Rolling over to CMS Bridge with Existing Airtable items (Webflow/Airtable)

I need to rollover to CMS Bridge from the previous deprecated Nobull extension within Airtable.

We have existing data in Airtable across many tabs.
We have backed up the data and I have been following the tutorial to rollover.

We’ve set up the mandatory and additional fields, however looking for answers to these 3 questions:

  1. Do you need to sync webflow to airtable first (to pick up the new mandatory fields in CMS Bridge) and sync all records…if there is existing data in the airtbale then will this be deleted?
  2. I’d like to just sync Airtable to Webflow first (instead of webflow to airtable), however again not sure this is possible at first?
  3. I’d like to update only single records or records in Airtable that have been altered. This is ideal however I don’t think we can do this in the first instance of syncing, without syncing Webflow to Airtable first.

There is a risk of potential deletion of data, duplication of records and/or creation of new urls that I’m looking to avoid.

Been working off this support tutorial: https://youtu.be/SLrgjC39Xfc?si=CHxnoLk9wbj-JFsr

I need to run an update very soon so really need this guidance.

If anyone can provide any expertise on this I’d greatly appreciate it! :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Hi @sarah,

I’m Rohan, the product owner of CMS Bridge and I’m very happy to help you with the migration.

I suggest you watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flhjImO10lQ as it explains how you can integrate CMS Bridge into existing projects.

Since you were using Nobull, can I assume that you’re using Airtable as the source of truth? In which case, Airtable would already contain the CMS item IDs of all the data that exists in Webflow CMS. And, any new data you created exist in Airtable. Is this the case?

Or, is there a mismatch in data between Webflow CMS and Airtable?

Once we’ve established the scenario, we can proceed with the next steps.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks so much for the help.

Yes - Airtable is our source of truth data and contains CMS item IDs and slugs.

Thanks,

Hi @sarah,

Assuming you have 100 records in Airtable and the same 100 records in Webflow CMS, then it should be a straight forward process.

  • Make sure you’ve created all mandatory fields for CMS Bridge.
  • Take backups of both Airtable base & Webflow website.
  1. I’d like to just sync Airtable to Webflow first (instead of webflow to airtable), however again not sure this is possible at first?

Yes, you can send data from Airtable to Webflow. CMS Bridge will match the Webflow CMS item ID to update the records. It will also add the Airtable record id to those records.

  1. I’d like to update only single records or records in Airtable that have been altered. This is ideal however I don’t think we can do this in the first instance of syncing, without syncing Webflow to Airtable first.

It should be possible, but I’d recommend a full sync, so every Webflow CMS item has it’s corresponding Airtable record id.

If you need to save on Credits, then you can do it manually by exporting data from Airtable as CSV file and importing it into Webflow CMS.

Please let me know how it goes… thanks!

Thanks so much Rohan! Everything worked and synced over with no issues.

Brilliant from what I can see so far and much better granular capability.

Very excited to use this moving forward.

Thank you again.

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Actually Rohan - I just followed the steps in the first tutorial video about updating only the records we specify…ie - by making a sync status column, editing the last modified field to be dependent upon only that status and creating a new “sync to airtable” view…

However when I ran the update it actually deleted 200 records from webflow.

Why would it do this? There was nothing I did to indicate this or mean for this to happen it has seemed to select records at random.
I’ve had to now run a whole database sync again and undo the steps I did above around sync status and ready to sync to airtable view of the base.

If you can advise please as we want to be able to sync only selected records as you said.

Thanks,

Sarah

Hi @sarah,

I’m happy to see the migration went well, initially.

However when I ran the update it actually deleted 200 records from webflow.

Why would it do this?

CMS Bridge works on the logic of mirror sync, which means, it mirrors the data from one platform onto the other. So, from a selected Airtable View to a Webflow CMS Collection.

creating a new “sync to airtable” view…

I think when you linked the new Airtable view, it was missing those 200 records in Airtable, so CMS Bridge deleted them in Webflow CMS - was this the scenario?

You need to ensure that the selected Airtable View has the same data as the Webflow CMS Collection.

Thank you!

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Hi Rohan, there were all the records in the airtable view that I tried to sync - I just checked…

I will try again to go through the process of syncing single records as described in this tutorial to see again.

Thanks,

Sarah

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Hi Rohan,

I followed all the steps to update single records as per the link above however again it has deleted 200 records.

Is there any chance you could help us out with this?
We really need the ability to update only the records we specify.

If we could have a troubleshooting call that would be excellent?

Thanks,

Sarah

Hi @sarah,

Sure, please schedule a call with me at https://calendar.app.google/iDvDfnBc67mcsPxg9

Looking forward to speaking with you!

Hi Rohan,

I ran the update again after we spoke twice and still 2 times it has had an error message of database sync error: timeout

And it is not processing all records.
Please advise ASAP.

Or I can book another call.