Improving refresh time Airtable<>Glide

I’m building a Glide page with Airtable as database. My application has a lot of user-inputted data via various forms. I have a big problem which is that the current sync time between Airtable and Glide is not great. So when I a user, for instance, creates a new row of data and submits a form, it shows up immediately in Airtable but does not display in Glide for sometimes several minutes.

I’m curious if anyone has any experience using Zapier or some other tool to sort of ‘force refresh’ Glide/Airtable when a user submits a form so that the data display is closer to real-time.

I know that one option is to move my database to Glide tables, but I looked into this and (a) it would take a lot of time to migrate and (b) from a quick test it seems like there are many things that Airtable does easily with data management that I cannot do easily in Glide. So I don’t think Glide tables is an option.

Hey @lawsonk, I believe we reload every 3 minutes. Can’t do it any other way at the moment. And yes, I’m sure there are workarounds using Zapier. Linking you with @Darren_Murphy @Robert_Petitto @ThinhDinh who are some of our top experts and may be able to help you with this.

I’ve noticed similar issue on my app, this is a problem that @david mentioned will be fixed by the end of year ?

i’d like a temporary solution if theres any

Thanks @iamtomgray ! Yes I’ve talked to @Robert_Petitto about this before. I know the general solution is to move to Glide Tables but I’m just curious if someone has experience fixing this without doing that.

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Per Glide’s description of when a data should be re-sync, I expect form submits to be immediately synced, per point 3.

However, it seems like the behaviour @lawsonk was talking about looks to be more in line with point 2, and caused a delay.

Don’t know if it’s a technical limitation, and I haven’t had any Airtables app, just my 2 cents.

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Yes @ThinhDinh my problem is related to #2 – the 3 minute check delay via Glide. I do wonder how hard it would be for Glide to simply check more often. Maybe this is a question for @david . If Glide could check with Airtable every 10-15 seconds this problem would largely be solved for my users. I’m not a software engineer so maybe this is hard/expensive to do, but if not it would be a huge help.

(and I would pay more to Glide for the option of faster checking, btw)

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I’m leaning towards a limitation in the Airtable API.

David talked about this, but there’s no ETA.

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That makes sense. I get that part of it is an Airtable issue. But I do wonder if there’s anything Glide could do to make the sync faster or if it’s entirely an Airtable problem? @david maybe has the answer to that.

Because even though instant sync would be nice, I would be very happy with a sync every 10-15 seconds. Maybe that is possible now?

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Just wanted to query what the things Airtable could do with data management that you couldn’t do in Glide, as I’m somewhat new to both and deciding which to go with for the data side! Cheers

It’s hard to summarize quickly but Airtable is able to do many things that Glide tables can’t do including certain integrations, automations, and overall just easier to manage and visualize your data. If you are building something pretty simple then I’d probably stay with Glide tables. But if it’s complex Airtable will probably end up being easier. @Robert_Petitto may have a more concise suggestion.

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:point_up_2:This.

If you need to have lots of functionality for people who are strictly working within the database all day, then AT makes sense.

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Hello there,

Having the same thoughts regarding the 3 minute reload delay from airtable to glide pages. I would like a quicker solution, and are willing to pay for it, as it’s what’s holding us back from pushing our client projects to mainly be build using glide pages.

Looking forward to news regarding this topic!

cc @iamtomgray

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Hey @Scd,

You’re in good hands with @Robert_Petitto, one of our leading experts. You can book time with him here:

Thanks for the referral, @iamtomgray. I can certainly help @Scd build an app using AT, but there’s nothing I can really do about the 3-min sync time.

Is there an enhancement / solution I’m not thinking of?

@iamtomgray Thanks

@Robert_Petitto Idk if you can do anything about it, it’s only the 3 minutes sync time that is causing our limited use of glide pages. We just started to run our entire business using our own glidepages build. We can overlook the delay, but it’s hard to sell solutions to clients when we can’t give a reasonable explanation for the delay.

Hope it makes sense :slight_smile: If there could be a force refresh button just like the one in the data editor it would be great for now.

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Airtable recently announced his new API with the posibility to send webhook.
Do you know when it will be take into account in Glide? I think with this solution we will have real time sync in two ways, right?

Do you know guys if there are any changes. I need clients to register some inputs and then an audio gets created in airtable. I would like the user to get access to this audio faster but there is still a delay of 2 minutes, do you know if anything has changed related to this topic as basically I would have no user if it doesn’t update everydate a file is created in airtable?

Stackerhq and noloco provides instant sync to airtable

The slow sync to airtable is my biggest complaint right now with using Glide. Otherwise great. Would love an update for this.