Hi there, I’m trying to put together an expenses claim form for my team including mileage claims. We previously uses Google API Distance Matrix on JotForm to calculate the distance an employee travels between two locations. I wondered whether there was a way I could add something like this to an Airtable form? The distance that came out between the two locations then calculated how much that employee is owed for the petrol used. Any advice would be appreciated.
Question
Google Distance Matrix - Airtable Form
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Unfortunately, you can’t add a distance calculation to Airtable’s forms like you can with JotForm’s distance calculator.
However, if you want to use Airtable’s forms instead of JotForm’s forms, you can use Make's automations to automatically calculate the distance (using Google’s Distance Matrix) AFTER the form has already been submitted to Airtable.
You would just need to use Make’s Google Maps integrations along with Make’s Airtable integrations.
If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread. For example, here is one of the ways that you could instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable. And in this video, I show how to work with Airtable arrays in Make.
Also, if you’re going to be switching away from JotForm, you may want to check out Fillout, which is 100% free and gives you some advanced Airtable features that you can’t get with Airtable’s forms. For example, your users can update an existing Airtable record with a form, so they could go back and update a record after they have already submitted the form.
Other examples: Fillout also lets you create or edit linked records on a form, add a login page to your form, or automatically generate custom PDF’s after a form is submitted.
I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
- Using Fillout to update an Airtable record and create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
- Using Fillout to create an Airtable order entry form with line items.
Hope this helps!
If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
+12Do you need that in the form, or in the database?
If latter, you could just link Make to Distance Matrix API and store your calculation in database after submission.
+35Do you need that in the form, or in the database?
If latter, you could just link Make to Distance Matrix API and do your calculation in database after submission.
He actually wouldn’t do the calculation in the database itself. Make’s Distance Matrix API will do the calculation for him, and then it will automatically insert the calculated distance into the appropriate Airtable record for him.
- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant
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