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.

[Jordan_Scott1]

Thank you for sharing this feedback, it’s super helpful and has been shared with the team.

[Dario_Rota]

Thanks for the announcement … I had noticed the little magic new button and immediately tested it.

If I understand correctly, the big news is that now you can create an EDITABLE form without using complex methods or external plugins, is that correct?

I also noticed that by sharing an interface my collaborator have now access to ALL MY BASE TABLES! Doens’t sound good. Is there a way to only share the interface?

Thanks!

Dario

[Olpy_Acaflo]

Thank you for your answer @Jordan_Scott1 !
It’s AIRTABLE DEV Team that we have to thank for this beautiful interface because it’s one of your templates ! :slightly_smiling_face:
On the other hand it suits perfectly to my use case :
I had not experienced such UX / UI in solutions of GRID or GALERIES proposed
“built on top of AIRTABLE’s public REST API” because in any case, my Image was never seen in a full true responsive way, so in this use case, I’m already very happy without any other settings!

I will continue to give you feedback when the opportunity appears but in the specialized section:

Interface Designer

Using Interface Designer, you can create interfaces right from your Airtable bases, no code required (IN BETA).

Regards,

oLπ

[ScottWorld]

Dario_Rota:

I also noticed that by sharing an interface my collaborator have now access to ALL MY BASE TABLES! Doens’t sound good. Is there a way to only share the interface?

Interfaces are only accessible to collaborators at this time. Collaborators have always had access to all of your base tables.

In other words, interfaces is not a “security layer” in Airtable. It’s just a new “design layer”.

[Bill_French]

Jordan_Scott1:

without concern that those interfaces be subject to clawbacks or restrictions.

For those of you who appreciate this warrantee of access to your Interfaces into the future, know also that Jordan is obviously very-well versed in the risks associated with beta launches. Her use of the term “clawback” in this context would only come from a professional steeped in the challenges of managing customer expectations. I love the subtle insights about the team that is emerging at Airtable. Impressive tech, and impressive people.

[Eli_Green]

Also chiming in to say that I really appreciate this – I have been very much in need of this exact thing. EXCEPT, the lack of ability to share that with people who are not on AT pretty much ruins it for me.

Here is how I am using this:

I run a company that has many consultants who run trainings for us, and we have base that is a list of everyone’s assignments, that we share in calendar view. Each event has a very long record attached to it because it holds all of the info needed to run that training. At the moment, the trainer goes to the calendar, clicks on that event, and then has to scroll through the record and read all the info. It’s not ideal because with syncing multiple bases, getting things in the right order is hard, its a lot of extra steps for our consultants and it is not particularly easy to read from the calendar view.

So, I used the interface to create a “trainer assignment sheet” that has all of the information that trainer needs. It looks great, easy to read, perfect. Except, I have no way to share each of those individual with the consultants who are doing that training. I am not going to pay $240 a year for each of consultants to access AT, when they really only need to see 2-4 records a year. So that leaves me with a gorgeous, self-populating interface that the people for whom it is for, cannot access.

My requests so far:

• Make it so that each record on a view has it’s own interface that can be shared by link (same way that we can share a certain view of records),

• Make it so that the interface can be shared by embedding into a website (same way that we can embed from a view now),

Thank you!!!

[Dario_Rota]

Thank you ScottWorld, so if I understand right, if I want to create a form without giving access to my base, I have to do it in the old way (and using thirdy party methods for the EDIT forms).

Dario

[ScottWorld]

Dario_Rota:

if I understand right, if I want to create a form without giving access to my base, I have to do it in the old way (and using thirdy party methods for the EDIT forms).

Yes, that is correct.

[Databaser]

Eli_Green:

I am not going to pay $240 a year for each of consultants to access AT, when they really only need to see 2-4 records a year. So that leaves me with a gorgeous, self-populating interface that the people for whom it is for, cannot access.

Mutatis mutandis for many of my clients, being a ventilation company that works on different projects for different building promotors, a engineering company that does studies on different building phases for different architects and contractors, a marketing company that wants to offer a view to their clients of all the actions they are taking for multiple marketing actions at once, …

But, being a Business Unit Manager at a training/consultancy company myself, your user case is recognizable :cowboy_hat_face:

[Justin_Barrett]

Dario_Rota:

If I understand correctly, the big news is that now you can create an EDITABLE form without using complex methods or external plugins, is that correct?

Not quite. While you can build form-like structures with it, and with a little work (as @kuovonne has demonstrated) you could even use this feature to add new records, it’s not a form, and was not created to replace/enhance Airtable’s form features. Its primary purpose—based on this initial feature set, anyway—is to provide greater flexibility for base collaborators when viewing and editing existing data.