I’d like defaults for long text - use case is a checklist of tasks. I know I could make each check a single field but they’re really not worth their own fields for my use case.
It would be great to have a default “Time” set when choosing the date field. We have a table dedicated to logging employee time off, and when they are filling the form out, it would make it easier and faster for the start time to default to 8:00am and end time to default to 5:00pm. The start and end DATE could still pull from what the current day is. It would help when sending this information to Zapier to correctly interpret what a “full day” is.
When a new user is onboarded into our platform, we have a certain number of steps we want the user to go through to complete their onboarding. We track these steps in a Status column that’s field type is “Single select”. The field has four different options, and we want the first option to be the default when a new user is added to the table. As you all know, this isn’t possible in Airtable for the moment. However, it occurred to me that Airtable’s new(ish) Automations feature might be able to solve the problem, and the good news is that it did. :slightly_smiling_face:
Steps to create a default value for a Single select field type using an Automation:
Click Automations (top-right) >> New Automation
Name the automation
Click “Choose Trigger” button
Click “When a record matches a condition…”
Under Conditions, select “When [Status] [is empty]”
In the “Select a table” field, select the table where the record is created (e.g. Users), and click “Run test” (make sure the test runs successfully, you will need a record with an empty Status)
Click “Done”
Screenshot for reference on the “Triggers” segment (Steps 1–7)
Click “Add Action”
Click “Update Record”
Under “Record ID” click the [+] button
In the dropdown, next to “Record (from Step 1)”, click “Continue”
From the list select “Record ID”
Click “Choose Field”
Click “Status” (or whatever your field you want to update)
In the Status field, enter the text of the default status (in our particular case, the default status is “On Deck”), and click Run test (make sure the test ran successfully)
Click Done
Last, but not least, make sure to toggle the Automation to ON in the top-right corner.
Screenshot for reference on the “Actions” segment (Steps 8–17)
::phew:: That was a lot! And a bit confusing, to be honest. Setting the Record ID (step 10) and entering the default value (step 15) were not clear at all when I was going through this. I hope this helps some of you!
me too … this one of the real time-wasters in my current project testing out Airtable; yes i saw the workarounds, and if i had thousands, rather than just a couple hundred records to deal with, it would be worth the effort to build the workaround
IT is very disappointing to see this feature was never actions in 5 years. I just started using airtable, thinking it would replace an old spreadsheet I have. This was my first requirement beyond the simple spreadsheet functionality.
Exactly Emre, unfortunately they are way more interested on new functionality than simple issues in the base product. I loved Airtable, told everyone it was the answer to every problem but I’m completely disillusioned with it now
