Button Field Not Working In My Interface

[Celeste_Bancos]

I added a button field to my interface but it’s not clickable.

I don’t see an option to make it editable when I go to the properties to try to configure.

I’m assuming this is a bug — buttons would be handy to include on an interface!

[Kamille_Parks]

Button fields are not an editable field type anywhere, so that won’t change in Interface Designer.

What does this button do? Button fields that open a URL work, buttons that try to activate an app do not since there is no app sidebar in the Interface Designer (all your apps are in Dashboards, entirely separate from an Interface).

[Celeste_Bancos]

The button calls a scripting app that sends a webhook to Pipedream to sync the record with a different database. Maybe there’s a better way to do that? It’s already annoying that it pops open the app dashboard every time I click it.

I just want a button that makes a POST request in the background without opening any other kind of interface.

[Kamille_Parks]

The Scripting App is no exception to “no Button that opens an app will work in an Interface”.

Assuming your script requires no human input and is a otherwise compatible with Automation Scripts, you could use a checkbox or a single select field (empty by default, one option for “run script”) to trigger an Automation to send the same POST request. Be aware of your monthly limits for Automations.

[Celeste_Bancos]

Yeah, I guess I’ll switch over to automations and say goodbye to my pretty button. Oh well!

[Jonathan_Frank]

This is a frustrating limitation imo. I don’t want to add pointless extra data with checkboxes to trigger automations (although I do get that that’s a potential workaround in some cases), and I also need the user to be able to interact with the scripting app that gets called when they’ve pressed the button. I had high hopes that Interfaces would be a great way of building an interactive front-end, but this really limits its application for my situation.

It’s been pointed out here that there’s no app sidebar in the interface designer, and that dashboards are entirely separate from an Interface. All of that is true - but it’s not a good reason for why this feature isn’t designed in! I’d like to see the Interface able to trigger apps which then open and run in a dashboard-like area of the Interface window.

[Kamille_Parks]

This would require a direct link between Interfaces and Dashboards to work as you described, or the code for every app would need to be rewritten to handle external requests. With the former, there are performance issues that come along with that since apps like Scripting App need to be able to read the entire base (regardless of what the entered code actually does).

While Chart is both an “app” and now an Interface “element”, and Timeline used to be an “app” and is now a “view type” as well as an “element”, it is unclear if Scripting will get the similar conversion treatment.

[Celeste_Bancos]

I guess what I really want for my use-case is the ability to trigger an automation with a button (since the scripting block is overkill just to send a webhook), and to have that type of button work in Interfaces as well as in the regular table view.

[Joe_Hewes]

You could use a web hook that allows a trigger using a query string (just by visiting a url). Integromat let’s you set that up- deliver the record id as part of the url and let integromat dig the rest of the data out once it has delivered. Generate the query string url with a formula button and add that to your layout.

E.g:
https://hook.integromat.com/yourunique32characterslongstring?name=Airtable&recordid=recordid

Only downside for this technique is it would open a blank browser window which isn’t very neat :frowning:

[Celeste_Bancos]

Yeah I considered something like that but having to close all those extra tabs would drive me crazy!