Introducing a new way to submit Airtable product ideas!

Thank you for describing the new process for submitting product ideas.

Will community members be able to see what product ideas have been submitted? Being able to view and reply to product ideas had several benefits.

• People could “plus 1” an existing product idea to show additional support for the idea, even if they would not have come up with the idea on their own.
• It can be difficult to remember which product ideas one has already submitted. Being able to search existing product ideas makes it easier to avoid duplicate submissions, or a missed submission when incorrectly thinking it might have been submitted already.
• Several product suggestions come from people who do not realize that there is a current workaround. Being able to comment on product ideas with these workarounds helps solve their immediate problem faster than waiting for the product idea to be implemented. 

If we have any favorite product ideas listed on the legacy page, is it okay to resubmit the idea using the new form?

This is great news ​@MaddieJ!! Adding to ​@kuovonne’s comment, I'm curious - will there be any way for users to track the status of submitted ideas (like "under review" or "planned for future release")? This would help users understand where their suggestions stand in the development pipeline.

I would agree with the above.  I would appreciate being able to see the ideas that are already there (so we don’t duplicate), vote on them, and then see the roadmap.  It seems you have reduced, rather than increased the usability and transparency of this which is more company-centric (meaning airtable) than customer-centric (us).  It’s hard to see how this is an ‘improvement’ other than you saying it is. 

Hey ​@kuovonne ​@gaston and ​@Michael_Andrew,

Thanks for chiming in with your thoughts on the new process!

As you all likely noticed with our last community experience, we weren’t able to process or respond to your feedback at scale, as it just lived in the community platform. I can assure you this process will get your ideas in front of our product team quicker by leveraging Airtable.

I also understand the desire for transparency, so we are implementing new “Product Playback” posts to share back the trends and potential roadmap items that have come from your feedback. We’re also going to continue to shape the process overall and how it shows up here on community, so thanks for letting us know what you’d like to see. 

If we have no knowledge of what ideas are already submitted, there is a risk (and not a small one) that we will spend (therefore waste) time writing up an idea that someone else already spent the time on, instead of letting us ‘agree’ to the idea in some way.  How are you going to prevent this via your new system? 

It feels like there are competing forces here between community members and Airtable staff. I understand that it is easier for Airtable staff to process feedback that is submitted via a form. However, other methods have less friction for community members while also allowing community members to engage with each other on the ideas.

Historically, product suggestions have generated discussions among community members. Community members got some value from those discussions, ranging from validation that someone else liked the suggestion to actual workarounds to a chance to rant. However, the product suggestions did not produce any visible impact on the product roadmap or even much evidence that anyone within Airtable read them. (I’m sure some Airtable staff did read the suggestions, but unless they post back to the community, the community doesn’t know that happened.)

Entering product suggestions using the form also involves a lot more friction than typing a freeform product suggestion. I know it doesn’t seem like much more friction, but it actually is. One has to find the form. One cannot interweave screenshots and explanations with each other. Including media requires more effort than simply pasting in a screenshot. All these little clicks add up. Plus there is no ability to go back and add more info or answer clarifying questions.

Asking us to submit product feedback solely through the form removes what little value we were able to get from the limited discussion with community members, while also greatly increasing the friction of providing the feedback, with little more than a promise that you will share more info.

If the issue is processing feedback at scale, why not use AI to help process it? Every week/month/quarter have a new thread where people can post their product suggestions and have their discussions. At the end of the time period, close that thread and open a new one. Once the thread is closed, have AI process the thread, say what ideas were most important to people, and dump the info in whatever format you feel would be easier to process internally. Also have a human read the original thread and compare the AI results/summary and make any appropriate tweaks to the results. Annotate the results/summary with as much info regarding what is and isn’t on the roadmap as you feel like sharing, and then post that at the end of the original closed thread. Repeat.

I'm from the Airtable product team. This new feedback system creates a direct pipeline from your ideas to our builders.

The form connects you directly to our product teams. It means that at scale, your ideas will reach the people who can build them - something we've never had before and should not lose sight of.

We kept it simple: one field for your idea and its impact. Understanding why you need features takes a moment, but is essential to help us build solutions that solve real problems. The AI-powered routing identifies patterns, so similar “duplicate” ideas are not a problem but in fact strengthen each other. We've imported all previous forum posts to the new workflow too, so nothing is lost.

I hear you on wanting visibility into submissions. We're working on additional ways to show what's shared and our progress. This is just v1. 

Product Discussions remains ideal for community conversation, but the Product Ideas form gives you a new, more impactful way to participate in product development. Looking forward to our first Product Playback post about what we're hearing and sharing the latest from our product team.

Zach

Airtable Product

​@Zach Thank you for posting to the community. It is always nice to see content from Airtable staff. It sounds like you have a new workflow in mind and are already using AI. I’ll sit tight and see how things unfold.

Want to point out a few things because I’m personally delighted this is a form now. 🙏🏻

Re: interweaving screenshots with text—folks could add a “See first screenshot”, “see second screenshot”, etc. with the applicable text. Not perfect, but something. Also, when you go to upload a file to the attachment field, I’ve always been able to paste an image directly from my clipboard into the “add attachment” pop-up?

The form approach might also make direct follow-ups + asking clarifying questions easier in some aspects, since user emails are recorded when the form is submitted. Also allows for a form submission to be more easily directed to a CSM (for applicable accounts with a CSM) and/or a support team member if it’s a feature that already exists, or an existing feature that might be bugged.

Also want to throw an option into the ring for increased visibility of feature requests: I’ve seen other platforms utilize Canny.io, which I would imagine could be connected to the request data via some combination of API/webhooks? AI could consolidate and curate which feature request records end up posted there, and then presumably feed at least the +1 data back into Airtable, (if not other insights as well)?

That all said: again, I’m thrilled product idea submissions are now handled via form. When you guys launched the Interface Designer feedback form I immediately wished there was something similar for the platform as a whole. I’ll take the direct line to the product team over “yes, users can see and discuss product feature requests, but it’s not the most streamlined and the community search function is not always great at surfacing old posts/threads, and also, yes, it definitely feels like shouting into the void”, especially if the intent is to provide visibility later down the line. Eagerly awaiting the first Product Playback post. ☺️

One last thing re: discoverability, because I 100% agree with kuovonne that discoverability is important, and right now I don’t think it’s very visible (I’ve been on Airtable nearly every day since it went live and I didn’t know it existed until today, when I finally came to check out the new Community): throwing the form link in the Help menu, somewhere in the support documentation (top right next to Contact Support?), and/or the What’s New page might be good spots, as well as making sure the link the support bot is providing works properly (this is the one it just provided me, unfortunately). 

Thanks for all you guys do!

​@stagandforge Thank you for offering your perspective on product idea submissions via form. Although you have been a member of this community for a couple of years, it looks like you have not been very active with less than a dozen posts. May you continue to enjoy this community and become more active!

Re: interweaving screenshots with text—folks could add a “See first screenshot”, “see second screenshot”, etc. with the applicable text. Not perfect, but something.

Yes, this workaround exists, and as you said, it is not perfect. I find that added friction to providing feedback means that less feedback is provided, and the quality of the feedback goes down. It’s the death of a thousand cuts.

Biggest issue I see with the forms is the “private” way in which this is handled, vs. shared publicly.

As submissions are private (to the best of my knowledge, and with the exception of what we might find in the “Product Playback” posts) it is super hard to “upvote”, or engage in Product Ideas/feature requests.

If the idea is to streamline submissions directly to Airtable, I guess we could have it both ways?

E.g. Form submission which would in turn create a new post on the community automatically.

Seems to be a hybrid approach that would be nice to have.

​@kuovonne ah, the downfalls of having a new account since going freelance—my old one (tied to a previous workplace email) is here. Not a big poster, admittedly, but Airtable wasn’t the top bullet in my job description, so community time got pushed to the farthest backburner.

To be frank, I always saw posting to the community as having its own friction. I would often feel obligated to check if a similar topic had already been posted previously (a step plenty of folks skip, I’m certain); and then if it had been posted, seeing if any of the provided workarounds would solve my specific issue, troubleshooting those workarounds, trying to decide if my thought/idea was still worth posting, etc.

Also, maybe this sounds silly or irrational, but there’s a pressure or anxiety that can come with posting something publicly. How many folks in this community are perennial lurkers and breathed a sigh of relief knowing this is an option now? 

For me, personally, being able to fire off a quick form—knowing exactly who the audience is and that they’re the ones with the ability to act on that request—makes it more likely I’ll throw in product ideas/feature requests when they occur to me. 

All this to say that this just feels like a “different strokes for different folks” kind of situation. That said, I agree that a hybrid/happy medium approach is ultimately the way to go, both when it comes to discussion and to visibility.