Managing Views and Forms for Multiple Clients

[AndyC]

Hi all,

I’m new to Airtable and was hoping to get some advice on how to set up the base properly especially so it is scalable for numerous clients.

I am designing an ordering system where the client submits their orders via forms and can view their order details via read-only grid views.

Currently, I have client specific forms and views which I have duplicated for each of the clients (currently 2 test clients). The forms use the ‘Limit record selection to a view’ feature so clients can only select what is specific to them.

Since my system is a work in progress, I am constantly updating the forms and views with any changes and then have to replicate that change for each client. I can kind of manage it now since it’s just two clients, but I can imagine with 5 or more clients, a small change to a view or form would take a fair bit of time to propagate across and is error prone.

I’m not in a position to pay for the Stacker plan that has the portal feature. And the miniExtensions Portal for Airtable doesn’t seem to support client specific forms (and limit record selection to only the clients’ records). And their portal grid view doesn’t look as nice as Airtable’s default grid view on mobile.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to manage & update forms and views in a scaleable way for numerous clients?

Thanks in advance!

[ScottWorld]

Welcome to the community, @AndyC!

You can create dynamically-updating forms for your clients using the combination of JotForm + On2Air Forms.

You will only need to create ONE form, and it will dynamically pull in the values for that particular client.

You would send each client to that form by using a prefill parameter in the URL that would prefill a hidden field in the form with their unique Record ID or their name or something like that.

For a dynamic portal, you can take a look at softr.io

[AndyC]

Thanks heaps @ScottWorld for your suggestion on the dynamically updating forms.

I’m assuming for a dynamically updating view (with client specific content) I’d need to use another tool like miniExtensions Portal for Airtable (or a portal solution). Would that be correct?

I had a quick look at Softr and it looks like I would be building out a completely new site. As I currently have a simple WordPress client portal set up which is easy to manage, but to display client specific info, I have being creating custom filtered views for each client.

[ScottWorld]

Yes, you can embed the MiniExtensions portal on your website.