Hi all - thanks in advance for suggestions.
I am currently running a web app for managing a custom furniture manufacturing process using Airtable (AT) and Stacker. This involves a number of tasks to different parties involved in design and manufacturing; a matching process and then the transactional piece which I imagine Bubble is well placed to do.
Using AT with Stacker seemed to be a good solution because the process itself is quite iterative, requires a combination of different linked tables in AT and each user’s request is unique (therefore requiring user specific permissions).
Here is some context on the workflow: eg. Customer submits a request via form for each distinct piece of furniture; >>> We source a designer and send them the customer spec >>> designer requests more info that we then submit back to the customer via a ‘task’ in the customer stacker portal >>> customer updates certain elements and sends back to us via a form, this completes the task in the other AT table >>> We then submit a final request to the manufacturer in the format they want it in via another stacker portal to manage manufacturers >>> Then transact via invoicing and payments via stripe.
So in short, it is a bit more involved than the listings based marketplaces.
In future, we would like to automate some of the manual intermediate processes (ie. matching a customer with a designer in our database or providing them a list of relevant designers or manufacturers based on some of their unique criteria to create more of a marketplace).
It seems like this is where Bubble may potentially work but I want to be sure that there aren’t huge limitations. Could anyone help me understand if this is a non-starter and if so why?
For example, in Webflow (using memberstack and zapier to create tasks and a marketplace) it appears that we would have to manually create a unique view for each customer’s related tasks in Airtable and copy the ‘share AT url’ link to webflow cms if you want to display a users’ unique tasks. This won’t be practical for us or anyone with more than a few users.
- Could we do everything that Stacker can do (including the user-specific related table lists) in Bubble and therefore replace Stacker?;
or if not: - Is there any workaround whereby you could think of a way to seamlessly shift from a stacker form submission to the Bubble marketplace to do the matching process; eg. User submits a custom form >> Then gets to pick a designer >>> Go through the designer Q&A / iterative process with Designer >>> Once happy with design, accept task and pick manufacturer.
I wonder this is by either i) custom code in stacker upon form submissions ii) embedding stacker in a bubble site
Thanks
!