Today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is about using Airtable for a genealogy research log and how to configure and save different views of your tables. Tables are like pages within a spreadsheet. In your research log table, you may have many entries of various record types. You may want to filter to just see tax records, then group them by tax district, especially if you’re studying many people with the same name. After configuring this special view of tax records, you can save the view and come back to it later. Now you have two views of your research log – the original view with all the records, and the tax record view. You can save up to 1,000 views of each table! Join us as we talk about saving views in our DNA match details table, research log, and even a new view type, the list view.
Transcript
Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 258 Saving Views of your Airtable Research Log Welcome to research Like a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited Genealogist professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at FamilyLocket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro A Genealogist Guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research Like a Pro with dna, Join, Diana, and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.
Nicole (43s):
Today’s episode is brought to you by find a Grave dot com, the best place to search online for burial information for your family, friends, and famous people at Find A Grave, you’ll find details about cemeteries and individual memorials for the people buried in those cemeteries. Hi, everyone Welcome to research Like a Pro
Diana (1m 1s):
Hi Nicole How. are you today
Nicole (1m 3s):
I’m feeling very accomplished because I’ve just been consolidating several years of research on the Dire Research project into one Airtable research log and one Lucidchart diagram.
Diana (1m 15s):
Oh wow. How long has that been taking you?
Nicole (1m 17s):
It’s been kind of a beast. I haven’t really loved it, but now that I’ve got it, I’m really happy with it. And what I found is that I have about four groups of matches who descend from different Dire and ancestral couples who, I don’t know how they’re all linked together, but I know that they are linked together. So I put them all in in the diagram with different colors for each group. And then I also use those same colors and added a column in my Airtable research log so that each match is labeled to what group they’re in. And it’s been really wonderful to finally feel like I have a way forward now, you know, in the past I had been so confused by all the trees being conflicting and you know, some of them being wrong and, and now I can just take what I actually know to be true.
Nicole (2m 6s):
You know, I’ve been verifying the matches trees and the next step will be doing documentary research on each of these four ancestral couples and seeing if there’s anything that Links them together. You know, are, is there a common ancestor and are there common locations, are there common band club members? Anything to help put them together?
Diana (2m 26s):
I love that idea. So for Airtable, you just did another column and then had that be the family group, is that what you did? And then each one had their specific color?
Nicole (2m 38s):
Yeah, I, I just had in the people table another column called Match Group and then I used it as a lookup field in the DNA match details as well. So it’s been great and I add columns and customize my Airtable bases all the time depending on the project. And this particular project I’ve had to do a lot of different little customizations to really help me see the things I need to see.
Diana (3m 1s):
I really like that concept because as you get more accomplished with using Airtable for your basic research, then I think it opens your minds to the possibilities of what you can do with it. So that’s a great example of really customizing to reflect what you need to see in the research. Well let’s do some announcements. We have our Airtable quick reference guide available on our website FamilyLocket dot com for PDF download and our Research Like a Pro Webinar series for 2023 is so much fun. We are enjoying this immensely and we actually have a fun Webinar that I will be doing.
Diana (3m 41s):
Next It is titled is Elijah Dillard, the brother of Cynthia Dillard Royston a DNA case study and all of our listeners have heard me talk about Cynthia Dillard Royston for all very long time and So I will be showing how DNA helped me find another avenue to research when I thought there was nothing else I could do. So it’s going to be fun. We have our next Research Like, a Pro study groups starting soon that will begin the end of August and go through November of 2023. Our peer group leader application is on our website and we are currently accepting applications. So if you would like to have a complimentary registration to the study group and get to work with a small group of peers, we would love to have you join us.
Diana (4m 23s):
Please join our newsletter to get the coupons for special sales throughout the year. And we are excited that we have the upcoming Association of Professional Genealogist conference that will be held in Salt Lake City this fall. And that’s the next big conference as well as the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference, which will be taking place in New Jersey and also online. That is the first weekend of October and Nicole and I will both be doing lectures for that on demand recorded lectures. So it. So fun to look forward to these conferences and getting together with people who also love Genealogy and D N a and learning more from everyone.
Diana (5m 8s):
Yeah,
Nicole (5m 8s):
The East Coast Genetic, Genealogy Conference was so fun and I believe it’s in Maryland, not New Jersey.
Diana (5m 14s):
Oh, okay. There was something else in New Jersey this summer that I couldn’t go to for D n a. That’s why that one stuck in my head. That’s funny.
Nicole (5m 22s):
Love it. Well, today we get to talk about Airtable and as you know, we both love using Airtable for research Logs. So today the topic is a new thing that we both learned how to do and we’ve just really adopted it and use it all the time. So we wanted to share the exciting news that you can save Views in Airtable. What does that even mean? Well, you can see certain parts of your research and then you can save that view the way you’re looking at it for later so that you can easily toggle back and forth between different Views of your research log. You can view it filtered one way, you can view it sorted by date, you can then view it grouped by record type and then you can save those Views to easily toggle back and forth.
Nicole (6m 6s):
So here’s an example of Saving a view. Let’s say that you’ve entered a lot of different types of records into your research log and one of the record types you are using is tax records. Maybe you’re doing research on a person with a common name and so you’ve just taken all the people with the name, you know John Smith and entered them into the tax records for that county. And so you have a lot of tax records in your research log now. So when you’re working in the tax records and adding new ones and analyzing them, you might want to filter your research log to get rid of any other record types so that you’re only seeing the tax records. Then you could even further filter it to see only people from one of the tax districts, then sort that in chronological order and maybe you would save a different view to see only people with the name John Smith and then group that by tax district.
Nicole (6m 55s):
So there are so many different ways that you might want to view your data when you’re analyzing it and trying to figure out which John Smith is your John Smith. So that’s just one example of Saving, different Views in your Airtable research log.
Diana (7m 7s):
Exactly. and I, remember when you first told me about this, I couldn’t believe it. It was so neat and it was so exciting to get to do something new with Airtable that could really help me to analyze my research. But let’s back up a little bit for our listeners and talk more about Airtable. We throw it in there a lot. You know, I did this with Airtable or did that with Airtable, but really what is it and how do you use it for research Logs and Genealogy? Well, Airtable is a spreadsheet and a database and It is cloud based, so you can access it through your web browser, but there is also an application that you can download to your Windows or MAP computer and it’s also an app on mobile devices.
Diana (7m 51s):
However, I don’t know how you would do much research on your phone with with a research log, but I know people can do the amazing things. I just like my big screens.
Nicole (7m 60s):
Right. Maybe just looking at your research just to see what there,
Diana (8m 3s):
Yeah, you know, that actually is true because when I was using Google Sheets, I know in the past I have been somewhere like the Family history center or library and just needed to look up my research log really, really quick and have pulled it up on my phone and So, it actually might be a Really good way to be familiar with in case you’re on the road and need to look at something quickly. Well the reason we started using Airtable a few years ago was because we needed a better way to track DNA matches. As we were doing our DNA research, we were finding so much data, you know, you’ve got your matches, you’ve got your test takers, you’ve got correspondence, you’ve got match details and kit numbers.
Diana (8m 46s):
There was just a lot of moving pieces with DNA and you discovered Airtable because you had been using it with another group of people that were using it and started thinking that maybe it would work well for DNA and really experimented with it. And we continue to experiment and learn new things, which is what this podcast episode is all about. Well one of the things that we really love is using it for the fan club research. So when we’re trying to track all the friends, family, associates and neighbors of our Ancestors, our key research subjects, then Airtable is wonderful. Back in the day when I used Google Sheets, I would have a column and I would have a little cell and I would type in the name of the fans, you know, the witnesses or the neighbors, but it was kind of difficult to use that.
Diana (9m 36s):
I’d always have to go and read, read the Cell and try to find all the instances of that. So with Airtable I can have now a column or we call it a field where I enter each fan and then they show up on a special table within my Airtable research log and I can see all the instances laid out for me about where they appear. And It is a wonderful way to actually track the fan club. It is so much better. Well Airtable as you can tell, has a little bit different terminology and so we call the different pages tables and we can have a lot of different tables.
Diana (10m 17s):
We have for our DNA work, we have one called DNA match details, we have a timeline table, a research log table, we have a people table and our people table can do whatever we want with it. So right now we have the people table set up So, it tracks our research subjects, it tracks our dna, matches our DNA test takers. You can customize this just as you were saying Nicole, you know, you can change things up a little bit in Airtable if you don’t like the way we set it up as a Template, you can change things around other tables that you might wanna have if you’re working with dna, you can have one just for segments. You can have one for locations in your matched trees that you’re trying to find a common location.
Diana (11m 1s):
So there’s some really neat things you can do with all these various tables that will be within your Airtable base.
Nicole (11m 9s):
I love that. I love that you were talking about the linking between the research log and the fan clum table and linking is really one of the, the best parts about Airtable is that you can have a row about a person and then you can describe that person in many different tables in different ways by linking back to that person’s record and the people table. So it’s just a wonderful way to be able to stay organized and to see all of your data linked together instead of separated and having to reenter the data. You know, it’s, it’s such a time saver to be able to just describe that row that you already have in another way without having to type out that row again.
Diana (11m 49s):
Exactly. We don’t wanna do any more data entry than we have to. No more duplicate data entry.
Nicole (11m 54s):
Well let’s talk about Airtable Views. So within each individual table within your base, you can have up to a thousand different Views of that table. So when we say tables, we mean like pages in a spreadsheet. And so for example, in my Airtable base that I’m using now, I have a research log table, I have a timeline table, A D N, A match details table and a people table and so forth. And so each table may have three or four different ways of looking at that table and those are Views. So a view is just a unique configuration of a table. You can hide columns or fields, you can sort it in different ways.
Nicole (12m 37s):
You can filter out records to just see the relevant records to that view. You can group, so using the hide sort Filtering group functions, you’re creating different configurations of that same table and then you can save the way you’re viewing it to come back to later. So like I said, you can have up to 1000 Views per table, which I doubt we’d ever reach that, but it’s nice to know there’s not like a limit really. And there are several different types of Views that you can use and we only usually use the grid view for our research Logs and all of our different types of tables. But just for your information, the different types of Views within Airtable are the grid view form calendar, gallery, CanBan timeline list and gaunt.
Nicole (13m 30s):
And the timeline and the gaunt view are both only available in pro and the timeline is fairly recent. So I, haven’t had a chance to try it out. When I did a free trial of the pro version a few years ago, So I, wonder if that might be a neat and useful thing to do since we obviously use timelines a lot in our research. So sometime I’ll have to try that out. But the only other type of view that I’ve used besides grid for my Genealogy research log is the list view So. I’ll talk a little bit about that later. But mostly it’s just duplicating the grid view to have different Views of the table in different ways. So when we’re talking about different Views of our research log and things like that, we’re just talking about multiple ways of viewing the grid view or the table,
Diana (14m 19s):
Right? Well how do we see these Views? You can open or close the Views, you find these all the way over on the left side and up in the top left you will see a little tab that says Views or a little box. And so when you click on that, you can collapse the sidebar or you can open up the sidebar and then once it’s open then you can do a duplication of your full view. So you’ll see that there’s a default name for your table view and it’s grid view and I know I have seen that there forever, but I didn’t really know what to do with that.
Diana (15m 1s):
And that just means that we’re seeing this research log or this table in a grid. So it just like a spreadsheet, you know you’ve got all your different columns, you’ve got your different rows, that is called the grid view. Now the neat thing you can do is you can rename these Views, which I didn’t realize you could do. And so you can click the little down arrow and right click it and then you can rename it and you can call it whatever you would like. Now this is also how you duplicate a view. So you would take your grid view and you would right click and you would get the little box that opens up and it says add to my favorite’s rename view, duplicate view or delete view. And so you’d want to duplicate view, then it will be called grid view copy.
Diana (15m 45s):
And then you can rename that. So if you have gone ahead and decided you wanted to do that view of just the tax records and you could rename it tax records. And what I like to do is call my, I call it the full view and it’s where everything is there and it’s just, you know, the whole thing. And then I give my special Views names like tax records or land records or perhaps I wanna do a view just for a person, you know, whatever you want to do. It’s good to just think through kind of what you wanna do before you start naming things. But then your duplicate view every time you click on that one that with named tax records, it will show it already filtered, sorted, grouped, however you’ve organized it and you don’t have to go to the work to redo all that organization.
Diana (16m 36s):
And one thing to note is any time that you add new information to your full view, say it will also be in all the other Views. It’s not like you are going to have to do any duplicate entry. It’ll still be there on whatever you enter. So if I were to add a new tax record in my tax view, it would also be on my full view automatically. It’s, it’s not changing your base, it’s just giving you a different way of looking at it.
Nicole (17m 3s):
Fantastic. So let’s just spend a couple minutes talking about how to configure your new view because when you first duplicate the full view, it’s just gonna look the same as the original. So then going to your new view that you’ve created, you need to do something to it. And there’s basically five different functions you can do. You can hide. So hiding columns you can filter to see just a specific subset of things you can group. So taking rows and putting them in groups based on one of the columns or fields you can sort and you can even move columns when you’re trying to draw out specific information that’s relevant to your research project.
Nicole (17m 46s):
You may want to move a certain column toward the front of your research log or toward the left so that you can see that in its front of your mind, you know? And one example of this is the Genetic network column in the D N A match details table. So if you’re working from an auto cluster, a columns, leads method, a GFE network graph, and you have people from different clusters and you’re trying to kind of make sense of that, you may want to move your Genetic network column closer to the left so that you can really see everyone in that grouping. And you may even want to group by that column. For my current research project, I’m not really using Genetic networks as much as the match groups that I’ve defined by who they descend from in the documentary research, So I added a column for that for the match group and then I put that upfront in my research log.
Nicole (18m 40s):
So depending on what you’re trying to do, you may want to group things in a certain way. You could sort, one thing I do often with D N A matches is I sort the list of D N A matches from largest to smallest amount of D N A shared because that helps me prioritize matches sharing more D N A rather than those sharing the smaller amounts. So there’s just so many ways that you can configure your research log, your D N A match details, your timeline. And so using those functions to hide filter group sort and rearrange the columns, you can just have so many different ways of viewing your data. Now let’s go back to using the view sidebar.
Nicole (19m 22s):
So you can have this open all the time or you can close the view sidebar that shows your different Views and helps you rename the Views so that it’s not taking up space on your grid view. So, I usually like to keep it closed, but if you hover over the view box in the top left, you can see that it pops open for you. There’s some other tips to help you with that. If you want to pin the sidebar open, you can use the keyboard shortcut, control shift K. You can also use that keyboard shortcut to use the keyboard to toggle between different Views. So once you have opened that, you can press the down arrow and then enter to select different view to be on.
Nicole (20m 5s):
So if you’re a keyboard user, you might like that. You can also change the size of the Views sidebar by clicking on the right border of it and dragging it to be wider or thinner. So if you just want it to take up a little bit of space, you can drag it to the left to make it smaller. And then if you want to see the full names of all of your different Views, you can make it wider. a Pro tip is that you can do this with your primary column or field and you can adjust that also to change the number of frozen columns in your spreadsheet so that you can see like the first three columns, even though you are scrolling to the right to see something far on the side.
Nicole (20m 53s):
So a lot to know about Airtable, but hopefully that helps you to know how to use the view sidebar more efficiently.
Diana (20m 59s):
That’s great and it’s nice to make that a little bit smaller. I think the default is a little bit larger. When I learned I could make it smaller So it didn’t take up as much space. That’s great. and I also like just collapsing it and not even having it there. So I can see more of my actual data, so thanks for that. Well let’s do work from our Sponsor. Find a Grave dot com, find a Grave dot com makes it easy to find the graves of Ancestors. Create virtual memorials and add photos or virtual flowers to a loved one’s memorial. You can search by name, locations, cemetery, date and more. Find a Grave members, add more information each day. So if you’ve searched the site before without finding what you were looking for, come back and check again, looking for a way to give back to your community.
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Nicole (21m 58s):
Let’s talk about different ways that we have used Views to help us with our research. So I’ll go first and I’ll talk about the DNA match details table. So what is the DNA N match details table? This is where you put in a match between two people, a test taker who you have access to their results, and then a match who’s relevant to your objective for this research log. And you may put the match between those two people in there twice if they match at two different companies. So for example, I have a match between my father-in-law and his Y D N A match that’s at family tree d n a. And then if they also matched at Ancestry, then I would put that in as a separate row as it happens.
Nicole (22m 42s):
They don’t match at Ancestry, but my father-in-law’s brother does match the Y D N A match at ancestry, just sharing a small amount of autosomal D N A, which was really exciting. So anyway, I put those matches all into my D N A match details table and I also have the tests that they took, whether it’s ancestry or my heritage, the amount of shared D n A, the number of segments or the Genetic distance if it’s a wide D n a or mitochondrial D N a, then a link to the match page, which is really important for your research log to be able to get back to that match page quickly. Also, if the match has a tree, I put the link to their tree there.
Nicole (23m 22s):
Then there’s a column for in common with so any important shared matches between those two. And then the most recent common Ancestors and a lot of other columns that you can add, like if you’ve added them to your diagram, you can check the box, you can put in the relationship. Then that relationship and the amount of shared DNA is checked against the Shared Cinema Morgan project in a formula column that tells you if it’s within range. And another column tells you if it’s within one standard deviation from the mean. And then some notes Genetic network number if you have done a an auto cluster or GFE network graph and you can add whatever other things are helpful for you.
Nicole (24m 2s):
So that’s the D N A match details table. And then for more details about the match, I have the people table where I can put in like a Match’s Facebook profile, their phone number, their address, any anything I’ve learned from being in contact with them and where they live, their address if I’ve sent them something in the mail and all kinds of different details. So that’s in a separate table. The people table. So this D N A match details table is kind of the main part of the research log that I work with. When I’m doing D N A evidence and adding d n a analysis to a project So I will often group it in certain ways to help me visualize what I’m seeing and to help me do the data entry more efficiently.
Nicole (24m 44s):
Currently on my Dire research project, the way that I have grouped it and saved different Views is first by test taker So. I have about 10 test takers that I’m using that descend from different Dire and a Ancestors. Most of them are from my Dire side, but there’s three that are from different Dire lines that I have been able to see that are all connected. So when I’m entering a new match that I’ve found that’s relevant, I go to my view where I have it grouped by test taker because that’s kind of how I think about the match. I think. Okay, this is a match to my father-in-law, Robert Dyer, So I want to go to the grouping for all the matches that match Robert Dyer and then I can just add a row at the bottom of that grouping and his name will already be populated as the test taker.
Nicole (25m 30s):
All I have to do is add the name of the match and then fill out the rest. And usually I just put in the company the shared son of organs and the match page and the tree. Then what I do next, because I have so many test takers at Ancestry, I want to see if any of my other test takers also match this person. So that’s when I switched to my other view of my D N A match details table. And this view is grouped by match. So then when I’m checking to see if other people share with this match, I can easily add my other test takers as a row in that grouping. So let’s say the match that I added for Robert Dyer was named Ryan Dyer.
Nicole (26m 13s):
So going to my new view of the D N A match details table grouped by match, I then go to the grouping for Ryan Dyer and then I check in Ancestry by going to the profile page for Ryan and I, click the little dropdown list for comparing his D N A with all my different test takers and I, choose some different test takers that I have. And when I find that one of them does match Ryan, then I add another row to my Airtable Log for Ryan and put in the amount of cinema Morgans that that new test taker shares with him. And usually I find that three or four, sometimes five or six of my test takers will share D n A with this new match.
Nicole (26m 54s):
So I have a grouping of about four or five rows for Ryan Dyer with some of my test takers. One thing that’s interesting is sometimes I don’t find any other test takers who match this individual, and this has happened once or twice, and that is a really big red flag to me that this match is probably sharing D N A through a different side of the family and usually it’s a small match. That is
Diana (27m 16s):
A great way to use that. I love that idea of sorting by D match and then being able to see if you’ve got somebody who’s just not related to your project. Wow, that’s great. Right?
Nicole (27m 30s):
Then after working in my research log for a while, doing it this way, I recently have added two more Views. And like I said in the beginning, I’ve been grouping my matches by which Dire ancestor they descend from. There’s four groups that I’ve identified. The one that is my side of the family is Dyer Tharp Group number one. And then our Y D N A match is an exact match. They all descend from the Dire York ancestral couple. So that’s group two. And then there’s another huge group of matches who I’ll descend from a James Dyer who married a woman named Betty, which I think is possibly short for obedience because it’s spelled Betty with a D or Biddy, B I D D Y. So she’s got an interesting name.
Nicole (28m 10s):
So that’s group three. and they lived in Granger County, Tennessee. My Dyer Tharps lived in Hawkins County, Tennessee. And then the Dyer York group is from Georgia. And so we’ve got all kinds of localities here. And then the fourth group is Archibald Dyer and Ruth. And if you’ve heard me talk about Baldy Dyer before, this is possibly a a son of Baldy Dyer. So I’m really starting to see a lot of matches through all four of these ancestral couples that are shared matches with each other. And they’re kind of forming this big Dire group. So I added a column to put which group the matches in. And then I grouped my D N A match details table by the Dire ancestor group so that I could see at a glance everyone in the Dire York group and everyone in the Archibald Dire group.
Nicole (28m 56s):
And then the last thing that I just did is I looked at my closest matches, I sorted and put all of the highest matches at the top. And then when I noticed match between two people from different groups sharing more than 25 cent Morgans, I gave them a check mark in my new column called Star So. I just wanted to star some matches that were important and So I wanted higher matches, sharing between two different groups, sharing more than 25 cent Morgans. And then I filtered that and now I have a view just for my starred matches that can help me focus on connections between these clusters and groups and matches who are sharing higher amounts of DNA to really see, okay, which groups seem to be most strongly connected.
Nicole (29m 43s):
And then when I’m in the documentary research, maybe I’ll be able to find some documentary clues connecting them as well.
Diana (29m 50s):
Can you go back and tell us how do you do the Stard groups again?
Nicole (29m 55s):
I just, the column field type is checkbox and I just called it star. Okay.
Diana (30m 1s):
Like am I missing something about something special here?
Nicole (30m 5s):
If you’re in the pro plan at Airtable, you can change the check mark column to be a star. Got it. Or
Diana (30m 12s):
Something. Got it.
Nicole (30m 13s):
I just, I just did the simple way and just call it star and gave it a check mark.
Diana (30m 17s):
Okay. Glad I’m not missing that. Well, let me talk a little bit about using different Views for the timeline and the research log tables. And this is fun because for my current project that I’m working on right now, I took all of the 150 rows that I had in my Google Sheet research log from my Accreditation project and transferred those into Airtable. But 150 rows is kind of a lot to look through. And so when you told me about this way to do Views, I immediately went and were worked with that. So for my Accreditation project I was covering, this was my fourth generation, John Kerry Royston and I had to do all of his wives, which there were two known and one unknown.
Diana (31m 4s):
And then all of his children and So I had all these people and So I have now created Views within my timeline for just John, for his wife Mary, for his daughter Sarah Baldwin, you know, and on and on. And so that has been wonderful because now on John Kerry Royce and just himself weeding out all the other records, I only have 70 rows. He had a lot of records, he was in a ton of court cases. He was a very interesting person and had a lot of litigious things going on in every location he seemed to live in. So that has made it so much easier for me to see.
Diana (31m 45s):
And then for my research log, what I did was I took all the records that I knew applied to a person and put those into the timeline from my Accreditation research log. But then I had several Searches that were negative Searches and I. I didn’t really wanna put the negative Searches into my timeline because I wanted that to be just the known facts about a person. And So I put the negative Searches into the research log. So I could track what I had done because this research was quite a long time ago. and I honestly could not remember some of these things. And So I have created new Views within my research log of those different negative Searches for locality and record type.
Diana (32m 29s):
You know, I’ve got tax records, probate records, you know, all the typical types. And then I could also do another view for specific repositories. What did I search the Family history library? What did I search on Family search.org? So anyway, I’m seeing so much potential for getting everything organized with these different Views. Once I’ve figured out a good view, I don’t have to redo it, I just save it as a new view with that new name. It’s been great.
Nicole (32m 57s):
Good job. It’s really fun to see how we can make our research more accessible and find what we need to and then just be so much more efficient with getting to that again.
Diana (33m 8s):
Yeah, It is because we want these to be working research Logs working tables for our D N A. We don’t wanna just enter the the information in there and then just kind of look at it like, what’s next? There’s so much here I don’t even know what to do. So, I think that’s the beauty of Airtable being able to make it work for us and help us to make the connections that we want.
Nicole (33m 32s):
So true. Well, at the beginning of this episode, I promised I would share a new type of view that I’ve recently found. And this is the list view. So we’ve been talking all about the grid view, which is your typical table spreadsheet type of view. Well, the list view is very similar, but it simplifies your table view to just see the primary field by default. So if you choose one of your tables, let’s say the correspondence table where you’re tracking all of the messages that you send to people relevant to your research project, and in a DNA research project, these are usually matches that you’ve sent messages to trying to learn how you’re related to them. So in this correspondence table, you can go to that table, then under the Views sidebar, go to create and click list.
Nicole (34m 19s):
Once you do that, you’ll then see a list of the rows from that column and just the primary description while the primary description or the first column in that table is actually just the date. So what you’d need to do is customize that list view to show you which rows are relevant. And the row that I think is relevant is who it’s to. So the name of the D n A match, So I, turn that row on. And then the next action column. And this is where I type a little note to myself of what I need to do next after receiving an answer from this correspondence. And usually the answer is to build their tree or to send them back more information.
Nicole (35m 3s):
Sometimes a person will say, yes, you can have my permission to use my name in your research report. Just please send me the report. So. I can see it when it’s done. So sometimes the next action is to send them the report when it’s done. So in creating a list view from your correspondence table, you’re creating a to-do list basically, and you can even add a column to check it off when it’s done. And then you can see your to-do list gets smaller. Another place in our research log Template where we have kind of next actions or to-do list items is in the research log. And there is a column called comments and next steps.
Nicole (35m 45s):
and I might even break this out into two different columns. One for the comments and one for the next steps. And you can do the same with the list view For the research log, what I did is I chose to see only the short description column and the comments and next steps column. Then I filtered it to only show Rose where I have something in that next steps column, because I don’t put next steps for every single item in my research log, but some of the items in my research log, I do have a next step that I need to do or an idea that I received while I was analyzing that record. So then being able to see the list, I can just rename that list view to be to do items or research plan so that I know my next steps from this research project.
Nicole (36m 32s):
So that’s just one way you could use the list view and I think it lends itself well to Genealogy research Logs. So hopefully that can give you some ideas of how to use different Views, especially duplicating your grid view, but also to use the list view. And if you, any of our listeners out there are using different Views for your research log and different ways we haven’t mentioned, we’d love for you to leave a comment on the show notes, the blog post that goes along with this podcast episode and share with us what you’re doing.
Diana (37m 3s):
Well, I love that idea of using that for a to-do list because oftentimes in my research log I, it will get lost in all the different notes and things. So I, like the idea of separating that into two columns for comments and next steps, and then doing the list view just for that. And then you could also have, you know, the repository that you wanna search at so that you could sort it by repository. So you could see all things you need to do at the Family History library or on family search. I need to get used to calling it the Family Search Library. So I can see a lot of potential for that in keeping some lists within your, your Airtable base rather than having a separate document.
Diana (37m 45s):
That’s great. Well, thanks so much for discovering that and thinking of some applications for list view. We hope everyone has learned something new about Airtable and if you haven’t started using it, we would really encourage you to check it out. Nicole has done Templates. You can just go to Airtable Universe and do a search for her name, Nicole Dyer, and find all the wonderful Templates that she has created. And you don’t have to do the thinking, she’s already done that for you. However, as you’ve probably heard, it’s really great to learn the basics and then start customizing for whatever you need Airtable to do for you.
Nicole (38m 22s):
Thanks for listening everyone. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you again next week.
Diana (38m 26s):
All right. Bye-bye everyone.
Nicole (38m 27s):
Bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like, a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket dot com slash services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email in box each Monday. Subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket dot com slash newsletter. Please Subscribe rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.
Links
Getting started with Airtable views at Airtable Support – https://support.airtable.com/docs/getting-started-with-airtable-views
Airtable Research Logs – https://familylocket.com/airtable-research-logs/
DNA Research Logs: How to Keep Track of Genetic Genealogy Searches – https://familylocket.com/dna-research-logs-how-to-keep-track-of-genetic-genealogy-searches/
Airtable blog posts and podcast episodes on Family Locket – https://familylocket.com/tag/airtable/
East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference – https://ecggc.org/
Filtering records using conditions at Airtable Support – https://support.airtable.com/docs/filtering-records-using-conditions
Nicole’s Airtable Templates – https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrsBSDhwHyLNnP4O/nicole-dyer
Diana’s Airtable Templates – https://www.airtable.com/universe/creator/usrBessQxAQ11fCO5/diana-elder
Latest Airtable Template: RLP with DNA 2023 Log – https://www.airtable.com/universe/expy4V9HzRUxtJLvh/rlp-with-dna-research-log-2022
Sponsor – Newspapers.com
For listeners of this podcast, Newspapers.com is offering new subscribers 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription so you can start exploring today. Just use the code “FamilyLocket” at checkout.
Research Like a Pro Resources
Airtable Research Logs Quick Reference – by Nicole Dyer – https://familylocket.com/product/airtable-research-logs-for-genealogy-quick-reference/
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide book by Diana Elder with Nicole Dyer on Amazon.com – https://amzn.to/2x0ku3d
Research Like a Pro Webinar Series 2023 – monthly case study webinars including documentary evidence and many with DNA evidence – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-webinar-series-2023/
Research Like a Pro eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-e-course/
RLP Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-study-group/
Research Like a Pro with DNA Resources
Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence book by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin – https://amzn.to/3gn0hKx
Research Like a Pro with DNA eCourse – independent study course – https://familylocket.com/product/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-ecourse/
RLP with DNA Study Group – upcoming group and email notification list – https://familylocket.com/services/research-like-a-pro-with-dna-study-group/
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