New Interface Designer Features

[LarsJohnson]

Hi! I’m Lars, an engineer at Airtable. We’re excited to let you know about several new Interface Designer features launching today that make it easier and more intuitive to build powerful custom apps.

 

New Page Layouts

When creating a new interface page, you’ll now see several new layout options. These full-page layouts are based around a single visualization, offer streamlined configuration controls, and introduce powerful features for interface users.

Highlights of new functionality available in these layouts:

• End user filtering and sorting: Interface users can filter and sort by displayed fields to better understand the data presented.

• Filter Tabs and Dropdowns: Builders can define tabs to save common filter combinations such as “Needs review” or “My tasks.” Or, they can add dropdowns to highlight key fields and allow users to mix-and-match filter choices.

• Multiple Visualizations: Builders can enable multiple visualizations of the same data without needing to create additional elements or pages. Interface users are shown a dropdown to switch between visualizations.

• Action Buttons: Builders can allow record creation via customizable forms and add action buttons that link to other pages to continue a workflow.

For more information about creating and configuring these new layouts, take a look at this support article.

Record Detail Sidesheet

Detail views allow users to drill down into records to see more information than can be displayed in the primary visualization and take record-specific actions.

Starting today, record detail views can be configured to display in a sidesheet to the right of an existing interface page rather than replacing the entire screen. This offers a lighter-weight experience and helps users retain more context on the original list they were viewing.

 

Reusable Record Detail and Form Layouts

As apps grow to power more workflows, interface builders need the ability to show different field details and forms for different use cases. Before today, all record details for a given table shared the same layout.

Now, interface builders can reuse existing record detail and form layouts or create separate layouts from separate contexts for more customized experiences.

Default Values in Interface Forms

Last but certainly not least, we’ve added the ability to set default values for interface form fields. This helps interface builders guide creation flows and supports workflows where records are created from a filtered context.

For example, a task created within an “Assigned to me” filter will default to being assigned to the current viewer and the builder can specify “Not Started” as the default status.

More Features Coming Soon

We’re continuing to work on additional improvements such as allowing interface users to search through large lists of records, and giving builders quicker access to make schema and notification changes directly within Interface Designer.

We look forward to hearing what you think, please let us know any feedback or questions!

[Karlstens]

These new features are great. Thanks for sharing and all the work done to get these product updates out. ☕️

I’m concerned that the potential of Interface Forms will never be fully seen for all their awesomeness until Airtable relax the permissions that prevent read-only users (who can access the Interface Forms) from creating new records via an interface form. It leaves them to continue to use the View Form for new record creation - which doesn’t support default values - a feature that really needs to be added at a base/table level.

Further to this, one feature needed is input field data validation at the base level, to then be leveraged by both Interface Forms and View Forms, or any other view for that matter. Having only Automations to post-process form entered data is killing us. We need users form input data cleaned/checked at the point of entry.

[adam-skjervold]

Awesome! I love the interfaces as it really sets airtable apart and provides a ton of value. One thing that myself and a ton of people have been pining for is mobile interfaces too!

[ScottWorld]

Hi @LarsJohnson,

Some features that we would like to see in Interfaces:

Number fields: The ability to have commas in number fields, so large numbers like 1,823,298 don’t look like 1823298. Also, the ability for number fields to have international formatting (commas for decimal separators and periods for thousands separators), so that Interfaces can be used in countries outside the USA. 

Moving pages: The ability to move an “interface page” from one “interface group” into another “interface group”. Because this isn’t possible, we currently have to recreate our entire interface pages from scratch.

Duplicating Records: The ability to duplicate records inside a linked record grid.

We’re also keeping a list of other general Airtable feature requests here.

[Ruchika_Abbi1]

Have these features released to all users across plans?? I don't see an option to set the default value anywhere;
Please see screenshot.

 

[matt_stewart1]

these are fantastic updates!

Two additional features to keep people from navigating to base views:

1. Ability to print from interface
2. Ability to turn on/off "watching comments" from interface

[Joseph_Roza]

Thank you for the update as per usual.

The new form templates are really exceptional, but I noticed the forms on KanBan still can't be customized (the big plus button on KanBan view). Was this intentional, or has this fix just not rolled out yet?

[Hannah_Martin]

Glad that Interfaces is still being worked on! It's a great feature with a huge amount of potential.

I know many people have already requested this, but I really would love the option to either embed Interfaces on a website or link to them publicly without giving visitors access to any editable data.

I'm aware this probably isn't a regular use case, but the database I'm working on is a hobby one and the purpose of it is to share detailed information with other fans. Since I'm not a business and am just an individual doing this for fun (data entry is fun, I swear!), using multiple third-party tools, websites and other ways to display Airtable data quickly becomes expensive, and I think Interfaces would be a wonderful solution to this. 

Of course, development is still on-going and I know Airtable has a lot of projects and a lot of people working on said projects. This isn't a complaint at all, just a comment (hopefully) letting some of those people know what kinds of use cases I think Interfaces would be useful for, and the sorts of problems the feature(s) could help eliminate.

[Cara_Van_Meter]

@LarsJohnson, how can I customize a layout? I love that the list layout includes the filter, sort and search options in the upper right hand corner for the end user (and the ability to switch visualizations!), but I'd like to also be able to add a button and some other elements to the same page. How can I do that? Usually the "Add Element" button shows up in the lower left hand corner, but it's not there when I choose the list layout. 

Alternatively I tried starting with a blank canvas so I could add both a grid or list element AND other elements like buttons, but when I take that approach, there doesn't appear to be a way to show the filter, sort and search options to the end user or allow them to switch visualizations. What am I missing?  

[HappyKarma]

Do we have an ETA for maps inside interface builder? I see it on your homepage, I get the impression you'r saving it for your own apps? An ability to show a map related to each enter in your table would be amazing and I wouldn't have to you an external product to do this. 

Thoughts?

[kofal]

Awesome. 

Is it me or the sorting feature is not available on the IOS APP?

Or is there a way to change the default sorting field to avoid this issue?

Thanks @LarsJohnson