Forms in Interface Designer

Good afternoon @Emily_Sermons

I’m creating a significant View Form workflow with my current project - over 30 fields, some linked, some leveraging Automation to transcribe form entered text data into those linked fields for future form use.

My current concerns;

• There’s too much disconnect between key features of the View Form compared to an Interface Form.
• The main advantage that an Interface View holds is that it supports fields nested into rows.
• However, the lacking features of an Interface Form compared to a View Form is overwhelming, preventing the adoption of an Interface Form.
• Interface Forms have absolutely highlighted the need for a View Form to be able to nest multiple fields per row.

I’m really hoping that Airtable Interface Form and View Form developers are both working together to bring both Form solutions inline with one another.

Yesss we want it back!

It seems that when picking a linked record in an interface form, the form does not respect limiting records to the view specified for the field.

The user also does not get a preview of a handful of field values—only the primary field value. Since users have full access to the base it seems strange to not show these preview fields.

Is anyone else able to reproduce these behaviors?

Can someone confirm if this is the expected behavior?

When creating a new record using Create Form of a record picker, the parent record doesn’t seem to get set by default, essentially it’s not creating a linked record, just a new record. Does anyone else see this behaviour?

This seems to be fixed. Thank you, Airtable.

This is the behavior I see and I believe it is the expected behavior.

@Ruchika_Abbi1 & @kuovonne:

Firstly, thanks for helping me to discover the new record feature for a record picker! I was going in circles trying to figure this out!

Have either of you had any luck editing the form that the new record button creates? I can remove fields, but I can’t seem to add fields/customise it much.

Is that from my lack of seeing, or is the feature not there yet?

You can add/rearrange fields in the interface form the same way you add/rearrange fields in an interface page.

You cannot make fields conditional the way you can in a regular form view. You also cannot prefill an interface form.

Aha, was also looking for this :slightly_smiling_face:

Ah, got it now, thanks so much :slightly_smiling_face:

oh, that’s too bad, I hope they change this. It should create a linked record.

@Emily_Sermons
Hi Emily, Happy to hear about the permission changes coming this fall. I had a recent topic brought up from one of the managers within my company; if there is option that would only allow an individual to see those data elements that relate to them? Almost in a way like verification of the individual when they come on to access the page that it only displays their information?

You can set the underlying filter to the record list elements to only show records where a User/Collaborator field matches the current collaborator. This is a feature already present.

There are ways around this, like if you have the direct link to an interface page with a record ID prefilled in the record list element, and that user isn’t tagged in the User field, the data will still be shown to them.

@Kamille_Parks
Thank you. This is good to know and didn’t realize this could be done. The users that need to see the information currently do not and wont ever have access to the actual Base. These users are employees but only need to see their performance reviews. Maybe this will be a fixed solution when the permissions are updated this fall for the interfaces.

Interface designer is designed for internal users and such the forms must be catered to internal users. Currently, the selection for related linked record is still much basic.

I do hope it can follow linked record selection in the table where you can see related information.

Good evening @Emily_Sermons

Further feedback for Forms, importantly for both Interface Forms and View Forms. Currently, it’s not possible for an applicant to be limited in numeric fields to maximum and minimum values.

For example, a number field requesting a value, the applicant can enter any number they wish. The only way an administrator can post-govern this is with an Automation script, such as;

let adjustedQTY = Math.min(Math.max(1, inputConfig.userQTY), 9);

With this above example, if the user enters in 200, then the automation will execute off of a maximum of 9.

Just as important on View Forms;

It feels ugly employing automative hacks when really this range functionality is expected. The applicant has no sense that their value is being mutated in the backend, and can lead to confusing situations due to the lack of Form Feedback (but at least the Automation allows for form execution).

In summary - we really, really need a method to limit user inputs for numeric values for both Interface and View Forms - the Airtable community have been asking this for years now, so I figure now would be the perfect time to implement this feature. :pray:t2:

PS: Please don’t judge me on my example Airtable Base. :lollipop:

Good morning @Emily_Sermons ,

I’ve a further request for both Interface Forms and View Forms when working with Linked Fields.

Below shows an example of a Multiselect Field “List” box selection within a Form View;

But with Linked fields, we don’t have such luxuries for list display within Forms (either interface or view forms)

Weirdly, there’s the ability to select Linked records during the form creation, but this doesn’t actually result in any feature/function in the final form?

In short, when working with Linked fields, I’d like to see the option given for Tick Box selection.

There’s no real “automated” workaround to this problem due to Automations not supporting Field option maintenance (this can only be achieved through a manual script extension).

It would be great to see tick-box / check-box navigation added to Interface and View Forms for Linked Field selection.

Further to my above feedback, could we please have an update on Interface Forms, or Interfaces in general?

Two possible solutions:

1. If you have a modest amount of fields you’d like to prefill, you can add to your Interface the Filter element and the Table element, making sure you allow the Interface users to add new records in the table. When they create a new record, each new record will include the fields as they appear in the filters.

Flaw: If the Interface user edits the filters, they would edit the pre-filled fields as well. Doesn’t seem to be a way to lock the filter. Additionally, if there are a ton of fields, confusing fields, or unsightly/secure fields, you would reveal that information to the user, though I suppose you could have some formula field as the filter to hide what you’re pre-filling or bundle your pre-filled fields, using an automation that states “if {Formula} = 1, then edit xyz fields”. It solves the unsightly issue, but I think interface users have full access to read all of the records’ data anyways through the expanded record view, so perhaps that security issue is unavoidable.

Here’s a look at an example:

Below, in the expanded record view, you can see that the filtered field of {Project}=“Steady Now” is reflected in the new record. Disregard “Standby” as that’s the result of an unrelated Automation.

2. If certain users use a specific Interface as the only way in which they edit a table’s information, you could create an automation that would “post-fill” the records that they specifically edit (assuming your table has a “Last Modified by” field) to include the information you wish you could pre-fill.

Example: The only way that Derek is accustomed to interacting with the “Assets” table in my base is via the Asset Requester, so I know if he edits any field in an “Assets” record – or, even more granularly, just the X and Y fields in an “Assets” record, which are the ones I have editable in the interface – I can be sure that Derek is editing via the interface, and can post-fill using an Automation that says if X field isn’t empty, Y field isn’t empty, and Derek was the user who it was {Last Modified By}, then I would instruct it to fill whatever other fields in that record accordingly.

Flaw: This would likely mean creating a new interface every time you want to trigger different pre-fills, or working up some convoluted automation schemes that are specific to either specific users or specific combinations of fields that any Interface user filled out. Also, if a user doesn’t ALWAYS use Interfaces to input data, this method would not work.

Further Interface Forms feedback. We really need the ability for Automations to handle both View Forms and Interface Forms, giving Automation authors a ‘toggle’ list that allows them to define which forms (either interface or view forms) trigger an Automation.

The inability to program default values is an absolute pain and show stopper. As a workaround, an automation could be employed to fill in the blanks after the fact, but still, it would be most preferable for an Interface form to support both default values AND to have an Automation trigger.

Again, to save on maintenance and the fact that Automations are capped, we should be given the ability to configure an Automation trigger to accept/trigger from multiple types of forms of either View or Interface, and multiple of each.

Hi @Emily_Sermons

Regarding the Record Picker - when pre-filling an Interface Forms URL with a record value for the Record Picker Element - I really like how this works with multiple Record Pickers. However, what I’m needing to understand is how may I default various Record Pickers to “Select Record”?

If I delete the Record Picker element out of the URL, they just default to the first record in a list. But I’m needing an option to have some Record Pickers default to the “Select Record” option.

Editing the form and the Record Picker element, there doesn’t appear to be a setting to keep the Record Picker to default to “Select Record” as a hard-coded option either.

I’m hoping there’s some URL syntax magic I can employ here. I checked the Airtable Help Center but it didn’t detail this feature.

I’m wondering if your team has made any progress on this. Everything is great but I’d love to give interface access without opening up the whole base to people. Thanks!

This is a new feature that went live some time ago. Check out the support page on this.

Hi @Emily_Sermons ! this is awesome. Is there a plan to develop the following features on the integration of form fields in a page? I know this is possible in an interface where it's just the form, but would be so useful in an interface where there is not only the form:

- conditional fields

- adding the form field description like in the link form

Basically adding the form as a form to an interface with other stuff is what would be the most useful. Is there a plan to enable that (rather than limiting this to an interface with only the form)?

thanks! 

Am I missing something on my setup??? Or have I completely misinterpreted permissions on these forms in an interface??? I have 44 staff who complete a simple form (but it is complex enough to require being an interface form rather than a simple base form view). I can't find any way to allow the 44 non collaborator staff to submit the form. Is that possible to do? Or am I out of luck here?

It's a shame that this is reserved for Airtable account holders. I am trying to create a form for lease applicants so we are looking for these functionalities - conditional logic, multiple columns, ability for the prospect to upload their documents, multiple pages to separate out the process and the option to continue the process. I think Airtable could easily support these function but it's sad to see the development linger even on basic functions