Product Update: Inline Record Creation/Deletion & Editing Settings in Interfaces

[Johari_Wiggins]

Hello, Airtable community! I'm Johari, a software engineer here at Airtable. I'm excited to share some enhancements to Interfaces that will give you more control and flexibility when collaborating with your team.

New Linked Record Creation/Deletion in Various Elements

The first enhancement allows collaborators to create and delete new linked records directly within List, Grid, Calendar, Kanban, and Timeline elements. This feature simplifies the process of adding and deleting related records. Gone are the days of the lock icon and complex workarounds to create/delete linked records in interfaces. Now, you can swiftly and seamlessly accomplish this within your current layout. To access this functionality, you will need to enable the Inline Creation/Deletion setting mentioned below. 

Settings Separation: Inline Creation/Deletion and Inline Editing

The second improvement gives you more granular control over your layouts. We've separated the settings that enable inline creation/deletion of records and inline editing of records in List, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, and Grid layouts. This means that you can now choose to enable only inline editing without enabling creation/deletion, allowing for more precise control of your data input and management.

These improvements (available on all plans) are designed to streamline your experience and offer you more control over how you and your collaborators interact with your data. We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts, so please don't hesitate to share your feedback!

Questions?

• We’d love to hear from you —if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below!

[Karlstens]

This update is most welcome. Thank you so much for sharing!

( I had actually stopped using/developing interfaces due to this very feature being locked for so long. Now I have some work to do! ) 🥳

[kuovonne]

Thank you very much for this feature!

[Jack_Manuel]

Yes! Been looking forward to this one for so long!

[Jan_Segier1]

Deleting a record works by right clicking on the record in the gridd view that is added as an element, but it doesn't workin a "show data as grid" view (I can only "copy" and "expand" and everythin is enabled in the right hand settings bar). Am I missing something? 

[Johari_Wiggins]

@Jan_Segier1 hmm, that doesn't sound right.  Can you verify that the "Add/delete records inline" toggle is enabled in the "Add Records" section (see screenshot below)? 

[Jan_Segier1]

Aha, it said "enabled", but had to click through to toggle "add/delete records inline" seperatly. Works fine now, thanks. 

[Yaron_Avramov]

Thanks, long awaited feature.

However, it seems that when a user without base access tries to add a record in an "embedded" list in an interface, they get a "you are not permitted to perform this operation" error.

Is there a solution to that issue?

[dsolimini]

Excellent features that are necessary for Interfaces to be a top-tier useful tool. Thank you!

Some feedback on an issue that these new features exacerbate, at least for me. It seems that various ways to create interface elements that list related records are increasingly inconsistent in their features and UI.

For example:  

• A list view created from a page template has options to be a List, Gallery, Kanban, Calendar, Timeline, and Grid and it can have New REcord and action buttons:
  
• However, a linked record field in a record detail pane -- showing the exact same content -- would have additional options to be displayed as Pills or Cards:
  
• However, if I create a page using the Record Review template and add a linked record field, I can only display those as Pills or Cards:
  

• If I choose instead to create a Grid/Cal/Kan/Time/ or List, then I can switch between those layouts, but the UI for both editing and for the user is different:

  

  • Here now settings are all over the place and dramatically different:

    • Permissions settings are in different places
    • the "list options" submenu of settings is not there
    • there's an appearance tab in one bt not he other
    • I can't let users switch between visualizations/layouts in one 
    • There are not tabs/dropdowns in one verison.
    • the UI for users adding a new record is different between the versions
    • I can't add action buttons in one variant ....
    • etc etc etc

In short, it seems as if there are multiple versions of elements that are largely displaying the same data, each with different settings and capabilities. This introduces a lot of friction for me when I'm building interfaces. It in particular it makes experimenting with different approaches to display data cumbersome and frustrating, forces me to remember multiple locations for the same/similar settings, and has user-side UI inconsistencies that make their experience less consistent. 

It would be helpful if features and settings on such similar elements could be kept in sync with eachother as the Interfaces Designer product is developed and updated over time.

[wkidger]

This is a great update, but @Johari_Wiggins pease could you confirm if the below is expected behaviour, and if there is a further update coming to allow full creation of linked records:

I'm trying to create a record, and within that create a new linked record. There's a nice new 'Create a new [object]' button, but rather than brining up a form/further modal like you might expect, this just creates a completely empty linked record which then can't be edited:

... that seems kind of weird?

I then tried starting to type the name of the customer as if I was searching for them, and this then fills in the name in the 'new object' button, so I guess that's the purpose of the button:

... but this seems a slightly unintuitive workflow (perhaps the button shouldn't appear until you type, if that's the intention) and you still can't fill in any details for the new linked record (other than the record name).

Further to that, if you use the form method (which would be my preference), there's no option to create a new linked record at all - seems inconsistent?

I appreciate the update nonetheless, and I know it's a complicated product with lots of feature requests to balance, but I'm just wondering if the ability to create a linked record (with additional field inputs) through this type of workflow is something that's being worked on? I explained the issue here on a community thread, and also emailed the support team a couple of weeks ago about it. I can't work out if I'm missing some solution, or if this is just a limitation and, if the latter, if I should hold out for an update.

Thanks! 

[Johari_Wiggins]

@Yaron_Avramov this is an issue we are currently working on. It should be resolved in the next week or so.  In the meantime, you can avoid this issue by adding the parent linked record as a visible field in the "embedded list". For example, if you're looking a project detail page and add a Grid element for the project's tasks, you would need to make the 'Project' field visible in that Grid. Not ideal, but hopefully this can unblock you enough as we resolve this issue!