New button types in Interface Designer

Thank you for this!! I am so impressed with the progress the Airtable team makes every month.

@Emily_Sermons, it would be very useful if an Interface button could trigger a manual sync for the underlying table.

Use case:

I have a base with client data that syncs to another base for client interventions. In that last base I’ve created an Interface to log intervention questions. When a client’s data is no longer correct, I click a button that brings me to the source record (standard option in a gridd button field) in the first mentioned base. I change the data and come back to the interface. I fill in some necessary fields and trigger an automation that creates a new record and fills in the client data.

The problem is that the client data is still the old data. If I could trigger a manual sync from my interface, that would be solved and the updated data would be immediately available.

Really great idea for a button action

I would still love to see a Copy field to Clipboard button.

Good evening @Emily_Sermons - what are Airtable’s plans regarding Grid Based buttons that execute Script Extensions? For example, I’ve just written a script extension for my base, but I have no way of accessing/triggering my Script from an Interface - and the Table Button Fields are greyed out, and the Interface Button doesn’t appear to have an Extension access option.

EDIT:

Further to my previous post, I’d like to see Field Dependent Buttons, that are only clickable upon field other criteria being met.

It would also be extremely useful for an Automation Button to return an output message from the Automation upon completion or failure - specified by the Automation script output.

Good afternoon @Emily_Sermons

Further Interface Button suggestions for yourself and the Airtable dev team.

The scenario - An interface that navigates a Projects Table, with a Linked Field to a Tasks table. Often each task needs review, modifying and sometimes even deletion.

Unfortunately the user experience for engaging task buttons that have been placed in the Interface form is lackluster and annoying.

Some workflow examples:

Project Interface;

Task Form upon clicking Linked Field Tasks;

In my current Base set, projects are spun up with several tasks pre-assigned (depending on who’s generating the project). The Project owner then needs to review that new Project (via an Interface) and clear out the Tasks that aren’t required by deleting the tasks. The desired functionality needed after a Task is deleted is for the UI to delete the active task, then take the user to the next task in the Linked field, or, if there are none remaining then take them back into the active Project (exit the Linked field form).

Whilst continuing to work in Linked Tasks - the Next / Previous Record Buttons don’t work, because they currently can’t identify that the users Interface form is currently reviewing a Linked Record table, in this case the users Task table. What we’re needing - is that when a user is navigating Projects via the Project Interface, and then they click into a Task Linked Field record, the form that pops-up needs to forward the Task Table ID to the buttons in that form, so that the user can cycle through each of the records within that Multi-Record Linked Field.

And finally, the ability to delete a record should be a button that may be accessed/toggled on display at the Project level;

Ok, that’s today’s feedback done! Worth noting that this isn’t me wanting features for the heck-of-it, but is actually real world feedback from our current team who are using Interfaces in production.

Hi Emily,

Don’t love the new interface buttons inside an interface but do like that I can go back the the interface page rather than jump back and forth to the base.

We use interfaces extensively and the new format is not helpful to me or my users. Please let me know who can help.

1. The biggest problem we have is seeing whether there is work to be done. Both the new and the old version force users to go to each interface to see if there is work to be done.

The old format was better: it simply needed a record count at the summary level, which would tell a user that there were records that needed to be reviewed in that interface.

The new format doesn’t solve that. Even makes it worse because I now have to skim through each and then go to MORE to see what else I missed.

2. I can’t figure out how to change the name of an interface group. Probably simple, but I can’t find it now that there is no category page.

Thank you for your help and for raising the issue in #1. It remains our biggest challenge.

This is great. But I’m wondering, What is the use case for the previous/next button? I’m working on a detail view that opens from a grid page. I’d like to put a previous/next button on the detail view that would go to previous/next record in the grid the user was looking at when they opened the current detail view. But I am unable to configure a source for the button.

Even on the grid page, I can’t get this action linked to a source.

What placement context is required for this button to be usable? I’m missing something big but I cannot see what it is.

Your source needs to be one of the List elements. Either Record List or the sidebar thingy. That’s how Airtable is able to define what record comes before or after.

The Pop-Up Form form to edit the Link Record field doesn’t allow to set a Source - I’m not sure what step I’ve missed that allows me to tie a Next / Previous Button to a Linked Field source.

Apparently the go to next/previous action for buttons in Interfaces works only on Record Review (master-detail) type interfaces. Sad because it’s much less useful in that context than it would be on a record-detail view (where it might be nice to move to the next record in the parent-page’s list without having to switch back to the list, then pick the next record).

@Emily_Sermons - can you confirm if this particular Previous/Next Button limitation (the fact they can’t be used within a Linked Field Child/Form interface) is in the next rounds of development? This functionality is very much needed.

Good afternoon @Emily_Sermons

Another week, another Button feature request.

In our base, users have Automations that trigger when they Duplicate a record via a Grid View - the Automation has the When New Record Created trigger - along with conditional criteria, that once met allows an automation to tidy up a duplicated record so that the user can then manage and process.

Recently we discovered a limitation with Interfaces, where we have no easy way to duplicate a record from an Interface that allows for the existing working workflow to execute, or ties in with the existing Automation that cleans up duplicated records.

In the above screenshot, on the Interface Button action, we’re needing to have “Duplicate Record” added to the selection list - that acts exactly how “Duplicate Record” works when in a Base Grid View.

The result is either, one less reason for the user to use an interface and continue using the Grid View - or, waste a couple of hours figuring out a suitable workaround, duplicating scripts, duplicating Automations, re-working trigger logic etc.

Further request - we’re also needing the default Airtable Colours available for button use. It would be great if the button colour could also be dynamically assigned from an existing select field too.

Really hoping to see my previous request of prerequisite filters too, which determine if a button may be clicked or not, depending on the state of other record fields. Although we can achieve some functionality via the Automation, as it’s obfuscated from the user they may be confused upon clicking a button and not getting the desired outcome (because they haven’t filled out a field, for example).

Hi @Emily_Sermons Looks like there is a bug with the Interface buttons. I’m trying to use the Update function however it doesn’t show me the option to set fields.

I’m stuck on some updates because of this bug.

[Editing this with updates]

So the interface is a record picker and if I set a filter on it which results in no records, then the Update button doesn’t give me the fields. However, if I select a record and then go to the Update button, it shows me the fields. Since I am still in draft mode, I expected it to still show me the update button properties. This is still a bug according to me since it’s not clear to the user why the configuration is not working as expected.

is there a button to open record in a different interface?

Im in interface A looking at a project, and need to jump into a different interface B for same project. Is there a way to setup a button to do so?

similarly open a record in a specific view?

Yah, I too am needing a method to take the record ID on Interface A, and then click a button to open Interface B in a new tab, and have that same record ID load on Interface B by default.

It would also be useful if that Record ID from Interface A could be set as the default record in a Record Picker on Interface B.

Another interesting option to have, would be a field value from the Record ID from Interface A feed into a Filter value on Interface B - that would be super powerful.

Not a button, but you can definitely have a URL field which will take you to the other interface with the record selected. Not pretty, but works.

Button field with formula as the url does the pretty part

This is a handy workaround - it needs to be implemented directly into the Button so that we don’t have to create new Formula Fields to cater for interfaces.

Hoping for pagination and/or page anchor buttons are on the horizon. This is what will take the navigation to the next level. Currently if you need many different views for a single record we have to make a very long page with all the elements sub categorized or we have to have a very long menu and search the record every time you change the page. Thanks!

Today, I coded up a Button automation, and that button needed to be placed within a couple of different interfaces. I found it frustrating that I have to “duplicate” my automation, containing a couple of pages of Javascript, and then link each button (that does the same thing) to the duplicate Automations.

Such practice is asking for trouble. Can we please have the ability to link multiple buttons (typically on different Interfaces or Interface Forms) to the same Automation?

Hi! I might be missing something here, but I'm trying to add a button that runs an automation. It's asking for a "Source" and the only way I can get something in that dropdown is placing a Record Picker element into the interface design (which I don't need in this particular case). The record picker is 100% unrelated to the automation but now I'm stuck with a record picker I don't need in the interface. Why would I need to add a Record Picker to a button that runs an Automation? Any other work-arounds? Thanks!

Several of my Airtable consulting clients have asked for the ability to have button fields (not interface buttons) trigger an automation.

For example, clicking on a button in the grid view to run an automation. And this grid view might be in the data layer or the interface layer.

Currently, we only have 2 workarounds for this:

1. Instead of triggering an automation from a button, we can trigger an automation from a single-select field or a checkbox field. The advantages to using a single-select field over a checkbox field are outlined in detail in my post here.

2.  We can use a button field to trigger an automation in Make’s advanced automations & integrations for Airtable. This would be accomplished by starting the Make automation with a custom webhook, which provides a unique URL for each automation. Then, back in Airtable, the Airtable button field can be set to the URL of the webhook. The downside to this method is that it will open a new browser tab when the automation starts running, but the upside to this method is that you can customize that browser tab to display anything you’d like by using Make’s custom webhook responses. I discuss webhooks (in the context of email) in this Airtable podcast episode.

p.s. If you would like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld