Automatically submit form? (prefilled by URL)

[Nathans]

Is it possible to automatically submit a form?
I’m creating a series of links that have the form input prefilled. Each can take me to the form with the info I want ready and waiting (which is terrific).
At that point I have to click Submit.
I’m using this for class attendance, so it’s a quick rundown of 25 entries at a time. It would be ideal to load the prefilled URL and have that submit automatically. Is that possible?

TIA,
Nathan

[Justin_Barrett]

Bill.French:

is there any way @Nathans can add a simple Zapier call inside a web app that takes some values and sends them on to Airtable?

I believe this should be fairly easy. Unfortunately I don’t have time at the moment to test and offer more specific guidance, but my gut says that it would be setup as a webhook trigger in Zapier, with the second step in the zap set to feed the webhook data into Airtable. I don’t believe that JS needs to come into play at all.

[Bill_French]

Justin_Barrett:

I don’t believe that JS needs to come into play at all.

How would his custom web app call Zapier’s webhook without issuing a javascript ajax call of some sort?

[Justin_Barrett]

I use webhooks in Integromat, and it’s just a URL that I can call via a hyperlink that I build in a formula field in Airtable. Clicking the URL forces a new tab in my browser to open, I see the webhook result (“Approved”) as the only output in an otherwise empty tab, and I have to manually return to Airtable (tab or standalone app). In the end, I’m using the webhook feature of Integromat, but not typical webhook behavior where it all happens under the hood, and I suppose that’s where JS typically comes into play, so perhaps I misspoke.

In my case, it’s part of my invoicing system, and the browser switch doesn’t bother me because I’m not clicking lots of these links in quick succession. In the situation that @Nathans described, where the desire it to use links to mark someone’s attendance status, all the tab switching would likely make the system quite cumbersome. In that case, JS would definitely be advisable to keep the usage clean.

[Bill_French]

Justin_Barrett:

Clicking the URL forces a new tab in my browser to open, I see the webhook result (“Approved”) as the only output in an otherwise empty tab, and I have to manually return to Airtable (tab or standalone app). In the end, I’m using the webhook feature of Integromat, but not typical webhook behavior where it all happens under the hood, and I suppose that’s where JS typically comes into play, so perhaps I misspoke.

No - you didn’t misspeak. Backstory… he wants to eliminate steps and his “link options” are already presented in his web page, so I was thinking - instead of the links on his webpage calling out to the Airtable web form, why not simply use the onClick() event handler to call direct to the Integromat webhook to post the data? This would be vastly easier than building the complete API interface in javascript.

[Justin_Barrett]

Bill.French:

why not simply use the onClick() event handler to call direct to the Integromat webhook to post the data?

But won’t that open a new tab like my setup does? Or is there a way to make the call under the hood? My Javascript knowledge is rudimentary at best. I played with it a bit many years ago, then stopped for a long time, and only recently have been getting reacquainted with it.

[Bill_French]

Justin_Barrett:

But won’t that open a new tab like my setup does?

No. If you use JQuery (or any Ajax method) of performing a POST over HTTP, it’s all silently executed. Ideally, the POST to Integromat would wait for a response (in the call-back) and display success or failure.

I’m only suggesting this to @Nathans because (a) he already has a web page, (b) he has all the data he wants to post into Airtable (in the web page), and ( c ) he doesn’t have a lot of API skills. This would be the simplest approach I could envision that would remove the extra form step from the process and provide a chummy way to manage the throughput of the data to Airtable.

[Ezeh_Uche]

Hi @Nathans, check out https://beenform.co. I think it’s the solution to what you’re looking for.

[Nathans]

@Justin_Barrett and @Bill.French - your exchange sparked a few things for me. I also discovered Airtable’s gallery view. I think that might be able to create the visual layout there that I’m looking for and create the new “check-ins” that way. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but if that works, it could all be done within Airtable. I’ll post again as soon as I can get a few minutes to see if it’ll work.

[Nathans]

Thanks! I just mentioned in another reply that I might have figured out how to do this within Airtable. If not, I will check out beenform.co - looks cool. I would love to avoid paying another monthly fee if possible, and I’d definitely be out of their free plan range, so fingers crossed for the Airtable approach.

[Bill_French]

Nathans:

if that works, it could all be done within Airtable.

Even better! …