Multiple forms on same page

[oreocereus]

I know airtable doesn't have the ability to do this, but I wonder if anyone here has a clever solution.

For context, we're a non-profit vege farm. A few of the things we keep records on need many records created at the same time. For example, when I seed trays of 15 different crops in the nursery, or I sow a cover crop into a bed (sometimes 10+ species). Each crop in either of those instances has unique data stored against it - Date, quantity, etc.

We need to be able to do this on mobile, as we're in the field, and unfortunately the table view of airtable isn't very easy to do this on mobile. 

And unfortunately having to submit a form 15 different times is confusing and time consuming. 

The ideal solution would be a form that could collect all data against each instance, but airtable doesn't allow that.

Does anyone have any ideas to help with this workflow? I have seen on2air, but unfortunately as a non-profit, spending more and more $ on record collection is really really hard to justify.

[ScottWorld]

The only 2 form apps that I know of that will allow unlimited line items on a form are Fillout and Cognito Forms.

Fillout natively communicates with Airtable.

Cognito Forms does not. But after your Cognito form is submitted by the user, you can then use Make's Cognito Forms integrations to send your data into Airtable. There can be a bit of a learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video for Make, along with providing the link to Make’s free training courses.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld

[CJSmith]

Hi @oreocereus, out of curiosity, how many crops are you dealing with at a time per bed/tray? I know you mentioned 15, but is that the norm or the maximum?

[oreocereus]

Thanks Scott! A shame Airtable don't have more native options for this kind of thing eh.

[oreocereus]

Hi CJ, I tried to keep the details simple as I realise market gardening is foreign to most on here! But to give some details:

We have about 40 different "crops," but within that there may be data on as many as 10 cultivars. E.g. we sell "lettuce" but grow at least 6 different kinds of lettuce - usually a few at a kind for our lettuce mix - and appropriate cultivars change with the seasons (some do well in the heat of summer, some deal with damp winters better).

Trays
Generally we do 1 crop per tray. But we may do a few crops if we're doing a small trial. But on a nursery day, we may do 30 trays. Typical is probably more like 10. That may look like 2 trays of beetroot, 2 trays of Lettuce 1, 2 trays of lettuce 2, 1 tray red cabbage - etc.

Seeding beds
We mostly seed one crop per bed - e.g. rocket, or carrots. But we use a soil conservation and regenerative practice of "cover croppping" - where we sow a diveristy of species (up to 12, but some people use over 20 species) in a mix in the bed. So I'll weigh out 10g vetch, 150g tick bean, 8g daikon, etc and seed that. Norm for my cover cropping is 8-ish species per bed.


For both of those practices, it gets quite tedious with forms for each crop needing to be refreshed (it's also easy to lose track of what info you have inputted). Pen and paper is far superior for usability and speed of input, but far inferior for reflection and analysis. 

[CJSmith]

For sure, I appreciate the additional context! I've been workshopping this for a while, and for a second I thought maybe it would be possible using 3 tables, an automation, and some goofy formulas.

Unfortunately, I think this is one of those scenarios where the best course of action might be to adapt the workflow itself, whether that means dedicating time to transcribing field notes to the desktop version of Airtable, or adapting to the mobile grid.

Either way, thank you for the thought-provoking prompt, and I hope you find a workable solution!

[oreocereus]

Thanks CJ! I think you're right, I have been thinking about it the wrong way, a mobile-friendly grid view is the simplest to set up and the simplest to use. It's a shame there doesn't seem to be a way to easily duplicate information in the mobile view. E.g. on desktop airtable, if I group the view by date and bed, then use the "+" to create a new record, it prefills the date and bed.

[CJSmith]

@oreocereus might not be the solution you're looking for, but you can duplicate whole records from the mobile version by clicking in to a record and hitting the ... in the top right corner. Alternatively, you could have an automation create batches of templated records on a certain cadence (every week/month/year, etc.). But I definitely see where it would be helpful to duplicate certain records after you've prefilled their info. 

I've also heard whispers of Airtable bringing interfaces to mobile as well, but that is largely speculative based on source code analysis someone did of the new interface designer. All the same, a mobile interface could be very helpful in this situation, if/when the mobile interface concept finally does get released!

[oreocereus]

Oh that works CJ, thanks. Just getting to grips with the mobile app. Do you know if there is anywhere easy to put descriptions that would be visible in the "new record" view on the mobile grid? It's handy that field descriptions show up in forms, and the "new record" view on mobile is fairly similar to a form entry - but it doesn't seem to display field descriptions.

E.g. it would be handy to have a note there to suggest to the user that they can simply hit that duplicate record button in the expandable menu, and to give some guidance as to entry format for certain fields.

[CJSmith · Accepted solution]

Hm, the standard field descriptions don't appear when creating a new record and are fairly burdensome to navigate to on mobile. I thought maybe the record template could be an option, but that's a desktop-only functionality. Default values could help too, but those are only enabled for certain field types (single select, single line text, etc.). 

Could be another outside-of-Airtable solution, like an onboarding discussion with users or providing them with examples of values that should go in each field.