New Feature: Hide Form Field by URL Parameters

[Jordan_Scott1]

Hi all!

Sharing an update you’ll see this week - you can now hide form fields from a submitters view in Airtable using a new URL parameter. This is meant to create a more seamless user experience by hiding any pre-filled fields on forms.

For example, if you’re creating an NPS or beta feedback survey like you’ll see in the example below. On the right, you will see the experience before updating the URL and on the left-hand side, you can see the experience after.

In practice, here is an example of how this would be accomplished:

• Before
  https://airtable.com/shr7EmCXXraT6OwKk?prefill_Feature=Hide%20form%20fiel
• After: hide_Feature=true being added to the end of the URL
  https://airtable.com/shr7EmCXXraT6OwKk?prefill_Feature=Hide%20form%20field&hide_Feature=true

Additional resources:

• Support documentation: Prefilling a form

Let us know if you have any questions!

[Rebecca_Elam]

couldnt you just put white space where the title should be

[marks]

You can now use Field IDs instead of field names/form field title in your URLs for both hiding and prefilling. We’ll get the support article updated soon, but I wanted to let the community know first.

Off topic from forms, but you can also use Field IDs in Shared view URL filters too

These improvements should help make form links more resilient to breaking when field names or form field titles change!

[Greg_F]

This is super useful!!!

Bye bye " Please, please do not change this field"

[rafaban98]

This is HUGE thank you!

[rafaban98]

@marks I was thinking of hiding the recordid() to link and gather unique post survey info from participants each having their own link. Since I was already planning on prefilling their name and email, would hiding the linked recordid which just shows their name affect privacy?

[rafaban98]

@marks I'm still a little new to Airtable, so I just want to make sure. Is having the recordid in the URL the privacy concern? Thanks!

[marks]

Hiu @rafaban98 - the potential privacy implication is if you hide a linked record field and would consider the list of records in the linked record field to be sensitive information. For example, hiding a list of client names (or even a list of IDs would leak your client count).

Instead, I'd recommend you create a new single-line text field called "Client Record ID" and use that on your form to prefill the Airtable record ID (recXXX) and optionally hide it too. Then, have an automation that is triggered by form submission that copies that record ID in the "Client Record ID" field into the linked record field. This way, even if your user unhides the "Client Record ID" field on your form, they just see a single client record -- not the ability to list (or count) all your clients.

[rafaban98]

@marks ok thank you, that makes sense!

So if the use case only has one person (the person using the form) in the linked record then prefilling the linked record with the ecodeUrl(recordID()) wouldn't compromise security of the base? The issue is if you have many records in the linked record field people would be able to see the list. 

Thanks,

[marks]

@rafaban98 I cant comment on "compromise security of the base" but the principle I recommend following is assuming people who have access to your form are curious and tinkerers. Therefore, make sure anything you hide using URL params is not something you wouldn't want them to see or be able to change in a way that would negatively impact your work.

Hope this helps!

[Shift_Happens_V]

This new feature breaks URL links due to the 2 underscores at prefill_ and hide_ . I am trying to place my URL in an <a href" 'URL' "><img <a/> code in automation email message body. Can anyone help to figure out how to escape markdown from breaking this URL. I can't use a simple backslash because the URL will then be an incorrect URL with added '\' backslash. So I need another option. Silly IMO to use 2 underscores when airtable knows that anything inside _test_ becomes italicized. Any solutions?