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New: Setting custom record terminology

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Ayesha_Bose
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

:wave: Hello! I’m Ayesha, a Product Manager here at Airtable. We’re so excited to share a new feature with you that allows you to change the term “record” in the product to a term that’s more specific to your table.

b73f68e709633d37d4a6c2c4c9ee9e0422b30ddb.png

What is this?

When you name a table, you can now optionally select a name for your records from a list of 50+ options. You’ll see that name used in the product where you see your table or view, so you can more easily understand what actions you’re taking.

For example, instead of seeing the generic “Add record” action:

104a4e36fc1d445d603859fcc7d87524285ab2d2.png

You can now override this “record” terminology by specifying the work that you want to track. If you choose to call your record a “task”, you and your team can now see “Add task”:
2a2d2a23a3674c7a1849a993f5501c106017ba07.png

How can I set this for a table?

You can select this from the dropdown next to a table name, under “Rename table”:
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What options can you choose from?

You can choose from a list of 50+ options, based on common workflows (Project, Task, Event, Request, Campaign, etc.). We do not support the ability to add in your own term.

If you don’t see an option you’re looking for, let us know by filling out this form to request a new term.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, please let us know if you have any questions.

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

25 Comments
Karlstens
11 - Venus
11 - Venus

ohhhh shiny! Thanks for this, I’ll check it out very soon! :coffee:

Jack_Manuel
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Nice, thanks! Could you perhaps explain the reasoning behind not supporting a custom option? I’m sure there’ll be a lot of requests and it might assuage them?

Ayesha_Bose
Airtable Employee
Airtable Employee

Since these terms will appear throughout the product, we wanted to make sure that the options work well everywhere they will show up. In addition, as we think about supporting other languages in Airtable in the future, we also wanted to make sure these terms will work.

We’ll keep an eye on the requests and would love to know if there’s any options you think are missing! We’ll be regularly adding new terms as needed.

ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

HI @Ayesha_Bose,

A few comments:

  1. The plural of “person” is “people”, not “persons”. If you choose “person” as the term, it says at the bottom “### persons”.

  2. In the lower left corner of the grid view, where it shows how many records you’re currently looking at: Many people get confused if the number is lower than they’re expecting because they don’t realize that they’re looking at a filtered list. They might even think that records have been deleted. What it should say in the lower left is “X of Y records”. Currently, it just says “X records”. But it should say “X of Y records”. This would enable people to know at a glance how many records are in their entire table vs. how many records they’re currently looking at.

  3. Similarly, it would be nice if the views in the left margin would show a number next to them to indicate how many records are currently visible in that view. That number could show up in the tooltip which appears when you hover over a view name.

ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

@Jeremy_Oglesby Duh. Yes, I know that it’s “grammatically permissible” as the plural form of person. I am a grown adult who is in Mensa and also has a college degree. But it is almost NEVER used in day-to-day language — neither conversationally nor in writing. Try going around saying “persons” instead of “people” in your conversations, and let me know about all the strange looks you get. If Airtable isn’t going to give us a choice of which terms we can use (which is a very strange decision), they should at least give us the commonly-used version of those words.

Rupert_Hoffsch1
10 - Mercury
10 - Mercury

Please add multiple language support soon! Thank you :slightly_smiling_face:

Jack_Manuel
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Thank you for your response, although I can’t say I’m any clearer on the reasoning? Are we not essentially just talking about setting the singular of a table name? Why would a custom option be any more prohibitive to foreign language support and deeper product integration than custom table names?

I won’t be adopting this feature in this format as only a third of the tables in our main base have an appropriate option and consistency is far more important to my users than nice features (and I do think this is a nice feature). I understand you’re accepting requests for new options but that feels limiting. I don’t want to count on your team agreeing with my suggestion and implementing it in order to have a tightly integrated base.

Again thank you for rolling out the new feature and for answering my questions, but this one feels like a miss and I hope it’s not indicative of a less customisable future for Airtable.

Hendrik_Yang
9 - Sun
9 - Sun

Minor update but it’s great nonetheless @Ayesha_Bose . My requested feature update is to allow choosing default single select option when you click the button add. It will be quite handy.

Elias_Gomez_Sai
13 - Mars
13 - Mars

In the Delete dialog, the terminology is not applied (“products” in my case):

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