Great news! We’ve just enabled this feature for everyone. Check out Mikayla’s post below for more info.
Any progress or response on this? Pretty fundamental need and something you would intuitively expect as an option when creating a view. Really could lead to misleading decisions when evaluating data and not remembering to always hit sort after setting a filter, or after adding records.
+1 for me to. I think if you have a sort applied to a view, that it’s not persistent, or at least updated every time you look at the view, it’s confusing to the user. I can understand the sort not being applied when you first enter a new record, as then the record you’ve just entered down the bottom would instantly jump to a unexpected position in the table. But the current design means I don’t trust the sorting.
+18Katherine_Duh wrote:
Thanks for the request on how you’d like re-sorting to behave (we love very specific feedback!). As it stands there are a number of nontrivial design considerations when it comes to implementing live sorting (one example: how would it interplay with our collaboration features?) Nevertheless, this is still on our roadmap. :slightly_smiling_face:
@Katherine_Duh
I really hope the auto sorting feature will be implemented soon.
I created various views (for different groups of users), and every time a record that incidentely was skipped is entered, every single view needs to be updated. It’s pretty awkward.
Inserting the new record on the right spot would be smart, but it just doesn’t work like that all the time.
I would find this very useful as well. If the existing functionality is desired perhaps it could be a checkbox on the sort dialog labelled “auto-sort” or something similar. That way when you create the sort you’d have the option to pick whether you wanted it to be one-time, or ongoing as each record is added.
The way it is currently implemented it is a one-time sort, but with a history of what your previous sort was.
+1 to this feature. I understand the tricky UI this poses due to needing to “warn” a user of the potential changing position, but I think this would be a valuable piece of automation.
+8Katherine_Duh wrote:
Thanks for the request on how you’d like re-sorting to behave (we love very specific feedback!). As it stands there are a number of nontrivial design considerations when it comes to implementing live sorting (one example: how would it interplay with our collaboration features?) Nevertheless, this is still on our roadmap. :slightly_smiling_face:
Katherine, can you give us an update on auto-sorting of records?
+8Howie wrote:
Thanks for the feedback! As Emmett and Kat have mentioned, it’s on our roadmap, and we certainly appreciate the value of this feature.
There’s some technical differences in how difficult it is to perform live sorts vs live filters (for instance, because sorting is a more heavyweight operation than filtering, which can be calculated for each row independently, whereas sorts are by definition relative to all other rows in the table). This is exacerbated in situations where, for instance, multiple people may be modifying large numbers of rows at once (by copying and pasting values into a cell range that affects a sort, or just rapidly modifying many rows in quick succession in a very large table, etc).
Beyond the technicalities, there are also usability/interface questions involved. We’ve encountered many use cases where someone does want to apply a one-time sort and then manually order or insert rows in an arbitrary position. Some other examples of issues to consider:
- If you’re editing a record and you change its values in such a way that its sorted position would change in the view, we need a way to indicate to the user that the row’s sort position has changed, both while editing as well as afterwards.
- If collaborators are changing record values, there is a chance that this will cause rows to fly around to their new positions, resulting in a potentially jarring experience.
- It could be confusing to prevent users from manually reordering rows while the “live sort” mode is turned on, and it seems somewhat heavyweight (and potentially difficult to discover for novice users) to have to toggle that mode off before being able to drag rows around. Alternatively, if we allow you to drag rows immediately, but implicitly disable “live sorting” as a result, this could also be an issue (as users inadvertently cause live sorting to become disabled).
Again, it’s a valid feature request, but as with every feature, we want to thoroughly consider its design before implementation to ensure that our product remains intuitive and friendly for all.
Howie, can you give us an update on auto-sorting of records?
Another big 'ol +1 to this feature.
I get that filters and sorts are different, but they are presented right there next to each other. One is persistent to the view, one is not. Kinda weird and not what I’d expect.
+1 - This is a must have feature. The keyboard shortcut mentioned above is not good enough. I have to remember a load of keyboard shortcuts for various applications as it is, I shouldn’t have to remember yet another one for something that should be a basic feature.
This is the one feature stopping me going premium right now.
Matt_Sayward wrote:
The answer seems really clear to me.
When the sort dropdown is active, put a little checkbox at the bottom that says ‘Refresh sorting order each time the view is loaded’.
Agree!! All you need is a little checkbox at the bottom of the “sort” dropdown menu.
The wording & functionality could be quite simple:
“Autosort this view automatically”
+18Please please please Airtable, make this a top priority. I honestly can’t see how this can be a major issue.
Using a checkbox (like @Gabe_FromMaui mentioned) for example to check if you want autosort, is a nice solution.
Programming the sorting process is easy, testing this is easy as well. It is easy scoring! You will make hundreds of users really happy.
I litterally have 10s of views that need to be update every time, just because of the lack of this feature.
Please, update the community asap.
+44.2k*$20= $84,000/month. cmon Airtable, you guys are making a killing, since Dec '15 2015 and this feature still hasn’t been implemented. You can use some of that $84,000 you are making from us a month and hire a team to do it in a week, almost 3 years with this feature being ignored. I expect this from other companies to ignore their customers, but form you guys i expect better, and thats what make me sad! Also, you have 4,200 users that sparked interest for this feature, and not one employee is has made push? Everyone like this, please! Please!
+4This solution to this is so simple. I can’t believe the OP is almost 3 years old.
Checkbox in the Sort options, ‘refresh sort on page load’, job done.
Is this feature on the roadmap?? It would be so, so helpful – and is there even a tricky UI situation when it comes to notifying the user of the changing position that still needs to be defined? Why can’t you use the same (or similar) design you use in a filtered view when the user changes the value of a field to something that is filtered out?
For example, I’ve got a view that shows only outstanding tasks (i.e the view filters out anything with a status of “Completed”). When I mark something as “Completed,” Airtable highlights the row, moves it slightly, and includes text to let me know that the row has been removed from the view. I imagine something like this would work to denote which cells have shifted around.
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