Forms, Interfaces, and how to access

[Kent_Signorini]

Before signing up, I’d like to know a couple things about Forms and Interfaces. For my use case, Forms will most likely be the most common data entry means. Interfaces will be the most common way my users will edit a record’s data.

1. Can my users not go straight into the “Open form” view of a form from the main tables tab? I don’t want them to have to click the “Open form” button to use the form (and I certainly don’t want them to be able to edit a form’s layout, etc.)

2. How about an Interface? Is there no way to launch an Interface from a table screen? Like, why isn’t there an entry in the sidebar like there is for all the other views for that table?

Thanks!

[Vivid-Squid]

Hi @Kent_Signorini
These are some great questions.

Both a published form and an interface have their own unique URLs to access. There is nothing stopping you from putting a link to either as a field in your table. Airtable supports buttons that open a URL.

A few things you will want to familiarize yourself with is User count limitations and User access controls. These may impact how you plan to interact with your Airtable base, forms and interfaces. For example, any users you wish to give access to an interface will have access to the underlying base data.

There are app you can add to the sidebar that allow you to store clickable links to your URLs.

If you decide that you do not want all users to have access to the tables in your base there are many awesome front end applications that will let you do that, I am fond of Softr.

[Kent_Signorini]

The Button field looks like a good option to link a specific record to an edit form (using a nice Interface) but I can’t seem to find a way to put a button to launch a URL anywhere on the main tab. I also can’t figure out how to generate a URL to an Interface the way I can generate one to a Form.

You mentioned that there are apps to add links to the sidebar, but for all my searching in Apps, I can’t seem to find one. Can you point me to one that might do this?

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

Kent_Signorini:

I also can’t figure out how to generate a URL to an Interface the way I can generate one to a Form.

You cannot generate a public share link for an interface the way you can for a form. Only base collaborators can access an interface. Do you want to pay for every user? If you cannot afford to pay for every user, you will need to use a portal or some other system.

You can get the interface url by running Airtable in a web browser and getting the url from the browser.

[Vivid-Squid]

The Description app will hold a list of links

[Kent_Signorini]

The whole idea of “public” links is weird to me but we never use our systems outside of our company. So any Interfaces or Forms we use will be for internal use only. In that case, I suspect we will be paying for all users.

I did figure out how to create a link in a table field that opens an Interface with the record where the link was clicked. Works well once you format the Button URL correctly.

[HannesK-ME]

Hi there! Hannes from the miniExtensions team here.

We offer a range of super useful extensions for your exact use case! The great thing is that your users do not need to have access to Airtable at all, so you wouldn't have to pay extra for each of them! We offer a powerful form, which has tons of extra functionality compared to Airtable's form, as well as an even more powerful portal extension, which is essentially a direct replacement for Airtable's interfaces, but without the need for user accounts and a lot more flexibility in terms of customization. Users are simply managed in a specific "users table" in Airtable, so you can add/edit/remove users at will without limitations. If you don't need your users to log in and instead want to just show the same data for everyone, our Shared View extension does just that!

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to let me know and I'd be happy to answer them for you!