New features in Interface Forms

[carla]

 Hi everyone! I'm Carla and I am a Software Engineer at Airtable. I'm thrilled to share four new updates to forms in Interfaces that are now available to all Airtable customers! These changes make forms more powerful and allow you to create more sophisticated workflows while simplifying the experience for people using your apps.

🎯Conditional Fields: Now you can add rules to show and hide fields in a form based on how your users have filled out earlier fields. You can now support more complicated workflows with Interfaces forms, yet your users will only have to fill out the fields relevant to them. 

🔒Limiting Select Options: Take complete control over the available select options in forms. You can now determine which single or multi-select choices are accessible, ensuring a streamlined experience for your users. Say goodbye to unnecessary options cluttering up the form!

📝 Read-only Default Values: Provide valuable context to your users while maintaining control over specific form fields. You can pre-fill fields with default values that users cannot modify to help guide your users through the form while providing them with relevant information.

💡Helper Text: You can now add helpful instructions or guidance to your form fields. This allows you to provide additional context, examples, or instructions to assist users in filling out the form accurately and efficiently.

 With these updates, we're making Interface forms more powerful and user-friendly. We are committed to continuously refining and expanding the features available in Airtable, and we hope these changes improve your experience with the platform.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the future and let us know how we could improve Interface Forms even further in the comments!

[Stephen_Orr1]

@carla Awesome news! Limiting dropdown values is fairly useful but I'd love to suggest a fast follow on enhancement for dynamically limiting values based on answers given in previous form fields. Conditional dropdown values has been desired for YEARS and is one of the main drivers in pushing Airtable users to third party form builders still today. From firsthand experience at a large company on an enterprise plan, having this ability would be a game changer.

Otherwise, all sounds great!

-Stephen

[Abraham_Bochner]

Appreciated and commendable, and thank you, but the requested list attached is of greater importance, as has been repeatedly stressed over the years.

https://air.tableforums.com/t/list-your-top-airtable-feature-requests-here/260 

[Databaser]

Will "Read-only Default Values" also be introduced for the not Interface forms? 🙏

+ this 👇

"but I'd love to suggest a fast follow on enhancement for dynamically limiting values based on answers given in previous form fields. Conditional dropdown values has been desired for YEARS and is one of the main drivers in pushing Airtable users to third party form builders still today."

[ScottWorld]

We need conditional dropdown values. This is currently only possible with external form tools like Fillout and Noloco.

[Karlstens]

May I ask how Billing is currently structured to allow users to access these forms?

For example, I have 1 workspace administrators that owns and creates Bases, Automations and Interfaces. I then have 4 collaborators that view, maintain, administer and use the data stored within those bases (but not the base schema/automation scripts) via either Bases or Interfaces. And finally, I have a dozen or so users who fill out several View Forms for entering in data.

The billing for this is 5 Pro Users.

However, for the Form fillers to access Interface Forms - to essentially enter in and submit data (as per their View Forms actions), what is the expectation from a billing point of view? Do those 12 users need full paid Pro Accounts? Or alternatively, how can we share these Interface Forms with users without blowing out Airtable subscription costs?

My point is, these additions are fantastic!!! But... the target audience can't actually use them due to billing constraints?

[BillH]

@carla 

This looks like several big steps forward, thank you.

Having said that, I agree with @Stephen_Orr1 , @Databaser and @ScottWorld in that having conditional logic determine drop down selections would be a great next step.

One other feature I would love to see is the ability to auto fill interface forms.  I can call a view form from a button using "Go to URL in Record" where it picks up the URL from a formula field, but when you have several interface form pages on an interface, going back to the view forms seems a step backward and can be confusing.  

So thank you again, and hope to see more.

[Tobias_LGKR]

Thank you! Great step forweard. Can you please expand these features to the whole interface experience, not just forms?

[Karlstens]

Yah, @Tobias_LGKR I too was just testing out new Interface ideas, only to then realise that the new features discussed here aren't available in other generic areas of Interfaces - where I kind of assumed they would have been.

[Tobias_LGKR]

@Karlstens We don't use forms much in our intrerfaces. But we could really improve the interface experience by having those features in the rest of our interfaces.

[Joe_Svingala]

This sounded great & I went through to re-build a lot of the forms I've already built as views, only to realize that I can no longer restrict collaborator fields so that only specific users are selectable options in the interface form. 

I'm just going to hold off on using interface forms until some of the long standing requests & already existing features get added.

Also - what was the thought process behind making the required field '*' grey instead of red? It makes it nearly invisible on a bright screen