May product updates

[Rose_K]

Hello Airtable Community!

We wanted to gather all of May’s product updates in one place, to make sure we keep you in the loop.

Here is a list of changes, big and small, that we introduced in May:

• Users now have the ability to change the trigger of an automation after creation!
• When rendering records in an email we now fully support:
  • backslashes in a record’s content
  • list and grid column names that include underscores
  • truncating text fields when rendering records in a grid
• Custom scripts no longer have to adhere to the 1 second limit of CPU time.
• We officially launched the “Sync Source” field to help manage multi-source syncs.
  • For new multi-source syncs we’ll automatically create this field when you add a second sync source. For existing syncs, you can enable the field in your sync setting.
• The View sidebar now supports fuzzy search.
• When an automation is broken we have new error messaging to indicate that an error has occurred.
  • We’ve also added an explicit error to indicate when an automation’s external accounts have a problem and need to be reconnected.
• When using the “Jira Cloud Create issue” action, we now require users to have the proper Jira permissions before setting the Reporter and Assignee fields.
• We are happy to announce that both our mobile iOS and Android users have the ability to duplicate records!

[ScottWorld]

Rose_K:

• When rendering records in an email we now fully support:
• backslashes in a record’s content
• list and grid column names that include underscores
• truncating text fields when rendering records in a grid

This “emailing a list of records” action is 100% useless to my clients, because:

1. Airtable chooses its own record sorting order based on alphabetizing the Record IDs. This obviously makes no sense at all, since Record IDs are randomly-generated text strings that have no meaning. Alphabetizing something that has absolutely no meaning also yields no meaning. At the very least, sort the records by creation date, which might have some small semblance of meaning in rare cases. Ideally, give us the ability to sort the records.

2. Even worse than choosing its own record sorting order, Airtable doesn’t let us choose the field order. This is even worse than not letting us choose the record order, because Airtable literally just dumps the fields into the email in the order that the fields were created. This is almost never the field order that anyone would ever want people to see their fields listed in.

It seems odd that Airtable would release half-baked features like this without finishing them, or without inquiring to see if they would actually meet customers’ needs or not. As a result of this, 100% of my clients are still required to use Integromat to send out their automated email lists to people.

[Rose_K]

@ScottWorld
Thanks for the feedback on the “Send Email” action. I’ve passed the feedback to our product team, and if I hear any updates on this subject I’ll make sure to flag them here.

[ScottWorld]

Thank you, @Rose_K! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

[David_Solimini]

Just dropping in here to agree with @ScottWorld’s points.

[Databaser]

Rose_K:

I’ve passed the feedback to our product team

I think by now they’ve heard it more then enough to make it clear it’s a much needed option :expressionless:

[Rose_K]

@ScottWorld, @David_Solimini, and @Databaser

I’m very excited to announce: If you now “Find Records” based on a view, and then render those records as an HTML list or grid in an email, the records will be rendered in the same order as they were in the view.

I’ll also be promoting this latest update in the “June product updates” post a little later today, but wanted to highlight it here first! :dizzy:

EDIT: The “Find records” article has been updated to note inconsistencies that @ScottWorld brought up with this functionality. Thank you again @ScottWorld for pointing these out in a previous post! :star2:

[ScottWorld]

Thanks so much, @Rose_K! This is great news! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: :raised_hands: