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!

[Johari_Wiggins]

@dsolimini I hear you, I can see how that inconsistency is confusing and adds a lot of cognitive load.  I will pass this feedback along to our product team. 

[Johari_Wiggins]

@wkidger ah yes, the creating of a blank record is a weird UX.  I will file a bug on our end for that. I don't know of any plans currently to support triggering creation forms directly from Grid element but I can see how this would be useful. I will bring it up with our team. As far as creating linked records within forms, I know that's something we've discussed but I don't believe we are actively working on it at the moment. I'll be sure to mention this as well. Thanks for your feedback!

[Rob1]

This is Great!

However Id like to add my voice to the list of those finding it still a bit of confusing and sometimes frustrating disconnect between how some features can add records vs those that rely on the form popup.

This seems to be related to inline methods or fields allowed to access the records for specifically select type fields or connected record fields allows ability for user to add new options to these fields. However Any method were the add a record uses th form popup adding new options to these fields is not an option or possible.

For instance you can have an inline add record where when enabled an editor or collaborator can add a new record to multi select, single select, or connected record fields. This ability too add options that dont already exist is really really valuable, however in some interfaces like record view adding a record uses the form interface to add records and this wont allow you to enable or add new options for any of these same fields. This can be pretty confusing and frustrating in limiting options for builds when you wnat users to be able to add new options.

I prefer the slide out record creation vs the form because of this ability but allowing it for forms or not defaulting to from input are not options currently would be great additions to make function feel universal. the most at odds example is the Record review interface. You can have an element field fully open to creating new options by the user yet if they use the panel to add a new record you can on of those same fields. considering how often a formula field is needed to be the primary field this is pretty frustrating

[Angela_Malin]

I would like to also ask why the option to add a record from a form when in a grid view is not an option?

I have invoices that I need to add line items to, I don't want my user to have to click add a blank row and then edit it with the record pop out... I want them to be able to add a linked record (via a form) and fill in the details required at the click of a button.

Whilst I appreciate the new ability to add new records inline I still would love the ability to add a template record OR a record from a form or choice of forms. This is applicable across a lot of applications and I wonder why it is not a key feature in you development.

The ability to add a link record to the current active record is a sort after feature and one that I've had to turn to other tools like softr, on2air and clucky form automations with slow re-directs that should be a native feature in Airtable.

I don't want to give users an extra step to add a row and then edit it - they can do this in other ineterface layouts (list views etc) but not when in a record and looking at linked records.

ESPECIALLY when I can do this with a card view but not grid or list view (the preferred way to see linked data)

Please Please consider adding the add via form options to list and grid views in record overviews (record review and record summaries)

[wkidger]

Thanks for the reply @Johari_Wiggins and for taking the feedback onboard - much appreciated. 

My use case feels like it must be pretty common, so I'm sure there's a workflow/workaround that I'm missing here - are you able to point me in the right direction? Basically what I want to happen is:

Data structure:

• Orders table with order details e.g. total value, items, service date *and* linked field to...
• Companies table, with basic company details (name, address), list of orders *and* linked field to...
• Contacts table - contact details (phone, email, name) - company may have multiple contacts e.g. finance, sales etc.

Workflow:

1. User is viewing some sort of list/table view of orders. Phonecall comes in with customer wanting to create order so user clicks some 'new order' button to create a new order record in a modal/slide-out/form/whatever.
2. User starts to fill in order detail fields, one of which is the company making the order. This is a linked record field, but since this is a new customer they need to create a new 'Company' record - so a further modal or whatever.
3. User fills out company details, one of which is another linked record field - Contact (they will necessarily have to add a new one in this case) - so another modal.
4. User saves contact details and - this is key - is returned to the half-complete 'new Company' modal.
5. User finishes & saves new Company record and is returned to the 'new Order' modal.
6. User finishes & saves new Order record and is returned to the Order list view where they began.

I appreciate this is several layers deep in terms of creating nested new linked records, but actually on the face of it seems a pretty common CRM type workflow, so I'm wondering how other users are achieving this?

Thanks,

Will

[Alvaro_Hernande]

Many thanks for this feature.