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Mar 12, 2021 08:42 PM
I have a script I want to run to speed up data entry but I can’t figure out how to run it from a mobile device. The button support is too limited on the mobile app. Has anyone been able to run scripts on a mobile device?
Mar 17, 2021 01:43 PM
Sorry but I completely forgot to add the kicker. That is that what needs to be done is a linked record need to be created and linked to the main record which you retrieve via a QR code. I feel like I may have wasted your time. You have made me rethink the usefulness of forms.
Thank you,
Lee
Mar 18, 2021 08:00 AM
I guess this gets back to my original question which I didn’t explain well. I need to execute a scripting app from a mobile device to be able to streamline my workflow. As Bill correctly pointed out automations are not the correct tool to use. I hope that when scripting exits beta and goes into production it will be possible to execute a scripting app from a mobile device the same way you can from the desktop version. I will add this to the request list. Thank you both for your help in this matter.
Mar 18, 2021 11:22 PM
Scripting has been out of beta for over a year. While its features have grown over the past year, none of the feature additions have been anywhere near the scale of what would be required in order to run a script on a mobile device.
You may want to look into a portal such as Stacker or miniExtensions for adding/editing records from a webpage.
Mar 19, 2021 09:01 AM
I can think of a number of reasons this is not an ideal approach. The biggest is nature of mobile apps; they must ensure security in a climate with many more attack surfaces than a desktop browser must endure. As such, any kind of scripting is likely to raise a number of challenges that are easily overcome in a non-mobile-based web browser.
Another challenge is script running at the edge. While desktops typically have lots of memory for performing dynamic [late binding] processes, mobile devices are limited and constrained in ways the desktop is not.
Lastly, connectedness. Mobile devices are typically not in the most favored connected devices and this could put added pressure on server-side data requests and updates. Imagine a script process designed to expect an always-stable connection and what would happen with just a few timeouts because the connection cannot be sustained. You’d likely have to write the script one way for desktop browser and completely different with error and completion-handling logic differently for the mobile app. Should Airtable endure the likely support obligations, training, script examples and primitives to make this possible? I think it’s a risky idea if the goal is profitiability.
Ergo, my feeling is that you will never see dynamic (lately bound) script-building or script-running features in Airtable’s mobile app.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, execution of any manual or automated process based on custom scripts should be performed through indirection - i.e., establish conditions for said custom actions to fire and allow the servers to perform these processes because - well - that’s what they do well and the infrastructure is already in place.