Oops! Editable shared view update

Does Airtable has any idea how ridiculous we consultants will look to our clients now? I for one informed most of them immediately because everyone is waiting for this kind of functionality! This is really not ok, seriously, Airtable has lost so many credit the past months and now this, which is directly affecting our client relations.

I know this is not your fault, but as a rep for Airtable in this community, I want to make clear how p**** off I am. And this :point_up: is imo not appropriate…

Jordan, thank you for posting this. Trying to get the wording right in a situation like this is so hard.

It is also good to hear the reminder that Airtable is working in the background on revamping the permissions model, and that we can expect major changes related to this in the future. There is a lot of invisible work that goes into overhauling permissions.

I hope that the community will be educated about the changes before this major revamp of permissions is rolled out that the community.

In fact, can we get an overhaul of how Airtable communicates feature changes in general? If Airtable had been in the habit of announcing a feature change somewhere at least minutes before rolling out new features, we could check to see if changes we see are a bug, a mistake, A/B testing, or an actual feature change.

Can you also please clarify who currently is able to get access to the editing of shared views? Prior today, selected enterprise users were able to get access to this feature. Is it still possible for enterprise users to request access?

What should people who have already created editable shared views do with them? Will these editable shared views continue to function?

This is the second time that I’ve seen you open a post like this and I’ve thought: poor Jordan, her week is not going well because she is forced to set aside whatever else she was working on to write this post.

This one should have been left in drafts @Databaser

Too many questions homie, give Jordan a break lol

my editable shared views are still “on”.

You’re right of course. Made an edit.

Not your fault Jordan!! While definitely bummed out about the news, I’m optimistic about what’s to come in the near future!

Respect, hardest thing to do on the internet is admit you made a mistake!

I don’t have the energy to get into how bullshit this is. Getting really tired of airtable. Not the product. The company. Probably one of the least organized I’ve ever seen. This is extremely embarrassing.

Welcome to the Airtable community! It seems like you joined this community just now in order to post to this thread. Would you mind posting an introduction?

I hope that Jordan knows that I wish her the best and do not expect immediate answers. In her post, she invited people to post their ideas “in the thread” and I replied with that in mind. Do you feel that my questions/comments were invalid or better suited to a different venue? If so, please clarify.

@Databaser totally hear you and you have every right to be upset, I apologize that we put you in a difficult position with your clients, that’s the last thing anyone wanted.

In terms of the excitement around the feature, I do love the enthusiasm, and while the outcome isn’t what we wanted, I want to make sure we are elevating things that are exciting to all of you and it showcases how amazing the Airtable community is. I appreciate what you all create very much and it was encouraging to see, but I do apologize again for the outcome.

In short, this one really hurts.

I can’t express the amount of excitement that my users expressed about this update.
Many of my users have been hesitant to commit to adopting the platform entirely.

I have put in a lot of work to craft solutions and demonstrate the integrity of Airtable as a sustainable and scalable solution to them. In four hours, my users and organization went from being incredibly excited to being remarkably disappointed.

On top of this particular occurrence, the communication between Airtable and the broader community about changes, new features, and the platform overall deserves a more comprehensive discussion about best practices and norms.

Any sort of heads-up would be exponentially better than being ambushed.
Nothing is worse than waking up at 6:00 AM, launching Airtable, and realizing that an update has come out of nowhere that tweaks core functionality or how everything looks.

I then have two hours before banks open to brace for the sudden influx of support tickets and frantic questions about changes before team standups. All of that is on top of having to learn everything that changed with the new deployment.

Just talk to us.
We’ll talk back.

Y’all are seriously about to lose all your consultants and developers. Love you Jordan. As usual not at you and not your fault and I’m sorry you’re the one who has to take the **** for it. But this is bad.

Honestly just giving you a hard time with the number of questions in a single reply, which is why I followed up with the ‘lol’

IMO, asking 5 questions in a single reply is difficult to respond to, but you’re more than welcome to ask as many as you like!

Of course she is, as Kuovonne is one of the most respected and contributing members of this and other Airtable communities.

But yes, totally joined this community purely for the craziness in this thread lol (but longtime lurker)

And managed to snag the @jacob handle, which is pretty fun tbh!

Thank you for this response, I appreciate it. Changing the way we announce product changes is something a small group and I are actively working on so hopefully you’ll see improvements soon.

In terms of your other questions, we are honestly still figuring that out, but I will respond as soon as I have a solid answer for you!

Appreciate you and I’m sorry if we added any disappointment to your day. It’s top of mind for us to get the right solution out to all of you as quickly as we can!

My response is best summarized by a Jim Halpert/Ben Wyatt-style glance at the camera in bewilderment.

@Ben.Young I totally understand and I am terribly sorry about any swirl this created for you today. While I’m glad to know this was able to get your users excited, I am equally sad it ended with disappointment.

Launch communication is something that is incredibly top of mind for us and I hope that you’ll start to see improvements soon once we can get all the appropriate stakeholders aligned.

Appreciate your perspective here!

Here you go, @Kamille_Parks

Thank you for the update, @Jordan_Scott1.

I realize this wasn’t your mistake and regardless of who it was, we’ve all been there.

That doesn’t stop this from being a huge bummer. After I saw this, I let the Airtable communities I’m a part of know and was really excited for its potential. There were even a few potential clients that I was going to inform about this, as it would make their projects so much more feasible with this functionality. Luckily, I heard this was a mistake before I was able to let them know and it saved me a bit of face and difficult conversations with these potential clients, but I empathize with the responses above of those who haven’t been as fortunate.

I look forward to better collaboration functionality in the future. And for what it’s worth, Airtable still has my :heart: until then.

@Jordan_Scott1 I’m sure you are getting multiple versions of “can you tell us first before you roll it out”?

I’ve said this in multiple settings as well. But I think either a widely distributed or consultant distributed roadmap of upcoming features at least 1 day (but really week) ahead would also solve some of this pandemonium for Airtable as well.

If we are constantly looking for new easter eggs, get surprised by clients uncovering some new feature, or just otherwise needing to stop our regularly scheduled day to become experts with no instructions, then this type of situation will happen.

We rush to be the first person to tell our clients so we look like we are the experts that we are, or feel the weight of the influx of support tickets with no understanding of what is actually going on.

I can tell you stories of a software company that would routinely release major updates the day before US holidays - they were a US based company. It created a ton of work and insecurity of users over long weekends and was just unnecessary drama.

Getting ahead of tweaks (both big and small) and knowing all the fabulousness that is in store, even just 24 hours in advance would let us all relax, a teensy, tiny bit.

I agree, as others have suggested, that we need a better alert system for updates. But you made the decision to alert your customers 30min after something changed on your Airtable dashboard, without knowing anything else about it! Please keep the comments respectful! We’re all human. I can tell that Jordan is trying really hard to fix this as much as she can.