Allow creation of new Linked Records on Form Interface

[jcervantes]

Overview: We cannot create new Linked records when submitting a form. There is only the ability to create a new Linked record after the initial form is submitted (and record created). This is not conducive to some workflows, where it would be very helpful to create a linked record during the initial record creation process.

Feature Request: Allow users to directly create linked records while they are in the process of submitting the initial Form/record in Interfaces.

Current Workarounds:

1. Provide a link on the initial Form for a user to open up another form to create the linked record prior to them completing the initial form.
2. Create additional fields in the table and then use automations to automatically create linked records in the background when those are selected.

[ScottWorld]

Yes, this is one of the limitations of Airtable.

The key workaround for this is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, which is 100% free, and gives tons of advanced features that are all Airtable-specific — such as the ability to create new linked records from a form, update Airtable records with a form, and much more.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld 

[jcervantes]

Thanks @ScottWorld for the suggestion! Would you mind adding a Kudos to this idea to get more visibility by the Devs?

[Tito_Alverio]

I am looking for this functionality too. Right now for some workflows, this is keeping users from moving to Interfaces, when this is a feature that exists on the Data level. 

[ScottWorld]

New linked records can now be created through Airtable’s interfaces, but if you need to do this through a form, you’ll still need to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable. 

[jcervantes]

@ScottWorld This specific request is to allow new linked records to be created on the new record Form, which is not currently possible in interfaces. An example is let's say you're creating a PO Request form. The parent record would contain the general PO Request details such as requester, date needed, justification for request, ect. Then as child records (linked records), you might want the user to create "lines" of this PO all in one step. Currently users have to create the PO parent record, then go back into that in a different interface where they can create new linked records. This workflow is far from optimal.

[ScottWorld]

Yeah, unfortunately, that isn't yet possible in Airtable.

That's currently only available in Fillout at the moment.

But Fillout is 100% free and it is awesome!

And I give a brief demo of creating new line items on a form on this episode of the BuiltOnAir Podcast

[jcervantes]

@ScottWorld thanks for that podcast link. That type of functionality is exactly what I was referring to. It's nice to see that there are other solutions that workaround the Airtable limitation, but it is a bit disappointing that I have to get another product and then pull my users out of the native UI / App experience and have them use a different system just to do such a fundamental function such as adding line items when creating a record.

There are so many great things about Aritable, but they like to focus on  advanced functionality that might be used by a very small percent of the user base while ignoring such fundamental functionality such as this, or enforcing required fields when editing existing records, or conditional fields when editing existing records, etc. My list of basic functionality that Airtable lacks is quite big. 

Lastly, they offer no real consolidated way to request and vote on feature requests. You can only email support or post on the forum. There should be a consolidated list of requests where we can upvote requests. How they set their priorities is too obscured.

[JPal]

I really need this too. Please Airtable make it happen.

[will2727]

Same here... really need this

[joetwelve]

Same here, it would be really a helpful functionality I agree