Button Field Not Working In My Interface

Button fields are not an editable field type anywhere, so that won’t change in Interface Designer.

What does this button do? Button fields that open a URL work, buttons that try to activate an app do not since there is no app sidebar in the Interface Designer (all your apps are in Dashboards, entirely separate from an Interface).

The button calls a scripting app that sends a webhook to Pipedream to sync the record with a different database. Maybe there’s a better way to do that? It’s already annoying that it pops open the app dashboard every time I click it.

I just want a button that makes a POST request in the background without opening any other kind of interface.

The Scripting App is no exception to “no Button that opens an app will work in an Interface”.

Assuming your script requires no human input and is a otherwise compatible with Automation Scripts, you could use a checkbox or a single select field (empty by default, one option for “run script”) to trigger an Automation to send the same POST request. Be aware of your monthly limits for Automations.

Yeah, I guess I’ll switch over to automations and say goodbye to my pretty button. Oh well!

This is a frustrating limitation imo. I don’t want to add pointless extra data with checkboxes to trigger automations (although I do get that that’s a potential workaround in some cases), and I also need the user to be able to interact with the scripting app that gets called when they’ve pressed the button. I had high hopes that Interfaces would be a great way of building an interactive front-end, but this really limits its application for my situation.

It’s been pointed out here that there’s no app sidebar in the interface designer, and that dashboards are entirely separate from an Interface. All of that is true - but it’s not a good reason for why this feature isn’t designed in! I’d like to see the Interface able to trigger apps which then open and run in a dashboard-like area of the Interface window.

This would require a direct link between Interfaces and Dashboards to work as you described, or the code for every app would need to be rewritten to handle external requests. With the former, there are performance issues that come along with that since apps like Scripting App need to be able to read the entire base (regardless of what the entered code actually does).

While Chart is both an “app” and now an Interface “element”, and Timeline used to be an “app” and is now a “view type” as well as an “element”, it is unclear if Scripting will get the similar conversion treatment.

I guess what I really want for my use-case is the ability to trigger an automation with a button (since the scripting block is overkill just to send a webhook), and to have that type of button work in Interfaces as well as in the regular table view.

You could use a web hook that allows a trigger using a query string (just by visiting a url). Integromat let’s you set that up- deliver the record id as part of the url and let integromat dig the rest of the data out once it has delivered. Generate the query string url with a formula button and add that to your layout.

E.g:
https://hook.integromat.com/yourunique32characterslongstring?name=Airtable&recordid=recordid

Only downside for this technique is it would open a blank browser window which isn’t very neat :frowning:

Yeah I considered something like that but having to close all those extra tabs would drive me crazy!

I already have the syncing hooked up to the Stage changing in addition to the Sync button. So for now I’m just toggling the stage back and forth when I want to sync outside of a real stage change. A bit of a nuisance but I can live with it for now.

Outside of this I’m really loving the new Interfaces!

I don’t understand why airtable don’t see the potential to let us use button in interfaces AND let guests use it even without the paid plan.

If you do that, we could be able to build webapp in a day using airtable…

Hi Kamille,

Thanks for your insight here, it helps a bit with an issue I’m having as well.
I’ve integrated Twilio with Airtable and am setting up an Interface in which I hope to have an easily understandable, user friendly way to send SMS to contact groups via Twilio’s service. I can’t figure out how to set this up as its an App in the Dashboard of my base. I was trying with the buttons but they’re unclickable…
Do you have any suggestions in this area?

The Send SMS app is, luckily, one of the easiest ones to workaround Interface’s limitation since it isn’t pulling data from any one record.

You could just go to your base, make the Send SMS app full screen, copy the url in your address bar, then make that url the basis for your Button field. Clicking the button from the Interface will open the base in a new screen with the app expanded.

LOL is that a real answer coming from Airtable? Unbelievable.
It’s clearly a feature you need, talk to your engineers

I do not work for Airtable, I’m just listing the practical reason why this feature doesn’t exist.

@Airtable this a 1000%

I too hope that we can execute Scripting Apps via an interface by clicking a button, either via an Interface button or a Field Button. It would be too cool to have a script “element” embed into a Dash for use - without all the clutter that comes with the dash - or with that said, have either an option to embed a Scripting Extension OR an entire Dash into an interface.

Just annoy that the only way I can run script is via an Automation - which consumes an automation per click.

• it consumes an automation run
• which is very slow compared to scripting extension
• and has no idea who clicked the button
• and has no good way to report any errors,
• and can only accept input from fields, requiring the creation of additional fields that might have meaningful values for only the duration of the automation run

Just here to say that no one cares _why_ this is difficult for Airtable to do. It's not our fault they made architecture decisions that make this difficult for them. The point is that the basic assumption is that we should be able to interact with records through the interface.

I am more than happy to write the script for cloning a record anywhere it is necessary. I have to write it again just for the interface button? Fine! It is bizarre that we have to make record field listeners to use the buttons that they give us.

/rant