Button - to change value in the target field? (e.g. push button and change date to NOW() in a date field

2024 update:

Strangely, the Airtable team has decided that button fields can not trigger automations, which is extremely odd & frustrating, since the most obvious use case for an automation is to be able to trigger it via a button.

However, they DID decide to give us button objects on interfaces. Button objects CAN trigger automations. Very odd. Go figure. 🤷🏻‍♂

But there are some good options for triggering an automation from the normal grid view:

1. A checkbox field can trigger an automation.

2. Even better, a single-select field can trigger an automation, and your automation can update the single-select field to give you statuses along the way, such as "Running Your Automation", "Error", and "Done".

3. Best of all, a button field can trigger a custom webhook in Make, which can then run all sorts of advance automations. And to make this an even better user experience for your users, you can use a single-select field (instead of a button field) to trigger your Make automations by using the steps I outline in this thread: https://air.tableforums.com/t/sending-airtable-data-to-an-external-webhook-such-as-make-com/159

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Well that it is strange decision. Buttons would be of great use or automations. Is a nice worded email better than submitting here? … to Product Suggestions - Airtable Community Forum

Great suggestion with the checkbox, it’s a decent work-around. Gimmicky but at least workable.

Buttons that can’t run automations or update other fields eliminate my use for AirTable. The only interactive item in a shared view without logging in are the buttons. I’m using this as shipping / order manifest that syncs with QuickBooks via Zapier. Everything works great but my warehouse can’t mark the order as shipped. I don’t want them using the full / restricted view via login. A simple go to the link see whats open and needs to go out and mark as done once it has.

Airtable now supports incoming webhooks, so you can now trigger an automation with a button by triggering an Airtable webhook.

UPDATE: As mentioned below, this is actually not true. You can only use buttons to trigger an automation using Make's webhooks & Airtable automations.

And if you prefer doing this with a single-select field, I give instructions on how to do that in this thread: https://air.tableforums.com/t/sending-airtable-data-to-an-external-webhook-such-as-make-com/159

Not quite yet. Airtable webhook automations require the payload to be in “post” format, but a button field can only submit data in “get” format. Thus, you cannot pass the webhook any identifying data from a button field.

When I want a button field in a shared view to make changes to an Airtable base, I use a prefilled form url. The button field calculates the prefill for the form. (You can use the prefilled forms or ready-made-formulas apps to calculate the formula.) The user clicks the button, which opens a form. The user submits the form. (Depending on the use case, sometimes the user enters other data in the form, but not always.) Then, an automation takes over using the data submitted in the form.

 

kuovonne:

Not quite yet. Airtable webhook automations require the payload to be in “post” format, but a button field can only submit data in “get” format. Thus, you cannot pass the webhook any identifying data from a button field.

Oh darn, I forgot about that!

Anyways, @Jesse_Elkin, you can always do what I do with my clients, which is just have the button trigger a Make webhook, and then setup all of your automations over there.

Thank you guys very much. Seems like a lot more work than necessary just to mark an order as shipped. I can see how this solution would work in some cases but it’s excessive to have it pop up a new window and click another button, then close the window and see if it updated the field to the word shipped. Doing that every time doesn’t save time unfortunately. Back to Google spreadsheet with a drop down for now.

I would just use a checkbox field or a single-select field. It’s better than clicking a button anyways, because you have visual proof that it was selected, and you can have a timestamp when it was selected.