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.

[Karlstens]

Good evening @Emily_Sermons

Further feedback for Forms, importantly for both Interface Forms and View Forms. Currently, it’s not possible for an applicant to be limited in numeric fields to maximum and minimum values.

For example, a number field requesting a value, the applicant can enter any number they wish. The only way an administrator can post-govern this is with an Automation script, such as;

let adjustedQTY = Math.min(Math.max(1, inputConfig.userQTY), 9);

With this above example, if the user enters in 200, then the automation will execute off of a maximum of 9.

Just as important on View Forms;

It feels ugly employing automative hacks when really this range functionality is expected. The applicant has no sense that their value is being mutated in the backend, and can lead to confusing situations due to the lack of Form Feedback (but at least the Automation allows for form execution).

In summary - we really, really need a method to limit user inputs for numeric values for both Interface and View Forms - the Airtable community have been asking this for years now, so I figure now would be the perfect time to implement this feature. :pray:t2:

PS: Please don’t judge me on my example Airtable Base. :lollipop:

[Karlstens]

Good morning @Emily_Sermons ,

I’ve a further request for both Interface Forms and View Forms when working with Linked Fields.

Below shows an example of a Multiselect Field “List” box selection within a Form View;

But with Linked fields, we don’t have such luxuries for list display within Forms (either interface or view forms)

Weirdly, there’s the ability to select Linked records during the form creation, but this doesn’t actually result in any feature/function in the final form?

In short, when working with Linked fields, I’d like to see the option given for Tick Box selection.

There’s no real “automated” workaround to this problem due to Automations not supporting Field option maintenance (this can only be achieved through a manual script extension).

It would be great to see tick-box / check-box navigation added to Interface and View Forms for Linked Field selection.

Further to my above feedback, could we please have an update on Interface Forms, or Interfaces in general?

[Steady_Admin]

Two possible solutions:

1. If you have a modest amount of fields you’d like to prefill, you can add to your Interface the Filter element and the Table element, making sure you allow the Interface users to add new records in the table. When they create a new record, each new record will include the fields as they appear in the filters.

Flaw: If the Interface user edits the filters, they would edit the pre-filled fields as well. Doesn’t seem to be a way to lock the filter. Additionally, if there are a ton of fields, confusing fields, or unsightly/secure fields, you would reveal that information to the user, though I suppose you could have some formula field as the filter to hide what you’re pre-filling or bundle your pre-filled fields, using an automation that states “if {Formula} = 1, then edit xyz fields”. It solves the unsightly issue, but I think interface users have full access to read all of the records’ data anyways through the expanded record view, so perhaps that security issue is unavoidable.

Here’s a look at an example:

Below, in the expanded record view, you can see that the filtered field of {Project}=“Steady Now” is reflected in the new record. Disregard “Standby” as that’s the result of an unrelated Automation.

2. If certain users use a specific Interface as the only way in which they edit a table’s information, you could create an automation that would “post-fill” the records that they specifically edit (assuming your table has a “Last Modified by” field) to include the information you wish you could pre-fill.

Example: The only way that Derek is accustomed to interacting with the “Assets” table in my base is via the Asset Requester, so I know if he edits any field in an “Assets” record – or, even more granularly, just the X and Y fields in an “Assets” record, which are the ones I have editable in the interface – I can be sure that Derek is editing via the interface, and can post-fill using an Automation that says if X field isn’t empty, Y field isn’t empty, and Derek was the user who it was {Last Modified By}, then I would instruct it to fill whatever other fields in that record accordingly.

Flaw: This would likely mean creating a new interface every time you want to trigger different pre-fills, or working up some convoluted automation schemes that are specific to either specific users or specific combinations of fields that any Interface user filled out. Also, if a user doesn’t ALWAYS use Interfaces to input data, this method would not work.

[Karlstens]

Further Interface Forms feedback. We really need the ability for Automations to handle both View Forms and Interface Forms, giving Automation authors a ‘toggle’ list that allows them to define which forms (either interface or view forms) trigger an Automation.

The inability to program default values is an absolute pain and show stopper. As a workaround, an automation could be employed to fill in the blanks after the fact, but still, it would be most preferable for an Interface form to support both default values AND to have an Automation trigger.

Again, to save on maintenance and the fact that Automations are capped, we should be given the ability to configure an Automation trigger to accept/trigger from multiple types of forms of either View or Interface, and multiple of each.

[Karlstens]

Hi @Emily_Sermons

Regarding the Record Picker - when pre-filling an Interface Forms URL with a record value for the Record Picker Element - I really like how this works with multiple Record Pickers. However, what I’m needing to understand is how may I default various Record Pickers to “Select Record”?

If I delete the Record Picker element out of the URL, they just default to the first record in a list. But I’m needing an option to have some Record Pickers default to the “Select Record” option.

Editing the form and the Record Picker element, there doesn’t appear to be a setting to keep the Record Picker to default to “Select Record” as a hard-coded option either.

I’m hoping there’s some URL syntax magic I can employ here. I checked the Airtable Help Center but it didn’t detail this feature.

[Chris_Hamm]

I’m wondering if your team has made any progress on this. Everything is great but I’d love to give interface access without opening up the whole base to people. Thanks!

[Databaser]

This is a new feature that went live some time ago. Check out the support page on this.

[amjane]

Hi @Emily_Sermons ! this is awesome. Is there a plan to develop the following features on the integration of form fields in a page? I know this is possible in an interface where it's just the form, but would be so useful in an interface where there is not only the form:

- conditional fields

- adding the form field description like in the link form

Basically adding the form as a form to an interface with other stuff is what would be the most useful. Is there a plan to enable that (rather than limiting this to an interface with only the form)?

thanks! 

[tgrier]

Am I missing something on my setup??? Or have I completely misinterpreted permissions on these forms in an interface??? I have 44 staff who complete a simple form (but it is complex enough to require being an interface form rather than a simple base form view). I can't find any way to allow the 44 non collaborator staff to submit the form. Is that possible to do? Or am I out of luck here?

[Alton]

It's a shame that this is reserved for Airtable account holders. I am trying to create a form for lease applicants so we are looking for these functionalities - conditional logic, multiple columns, ability for the prospect to upload their documents, multiple pages to separate out the process and the option to continue the process. I think Airtable could easily support these function but it's sad to see the development linger even on basic functions