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!

[BillH]

We absolutely need to be able to collapse the new left panel on the interfaces.  It's a disaster, and it should have been announced long before it was put into production, so that existing interfaces could be tested.  As it is I have a client trying to get budget approval and unable to even give a presentable demonstration.  

[TDY]

Real world impacts. This is really important.

I'd call this critically valuable insights for the Airtable team.

Make no mistake, we really love your product. We use it ourselves in the trenches, not just push it to our clients. We don't want to be frustrated.

[kuovonne]

What happened to the designers who brought us the "Views" sidebar? That is an elegant design. It shows up when you want it, and disappears when you don't need it. You can pin it to make it stay in place. You can adjust the width. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close.

On the other hand, the rollout of the views sidebar was rough. The current sidebar was proceeded by a design change that stirred up a level of outrage similar to what the current interface-left-side-navigation is now creating. The reason was also similar--screen space. Eventually we got official word that Airtable would look into the issue and a form for people to submit feedback. Then we waited for weeks (or was it months?) of silence on the topic before the new version was released. Kudos to Airtable for coming up with a great design. Shame on them for not learning from past mistakes.

Airtable, you already have precedence for so many things that could have made this smoother:
- For the attachment urls changing, you gave us advance warning and an opt-out window of several months.
- For the new homescreen, you gave us the option to revert back to the old version.
- For the views sidebar, you respected our need to control our own screen real-estate.

There are many other things that Airtable has not yet done (such as focus groups with consultants) that could make things better. But there are also things that Airtable has done in the past that they seem to have forgotten. Or the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

[BillH]

@kuovonne Thank you for expressing this so well.

I'm still going over all the pages, and while this seems workable on my large monitor and maybe ok on my larger laptop, I'll probably have to rework some for smaller screens.

I like the thought of using the same approach as with the Views sidebar, if that's possible.  

[Aristeidis_Zagk]

agreed with most of the comments about sidebar, new Alphabetical Sorting AZ screen...etc
All these years we had stress with our business going on. Since last September, I have been stressed too about the path the Airtable team and shareholders have taken.
I have given enough grace period. After this, I am convinced that Airtable is far away from the original vision and will not go to the right direction. 

[Karlstens]

The chat gets it. And so does AI.

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Wasted screen space caused by a side-bar pop-up that is full of empty nothingness and obstructs functional features, buttons, inputs, and toggles would generally be considered a bad design practice. In user interface design, it is important to prioritize usability and efficiency by making sure that the interface elements are clear, accessible, and do not hinder users' tasks or workflows.

Releasing such a side-bar feature without notice, especially if it significantly impacts users' day-to-day work, can have negative consequences. Sudden changes to the interface without proper communication or user training can lead to confusion, frustration, and reduced productivity. It is generally recommended to introduce new features or design changes gradually, with proper user testing and feedback, and provide users with appropriate notifications, tutorials, or documentation to help them adapt to the changes.

Overall, it is essential to prioritize user experience and consider the impact of design decisions on users' ability to effectively use the web application and perform their tasks. Avoiding wasted screen space, ensuring clear visual hierarchy, and minimizing obstructions to functional features are important principles of good UI design.

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[ScottWorld]

Thank you, @kuovonne, for the elegant and very well-stated post! 😀

As you mentioned, the entire Airtable customer base went through complete hell and back to get Airtable to fix the "Views" sidebar. It's still not perfect (why does that gigantic tooltip always obscure everything?), but it's about 95% perfection.

> What happened to the designers who brought us the "Views" sidebar? There are many other things that Airtable has not yet done (such as focus groups with consultants) that could make things better. But there are also things that Airtable has done in the past that they seem to have forgotten. Or the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

I think that the 3 biggest engineering problems at Airtable are:

#1. The extremely high turnover in engineers, so there is almost no institutional knowledge of past lessons learned. All of us Airtable consultants have way more knowledge of the past than most engineers at Airtable.

#2. The engineering teams at Airtable are independent silos that have little communication with the other engineering teams. Everybody works on their own little piece of the puzzle, without any regards to how it fits in with the other parts of the product. 

#3. Zero communication with their customers or consultants. No focus groups, as you mentioned.

[Shannon_Anahata]

Hi everyone —Shannon on the product team here to respond to feedback about the new navigation. I wanted to start by thanking everyone for the  thoughtful feedback. Any change to a tool you use regularly is bound to cause some friction, but we want you to know that we hear you. 

First, I want to share bit more context for how we landed on this new design:

We have heard from customers that navigating between interfaces was so buried that they didn’t even realize it was an option. As we began to build Apps by Airtable—and pilot with customers—navigation was something we focused on. It became clear that this navigation was something customers wanted available to all interfaces so they can build apps that start to connect their workflows. As we continue to invest in making Airtable the best platform for anyone to easily build apps, we’re also committed to making it equally as easy for anyone to use those apps. Improving the navigation is one of the first steps in doing just that —so that your end-users can quickly find and engage with the most important workflows.

Again, this is just the first step and we intend to continue improving the experience. To start with, we are actively working to make the left navigation collapsible. Please keep your eyes out for that update coming soon.

While we know that having all interfaces visible to people who can also access the base can provide a painful experience, our goal is to make interfaces what you need them to be so that end-users no longer need to go back into the base, where we know it can be overwhelming and unnecessary for a majority of people. We would love to hear more about what needs are currently missing. 

We know change is not easy, but we hope you’ll continue to give us feedback as we continue to evolve and improve the app building experience on Airtable. Thank you for being part of the community and building with us.

[BillH]

Thank you for the response Shannon,  but before you can dream of becoming the best development platform you have to establish yourself as a stable and development platform.  

That can't be done by rolling out changes in a production environment without providing existing developers with the ability to opt out at the very least.  

I see some very familiar names on these comments, people who have used your application and platform extensively, and who could have, and should have, been able to review and comment long before rollout, not the day after. 

Trust me only works when you've earned that trust.  If this is an example you're not doing much to earn it.

[mprokop]

Thank you Shannon. The issue with making the navigation collapsible is that many of us DO need to easily  and quickly switch between the handful of pages on an interface. Having an option to keep that navigation at the top would be ideal. If it's going to be collapsible and there will not be the top navigation bar, there should be icons with tooltips of the names of pages available. Making it collapse completely creates friction when there previously was none.