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Introducing Interface Designer ๐ŸŽ‰

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Jordan_Scott1
Airtable Alumni (Retired)

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 baseโ€™s underlying data. By creating custom interfaces for your stakeholders, you can isolate the information thatโ€™s critical to them and none of the other details. This makes it tremendously easy to understand the status of a project and whatโ€™s required from whom. Jump right in or keep reading for a comprehensive round-up of everything youโ€™ll need to get started, plus information about a few other features youโ€™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 weโ€™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 weโ€™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 canโ€™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 youโ€™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:

Support Articles:

Videos:

Want more great news? We didnโ€™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:

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

Additional power for your workflows:

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

Weโ€™ve updated our automations interface to make it even more intuitive, with easy-to-read modals. Now itโ€™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. Weโ€™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, weโ€™re adding new integrations for external source syncs from our partners at Zendesk, Github issues, and Google Driveโ€”available to all customers on Enterprise plans.

176 Comments
David_Solimini
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

OK, that makes me feel better. I was worried I had missed something very obvious!

Given the level of documentation and the fit-and-finish of the product so far, my expectation is that this will rapidly become a feature-complete UI builder, meaning a form view canโ€™t be that far awayโ€ฆ In the mean time I will pine for it. :winking_face:

Xavier_G_Sabate
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Iโ€™m astonished !!!

I could easily create interfaces for bases that solved some business cases in a moment with an excellent result. This is a massive improvement and we are super excited to put them to work

THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!

Jordan_Scott1
Airtable Alumni (Retired)

Thank you for flagging - I have shared this with the team! :pray:

Michelle_King
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Exciting times - what would be truly beautiful for the future is if there was a way to share the interface alone without access to the underlying data and if we could create 1 interface bringing together information from multiple bases - now that would be living the dream

egordin
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Just FYI - it looks like the Airtable team added a new section of the forum for Interface Designer!

Justin_Barrett
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

The only โ€œtrickโ€ that Iโ€™ve found is a combination of practice and patience. Especially the patience part. Iโ€™m choosing to believe that, as with many elements of this new feature, the interactivity will improve over time.

Esabatad_Daeh
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Would it be possible to have Elements visible based off of set conditions?
Conditional visibility exampleโ€ฆ โ€œIf {Field X} value is greater than or equal to the number 2, then show Grid Element #1, etc.โ€.

This would allow me to create more dynamic type of interfaces where I could show more specific elements depending on the type of data needing to be viewed at that time. Picture a Grid to a table where in some cases you only need to see certain fields, and in other cases you only need to see a different set of fields. In my case, itโ€™s checkbox fields.

Jordan_Scott1
Airtable Alumni (Retired)

Hi @egordin - I just created an Interface Designer category so that should be good to go now. In terms of the conditional logic beta, can you send me a DM with your full name, company, job title, and email address? Then I can get you added :slightly_smiling_face:

Karlstens
11 - Venus
11 - Venus

Thanks for sharing this new feature @Jordan_Scott1 and Airtable team.

image

Hoping Iโ€™ll have time to tinker some-what this weekend. I noticed that when using a Blank template, that I couldnโ€™t actually achieve the same result as found in โ€œRecord Reviewโ€ template which has a โ€œRecord listโ€ element - this โ€œRecord Listโ€ element isnโ€™t displaying as something that I can insert into a blank template?

Jordan_Scott1
Airtable Alumni (Retired)

@Michelle_King thank you for this - I have shared with the team! :heart_eyes: