Digitized Parelli Natural Horsemanship's paper-based assessment credentialing system — replacing emailed Access database with 7-platform automation; migrated 6,000+ records and 13,500+ assessments into Airtable; designed assessor operations base and purchase-to-credential automation.
Year
2019
Migration
6,000+ student records · 13,500+ assessments
Platforms
7-platform automated workflow
Via
Deytah
Operational Impact
Eliminated the single point of failure for a credentialing system serving thousands of students globally. The migration preserved 13,500+ historical assessments — no student lost their record. The automation removed the manual data routing that made the old system dependent on specific people performing specific tasks in a specific order. Every staff member who no longer had to manually enter an audition application had time returned to higher-value work.
Parelli Natural Horsemanship runs a structured credentialing system for equestrian students worldwide. Each level completed is a legitimate credential — proof that a student and their horse have achieved a specific standard of partnership and skill. The system's integrity depends on accurate record-keeping.
That record-keeping lived on paper and in a Microsoft Access database on one person's computer.
The paper workflow was elaborate: a two-part submission including a signed audition application and a completed self-assessment checklist — a two-page rubric across seven skill categories evaluated at four levels of progression. Students mailed it in. Staff entered it manually. The database got emailed to whoever needed to edit it. Multiple copies accumulated with no version control. If the computer died, the records died with it.
Seven platforms, one continuous flow.
What used to require a paper form, a stamped envelope, manual data entry, and a phone call or printed sheet to notify the student now happens end-to-end without anyone manually moving data between systems.
The harder part wasn't building the new system. It was extracting 6,000+ student records and 13,500+ assessments from the Access database with full historical data integrity — so that every student's credential history was preserved and accessible from day one.
The first obstacle was opening the file. The database arrived as a Microsoft Access file — Windows-only software. Without a Windows machine or Microsoft Office license, the only option was a trip to the public library to open it, export everything as CSVs, and carry the data home to start transforming it. That's the moment the fragility of the old system became fully concrete: an international credentialing system whose records required a specific operating system, a specific software license, and physical presence at a library computer to access.
The BuiltOnAir podcast (Season 3, Episode 8, October 2019) featured this project as a showcase of creative Airtable implementation. The host described it as "an extremely creative way to get the data she needs in the right spots." The episode framing: scientist, creator, web designer, developer, self-proclaimed unicorn — someone who crossed from archaeology into systems work and brought the same spatial and analytical instincts to both.
The Access database wasn't the problem. The problem was that one person's computer was the single point of failure for an international credentialing system. Every student who had ever passed a level, every score ever recorded, every assessment ever submitted — all of it dependent on one machine staying alive and one person remembering to email the right version to the right person. The new system didn't just digitize the workflow. It distributed the data so that no single failure could take the whole thing down.