Data quality & data validation

[Nicola_Mondinel]

I’m doing a deep software selection and i’ll evaulated a lot of other software like airtable, and i have to say that Airtable is what i can say the best in class if we consider the 90% of the use cases our company needs.
What it seems to lack, but i cannot realize it clearly (it seems to me so fool) that its not possible to do data validation. Let’s say a simply use case: I want my collegues to fill in the hours spent on various task (not in real time with the time track app, but simply at end of the day or of the week). In airtable is simple: new grid, i add a column TIME SPENT of type INTERVAL and i’m lost? i can i force to insert only an x number 0 < x < 8 ? i dont want to let them fill in a WRONG record and with automations try to send email, rewrite numbers or other thing: simply to forbid a wrong insert if it does not respect the restriction rule.
I’m not sure it is not possible, but i’ve invested a lot of days of study and i only found workarounds.
It looks very strange to me that a product of this tier lacks such a feature: its not a good practice to accept incorrect records and check them after, data quality is to be done BEFORE the insert.
Is there any solutions?
(my use case of time insertion was only one of many data quality check that i need for our workflows implementation)

[Per_Carlen]

Maybe you should try out this app. Advanced rules for data input and validation - #69 by nitin

[Nicola_Mondinel]

It’s a nice try, but not useful in Real Life case. User can bypass It.
Out Company Is searching a solid tool. in our mind data validation is a core functionality for a business workflow.

[Alexey_Gusev]

You can use scripting step for it. Don’t need to be developer to make smth similar. (of course, if you need stronger validation, you may add new expressions at will, but you’ll need to read docs then)

1-trigger
2-scripting, use values from #1
3-update, using #2 output

create ‘validate’ field, let script define OK/notOk

(example - you may use other automation to delete notOK records and warn it’s creator by email. there any many options)

[nitin]

I can update the script code to fetch input validations from read-only location i.e. some API endpoint and then user cannot bypass it by changing the validations from the table but still they can simply ignore using the scripting app and enter values directly. You can either validate data afterwards at the end of each day or week or before entering it into the base using the scripting app, there is no real time data validation by airtable yet and these are workarounds and if your users are smart enough to workaround around workarounds then I suppose airtable isn’t good tool for your workplace.

[QuantumStep]

Hi @Nicola_Mondinel ,

You're not wrong—Airtable doesn’t natively enforce input validation like restricting time entries to, say, between 0 and 8 hours. It can feel limiting when you’re trying to maintain data quality upfront.

You might want to look into the DataGuard extension. It lets you set rules like minimum/maximum values (so you can prevent any time entry outside of 0 < x < 8), along with other checks like unique values or required fields. It ensures users enter correct data in real-time, so you don’t have to chase mistakes later.

Might be worth a try for your time-tracking setup.