Improvements to expand and edit records

[Jordan_Scott1]

Hi all!

We are excited to share that as of today, we’ve made it easier for you - and your team - to expand and edit records in Airtable.

• We’re making it easier to edit records while in the expanded view. We’ve increased the area around fields (including moving the field label to the left to save vertical space) in the expanded view for each record and made improvements to the activity pane.
• We’ve also made it clear when a field is editable in expanded view so your collaborators can easily make edits.
• We’ve added a persistent action bar so that common actions like changing between records, turning on comments, and the record title all stay in the same place, even as you scroll through the details.

You can expect these updates to be reflected in your bases in the next two days. We’d love to hear feedback from you about this change, so please leave your feedback below!

[Jordan_Scott1]

@kuovonne - totally hear you on the value of all the feedback here and it was a big part of the reason we kicked off a more formal process, so huge thank you to every who has shared their thoughts here :slightly_smiling_face: . Every piece of feedback from this thread has been documented and is currently under evaluation as well, there is no need to resubmit as I have gone ahead and gotten them all submitted accordingly over the course of the last few days. That being said, there has been a large influx of feedback and suggestions from a variety of sources, and this will help the team to organize it all in one place so that we are able to move faster on changes.

Again, no need to resubmit if your thoughts have already been shared here, but if a solution to some of the problems outlined comes to mind and you’d like to submit it to the team for consideration, we wanted to make sure that option was available as well.

[Jordan_Scott1]

@ScottWorld This is meant to be the opposite of disrespectful, and I hope you know that my intention is to do everything I can to make sure the community can be part of the solution here. The goal is not to hide any critiques, but rather to compile solutions to those critiques in one location so that our team is able to move as quickly as possible. I personally made sure that every single comment in this thread has been documented and escalated, so there is no need to resubmit anything already shared, but rather if you want to share a solution/proposed change based on the feedback that was shared by yourself or another user, you now have another avenue to do so. The team knows that there are a variety of pain points users are running into, so the goal of sharing the problem you’re trying to solve as well as a solution allows people to contribute to any part of this conversation and be as inclusive as possible in the process.

[ScottWorld]

Thank you for the clarification, @Jordan_Scott1, and sorry for misinterpreting the intention behind the form.

Most importantly, thank you for enabling the community to be a part of the solution, and for taking the time to document all of our feedback! :slightly_smiling_face:

Once again, I should reiterate that none of us are upset with you. You are in the challenging position of being the liaison between us and Airtable, and I really appreciate the efforts you’ve gone through to make the community feel more included.

Historically, Airtable has not made us feel included, but you are the key employee who is taking steps to fix that. :slightly_smiling_face:

[kuovonne]

ScottWorld:

the very first question on the form starts off on an extremely disappointing note, because it indicates that Airtable doesn’t even understand what the big deal is.

I think that it is clear that Airtable didn’t understand how people used expanded views when they created their re-design.

I’m going out a limb here, but I think that first question form is looking for the tasks that people want to accomplish with the expanded view. Are you trying to do data entry for multiple fields? Data entry for select fields? Do you need a “dashboard” like view of the record primarily for seeing data without doing any data entry. Are you doing a lot of copy/paste in the expanded view? Do you only use the expanded view when looking at the record history? Do different people in the organization use expanded view in different ways? Do you tend to page through records one after the other to find a particular record or to visually compare records? Do you need to see large attachments and the full text of long text fields, or do you find yourself endlessly scrolling to find the field you need, and wish there were a way to collapse the fields? Do you design your views so that you only ever need to look at the first “screen” of fields? When scanning the fields, what type of meta-information do you need to know? Do you really need to know the exact field type, or do you just need to know if the field is editable? Do you differentiate groups of fields by use emoji in your field names, and is the color of that emoji important to how you use the expanded view?

[Databaser]

kuovonne:

I think that it is clear that Airtable didn’t understand how people used expanded views when they created their re-design.

Margaret_Pickering:

I have also requested Support to reverse the changes. I got this reply :slightly_smiling_face:
Hi Margaret,

Juliana here from Support ️

[…]

We make these changes based on comments from users, like you, in research sessions.

So, who was in those sessions to come to this? Enterprise users no doubt, I know, but still… :woman_shrugging: :grimacing: :man_facepalming:

[Gregory_Gunther]

I agree. I am NOT a fan of the recent redesign. It’s horrible!

[Bill_French]

I’m surprised that no one has suggested that the expended view of any given record support the optional ability to render the information as a user-definable interface.

Ultimately, Airtable will do this because no single expanded view will ever satisfy every user or every use case. The current approach - a hardened, fixed design - is unsustainable.

All of this could have been entirely avoided by simply creating an optional Interface pallette. With this approach, the classic view would be there for all the comfort-seekers and the sky would be the limit for all others who had any trepidation concerning the classic view.

[Bill_French]

kuovonne:

1. Are you trying to do data entry for multiple fields?
2. Data entry for select fields?
3. Do you need a “dashboard” like view of the record primarily for seeing data without doing any data entry. Are you doing a lot of copy/paste in the expanded view?
4. Do you only use the expanded view when looking at the record history?
5. Do different people in the organization use expanded view in different ways?
6. Do you tend to page through records one after the other to find a particular record or to visually compare records?
7. Do you need to see large attachments and the full text of long text fields, or do you find yourself endlessly scrolling to find the field you need, and wish there were a way to collapse the fields?
8. Do you design your views so that you only ever need to look at the first “screen” of fields? When scanning the fields, what type of meta-information do you need to know?
9. Do you really need to know the exact field type, or do you just need to know if the field is editable? Do you differentiate groups of fields by use emoji in your field names, and is the color of that emoji important to how you use the expanded view?

This is a great laundry list of considerations for any detailed record view. Unfortunately, it is woefully incomplete - there are dozens of questions if you truly want to create “the perfect” expanded view. And by “perfect” I mean never ideal. :winking_face:

All of this is and much more is avoidable.

[kuovonne]

Bill.French:

This is a great laundry list

It is also an imaginary laundry list. It is just my guess on the type of feedback that Jordan was hoping to get. There will never be an “expanded view” that will completely please everyone. Airtable is probably looking for a solution that they think will fit 90% of the use cases. Woe to anyone who happens to fall into that other 10%.

[kuovonne]

Bill.French:

I’m surprised that no one has suggested that the expended view of any given record support the optional ability to render the information as a user-definable interface.

I think that having an expanded view that can be customized like an interface was already proposed. I also thought that it was not under consideration. I could be wrong on both accounts.

In any case, I suspect that bringing the ability to design an expanded view the way we can design an interface would require much more time to implement than many of the other suggestions. And some other idea may solve current pain points much faster with less effort, while we wait for interfaces to mature. Of course I don’t know. That is for Airtable to decide.