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Problems with Forms... How to update in "real time"?

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M_L
8 - Airtable Astronomer
8 - Airtable Astronomer

Greetings, Airtable community!

I wanted to reach out to ask for your ideas and assistance with a road block I ran into:

I have a Fillout "SignUp" Form that allows clients to schedule themselves for an appointment at the specific appointment time they choose. I've successfully customized Fillout form to show ONLY "unfilled" appointments (based on an Airtable view) when the client loads the form.

The problem is that if 3 people load the form at the same time, then they can all 3 "Sign Up" for the exact same appointment. Since they all loaded the form at the same time they have the same options given from Airtable. And since the form doesn't update in "real time" unless they refresh the page, then there's no way to keep them from all 3 selecting the same Appointment time.

On the back end, this means I received 3 SignUps for the same appointment and a "Something Went Wrong..." email from Airtable. I then need to manually go back and remove the extra signups and have 2 of them them SignUp again. I did this last week, and the client signed up for a filled session a second time! 🙂

So I'm wondering:

1. Is there a way to have my Fillout form update the client in "real time" so that users can get feedback if a client just signed up for the slot they were in the process of choosing? E.g., a popup that says "Sorry! This slot has filled!"

2. If not, then is there a way for me to have Airtable automatically email clients who submits a SignUp form for an appointment that is already filled? This isn't ideal, but it would get the job done.

This is honestly a new kind of problem for me, so other ideas are of course welcome. 

M_L_0-1736782487065.png

 

 

TIA,

ML

1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Unfortunately, this is the ONLY feature that Fillout's advanced forms don't currently offer that Airtable's forms DO offer.

However, Fillout told me that they will be adding it sometime this year. Be sure to contact Fillout to let them know that you really need this feature. You can contact them through the chat bubble in the lower right corner of their website.

However, the good news is that this is actually a feature that Airtable's native forms offer -- preventing 2 people from choosing the exact same linked record on a form.

I just discussed this exact topic on this Airtable podcast episode, so you can see it in action by watching the video.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

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3 Replies 3
ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Unfortunately, this is the ONLY feature that Fillout's advanced forms don't currently offer that Airtable's forms DO offer.

However, Fillout told me that they will be adding it sometime this year. Be sure to contact Fillout to let them know that you really need this feature. You can contact them through the chat bubble in the lower right corner of their website.

However, the good news is that this is actually a feature that Airtable's native forms offer -- preventing 2 people from choosing the exact same linked record on a form.

I just discussed this exact topic on this Airtable podcast episode, so you can see it in action by watching the video.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

M_L
8 - Airtable Astronomer
8 - Airtable Astronomer

Thanks @ScottWorld, this is very helpful and saved me from needing to do step #2 I mentioned above. I watched the video (the Airtable forms feature discussion starts at 31:14), and yes, this is exactly what I was needing.

As long as there aren't any other major drawbacks, it looks like I'll be moving back to Airtable Forms for this form until Fillout updates the "real time" aspect of the drop down menus for linked records.

Thanks so much,

ML

Mike_AutomaticN
10 - Mercury
10 - Mercury

Hey @M_L!

We recently had this exact same discussion on the post Best practices for working with forms handling items subject to stock?!

Posting this just in case you want to check it out!!

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation