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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
Hendrik_Yang
9 - Sun
9 - Sun

Yes, it is very unfortunate. I hope they can get it fixed

mdmtr
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This limitation is the one thing keeping me from using Interfaces for my business, which would otherwise be a huge productivity booster. Iโ€™ve made a thread about it before but adding/duplicating records through linked record grids doesnโ€™t seem to be very high up the priority list.

I do hope this feature is going to be added soon.

Mnicholls
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

@Karlstens - We use interface button + script automation to get around the add record grid limitations. Just a few lines of script to get running.

// get source record ID that we want to add. Configure as input for your code within automation.
const sourceID = input.config().sourceRecordID;
const parentTbl = base.getTable(โ€˜ParentTableโ€™);
const childTbl = base.getTable(โ€˜ChildTableโ€™);
const parentRecord = await parentTbl.selectRecordAsync(sourceID);
if (parentRecord ) {
// create new child record and link to the parent ID.
let newRecordID = await childTbl.createRecordAsync({[โ€˜ParentFieldโ€™]: [{id:parentRecord.id}], });
}

Karlstens
11 - Venus
11 - Venus

Yah, buttons and their individual Automations are a lot to develop, track and maintain - and although I havenโ€™t checked, when an Interface button triggers an automation to create a record, I assume that records Created By field would then read โ€œAutomationโ€, rather than the user who clicked that mock-up โ€œCreate Recordโ€ button?

Perhaps Airtable Devs are needing bugs to be solved before they unlock these features, but it just seems strange that we have all the options users needing via the Right-Click menu, itโ€™s just theyโ€™re greyed out.

image

Iโ€™m concerned that theyโ€™ll remain locked/greyed out forever due to system limitations? Would be good to know whatโ€™s going on here, before I commit time to developing work-arounds.

Pedro_Pais
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Isnโ€™t there some inconsistency when creating records from the Interface Designer? When I create a new record from the record list I can specify the form design and which fields are required, but if a new record is created from a record picker (creating a new linked record) I have no control whatsoever on the corresponding design and required fields. Am I missing something?

Londya_E
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

The same bug I mentioned before on this post has become a problem again. When I add new fields to a new interface page I'm building, they are marked as editable already but I can't edit them. I try to toggle between "View-only" and "Editable" to see if it will change and it doesn't. And when I publish, they are still uneditable. I'm not sure how to access the bug form I was using before to report it. @Jordan_Scott1