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"Quick Sort" functionality

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entropic
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

So for a ton of our views on our main Base we need to constantly sort them to keep everything in order and fresh. I would love autosorting, and I’ve thrown my hat in for that request, but this would be a much more straightforward stopgap to autosorting:

Have a button next to the “↑↓ Sort” button that says “Sort NOW” or whatever that instantly applies whatever the current sort is for that view. That’s the dirty way.

However, I think it would be waaaaay better to just keep the “↑↓ Sort” button but make it into a split button dropdown where you click/tap the main button to sort using that View’s current sort settings and clicking the disclosure triangle opens the sort options modal window.

I can’t even express how happy something like this would make me! It seems like a tiny detail, but having to open the sort options window every time you need to sort adds a surprising amount of friction.

2 Comments
Elias_Gomez_Sai
13 - Mars
13 - Mars

I use a lot the shortcut Ctrl + S and then Enter. It’s quick :laughing:

entropic
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This is a good point, however, I still find ⌘⇧s then enter pretty cludgy, being two separate steps. I would be totally fine with ⌘⇧s though. But keyboard shortcuts obviously don’t work on iPhone, whereas something like the feature request I posted here would.

However, the biggest issue is Airtable (the company) seems super focused on ease of use over features. This is fine and dandy, but ⌘⇧s then hitting enter is not clean or easy, especially for an action that has to be done many many times a day in an active Base for each and every view. Then there’s the problem with being presented with a sometimes long list of sort steps, which a “normal” user (meaning someone doing basic data entry) never needs to look at or be bothered with.

And along the lines of ease of use, getting my employees to use keyboard shortcuts is an uphill battle. They’re super fast and amazing at their jobs, but their main job isn’t data entry, and for the most part they’re not super computer savvy. Airtable is simply a tool we use to store information about the actual work we do. A single button click/tap would go a loooong way toward making things easy for this type of user.

Anyway, I really believe sorting as it’s currently implemented could be improved and in doing so, simplified for more basic users.