Double Click on Field Name - Restore Customize Field Functionality!

[Paul_Warren1]

Hello Airtable, Please, please please reverse this change!

Double-clicking on the field name now only modifies the name of the field. It is a pain to have to right-click to access this menu. I don’t want to be overdramatic and claim this will totally ruin Airtable, but it’s much less efficient than the old method.

I also noticed that when creating a new field, the field type is now the first dialog. Then we are prompted to put in a name. This is fine and I can get used to the new workflow. I understand that this reduces the number of times I use “Tab” to move between dialog boxes.

I love Airtable and hope it continues to make progress! Just not the progress I don’t like :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[Bill_French]

Zoe_Bridges:

I will start by saying that YES we do look out for constructive feedback shared in our community forums.

Crazy idea - add a new emoticon that identifies when an Airtable employee reads a message item and allows us to see who exactly is watching the conversation. If we could see analytics that show you’re watching and soaking it up, it might eliminate the [seeming] attention vacuum.

[Olpy_Acaflo]

Hi @Zoe_Bridges from Airtable, welcome to the Community and thank you very much for chiming in on this thread !

As I couldn’t better express things than @ScottWorld last message, @kuovonne , @Paul_Warren1, @Bill.French,
I just made this little edit to express what I feel good to prioritize or to keep in mind for FIELDS and for future Betas like this.

ScottWorld:

Plus, there is now a disparity between “creating a field” and “changing a field type”. When you create a field, you’re hidden from all the options. But when you change a field type, all the options show up again.

ScottWorld:

Plus, there’s now a 3rd step — you have to rename the field after creating it

ScottWorld:

However, one great change here is that you can cancel out of creating a new field, and the field won’t be created.

Paul_Warren1:

There are three things that would be a big help and avoid most of the frustration here:

1. An onscreen indicator that I am participating in a Beta.
2. The ability to revert functionality.
3. Can you please clarify what Airtable’s preferred medium of communication from users about Beta features? I have no desire to start nor participate in flame wars :fire: :blush:

kuovonne:

When you do testing like this, it would be nice if you start a community thread announcing that you are doing testing and make it clear that Airtable will read the responses in that specific thread (even if you don’t answer all of them).

kuovonne:

The number of field types can definitely be overwhelming. Would it be possible for you to present field types in categories in addition to the long list? Text based fields, computed fields, linked record related fields, number based fields, date/time fields, frequently used field types, favorites, etc.? Some field types might appear in multiple groups.

Paul_Warren1:

a small number of field types do the bulk of the work in Airtable. Shortcuts could be very nice

Bill.French:

Crazy idea - add a new emoticon that identifies when an Airtable employee reads a message item and allows us to see who exactly is watching the conversation.

Thank you Zoe for your reading, your messages and hope to meet Airtable Team on Community about future Betas,

oLπ

[Marko_Petrovic]

Just my thoughts about this, although I feel everything has already been said numerous times :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

For existing fields, double click to change name and right click to change properties and other options seems like correct way.

For adding new field, I feel like old system where you could set all in “one go” feels more natural and faster. Its kinda logical when you add field that you are automatically presented with all the options that you could set for that field and to do it from “single point”, than to have to add field that go back and open settings menu and set field properties.

[andywingrave]

Thanks so much for getting back to us, Zoe. My user account doesn’t have this removed yet.

Edit - I cannot express really how much I need this removed as quickly as possible. Anything you can do to ensure I never have to select field type first would be amazing! It is a total travesty :rofl:

Edit edit - I mean, I’m on here just to have a moan because it feels more productive than trying to just simply create a field in Airtable. :face_vomiting: , and since this update I’ve been disinclined to use it.

Edit edit edit - Here’s a gif, which I hope remains here for posterity, as a reminder of the 8+ days or so, when Airtable made their core functionality redundant and overwhelming

[andywingrave]

As somebody who consults on Airtable, and is often in other peoples’ bases. It is with deep regret and sadness that I can confirm that some people are still suffering through this travesty.

My thoughts and prayers are with them

[ScottWorld]

@Zoe_Bridges: Because you guys have rolled out this feature to so many people, you guys have created a ton of confusion amongst tons of people, and you have created way more support inquiries than necessary.

Why? Because now, when people create new fields, they AREN’T SHOWN ALL OF THEIR OPTIONS FOR THAT FIELD, so there is absolutely no way for them to realize that they have to GO BACK A SECOND TIME to find all the “hidden options“ for their field.

For example, this recent thread involved time zones — but how in the world is anybody supposed to know that a time zone option even exists if they’re not shown it when they create the field?

For new users, they need to see all of their options when creating a field. This is basic common sense & logic.

And for experienced users, we want to choose all of our options in one fell swoop. We don’t want to waste our time by creating a field once, and then going back a 2nd time to rename our field, and then going back a 3rd time to choose our options.

Why would you guys make us repeat an action 3 times, when it used to only take us one time to take that action?

Honestly, the more I experience the detrimental & arbitrary changes that Airtable makes to the product, and the more I see Airtable ignoring important product suggestions that people have been requesting in these forums for literally 4 years, the less & less faith I have in the platform.

There is LITERALLY A WALL between what the users are saying and what the Airtable team is hearing. I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my 30 years of software development.

[Zoe_Bridges]

@ScottWorld Thank you for sharing. I’ve raised this to the engineer and designer experimenting in this space and they are appreciative for the feedback. Their goal is to help more new users engage with various field types, not to add friction to field setup.

Are there other fields, in addition to the date field, where you not being able to select options at the point of creation is problematic? I’d love to provide them a more complete point of view of the community’s feedback.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend.

[kuovonne]

I think that the number one thing that would help new users engage with the various field type would be when creating a field to present categories of fields, not just a long list of fields.

Trying to tweak presenting the long list of field types before or after you name the field won’t solve things when the problem is the fact that it is a long list that doesn’t have a clear order. So, make that list easier to mentally manage by making it mentally smaller with categories.

I actually don’t care if it takes me a few more mouse clicks to work my way through selecting categories because if the categories are well thought out it will actually be less overall effort. I’d be trading keyboard strokes (starting to type the field type) for mouse clicks (click the category, then click the field type) when I’m already using the mouse.

Categories of field types will also help users understand that some data types are more closely related to each other than others. For example, by putting rollups and lookups in the same category when clicking to create a new field, it will help transition new users who understand lookups to consider rollups as a similar type of field.

[ScottWorld]

That’s a great idea that @kuovonne came up with. My favorite database program, FileMaker, organizes much of their interface by categories as well — but they also give the user a choice to organize alphabetically as well.

In Airtable’s case, it seems like you guys have organized by “most frequently-used fields” to “least-used fields” — that actually makes a lot of sense to me, too.

I like having all 3 options: (1) sort by category, (2) sort alphabetically, and (3) sort by most frequently-used fields.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with having a long list of field types, but giving different sorting options could be helpful.

Zoe_Bridges:

Are there other fields, in addition to the date field, where you not being able to select options at the point of creation is problematic?

ALL FIELDS.

I was once a new Airtable user myself just a few years ago — and the #1 thing that helped me understand fields the most was that whenever I created a new field, ALL OF MY OPTIONS were right there in front of me! (Including renaming the field!) It was such a great gift to be shown all the different options for each field.

And now that I’m a seasoned Airtable user, the thing I appreciate THE MOST is being able to customize everything about a field in one easy step.

So, personally, I really don’t think there was ANYTHING wrong with the old interface at all. It was perhaps one of the most elegant & most well-thought-out parts of the interface. It was one of the few parts of Airtable that DIDN’T cause frustration!

I don’t know the inner workings of Airtable as a company, but it seems like each engineer is independently working on their own “pet projects”. I don’t think this is a good idea. Someone needs to be the “product manager” who oversees direction of the product, because there is a much larger, much bigger picture that you guys are missing. And that bigger picture is that there are actual problems & much-needed features in the product that people have been voicing their concerns about for years on end in these forums.

I’ve never heard anyone complain about confusion in creating/customizing fields — it was one of the very few parts of the product that worked perfectly. It should have been marked off as “complete” years ago. Yet every other part of your product is riddled with problems, and you guys look the other way.

There are TONS of things — both small & large — that people HAVE been complaining about for years, and they continue to go ignored by Airtable. There doesn’t seem to be someone who is acting as a product visionary or a product leader or a community engagement person.

[ScottWorld]

p.s. @Zoe_Bridges, here is another example of how much Airtable has confused new users by hiding field customization upon field creation!

Date override formula returns wrong date Dates and timezones

This is the formula i am using to manually override my default date entry IF({Date Override Entry} = BLANK(),{Default Mixed Date}, {Date Override Entry}) i attached a screen shot that shows the result that i am getting. It returns a result that is a day off and i am not sure i am not sure why. Thanks in advance any help it is much appreciated. :pray: Screen Shot 2020-11-21 at 11.57.57 AM|700x308