10. Using the Tips table

The public-facing site includes two ways for users to submit tips and optional photos about any real estate development project in your city. There is a dedicated "Submit a tip" form page, as well as a version of the tip form at the bottom of every development project page. Tips submitted using either type of form will be pulled into the Tips table.

Here is a list of all the fields that are used in the Tips table. Below, in sequence through the fields as they are displayed in the Airtable grid view, find details on formatting and how each field is used as part of your data structure, creating the live site and managing data entry workflows.

• Email
• Name
• Report
• Address
• Attachments
• Publish photo?
• Projects
• Project - manual add
• Assigned to
• Tip status
• Replied?
• Notes
• Created

Linked to the email field on the site tip forms.

• This will pull in automatically when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.
• We decided to make contact information optional to make the tip process as easy as possible; you may decide to adjust that page’s code to only allow non-anonymous tips to make it easier to follow up and verify information.

Linked to the name field on the site tip forms.

• This will pull in automatically when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.

Linked to the “What do you see?” field on the site tip forms.

• This will pull in automatically when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.
• This is the main body of the tip. The information may be used to to update existing records or start new records in the Projects table with information about developments you weren't previously tracking.

Linked to the “Where are you?” field on the site tip forms.

• This will pull in automatically when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.
• The field will accept any text, so someone can include an address or an approximate location to give you more information about their tip.

Linked to the “Upload a photo” field on the site tip forms.

• This will pull in automatically when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.
• People can submit any images that you could copy to new or existing Project table records if given permission; you should use your newsroom’s processes for verifying and confirming ownership of photos.

Linked to the "What is the photo's source?" selection field on the site tip form.

• This will pull in automatically if selected when someone submits a tip. It is not a required field, so may be blank.
• Tipsters can select either "I took this photo and you can publish it in the tracker," which will show in this Airtable field as "Yes," or "I found this photo elsewhere or don't want it to be published," which will show in this field as "No."

This field will fill automatically with a link to the related record in the Projects table when someone submits a tip from a particular development project page on the public-facing site.

• It will be blank if someone submits a tip from the main Tips page on the public site.
• Clicking on the linked record will pull up the corresponding development in the Projects table.
• This field is helpful for sorting tip records.

This is an internal single-select field you can use to manually add a link to a record in the Projects table.

• When someone submits a tip about a project that is not published on the site, but is one you have started working on, you can use this field to search for and add that project record.
• If the tip is about a project you do not have any data for, you can start a new record in the Projects table and then add it to this field.
• Using this field is optional but it is helpful for sorting tip records.

This is an internal field you can use to add collaborators.

• Using this field is optional, but it can be helpful for sorting records or for assigning tips that need to be verified, added to the tracker or replied to.

This is a single-select field you can use internally to track the status of a tip record.

• Using this field is optional, but it can be helpful for sorting records and tracking their status.
• You can add, delete or edit the existing options: Resolved, Assigned and Under review.

A checkbox to confirm whether a collaborator has replied to the submitter of the tip.

• Using this field is optional.
• Not all records will have contact information; but you can filter just tips with email addresses (which we have in a view, below).

A long-text field you can use internally to share notes about the record or communication with the tipster.

• Using this field is optional.

This is an automated field with the date and time the record was created.

• All tips: Main grid view, showing all tips.

• Unresolved tips: Grid view, filtered to show tips that have not been marked as resolved.

• Has contact info, needs reply: Grid view, filtered to show tips that include an email address and have not been checked off as replied.

• Assign to project: Grid view, filtered to show unresolved tips that were not submitted about a particular project nor have been manually assigned to a project. You can use this view to easily organize unassigned tips.

• Not assigned to collaborator: Grid view, filtered to show unresolved tips that have not been assigned to a collaborator. You can use this view to make sure all tips have been assigned for review.

You may find it helpful to set up an automation to get notifications whenever a new record is created, in other words, whenever someone submits a tip.

Now that you understand how the Airtable side works — and have possibly started adding data — it's time to code. The next section walks you through setting up your site.