Independent Interface Formula Fields

[KP11]

What is the proposed idea/solution?

It would be helpful to create formula fields within an Airtable Interface that are independent of the underlying data table. 

How does is solve the user problems?

For our account managers, we wanted to create a profit calculator in their dedicated interface. Doing so involves using our underlying data from the source table to create several new formula fields. To accomplish this we had to add multiple columns to our underlying data table, which are only useful in the context of this profit calculator and aren't related to the rest of the data in that table. The ability to create customer formula fields within an Airtable Interface that don't impact the underlying data tables and require the creation of new columns would help de-clutter our data tables. 

How was this validated?

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Who is the target audience?

Account Managers, sales reps, or anyone else who uses interfaces to manipulate underlying data

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[ScottWorld]

That would be cool! In the meantime, this is not exactly the solution that you’re looking for, but what’s interesting to note is that Fillout offers this ability on their forms (i.e. perform calculations on non-Airtable fields). Fillout’s forms can be used to update existing records in Airtable (or create new records in Airtable). Here’s a brief overview of how their formulas work. So this would be kind of a hack for your users, but you could have them click on a link in the interface to take them to an “update Airtable record” form in Fillout, and they could have their profit calculator there.