Using a form to filter

[Kyrstin_Graves]

I have an excel file that we currently filter by 3 to 4 fields to come up with a price for an item for vehicles. We filter by Year, Make, Model, and then for certain products, we also end up filtering by other parametes, but I’ll use size as an example.

I am trying to create a form where instead of having to exit and go to the excel sheet, a person could potentially do the following:

1. Select year → this should provide the filter for the next question and only return Brands for those years
2. When they select a make, it should filter the next question to only show models for the selected brand.
3. When they select model, if there are 2 models, it should bring up the size field for the next question, if there is only one model, it should bring up the ID for that specific model in the next question.
4. After it brings up the correct ID for that model, it should show the only price option for that ID.

I know I can import an excel file, but I’m not sure how to get it to let me make a form that filters based on the excel sheet I import. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Justin_Barrett]

Welcome to the community, @Kyrstin_Graves! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: Unfortunately Airtable forms don’t support that kind of conditional logic between fields. The only logic option currently available is to control whether or not a field will display based on what happens with another field.

I don’t do a lot of work with forms, so I’m a little rusty on which third-party form solutions might offer this ability. One option to check, though, is the On2Air:Forms product for JotForm created by @openside. It’s got some really robust features, though I’m not 100% certain how deeply the conditional logic options go.

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

In Airtable, forms are typically used for data entry, not for setting filtering criteria for what records to display.

Are you looking for a tool for external customers, or a tool for internal users who are collaborators on the Airtable base?

If your users are Airtable collaborators, the built-in tools for filtering a view work well. It won’t work exactly like you described with the gradual filtering, but users can pick years, brands, models, etc.

Another option for base collaborators is a custom script that will ask for the year, make, model, etc. The script could provide the gradual filtering (e.g. only show models for the given brand). There are some limitations (such as always having to pick filter parameters in the same order), but it could work.

[Kyrstin_Graves]

Thanks for replying!

So, we want this to be a customer facing form so they wouldn’t be collaborators. I have an excel sheet that I think I can turn into a table in airtable that will house all of the necessary data. I’m just trying to find a way that in the form, the customer could select 1999 and it only show the make of vehicles within that year. Then they could select the correct make and the next form field down would only show the models for the selected year and make. Then after selecting the correct model, it would show the corresponding price for that vehicle.

I know you can make conditional fields and lookup fields, I guess I’m just trying to find a way to combine the two. I’d even manually build it out for now, if I knew of a way to make certain options in a from conditional on which option was chosen above.

I feel like it has to be possible in airtable and I’m hoping someone knows a way to set it up. I’m just hoping I’m not wrong because using airtable for customer facing order forms would be amazing.

[Justin_Barrett]

Kyrstin_Graves:

I feel like it has to be possible in airtable and I’m hoping someone knows a way to set it up.

Like I said above, that kind of logic isn’t currently possible for customer-facing, non-collaborator interfaces unless you use a third-party system that a) retrieves the data from Airtable, and b) dynamically filters that data for display based on user selections. As @kuovonne said, Airtable forms don’t do that. They are only designed for data entry. They only have a very minimal connection to the data from the source table (only enough to retrieve what options are needed for certain field types). Editing fields in a form does nothing to your Airtable data in real-time. Only when you submit the form does the data that you entered get saved into a new record.

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

Kyrstin_Graves:

we want this to be a customer facing form so they wouldn’t be collaborators.

Airtable’s native filtering also works in a shared grid view. The shared grid view will have Airtable branding, and you may need to also have a video on your website explaining how to do it, but the functionality itself is free, so you might as well play with it to see if it will suit your needs. If not, I recommend using a third party system, or writing your own interface to the Airtable REST API.