
# required: true
connectionId: personal.airtable

# description: Connection Type
# type: string
# required: true
serviceType: Airtable

# description: API Key to access Airtable
# type: string
# required: true
# hint: Starts with `key`
# info: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/219046777-How-do-I-get-my-API-key-
apiKey: key*

Airtable pod tasks configuration

1. Run Dendron: Export Pod V2
2. Select New Export
3. Select Airtable Export
4. Select the connection you just created in the previous step, personal.airtable
5. Select Note (Exports the currently opened note)
6. For base-id, enter the base id
7. For table-id, enter the table id
8. For configuration-id, let's call it personal.tasks
9. Hit Enter, you should now see an editor for config.personal.tasks.yml open.
10. Update the configuration to match the following:

# description: configuration ID
# type: string
# required: true
podId: personal.tasks

# description: optional description for the pod
# type: string
description: Export personal tasks to Airtable for Kanban and more!

# description: export scope of the pod.
# type: string
# NOTE: When a setting is missing from this config, you will get a UI prompt to select a value for that setting while running the export pod. For this particular exportScope setting, if you would rather not be prompted and always have the same exportScope, simply uncomment the line below.
exportScope: Note

# description: type of pod
# type: string
# required: true
podType: AirtableExportV2

# description: ID of the Airtable Connected Service
# type: string
# required: true
connectionId: personal.airtable

# description: Airtable base id
# type: string
# required: true
# hint: Starts with `app`
# info: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405741487383-Understanding-Airtable-IDs
baseId: app*

# description: Airtable table id
# type: string
# required: true
# hint: Starts with `tbl`
# info: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405741487383-Understanding-Airtable-IDs
tableName: tbl*

# description: mapping of airtable fields with the note eg: {Created On: created, Notes: body}
# type: object
# required: true
sourceFieldMapping: {
  DendronId: id, 
  Name: title,
  Description: desc,
  # Special type here refers to body of your note, the markdown
  Notes: {to: body, type: string},
  Owner: owner,
  # singleSelect type, targeting tag using `#type.*` format
  Type: {type: "singleSelect", filter: "tags.type.*", to: "tags"},
  Status: status,
  # use yyyy-mm-dd format (ISO) for this example
  Due: due,
  Priority: priority,
}

# description: undefined
# type: object
# filters: TODO

Reference sourceFieldMapping and object values for more details on key values in Airtable Pod Export configurations.

Create a task note

1. Run Create Task Note

2. Create task.yyyy.mm.dd.write-short-story (example: task.2022.02.04.write-short-story)

3. Update the frontmatter values (don't update id, created, or updated values):

   title: Write Short Story
   desc: Write about the Sun swallowing Earth
   tags:
     - type.art
   status: wip
   due: '2022-03-01'
   priority: M
   owner: alice
   

4. Add content to the body of the note:

   ## Summary
   
   Whoa! This is a test!
   
   ## Details
   
   The Sun is hungry. Planet-eating hungry.
   

Export task note

1. Run Dendron: Export Pod V2
2. Select personal.tasks

You should see a notification message:

Finished Airtable Export. 1 records created; 0 records updated.

Subsequent updates to the task can be synced by running the same command, which would output:

Finished Airtable Export. 0 records created; 1 records updated.

The task should now appear inside of Airtable.

If problems arise, reference Troubleshooting as there may be either a permissions problem or a mismatch in field values in the target table.

Congratulations!

You can now use Airtable as a way to visualize and navigate your notes!

Key takeaways

• Learned how to create a base in Airtable
• Learned how to create a table in Airtable
• Learned how to create an Airtable export pod service connection configuration in Dendron
• Learned how to create an Airtable export pod configuration for Dendron task notes

Next Steps

• Create a kanban view in Airtable

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Backlinks

• 0.81
• Getting Things Done (GTD), Bullet Journaling, and Other Task Management Workflow Demos with Dendron