Forms in Interface Designer

[Emily_Sermons]

Hi Airtable Community! :wave: I’m Emily, a product manager for Airtable’s Interfaces team. I’m so excited to announce a new feature that is available today: Interface Forms!

What are Interface forms?
Interface forms are an easy way to create new records directly in Interfaces. Using the full power of the Interface Designer layout engine, you can customize exactly what information you’d like your users to enter each time they create a new record.

How can I access Interface forms?
There are two ways to create a new form:

1. Create a full-screen form using the new form layout. This should be available any time you create a new page in an Interface.
   
2. You can add forms to existing pages that include a Record List or a Record Picker. Select either of these elements and toggle “Allow users to create new records” in the properties panel. From there, you can configure your form modal.
   

Who can use these forms?
Any user who has access to your Interface can access the forms you make to create new records. Stay tuned for more updates on Permissions in Interface Designer coming this fall.

Is this meant to replace Form view in the base?
Using the Form view in the base is still a great way to collect information from users who do not have an Airtable account. Interface forms are meant to be an easy way to create new records directly from an Interface.

What can I expect next?
The team is working on a lot of exciting updates to Interface Designer in the coming months, including: improvements to Interface forms, new button types, Navigation, Permissions, and more! We always love to hear what you want to see more of, and happy to answer any questions.

Interface Designer Contest
I also hope to see many of you make use of this new feature in the Interface Designer Contest. Because this feature is being rolled out a bit later than anticipated, I’m excited to share that we will be extending the Interface Designer Contest deadline by 2 weeks - you will now have until August 12 to get in your submissions. I’ll be one of the judges and can’t wait to see what you all create! More details about the contest can be found here.

This update is available now. If you aren’t seeing these changes reflected, please try clearing your cache.

[kuovonne]

Ruchika_Abbi1:

When creating a new record using Create Form of a record picker, the parent record doesn’t seem to get set by default, essentially it’s not creating a linked record, just a new record.

This is the behavior I see and I believe it is the expected behavior.

[Joanna_Parker]

@Ruchika_Abbi1 & @kuovonne:

Firstly, thanks for helping me to discover the new record feature for a record picker! I was going in circles trying to figure this out!

Have either of you had any luck editing the form that the new record button creates? I can remove fields, but I can’t seem to add fields/customise it much.

Is that from my lack of seeing, or is the feature not there yet?

[kuovonne]

Joanna_Parker:

Have either of you had any luck editing the form that the new record button creates? I can remove fields, but I can’t seem to add fields/customise it much.

You can add/rearrange fields in the interface form the same way you add/rearrange fields in an interface page.

You cannot make fields conditional the way you can in a regular form view. You also cannot prefill an interface form.

[Databaser]

kuovonne:

You can add/rearrange fields in the interface form the same way you add/rearrange fields in an interface page.

Aha, was also looking for this :slightly_smiling_face:

[Joanna_Parker]

Ah, got it now, thanks so much :slightly_smiling_face:

[Ruchika_Abbi1]

oh, that’s too bad, I hope they change this. It should create a linked record.

[Michael_Hjorten]

Emily_Sermons:

I hear you, and thanks for the feedback! Our team has been working very hard over the last year on enabling Permissions in Interfaces, allowing you to share the Interface separately from the underlying base. This functionality is coming a bit later in the fall, and is just the beginning of granular sharing capabilities in Interfaces.

@Emily_Sermons
Hi Emily, Happy to hear about the permission changes coming this fall. I had a recent topic brought up from one of the managers within my company; if there is option that would only allow an individual to see those data elements that relate to them? Almost in a way like verification of the individual when they come on to access the page that it only displays their information?

[Kamille_Parks]

You can set the underlying filter to the record list elements to only show records where a User/Collaborator field matches the current collaborator. This is a feature already present.

There are ways around this, like if you have the direct link to an interface page with a record ID prefilled in the record list element, and that user isn’t tagged in the User field, the data will still be shown to them.

[Michael_Hjorten]

@Kamille_Parks
Thank you. This is good to know and didn’t realize this could be done. The users that need to see the information currently do not and wont ever have access to the actual Base. These users are employees but only need to see their performance reviews. Maybe this will be a fixed solution when the permissions are updated this fall for the interfaces.

[Hendrik_Yang]

Interface designer is designed for internal users and such the forms must be catered to internal users. Currently, the selection for related linked record is still much basic.

I do hope it can follow linked record selection in the table where you can see related information.