Interface - alternatives to gallery

​@HannahS 

Unfortunately, the gallery interface page (along with the list/grid interface pages) will always cut off lengthy text in a long text field, so your clients will always be required to click into the record to see the full text.

Be sure to submit this as a feature request using Airtable’s product feedback form, because I know that many people would love this feature.

However, there are 2 interface pages that will display the full text of a long text field:

• The “kanban” interface page. (You need to enable the “text wrapping” option on this page.)
• The “record review” interface page will ALWAYS display the full text of all long text fields.

However, neither of these interface pages probably represent the visual user experience that you were hoping to present to your clients.

So, outside of those 2 options (which are  probably not what you are looking for), your other option is to turn to a 3rd-party portal that gives you the ability to customize the screen exactly how you want.

The most popular portals that are currently available for Airtable are:
Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, Glide, and MiniExtensions.

I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

I haven’t tested all of these portals to see if they all display the full text of long text fields, but I know that Noloco does. Most of the other portals probably do as well.

Alternatively, you can hire a JavaScript programmer to custom-code a web page for your website that pulls data from Airtable and looks exactly how you want it to look.

Also, you mentioned that you are giving your clients the ability to add and edit their own client details in Airtable. This requires them to either: (a) have paid Airtable accounts as editors, or (b) this requires complicated prefilled URLs & complex automations.

Just a reminder that Fillout’s advanced Airtable forms gives you a 100% free and easy way to give your clients the ability to add and edit their own client details in Airtable.

Fillout lets your clients update their own records directly from a form — without being editors in your interface, without using any complicated prefill URLs required, and without needing any complicated automations.

Fillout also offers hundreds of other advanced features that Airtable’s forms don’t offer, such as the ability to create new linked records on a form, add a login page to a form, create multi-page forms with conditional paths, and much more.

I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:

• Using Fillout to update an existing Airtable record & create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
• Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

I don’t want editors to be able to open the record because there’s other information there that I don’t want them to see.

Hm, I’m confused, we can edit the fields that are visible when they open the record, so we could make it so that none of the private data is visible?

For example, if the data looks like this:

The Interface would look like this: 

Example base

​@HannahS 

Right, as ​@TheTimeSavingCo mentioned above, you can just edit your record detail pages so that you can hide the information that you don’t want your clients to see. 

If that was the only reason that you were looking for ways to display the full text on the gallery view, then your problem is already solved!

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Thanks ​@TheTimeSavingCo and ​@ScottWorld - it’s not really just that there’s stuff there I don’t want them to see - it’s also that when I allow the opening of a record from the gallery it seems to look like a spreadsheet again - I want this to be a nicer display of the information that people outside of my organisation can look at easily

Thanks for the third party suggestions ​@ScottWorld  - I’ll have a look through. It is fillout I’m using for the form that my clients use to keep their information updated. It’s a great tool. I

That’s fantastic! Glad I could help, and glad to hear you’re already using Fillout! :)

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 

it’s also that when I allow the opening of a record from the gallery it seems to look like a spreadsheet again - I want this to be a nicer display of the information that people outside of my organisation can look at easily

Hmm, could you provide an example of what you currently have and what you’d like it to be instead?  

Hey ​@HannahS!

Might it be the case that you have a grid view of linked records within your record detail page? Sounds strange, but it could be the case.

The other thing that might be happening is that you get all fields by default and that they do not look great (I wouldn’t describe this like a grid though, so I’m not sure). If this is the case, you’ll want to create groups, apply background color, include headers and descriptions for the groups, and give it some love!

See example below!

 

Completely different matter, but would love to have you join our Airtable Hackathon! Make sure to sign up!!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel