We are excited to announce that as of today, the Interface Designer beta is open to everyone, which means you will now be able to create interfaces right from your bases, no code required.
What is Interface Designer exactly? Interface Designer lets you build visual and interactive interfaces using your base’s underlying data. By creating custom interfaces for your stakeholders, you can isolate the information that’s critical to them and none of the other details. This makes it tremendously easy to understand the status of a project and what’s required from whom. Jump right in or keep reading for a comprehensive round-up of everything you’ll need to get started, plus information about a few other features you’ll start seeing after today
Before we go into more details, make sure to mark your calendars for the next Airtable Community AMA on December 1, with Product Manager JB Bakst, where we’ll dive into all things Interface Designer.
Common Questions
What are some of the common use cases for interfaces?
Interfaces can be used for just about anything, but some of the popular use cases we’ve seen so far include dashboards to view aggregated information & metrics, summaries to view key information about a project, record summaries for research insights, and record triage for things like customer feedback or campaign asset reviews - we can’t wait to see what you come up with next!
What permissions are required to create an interface?
Creator and owner permissions on the base you’d like to build an interface for.
If I share an Interface with another individual or team, can they see the underlying data?
For now, interface access requires you to have base access. So yes, anyone you share an interface with will have access to the underlying data.
When should I use Interface Designer vs. Page Designer (or another feature?)
Some key distinctions that Interface Designer offers:
Dynamic & interactive
Can share data from multiple tables within a base side by side
Easy to onboard collaborators without needed to teach them how to use the Base or fear that they may edit the wrong thing
Filter records based on the collaborator viewing the interface
Page Designer is ideal for instances where you need to provide a non-editable view of static information during a specific moment in time. One example is if you need to deliver a presentation or want to create a PDF.
Resources to help you get the most out of Interface Designer:
Want more great news? We didn’t stop there, take a look at all the other fun features you can expect to see starting today as well.
Enhanced features for admins:
You’ll notice a slick redesign of the Admin Panel, created to be more user-friendly. Next, we’ve added significant new security controls—like Audit Log APIs and workspace share restrictions. And finally, we’ve improved base performance across the board, making your largest bases more responsive than ever before.
Additional power for your workflows:
And finally, we’re proud to share new integrations to help you bring more data into Airtable, and improvements to automations.
We’ve updated our automations interface to make it even more intuitive, with easy-to-read modals. Now it’s easier to set up a new automation with a fancy full-screen mode, and a handy guide that will walk you through every step of the process. We’re also starting to beta test conditional logic, which allows users to trigger automations only when certain conditions are met.
And last but not least, we’re adding new integrations for external source syncs from our partners at Zendesk, Github issues, and Google Drive—available to all customers on Enterprise plans.
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Hi Jordan,
Is a form element for interfaces on the roadmap? I would love to see some native functionality which accomplishes similar data validation as that demoed within Kuovonnes previously posted interface video.
Thank you for the feedback! We are exploring lots of different elements we could add to Interface Designer over time - including views and forms - so stay tuned for more updates to come.
Thank you for the feedback! We are exploring lots of different elements we could add to Interface Designer over time - including views and forms - so stay tuned for more updates to come.
Hi Again,
Thanks for the quick response and transparency! I’m looking forward to seeing what the team comes up with. I’ll be hawking the announcements category!
@Justin_Barrett noticed that certain components are only available with the built-in templates. For example, the “Record List” component is only available in the pre-made “Record review” layout, but if we make a new interface from scratch, we don’t have access to the “Record List” component.
It would be nice if we had access to all components from all interfaces, regardless of whether we start from a template or build our own interface from scratch.
Right now, you can access elements like Record list from the layout that is built to support that workflow. As we continue to build this feature, we’ll provide more flexibility in how you can set up your interfaces to make sure you can build exactly what you need! Lots of exciting updates coming
correct, we’re entering beta for adding branching logic to an automation’s actions
How can I get access to "beta for adding branching logic to an automation’s actions
Here’s another sample interface that I built for viewing and editing data across three linked tables, including adding and deleting linked records.
I played a bit with this last night before I went to bed, and it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up. So excited about the possibilities!
I played a bit with this last night before I went to bed, and it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up. So excited about the possibilities!
Same here. I played with it a bit last night. And then I woke up wanting to build out the two use cases that I have demoed. Even with this initial set of features, there is a lot of power to make workflows easier. I am even more excited to see what improvements are rolled out over the course of the upcoming year.
It would be good to have the ability to add new records in the ‘records list’. Perhaps based on some kind of permissioning system.
Here’s another sample interface that I built for viewing and editing data across three linked tables, including adding and deleting linked records.
Two great videos today, @kuovonne! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:
I hope that Airtable can fix that issue of the linked records from 2 child tables away not clearing out when you switch to a different parent record. It looks like it will update linked records from 1 child table away, but not 2 tables away.
@Jordan_Scott1 This would probably be a good issue to share with the developers.
Can we share outside our circle of paid members? Or is that what this is intended for?
@Nathalie_Collins At this time, you can only share with your existing collaborators. There is a more detailed support article if you’d like to take a look as well. Hope this is helpful!
Incredible to see this sort of non-stop productive updates from a company during covid. Thank you guys for adding this!
I’ve jumped in so far… really impressed so far, I only wish there was the ability to add new records from record list views within the interface!
There seems to be a bug with the Timeline feature when it is connected to a record list. At least in one of my bases.
When I create a Timeline Element and set the Source as the ‘Record list’, only a small number of Fields are available. It seems to be the Fields that are linked to other tables in the bases. Then, when trying to set the ‘Date setting’, nothing is available to select, even though the tab has multiple date fields.
Maybe I’m just not understanding how this works?
@Nathalie_Collins At this time, you can only share with your existing collaborators. There is a more detailed support article if you’d like to take a look as well. Hope this is helpful!
I am AIRTABLE Pro paid Plan and the only Editor of my Bases.
Here’s my Original Table & Content : text & pictures as usual in my AIRTABLE most frequent use cases…
I made my tests by sharing my first interfaces attempts in readOnly mode with my spam email address as one says on certain social networks Apps
This user (it is me too) previously unknown of AIRTABLE opened my email, clicked on my link of interface sharing and obtained it in his workspace
after having made a SignUp towards a new AIRTABLE Free Tier, which is in fact a trial of 14 days of a Pro Tier.
All this works very well : very better show UX than ever got from some third-part Grids, Galleries interfaces I tried before learning html/CSS/js by the hard way (Work In Progress).
except that this User can see all my Base, all that it contains, because of 2 links to reach this Base present in the new AIRTABLE Interface UI
and
I would like these links and SHARE button never exist in that shared Interface real estate (subsequent to REACT Components reUsability ?) but it is out-of-scope of this message.
Does the visibility of my Interface generated from my Pro Plan Account but shared with an email address that just opened an Airtable Free-Tier account to enjoy it in Read-Only mode get an unlimited LifeTime or will it disappear after 14 days, at the end of the 14 days Trial of the new Free Tier involved in this test?
How long will I be able to share some new Interfaces with that AIRTABLE Free Tier as I’m publishing from my Pro Plan AIRTABLE account ?
I totally agree to spent more money involving my present Pro Tier to AIRTABLE in a future end of BETA time, but I would continue to share free ReadOnly interfaces to Free-Tiers as I’m already doing that with my shared & embedded VIEWs, from a long time, and outside of any AIRTABLE workspace, Free or Paid Plan : WEB Browser is enough to take a look at any of my shared readOnly VIEWS.
But new AIRTABLE Interface Designer is such better than any existing GRID, GAL, KANBAN existing VIEW that I definitely prefer continue building new Airtable Interfaces !
I am AIRTABLE Pro paid Plan and the only Editor of my Bases.
Here’s my Original Table & Content : text & pictures as usual in my AIRTABLE most frequent use cases…
I made my tests by sharing my first interfaces attempts in readOnly mode with my spam email address as one says on certain social networks Apps
This user (it is me too) previously unknown of AIRTABLE opened my email, clicked on my link of interface sharing and obtained it in his workspace
after having made a SignUp towards a new AIRTABLE Free Tier, which is in fact a trial of 14 days of a Pro Tier.
All this works very well : very better show UX than ever got from some third-part Grids, Galleries interfaces I tried before learning html/CSS/js by the hard way (Work In Progress).
except that this User can see all my Base, all that it contains, because of 2 links to reach this Base present in the new AIRTABLE Interface UI
and
I would like these links and SHARE button never exist in that shared Interface real estate (subsequent to REACT Components reUsability ?) but it is out-of-scope of this message.
Does the visibility of my Interface generated from my Pro Plan Account but shared with an email address that just opened an Airtable Free-Tier account to enjoy it in Read-Only mode get an unlimited LifeTime or will it disappear after 14 days, at the end of the 14 days Trial of the new Free Tier involved in this test?
How long will I be able to share some new Interfaces with that AIRTABLE Free Tier as I’m publishing from my Pro Plan AIRTABLE account ?
I totally agree to spent more money involving my present Pro Tier to AIRTABLE in a future end of BETA time, but I would continue to share free ReadOnly interfaces to Free-Tiers as I’m already doing that with my shared & embedded VIEWs, from a long time, and outside of any AIRTABLE workspace, Free or Paid Plan : WEB Browser is enough to take a look at any of my shared readOnly VIEWS.
But new AIRTABLE Interface Designer is such better than any existing GRID, GAL, KANBAN existing VIEW that I definitely prefer continue building new Airtable Interfaces !
Regards,
olπ
Seems like Interfaces follows all Base permissions so: If you have a read-only user, they are read only until you remove them. All Airtable “accounts” are free, you are charged by the workspaces you own. Users you add to your base/interface don’t disappear from the base/interface when their trial ends because they’re trial is irrelevant to the base for which you made the interface.
It’s a huge huge tease to have this transformative functionality but no support for button fields! Arrggghh! Our buttons call scripts that call other APIs. Hope this comes soon.
Bug: Editable fields for linked records in interface designer do not respect multiple vs single linked record options. In other words, if a linked record field in the Base interface does not have “Allow linking to multiple records” chosen, the interface designer will still permit a user to add a second linked record to that field. In our case, we use a linked record field for a number of items that can only be one choice – product type, product owner, etc.
Suggestion: Expose the record changes history feed as an Interface element. We can add a record’s comment feed, but not the very useful feed of changes made to the record over time. That journal of changes – who made a change to what field, etc. is exceptionally useful for our workflow, where more than one team member is often making changes to any given record. I’m considering an Interface as a friendlier version of our production pipeline and that would give us at-a-glance context for any record.
Suggestion: Inconsistent text boxes on interface.
An empty single-line text field shows an empty text box on interface
An empty multi-line text field shows “Start typing…” in the text box on interface.
Would be nice if the two are consistent (i.e. don’t show Start typing…)
Seems like Interfaces follows all Base permissions so: If you have a read-only user, they are read only until you remove them. All Airtable “accounts” are free, you are charged by the workspaces you own. Users you add to your base/interface don’t disappear from the base/interface when their trial ends because they’re trial is irrelevant to the base for which you made the interface.
Thank you @Kamille_Parks for taking the time to clarify this confusion in the last part of my message.
Password protected interface (similar to how we share our table particular view)
Enable button action in the interface. Lots of custom functions and magic from the button
Look forward to your updates!
When trying to build some interfaces, Its nice that I can for example “count the number of unchecked” records. But I would love to be able to count “checked” ones too.
Being limited to “percent of checked” is not that helpful when it says “6%” but the actual count is “2”. In my use case “2” is much more useful number than 6% and its forcing me to omit data points in the dashboards because I dont have valuable data points that are clearer for my purposes.
The same holds true for other fields, see image, I can do “empty” and “unique” but not “filled”.
If interfaces transitions to a paid feature, you will continue to be able to use any interfaces you have already made, per this support page.
While Interface Designer is available for all customers to use for free during beta, it will be subject to pricing and packaging restrictions down the road. After the beta ends, your workspace will retain access to any interfaces you build during the beta regardless of your Airtable plan.
retaining access most likely implies a read-only state. We all know that everything that we build is never completely finished. So where does that leave us if the full access is in a plan higher than what we have?
I’m speculated that this will either be a separate paid feature or a feature included in the Enterprise. I’m leaning towards a separate paid feature only because if you look at the placement of your interfaces, they’re all neatly tucked away in a separate “workspace” of their own.
I know they need to wait and see what value WE find it this product in order for them to validate whatever price point they already have in mind. I wish they were fully transparent with their intentions.
Truth be known, I like this feature but I don’t know how much I should love it though.
Maybe I’m missing something really obvious… How do I create a new record with an interface? Ie, a form where someone completes some fields and then saves it as a record?
Is there a trick to moving around the elements that I am unaware of? They sort of have a mind of their own and want to snap into place in not-so-good-areas.
Maybe I’m missing something really obvious… How do I create a new record with an interface? Ie, a form where someone completes some fields and then saves it as a record?
Ways to create a new record:
in a grid view, the same as a regular grid view (assuming that the filtering allows it)
from a linked record field itself (but not in a grid view based on the linked record field)
from an automation triggered by a data change in the base
There is no native form view in Interfaces. All data entry needs to be tied to an existing record.
