New button types in Interface Designer

[Emily_Sermons]

Hi Airtable Community! :wave: I’m Emily, a product manager for Airtable’s Interfaces team — and I’m back again to share some new updates to Interfaces, available as of today!

Today we’re excited to announce four new button types enabled in Interfaces:

1. Run an automation

Trigger your automations from buttons in Interfaces! With this button type, you can create a net-new automation or trigger a preexisting automation from within Interface designer; you’ll be redirected to the Automations experience to further refine & test the automation before deploying. This button type is great for kicking off repetitive tasks in your team’s workflow, such as:

• Kicking off a slack message
• Automatically creating a new record
• Running an automation script

2. Navigation buttons

Use these Interface buttons to navigate internally and externally, including:

• Navigate between records: Configure this button to move to the previous and next record of a particular source.
• Navigate to URL: Configure this button to open an external URL. Choose from a specific URL field, or a static URL.
• Navigate to Page: Navigate to a given page in an interface.
  • Design tip: We recommend using “Navigate to page” buttons in scenarios when you want to quickly direct your end-users to a single action-oriented page in your Interface (ex: Create a “Report a bug” button that navigates to a bug submission form page). Rather than overloading your Interface pages with navigation buttons for each page, you can use the new Navigation Bar component that showcases all of your pages, launching in October!

3. Copy Record URL: Use this button to quickly copy the Interface link for a given record.

4. Delete Record: Use this button to delete a given record from your base.

In addition to these new button types, we are also launching an exciting enhancement to Update Buttons! Starting today, you can designate an “updated” visual state after the button has been clicked. This makes it easy to see whether a given update has already been performed.

This is just one of many updates we’re making to Interface Designer over the next few months, including: Kanban element, introducing Nav Bars, a redesigned editor, full-page expanded records, form improvements, and Interface Permissions. We can’t wait to see what you build!

This update is available now. If you aren’t seeing these changes reflected, please try clearing your cache.

[Cameron_Kaiser]

Looks great, but from a UI perspective the button should not change in size when switching to the “Updated” version. The size should be determined by the larger of the two appearances so that only text and color change upon click.

[Jean_Francois_B]

Emily_Sermons:

In addition to these new button types, we are also launching an exciting enhancement to Update Buttons!

The Automation launch button is great, but the update button is really a game changer! Thank you for these fantastic updates! :raised_hands:

[Sharon_Visser]

@Emily_Sermons - This is a fantastic new feature. I have so many different interface pages for one heavy user group, that I just set up a dashboard with buttons to open the necessary interface page. It looks so much easier for users to navigate!! And color-coded buttons help them visually separate them by function.

[Anthony_Lagoon]

This is great! I’ve been building internal tools for small businesses with my team at Underbelly Creative and this really opens up more possibilities. Cheers!

[Daniel_Listopad]

Our team really misses ‘Run automation’ type on Grid buttons. Since Airtable Android app doesn’t support interfaces and extensions, button triggering automation would allow us much more effective flows.

[Stephen_Turban]

Thank you for this!! I am so impressed with the progress the Airtable team makes every month.

[Databaser]

@Emily_Sermons, it would be very useful if an Interface button could trigger a manual sync for the underlying table.

Use case:
I have a base with client data that syncs to another base for client interventions. In that last base I’ve created an Interface to log intervention questions. When a client’s data is no longer correct, I click a button that brings me to the source record (standard option in a gridd button field) in the first mentioned base. I change the data and come back to the interface. I fill in some necessary fields and trigger an automation that creates a new record and fills in the client data.

The problem is that the client data is still the old data. If I could trigger a manual sync from my interface, that would be solved and the updated data would be immediately available.

[Kamille_Parks]

Really great idea for a button action

[Karlstens]

I would still love to see a Copy field to Clipboard button.

[Karlstens]

Good evening @Emily_Sermons - what are Airtable’s plans regarding Grid Based buttons that execute Script Extensions? For example, I’ve just written a script extension for my base, but I have no way of accessing/triggering my Script from an Interface - and the Table Button Fields are greyed out, and the Interface Button doesn’t appear to have an Extension access option.

EDIT:
Further to my previous post, I’d like to see Field Dependent Buttons, that are only clickable upon field other criteria being met.

It would also be extremely useful for an Automation Button to return an output message from the Automation upon completion or failure - specified by the Automation script output.