Introducing Interface Designer 🎉

[Jordan_Scott1]

We are excited to announce that as of today, the Interface Designer beta is open to everyone, which means you will now be able to create interfaces right from your bases, no code required.

What is Interface Designer exactly? Interface Designer lets you build visual and interactive interfaces using your base’s underlying data. By creating custom interfaces for your stakeholders, you can isolate the information that’s critical to them and none of the other details. This makes it tremendously easy to understand the status of a project and what’s required from whom. Jump right in or keep reading for a comprehensive round-up of everything you’ll need to get started, plus information about a few other features you’ll start seeing after today :tada:

Before we go into more details, make sure to mark your calendars for the next Airtable Community AMA on December 1, with Product Manager JB Bakst, where we’ll dive into all things Interface Designer.

Common Questions

What are some of the common use cases for interfaces?

Interfaces can be used for just about anything, but some of the popular use cases we’ve seen so far include dashboards to view aggregated information & metrics, summaries to view key information about a project, record summaries for research insights, and record triage for things like customer feedback or campaign asset reviews - we can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

What permissions are required to create an interface?

Creator and owner permissions on the base you’d like to build an interface for.

If I share an Interface with another individual or team, can they see the underlying data?

For now, interface access requires you to have base access. So yes, anyone you share an interface with will have access to the underlying data.

When should I use Interface Designer vs. Page Designer (or another feature?)

Some key distinctions that Interface Designer offers:

• Dynamic & interactive
• Can share data from multiple tables within a base side by side
• Easy to onboard collaborators without needed to teach them how to use the Base or fear that they may edit the wrong thing
• Filter records based on the collaborator viewing the interface

Page Designer is ideal for instances where you need to provide a non-editable view of static information during a specific moment in time. One example is if you need to deliver a presentation or want to create a PDF.

Resources to help you get the most out of Interface Designer:

Guides:

• Your guide to designing an interface
• Simplify collaboration with the record review interface
• Highlight key details with the record summary interface
• When to use Interface Designer and other Airtable collaboration features
• Report on metrics with the dashboard interface

Support Articles:

• Creating interfaces in Interface Designer
• Managing and navigating interfaces
• Choosing a layout for your interface
• Adding and formatting elements in interfaces
• Configuring elements in interfaces
• Editing, previewing, publishing, and sharing interfaces

Videos:

• How to create an interface
• Explore Interface Designer layouts
• Empower your team with Interface Designer
• Tool Tips: Youtube series video on Interface designer
• Table Talk: Youtube Livestream on Interface Designer

Want more great news? We didn’t stop there, take a look at all the other fun features you can expect to see starting today as well.

Enhanced features for admins:

You’ll notice a slick redesign of the Admin Panel, created to be more user-friendly. Next, we’ve added significant new security controls—like Audit Log APIs and workspace share restrictions. And finally, we’ve improved base performance across the board, making your largest bases more responsive than ever before.

Additional power for your workflows:

And finally, we’re proud to share new integrations to help you bring more data into Airtable, and improvements to automations.

We’ve updated our automations interface to make it even more intuitive, with easy-to-read modals. Now it’s easier to set up a new automation with a fancy full-screen mode, and a handy guide that will walk you through every step of the process. We’re also starting to beta test conditional logic, which allows users to trigger automations only when certain conditions are met.

And last but not least, we’re adding new integrations for external source syncs from our partners at Zendesk, Github issues, and Google Drive—available to all customers on Enterprise plans.

[David_Solimini]

Bug: Editable fields for linked records in interface designer do not respect multiple vs single linked record options. In other words, if a linked record field in the Base interface does not have “Allow linking to multiple records” chosen, the interface designer will still permit a user to add a second linked record to that field. In our case, we use a linked record field for a number of items that can only be one choice – product type, product owner, etc.

[David_Solimini]

Suggestion: Expose the record changes history feed as an Interface element. We can add a record’s comment feed, but not the very useful feed of changes made to the record over time. That journal of changes – who made a change to what field, etc. is exceptionally useful for our workflow, where more than one team member is often making changes to any given record. I’m considering an Interface as a friendlier version of our production pipeline and that would give us at-a-glance context for any record.

[Y_K]

Suggestion: Inconsistent text boxes on interface.
An empty single-line text field shows an empty text box on interface
An empty multi-line text field shows “Start typing…” in the text box on interface.

Would be nice if the two are consistent (i.e. don’t show Start typing…)

[Olpy_Acaflo]

Thank you @Kamille_Parks for taking the time to clarify this confusion in the last part of my message.
Sincerely,
oLπ

[Hendrik_Yang]

Awesome updates @Jordan_Scott1 ! But few suggestions:

1. Password protected interface (similar to how we share our table particular view)
2. Enable button action in the interface. Lots of custom functions and magic from the button :grinning:

Look forward to your updates!

[Chef_Rude]

When trying to build some interfaces, Its nice that I can for example “count the number of unchecked” records. But I would love to be able to count “checked” ones too.

Being limited to “percent of checked” is not that helpful when it says “6%” but the actual count is “2”. In my use case “2” is much more useful number than 6% and its forcing me to omit data points in the dashboards because I dont have valuable data points that are clearer for my purposes.

The same holds true for other fields, see image, I can do “empty” and “unique” but not “filled”.

[Nathalie_Collin]

kuovonne:

After the beta ends, your workspace will retain access to any interfaces you build during the beta regardless of your Airtable plan

retaining access most likely implies a read-only state. We all know that everything that we build is never completely finished. So where does that leave us if the full access is in a plan higher than what we have?

I’m speculated that this will either be a separate paid feature or a feature included in the Enterprise. I’m leaning towards a separate paid feature only because if you look at the placement of your interfaces, they’re all neatly tucked away in a separate “workspace” of their own.

I know they need to wait and see what value WE find it this product in order for them to validate whatever price point they already have in mind. I wish they were fully transparent with their intentions.

Truth be known, I like this feature but I don’t know how much I should love it though.

[David_Solimini]

Maybe I’m missing something really obvious… How do I create a new record with an interface? Ie, a form where someone completes some fields and then saves it as a record?

[BobBannanas]

Is there a trick to moving around the elements that I am unaware of? They sort of have a mind of their own and want to snap into place in not-so-good-areas.

[kuovonne]

David_Solimini:

How do I create a new record with an interface?

Ways to create a new record:

• in a grid view, the same as a regular grid view (assuming that the filtering allows it)
• from a linked record field itself (but not in a grid view based on the linked record field)
• from an automation triggered by a data change in the base

There is no native form view in Interfaces. All data entry needs to be tied to an existing record.