The Interface Designer Contest 🔥

Excited about this! To clarify: is ‘interface’ defined here as specifically ‘designed using the Interface feature’ as opposed to any base that uses any view?

We’ve created a base that we are very proud of and would like to submit, but find that the Interface designer actually limits both the beauty and the functionality of our base. In the interest of winning, we’d be more inclined to submit our base in Gallery View to the contest than the Interface view(s).

Just FYI, your submission form still lists July 31st as the deadline.

Hi @Jordan_Scott1 thanks for informing this exciting contest. I just want to clarify and reconfirm, so this contest not applicable / not open for user from Indonesia, is that right?

We actually have some interesting and exciting implementation of airtable in Indonesia education sector / community. Is there any contest open for us from Indonesia?

Looking forward to it. Thanks heaps!!

Hey, @Jordan_Scott1

regarding this point -

You will need to publish your base to Airtable Universe for submission. Details on how to publish to universe can be found.

Is exposing our production data safe?

Are Automations allowed in this contest?

Welcome to the Airtable community!

No.

If your base contains private information, you should make a copy of the base, fill the base with only sample data that you deem safe to publish to the world, then publish the base with sample data. This recommendation has been stated earlier in this thread and in the instruction for publishing a base on the universe.

I’ll let Jordan give the official answer, but in my opinion, automations should be allowed, and I cannot find any text regarding their use in the contest rules.

Automations serve an important part of a base, just like table and field definitions. An interface cannot stand on its own without the underlying tables and fields. Neither should an interface be forced to stand without automations, if automations are appropriate.

I do agree - But the fact that automations do not convey with published bases makes me fear they will be irrelevant to this particular contest. Either a serious limitation, or interesting challenge - depending on how you look at it :slightly_smiling_face:

Yikes, is this still true? I assumed when I saw this contest that this limitation when publishing bases had been removed—all of the most useful features I’ve developed so far with Interfaces depend in part on Automations…

Wow. I did not realize this. The last time I published a base to the Universe was before automations were released. I simply assumed that since automations are duplicated when a base is duplicated that they would also be duplicated when copying a base from the Universe, but you’re right, they aren’t.

@Jordan_Scott1 Can you please look into this? Automations are an important part of a base, and not being able to publish automations through the Universe is a big limitation. (Or perhaps there is a poorly documented setting, like the hidden setting for including scripts in Universe bases?)

@Jordan_Scott1 Any updates on this? Would love to know if I need to proceed with building interfaces without automations for this contest.

@Jordan_Scott1 I just entered this contest but noticed that we give an address for the db we are using - but not the interface… I named the interface of course, but do you just go in and grab it? I noticed the interface was not part of the db copied to the universe… just want to make sure I entered everything correctly.

@Cheryl_Rae
I asked this same question and she answered in the post below mine:

@Jordan_Scott1 I also need to know about the automations as we have a couple of them in our database for entry. And if automations are not copied with the database… our entry will not look as cool as it really is…

@Jordan_Scott1 Hello. Seems we have the same questions here.
1/ Are you sure that when you publish a base in Universe, that it will also include the interfaces for users outside our organisation that would copy that base?
2/ Talking about contest, we would also much like to submit a full use case that solves a problem. Currently an Interface just using the available elements is quite limited and we also use automations to show the full potential of using interfaces. We see an interface as being like a final product/solution where a user should not even need to go into the base or tables, so if the contest is to create some interfaces that just use the available elements, it really limits the creativity and even more the "functional & actionable (25%) criteria in the judging criteria.

Looking forward to your answers/proposals :slightly_smiling_face:

Automations are allowed and will carry over when published to Universe!

@Jordan_Scott1 Glad to hear it! Is there anything in particular we need to do when publishing to the Universe to ensure that the Automations carry over? Currently, if I publish to the Universe and copy the base, automations do NOT travel with it. Is there something I’m doing wrong when publishing?

They should carry over and we will just have to turn them on once we copy it over

Is that something only Airtable employees can do? That is kind of scary if I published something to Universe expecting Automations NOT to carry over.

Been working on my entry this week but stumbled across a (possibly) stupid question…

What do you mean by Interface? Are we being judged on a single interface screen, or the whole set attached to our base?

Because your submission asks just for the Base URL I’m guessing it might be every interface, but I can’t find that detailed in the post.

Thanks!

This is not my experience. I published a base and tried using it. While the new copy of the base from the universe has the interface, there are no automations. When I make a public share link and enable copying of the base, the copied version also has the interface but no automations. This is different from when I duplicate a base. If I simply duplicate the base, I get both the interface and the automations and simply have to turn the automations on.

I’m 99% sure that automations do not carry over into the universe. I also, like @kuovonne, created a second account to test this. I used the base template I had put up in the Universe with my primary account as my contest entry, and it did not contain automations.

What I ended up doing is creating a table where I created a record for each of the automations my Interface relies on, and writing a description of how it works and what it does, and attaching screenshots of the automation setup.

Is there documentation required as part of the contest showing others how to use the interface?

Hello! Also now 99.9% sure that automations are NOT carried over. I just wanted to make sure and have just published a base that contains interfaces, extensions and automations in Universe. Extensions & Interfaces are there when I copy the base with a new user I created for testing purpose. Automations are just NOT there…
The only way I know to share automations is the following: > creating a base containing the automations and then allowing users to access and then Duplicate the base. If the base is duplicated, then the automations will be duplicated along with it.

The problem with that method is that
1/ it’s not published and public
2/ if you share that link with a user that is not a registered airtable user, there’s a huge risk that that user will become your “co-worker” instead of having him using your base and automations on his own.

@Jordan_Scott1 it would be great if you could double check and if, like you said previously, the automations should carry over, explain if there is a way to do that within the Universe? Thanks a lot

I’ll ask a non-automation question:

Will we get to see all of the entries once submissions are closed? I’d love to be able to see what everyone else can do with Interfaces!