Introducing new ways to harness the power of AI, build apps, and connect data

[Stephanie_Sosa]

👋Hi all! I’m Stephanie, product marketer at Airtable and I'm so excited to introduce some powerful new features to help teams build AI-powered apps on top of shared data—all within a single, scalable platform.

Today, we’re bringing AI to Airtable, making Airtable the easiest and fastest way to deploy AI-powered applications across the enterprise. We're also releasing new features to empower teams to get up and running and build powerful apps quickly with a suite of pre-built applications for marketing and product teams. 

• Apps by Airtable: Get set up and running faster than ever with out-of-the-box apps built for critical use cases. Available for Enterprise.
• Verified data: Easily protect and manage your org’s most important data from one place, while making it accessible to those who need it most. Available for Enterprise.
• Two-way sync: Automatically sync data and edits back and forth between workflows so your teams can easily collaborate on the most up-to-date information. Available for Enterprise.

We’re rolling these updates out over the next week; if you don’t see them reflected in your workspace, hold tight! 

But something I’m super excited to announce is a new left navigation in Interface Designer. Now, we’re making it easier for you to quickly find and engage with the most important parts of their workflows. In addition to the updates we released back in March, Interface Designer makes it that much easier to build on Airtable. (And spoiler alert: we’re not done. Stay tuned for even more exciting updates to the app building experience)

Left Navigation: New left navigation panel for easy navigation between interfaces & pages.

But that’s not all, you’ll also see that we cleaned up the share view menu so that your teams can discover and share important views and data across the org.

Redesigned Share View Menu: Simplified sharing and syncing with a redesigned share view dialog.

These features will be a game changer for teams of all sizes—helping them build the apps they need on a scalable, secure platform. Learn more about these updates in our blog post!

We can’t wait to hear what you think, and see what you build, with these updates!

[Anonymous]

@Japheth_Beaty 

Try opening it on a 13" laptop. This with a Record Review, and about half of my screen is gone. I really hope they at least make this optional.

[TDY]

The new left hand panel interface is so badly received by our Creator clients that our contract renewal is already at risk. They have men in the field using Airtable on phones in a dynamic environment and this breaks the utility of the entire platform for men on the ground. They can't spare time looking through ways to hide menus and flat useless space taking up the phone in a hardhat environment.

We've got a patch in place to move everyone to Editor but before we can even address that, it appears that we can't even reassure our Creators they will get certain design aspects back before EVERYONE in the field is forced on to this next week and they all stop using it.

Our expectation is that we will now lose the contract. I'm having to prepare staff for contract exit and negotiations on remaining IP from the fallout. It turns the product non-usable in the field.

How about that.

You actually broke stuff in the real world.

There has to be a way to provide this as an option to people. 

Please give your clients time to provide their clients with enough time for change management in their field operations.

[kendallodom]

Is there a way to turn left nav off? This is pretty problematic for several reasons, including: 

1. This takes up valuable space, especially for users with smaller screens, and it cannot be minimized. Now our grid layouts do not fit.
2. The UX does not look nearly as clean as the white tabs at the top did. I even reset our base to grey and it still looks odd. I need to keep our base teal in order to preserve the colored boxes in the pop out windows, which tell users in that view what they are responsible for, but the teal looks pretty hideous in the left nav.
3. Our users are only using one interface, and don't need to toggle between them. We've also set it up so each team gets their own tab, and ICs will mostly stay in their own tabs. So now we are essentially losing 15% of their screen just so tabs that were already easily accessibly and not really needed are always visible?
4. I've already created all of our enablement videos and documentation and now it's all outdated.

I'm also doing several enablement calls this week and now I have a different view than everyone I am enabling which is okay for me but confusing for them - please let me know if there is a way to toggle this off!

[Meredith_Scrog1]

I would really like to reiterate all of the comments that are shared here about the interfaces - while there are some appearance improvements, it has absolutely rendered Interfaces useless for so many customers as seen in this whole thread - and it feels very unanimous. Why not give the simple ability to collapse it like it can be done with views? There are plenty of other things that could be improved with Interfaces that we use third-party tools for (the biggest ones being displaying data from multiple bases and giving read-only permission without having to create an Airtable account) and this release has likely discouraged people from investing their time and resources into building Interfaces. 

I would echo all similar thoughts about AI - feels cheap to go for a half-baked feature that most new and future users aren't looking for in Airtable, and feels frustrating when there are so many more obstacles that need solving. If the goal is to continue focusing on Enterprise (which is its own can of worms), then why introduce features if Enterprise customers are likely using other robust tools for their operations?

To emphasize other commenters --

"I'd really appreciate if Airtable could focus their UI team on fixing problems that the community has raised year on year ..."

"Are you testing these features with non-enterprise customers before launching?"

"This pretty much sums up Airtable in the last years" 

What will the solution be for this? Airtable has the luck of having COUNTLESS members and users, many of whom already have excellent data and UI skills, who contribute tons of great ideas and try and speak on behalf of an average customer. So much of this feedback could have been avoided by gathering and USING real customer feedback, or at least doing user research before rolling it out to everyone. Not many companies/tools have the privilege of having a user base willing to contribute great and valid feedback and will likely be turned away from seeing UI decisions like this that didn't seem to be well thought out first. 

[Bill_French]

$1.6b raised, and not a single development lead has said -

Hey! Why don't we allow users to opt out of this new UI change?

Over the years, Airtable has endured frequent announcements that become a rolling calamity. I've suggested in this forum at least a half-dozen times since 2018 -- when you start making changes to key UI behaviors, you need to create the ability for some users to opt-out. Otherwise, 50% (or more) will be unhappy.

When will this team learn this crucial lesson?

[ScottWorld]

What everybody has pointed out in this entire thread is exactly how I feel as well. To me personally, it feels like Airtable is driving in their own lane on the freeway going in a completely opposite direction than the rest of us.

As one of the world’s top Airtable consultants for the last 6+ years, it has been a frustrating journey for me. I have yet to personally experience Airtable listening to customers’ product needs, feature requests, or bug reports. I have yet to personally experience them having any sort of open communication with us.

Out of all of their paying customers, I feel that the Airtable consultants should be at the top of the food chain, because each consultant works with dozens (or hundreds) of Airtable customers, meaning that each one of our voices represents many Airtable customers. But even the consultants aren’t told about new features before they come out.

In the last 6 years, Airtable has only given the consultants 2 sneak previews of upcoming product changes, but the sneak previews weren’t designed to gather feedback from us. They were “one-way discussions” (i.e. "polished slideshow presentations") designed to alert us to what was already “locked in” and what was “already decided” by them. No feedback allowed. No changes allowed.

Meanwhile, even basic features that people have been requesting for 6+ years have been ignored. Basic features as simple as “wrappable column headers in grid view” or “dynamically-changing row heights in grid view” are tiny features that would be a massive game changer for customers, but despite years of requests, nothing yet. Never mind all the advanced features that customers have also been requesting for years.

Instead, it feels like Airtable sits around, dreaming up their own ideas, instead of actually engaging with people who use their product on a daily basis.

Sadly, I think that the major disconnect here between Airtable & its customers might be caused by the problem that many others have brought up to me: I have been told that the majority of Airtable employees rarely use their own product on a daily basis like the rest of us do. For example, I was told that the Enterprise Sales Team exclusively uses Microsoft Excel and Salesforce. Why are they not using Airtable?

The unofficial community of Airtable customers & Airtable experts is in the process of compiling an ongoing list of feature requests in this thread. Most things listed in this thread have been requested for years. The thread is not complete. I still need to add dozens of more items to this list, and I encourage others to do the same.

Ultimately, though, the list is meaningless if Airtable doesn’t really care to engage with us or communicate with us or respond to our needs.

[Bill_French]

Excellent summation @ScottWorld!

>>> ... the majority of Airtable employees rarely use their own product.

The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own Dog Food" (platformative)

[TDY]

The bigger problem is this:

We're on the cusp of turning this into a marketed service from our regional customer to global. There are other contracts that will be following. We have to depend on the platforms we create for this environment. This is not dependable. It's very distressing.

Makes this all terribly difficult.

[Tobias_LGKR]

@ScottWorld that's really kind sad to read from someone like yourself. So this sentiment and observation exists through all ranks of users and expertise 😯

I understand road maps. Our company has a roadmap as well, yes. The great vision of what we would love to achieve for our customers. But we constantly schedule improvised pit stops to react to what our customers and partners need along the way. Our vision would be rendered mute if it did not align at least 80% with the needs of our customers. And that's not an approach driven by economics but by the simple fact that we love to make people happy. And our customers aren't nearly as verbal about their needs as is the AT community. We would honestly cherish that much input from our customers.

I would really like Howie, Andrew or Emmet to chime in on this as there seems to be a core issue at the heart of what this announcement has triggered.

[Gina_Fernandez]

@Stephanie_Sosa you said "These features will be a game changer..." and indeed they are as I have an entire office ranting at me about the side bar menu. Our teams works on laptops on the field and this is taking up a huge amount of screen real estate. Just got word from higher ups that if it stays as is, we will no longer be using interfaces.