Clients HATE new interface sidebar so much they want to stop using Airtable

[TDY]

We are spending all morning desperately trying to find a way to get OUT of this hideous unwanted new interface view, and back to how things worked before.

Our clients are furious at this change and our inability to revert it. We've literally spent a year in developing a product for a major client who now DOESN'T WANT IT because of this change.

Does ANYONE here know how to revert this before we lose a major contract (nice timing Airtable, we're up for the 2nd year of development contracting)?

We are incredibly concerned with our Airtable decision now, as this type of change means they will do it to us again and we'll end up in this situation with clients again.

[Erin_Keeffe]

Adding my voice that the sidebar feels like a major regression, or like it's directly aimed at enterprise teams with many interfaces? I'm not really sure but I don't see a mostly empty sidebar taking up a ton of horizontal space being beneficial for most non-enterprise customers which potentially sets a pretty worrying precedent for future updates...

[nwttyler]

While the non-hideable menu on the old interface was an annoyance, the new menu bar on the side takes up significantly more real estate and completely breaks all of our interface views. The whole point of views is to build dashboards which can be displayed on standalone screens. There should be an option to HIDE ALL MENUS. That can be achieved in roughly 4 lines of code (2 lines in css, 2 lines in javascript). Fingers crossed this gets fixed soon.

[NAVana986]

Absolutely ruins the interfaces I have developed for our team.  I am already looking for alternative solutions.  Additionally, the lack of a mobile interface in 2023 is a joke.  I have loved Airtable, but whoever is making these decisions needs to be fired.

[Anonymous]

We have Glide running for this exact reason. I need to control who sees what, as well as clean things up for the average user.

[ScottWorld]

@NAVana986 @nwttyler @Erin_Keeffe @TDY @David_Smedberg @Eric_McFetridge @Anonymous 

Please note:

I agree with all of your sentiments, but Airtable employees do not typically read the posts that people make in this community, so this entire thread will most likely never be seen by Airtable employees.

The only posts that they MIGHT READ are the ones where they started the thread (and even then, it's questionable if they will read your responses).

So, everybody who posted in this thread, please be sure to repost your comments in their official announcement thread about the new interface design. That is the only place where your comments MIGHT get seen.

p.s. You may also want to send an email to support@airtable.com, but they typically don't reply to emails for several weeks (if at all).

[Erin_Keeffe]

Good call thanks @ScottWorld ! I would also highly recommend people submit a feature request through the "Message support" option from the help menu in the top right when in a normal base (not an interface). This is probably the best way to make noise that will get to people who can make decisions about this stuff. the more noise on the same topics the better.

In the chat, type a few words, hit enter, and click "No" for the help article suggestions until you get the option to click "Help with Airtable product", and then "Feature request" (or "Bug") at which point you can submit a request.

[Eric_McFetridge]

Thanks for pointing us to that post. I have commented over there and had already reached out to enterprise support and our success manager as well. I appreciate the talent and the capability the Airtable team has and understand that we all hate change, but this particular change is going to cause some serious issues. I honestly like aspects of the navigation panel, but it will not work for us in its current state.

[TDY]

This does not bear well for this change. I'd start looking at rollback, plus high user engagement here, and the solution of "make optional" really does work I think for everyone. How can optional be argued with?

[TDY]

That may kill our largest contract.

[TDY]

That's not good.