Yes, this is one of the limitations of Airtable.
The key workaround for this is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, which is 100% free, and gives tons of advanced features that are all Airtable-specific — such as the ability to create new linked records from a form, update Airtable records with a form, and much more.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
Thanks @ScottWorld for the suggestion! Would you mind adding a Kudos to this idea to get more visibility by the Devs?
I am looking for this functionality too. Right now for some workflows, this is keeping users from moving to Interfaces, when this is a feature that exists on the Data level.
New linked records can now be created through Airtable’s interfaces, but if you need to do this through a form, you’ll still need to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.
@ScottWorld This specific request is to allow new linked records to be created on the new record Form, which is not currently possible in interfaces. An example is let's say you're creating a PO Request form. The parent record would contain the general PO Request details such as requester, date needed, justification for request, ect. Then as child records (linked records), you might want the user to create "lines" of this PO all in one step. Currently users have to create the PO parent record, then go back into that in a different interface where they can create new linked records. This workflow is far from optimal.
Yeah, unfortunately, that isn't yet possible in Airtable.
That's currently only available in Fillout at the moment.
But Fillout is 100% free and it is awesome!
And I give a brief demo of creating new line items on a form on this episode of the BuiltOnAir Podcast
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
@ScottWorld thanks for that podcast link. That type of functionality is exactly what I was referring to. It's nice to see that there are other solutions that workaround the Airtable limitation, but it is a bit disappointing that I have to get another product and then pull my users out of the native UI / App experience and have them use a different system just to do such a fundamental function such as adding line items when creating a record.
There are so many great things about Aritable, but they like to focus on advanced functionality that might be used by a very small percent of the user base while ignoring such fundamental functionality such as this, or enforcing required fields when editing existing records, or conditional fields when editing existing records, etc. My list of basic functionality that Airtable lacks is quite big.
Lastly, they offer no real consolidated way to request and vote on feature requests. You can only email support or post on the forum. There should be a consolidated list of requests where we can upvote requests. How they set their priorities is too obscured.
I really need this too. Please Airtable make it happen.
Same here... really need this
Same here, it would be really a helpful functionality I agree
Same here, this functionality would be really helpful.
Yes I'm voting for this feature as well.
Just wanted to add-on here. This NEEDS to be a function if I am expected to actually utilize Interfaces. Right now I have a full backend built out as an interface which is sitting unused SOLELY because this functionality doesn't exist. This is such a crucial aspect that is being overlooked and is effectively making Interfaces pointless at least for me.
To clarify, my use case is: Through the interface I've created, I allow users to create a new records (which represent single events for my clients). Within the "new event form" exists an option to select the venue which is tied to my table of venues. If the venue isn't in my table yet, the user now has no way to add the new venue from within the "new event form." As you can see, it ultimately makes this whole interface pointless if we need to input a new venue.
Airtable team does seem to rule so I am not trying to trash the team. But please please pleeeeaaaase Airtable! You would be taking my company to another level with this change.
There are 3 great workarounds for this limitation:
1. On the first form, give the user a link to the other form which will add new records to the linked table.
2. On the first form, in the linked record field, give the user an option to choose from that is called "new record" or something like that. Then, conditionally show additional fields where they can type in the new information. Then, use an automation to add the new record into the appropriate table.
3. Use Fillout's advanced forms for Airtable, which has this functionality natively built into its forms. Fillout offers about 500 advanced features that aren't natively available in Airtable's native forms.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
@ScottWorld Love these ideas, Scott. I can see how this would work and should be able to implement it fairly easily. Still would like to see native function built in, but for now, I'll try out option 1 or 2 in my Interface.
Oh, for sure. It would definitely be best if this was natively built into the product! But hopefully those options will help you out in the meantime! 🙂
@ScottWorld you've definitely convinced me to give those ideas a shot.... Thanks for this insight! Option 2 definitely makes a lot of sense.
You're welcome! Glad I could help! I agree that it's not ideal, but it's not too shabby.
@ScottWorld Thank you Scott for these ideas, it's a great workaround!🙂
@ScottWorld I'll def try that. Thanks!
Agreed, this feature would be very helpful.
This feature is very important for the workflow.
According to @jcervantes11 "it is a bit disappointing that I have to get another product and then pull my users out of the native UI / App experience and have them use a different system just to do such a fundamental function such as adding line items when creating a record."
I can't figured out why this feature is still missing.
Unfortunately, that is one of the major limitations of Airtable. It is not possible to create new linked records from a form.
There are 3 workarounds for this limitation:
1. On the first form, give the user a link to ANOTHER FORM which will allow them to add new records to the linked table. Then, they can come back to the first form to continue their data entry.
2. On the first form, in the linked record field, give the user an option to choose from that is called "new record" or something like that. Then, conditionally show additional fields where they can type in the new information. Then, use an automation to add the new record into the appropriate table.
3. Use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, which already has this functionality natively built into its forms. Fillout is 100% free and offers hundreds of advanced features that aren’t natively available in Airtable’s native forms, such as adding new linked records from a form and updating existing Airtable records from a form.
Fillout is really the best path to go down here.
Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld
