Product Update: Improvements to Base Navigation

[Rotimi_Iziduh]

Hi everyone!

I’m Rotimi Iziduh and I’m the product manager working on various Core Surfaces here at Airtable. I’m super excited to share a set of upcoming updates that make the in-base experience easier to navigate, and improve the discoverability of the automations and interfaces features. Specifically, we are introducing a new top navigational structure that contains the below three tabs:

• Data: This is the default starting point of the old experience. As before, it is where you will review and edit the various tables and views that contain your data
• Automations: This provides easier access to automations that trigger various actions based on your underlying data
• Interfaces: This gives quick access to a visual layer to turn your underlying data and automations into apps that are tailored to your unique workflows

To illustrate this, here’s a quick before and after snapshot:

Before:

After:

We’re excited to launch these improvements and please keep an eye out for more exciting updates across your favorite Airtable surfaces!

Thanks,
Rotimi

These updates will be rolled out to 100% by end of day tomorrow. If you aren’t seeing these changes reflected, please try clearing your cache.

[Justin_Barrett]

@marks It may be a small change, but this has to be one of my favorite small changes in recent memory. I wrote a script to help me grab field IDs to use in scripts, and that’ll still help when I need to get them in bulk, but sometimes I just want one, and this will probably be the easiest way to do that going forward. THANK YOU!

[Vivid-Squid]

DamonH:

And if they don’t show up as highlighted, you don’t have any idea what tab you are in unless you remember. Unfortunately that behavior is not resolved but I really hope it gets tweaked now that they have a new shiny UI upon which to refine!

In the mean time you can use Ctrl+j to see your active table and jump to another one without scrolling.

[marks]

In the mean time you can use Ctrl+j to see your active table and jump to another one without scrolling.

I have to admit, I just learned about command+J today :joy: and am so excited about it :rocket:

[Karlstens]

Side note: Ctrl + J is also a keyboard shortcut universal to browsers for navigating to Downloads. Not sure if intentional… I guess at least that it’s easy to remember? I should really make time to learn all Airtable shortcuts.

@marks thanks for the Field ID update, super useful.

[DavidVM]

I like most of these changes, however, I’m now seeing an “Insights” tab on the far right. I’m on the Pro plan, so all it does is tell me that the feature is only available for Enterprise. No sneak peek. No basic functionality. Just a constant reminder how frustrating it is that Airtable doesn’t provide a mid-level option between Pro and Enterprise.

My business is not large enough to warrant switching to Enterprise at this time (I can’t justify a 10-100X price increase for a few additional features), and I’m not even sure that Airtable would permit me to move to Enterprise without additional users. So why continually market something to me that is not viable or even available to me as a loyal paid user? All it does is serve as a continual reminder of what to me is one of Airtable’s biggest flaws. If you want me to move to Enterprise, I would be happy to consider it. But if you don’t have an Enterprise plan that I can even consider signing up for, please stop telling me how great it would be if I signed up.

Better yet, create a viable path for Pro users to grow with Airtable and eventually become Enterprise subscribers. This would mean allowing Pro users to pay more to access Enterprise features that are actually needed by businesses earning less than $1,000,000/year. Namely increased record limits, automations and Blocks/Apps/Extensions. You have Pro users lining up saying that they’re willing to pay more for these basic Enterprise features. But they won’t wait in line forever. I have seen dozens of Pro users abandon Airtable for this exact reason.

Edit: The “Insights” tab has now been moved over to the right, and includes the star symbols showing that it’s an upgrade feature. This is better, but my complaint still stands regarding the lack of a viable route for most Pro users to transition to Enterprise, or at least pay for higher limits.

[Jack_Manuel]

One thing I’d like to add; any plans to make notifications accessible within an interface? I have an excellent use case for an interface now, namely copy editing social media posts, and having the comments always visible is great, but not knowing when someone has commented on a post that I’m not working on means I can’t yet ‘live’ in this interface.

[ScottWorld]

Yes, interfaces not only needs notifications, but it also needs a quick way to navigate back to “Data” and “Automations”. As it stands now, Interfaces is just a completely disconnected layer from the rest of Airtable, which makes it unlikely that people will want to use it. @Rotimi_Iziduh

[Steve_Singleton]

Thanks for this functionality. A few possible enhancements:

• bulk edit fields from this screen (thinking particularly select and delete several fields at once)

• setting field visibility in expanded record view; some fields are entirely admin, part of a formula calc or automation, or otherwise irrelevant and distracting even in “show hidden fields” view - would this be a place to take those completely out of the picture? I’ve long wanted more ability to control what happens in expanded record view based on different views or contexts, but until that day it would be nice to at least be able to kill some fields entirely outside of certain grid views.

From a UX perspective it’s very uncool to limit full Dependencies viewing to Enterprise users. Data integrity should be the most baseline feature/requirement across all Airtable use cases, and it sucks to get an alert essentially saying “Sure, you can delete this field, but it may have some damaging consequences. We know what those are but we’re not going to tell you because you are not big enough to deserve that information. Now go figure it out for yourself, loser!” We sometimes hear that Airtable is “Excel on Steroids,” but Excel lets everyone trace dependencies - this is more like “Excel On a Bad Diet and Lack of Exercise.”

[ScottWorld]

Steve_Singleton:

From a UX perspective it’s very uncool to limit full Dependencies viewing to Enterprise users. Data integrity should be the most baseline feature/requirement across all Airtable use cases, and it sucks to get an alert essentially saying “Sure, you can delete this field, but it may have some damaging consequences. We know what those are but we’re not going to tell you because you are not big enough to deserve that information. Now go figure it out for yourself, loser!” We sometimes hear that Airtable is “Excel on Steroids,” but Excel lets everyone trace dependencies - this is more like “Excel On a Bad Diet and Lack of Exercise.”

I could not have said this better myself. It is yet another example of Airtable slapping its customers in the face by doing this, and it seems like they do not care.

[Jean_Francois_B]

It’s like having access to the airport’s lounge as a Business class passenger but when you visit the buffet, the cookie jar is for First class passengers only.