New: Attachment annotations

[Jason]

We just launched a feature called attachment annotations that lets you leave comments in a specific position on an Airtable attachment. You can give fast, clear, actionable feedback on any type of visual asset to help speed up your creative process.

We currently support annotations on images (JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs) and videos (MP4 and WebM). For more information on how to use this new feature, please see this support article for specifics and our blog post for a broader look at the asset review process.

And, we’d love your feedback! Leave any comments or feedback here in this topic.

[Allen_Moldovan]

Woaa, that’s pretty cool

[Jason]

Thanks, we think so too! Do you plan on using this in your own base(s)?

[Bill_French]

Jason:

Do you plan on using this in your own base(s)?

Yes, and especially so if this issue is ever resolved. :winking_face:

Attachments uploaded via API vanish within seconds Importing / Exporting

Hi @Sales_Asian_Drive_Sh, and welcome to the community! Yep - this “bug” has been discussed … here… here… here… here… and here… And most recently, this thread. Despite the many claims [by Airtable] that this issue has been fixed, there is a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

[Michael_Gunner]

Would it be possible to extend this functionality to PDFs? I am using this Airtable to track issues with a design project, and it would be amazing to annotate drawings in the same way. Great product!

[ScottWorld]

Jason:

And, we’d love your feedback! Leave any comments or feedback here in this topic.

Feedback: Instead of releasing features that cater to one of Airtable’s Enterprise customers who requested that particular feature, does Airtable have any plans or roadmap to address the pressing needs, bug fixes, and feature requests that the greater userbase has been repeatedly requesting for 4+ years in these forums?

[Jason]

Michael_Gunner:

Would it be possible to extend this functionality to PDFs

That’s not in our immediate plans @Michael_Gunner, but something our team may consider further down the line!

[Bill_French]

Hi Michael, and welcome to the community!

Jason:

You can give fast, clear, actionable feedback on any type of visual asset to help speed up your creative process.

Michael_Gunner:

Would it be possible to extend this functionality to PDFs?

Jason:

That’s not in our immediate plans

Just sayin’ … if you name this feature “Attachment Annotations” and promote it for “any type of visual asset” but then only deliver this capability for certain types of attachments, it may come as a surprise to users, and above all, software teams need to mitigate surprises because users don’t like to be surprised unless it’s a magically smart surprise. This is the opposite of a magically smart surprise.

I understand why it’s not as easy to annotate PDF documents, but this is [yet again] one of those instances where Airtable has half-baked a feature. Is a PDF document not a “visual asset”? And it’s not just the lack of PDF support; consider the annotations themselves; no access via the API, and lacking this, we can’t even add PDF annotation support separately.

Oddly, there is a well-defined specification for adding annotations to PDF documents (without changing the document itself) and a vast collection of open-source libraries to choose from. While images do sometimes flow through workflows and approval processes, I have a hunch that PDFs are just as important in the conversations and workflows for business content.

Surely, we can all agree that there are fringe attachment cases. Would we expect it to work for JSON documents? Probably not. But for PDFs? Hmmm, there are about 2.5 trillion of them. Do they matter? More importantly, do conversations about PDF documents matter greatly? I think so. Airtable opened Pandora’s box with attachments. Now it must be prepared to fully bake the idea.

There is no world in which PDF annotations should not be in your immediate plans and should have been in this plan.

[Spencer_Mullane]

Doubling down on the request for PDF support. As one of the most common document formats on earth, especially in the context of teams needing to review and comment on things (legal, purchase orders, flyers, press release, basically any kind of last-draft deliverable ever), this seems like a pretty aggressive exclusion (and a deal breaker for us). If the goal is to only target creatives, marketing departments and ad agencies sure stick with images and videos, but that would seem to pretty severely limit your potential user-base on this feature. Overall this is a potentially solid feature that just got knee-capped in both legs before it left the starting line.

[Jason]

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback @Bill.French @Spencer_Mullaney - I’ll share this with our product team who are looking for this type of input.

[Michael_Gunner]

Great discussion. Thank you for amplifying my comment!