Form to edit data

I used to use the card view in FileMaker Pro all the time which displayed a form view, but allowed you to page through different records while in the form view. I’d love to see this feature implemented.

I completely support this amazingly great idea.

I would LOVE to be able to edit records in a form view.

Me too. I’d also love a Find field at the top of the form to go to a specific record.

This feature is essential if AirTable is to be a popular collaboration tool! Currently this is keeping us from fully implementing AirTable as a production tool.

Would looking at/editing the records in expanded view serve your needs? When editing in expanded view, the fields are presented in a way that appears similar to our form view.

Hi Katherine,

Thank you for the suggestion. We would like to be able to give individuals the ability to edit existing records without giving them access to the entire base. We wouldn’t want them to make any major changes to the base (e.g., delete tables, delete columns, etc.). Since full access is needed in order to look at records in expanded views, this unfortunately would not work for us.

I agree with Wayne. It’s not about how the data appears, it’s about limiting access.

My full base is very confusing to anyone who takes a brief look at it. Because you don’t provide any sort of cross-table query, I’m having to include many lookup and calculated fields in order to be able to pull the data I need out of it. A new user would be overwhelmed and unsure which fields they could edit and which not. I need a form so I can present the user with just those fields that they can edit.

I would like customers to be able to update their own rows of information, is there anyway that I can email them row update requests they can easily update their preferences and info without logging in?

Forms don’t seem to help as they add new rows rather than updating, and customer specific shared views don’t seem to help because they can’t update without logging in. I’d like to make this as easy as possible for them.

Any suggestions appreciated, kind regards Lyndon

Hi, I would like to check if we can retrieve a record to the FORM and update it.

Not at the moment. The topic has come up though.

This would be really really helpful, and pretty much essential to how I’m using Airtable so far!

I’m sure it’s not an easy thing to implement. But some sort of view, maybe where a user can see all the records they’ve created (or been assigned to) so they can click one and make changes, but only those records and not the entire table (or base).

Right now, I have a table of agents I can assign to client records via a select column, it would be awesome if whichever agent(s) I selected in that column were the only agents who could access/edit those respective records via said form view.

Again, really great work here, just a few more tweaks and this will be the perfect platform. It’s so close already.

j

This would be incredibly helpful to our organization’s use of AirTable

Same here. I’m setting up a database for a project and want to share ‘editable’ existing records to certain users. A suggestion - within a particular record view (admin), there’s a share link. Anyone with this private link can view and edit only that record, nothing else. Better yet, records can be grouped. And particular groups of record can have share link to allow particular users to edit records within the group only.

Flexible sharing capabilities and user access control will make Airtable a truly powerful collaborative database platform.

Thank you

Yes, basically a customized “Expanded View” is greatly needed for editing individual record data without the clutter that is presently displayed in the existing expanded view.

I’m with you all. I would like to see permissions set to the “view” level so that I can allow some semi-power users the ability to update, without seeing certain sensitive columns. Permissions could do this, or as this thread suggests, I could let them edit with this editable form!

As with all other feature requests, the most useful and effective way to help us prioritize this feature is to provide highly detailed, specific examples of how you would actually use this feature. We’d love to hear not only abstract descriptions of the functionality you want, but actual stories about the real people who will use it, the actual nature of the content on which you’d be collaborating, etc. This is especially helpful for features like this one, where there are many different ways we can implement it, each addressing a different subset of scenarios.

I can give you more feedback as to my particular situation, I am using it for a Church Member Roster tool. I will tell you, what Airtables has blows other products out of the water when it comes to this type of tool and I have been able to build a pretty good setup. We’re not fully implemented but I believe it is going to greatly help the Elders make sure that they are accounting for all members. And I believe this is a tool that many, many other churches may be interested in.

In particular, I have a “roster” table, but then a second table with “elder notes”. The elder notes could potentially house sensitive information that is only for the elders to share among themselves. That being said, we have staff members who we would like to be able to update member information, without seeing the full blown table.

My thoughts on a solution for this was to extend privilege levels down to the “table view”, not just the “team” or particular “base”. However, the idea presented here, with an editable (and searchable) form, would allow for us to give staff members an ability to look up particular records and edit only what is on the form, not the whole table, and therefore not see the potentially sensitive information. They are already using a form to add new records, but it would be good for them to be able to edit them also.

Here is a specific use case that I would use this for…

Implementing an RFQ (request for quote) module that contains the following tables…
-Supplier Details
-Supplier Contact Details
-Item Detail (description, type, material, special requirements, customer name, project name)
-Item Revision Details
-RFQ Header (supplier name, date, rfq comments, etc)
-RFQ Detail (quantities per line item, comments per line, etc)
-RFQ Detail Responses (prices per quantity, lead times, deviations, etc)

A lead buyer or planner would create a new RFQ, containing the RFQ Header and RFQ Details, and submit to the procurement team to obtain quotes and those buyers would then populate sets of RFQ Detail Responses from suppliers. They would have access to a form that allowed them to add and edit responses to the RFQ. The lead buyer would be able to review the results from all of the other buyers at any time, using his own view (form) that display the same data with different grouping and emphasis (grouped by part number, sorted by price, displaying supplier name, lead time and comments next to each)

This is just one example. I can think of a hundred manufacturing cases like this.

Here is another manufacturing case. A quality control module focused on gathering and analyzing NCMR events (non-conforming material reports), using the following tables…
-NCMR Detail (date, part number, cause code, supplier, report originator, comments, disposition)
-Inspection Records Header (date, part, supplier, lot size, comments)
-Inspection Record Details (sample size, requirement, result, pass or fail)
-Supplier Detail (supplier name, address, primary phone, primary contact, last evaluated date, certifications, quality performance rating, on time delivery rating, primary account manager, etc)
-Contact Detail (contact name, title, direct phone, notes, etc)
-Item Detail (part number, date created, engineer name, current revision level
-Item Revision History (revision level, revision date, ECO number)
-PO Header (supplier name, order date, etc)
-PO Detail (line item qty, part number, due date, etc)

These can be combined to create powerful tools for quality and purchasing to work together on gathering and analyzing supplier quality performance. For example, a quality manager may have a custom view that lists items in descending order by number of NCMR events compared to number of line items delivered, and other which emphasizes quantity of rejected items compared to total number ordered (in a given time period, which is an unbound field that is used purely for calculation and is not stored in a table). The quality manager would then flag items that he wants improved based on these results, and submit the report to the purchasing manager. The purchasing manager would also have various custom views which list suppliers descending by total annual spend, with a corresponding quality rating and last evaluated date next to that information.

Quality department employees could write NCMR’s against suppliers, buyers could gather responses to those NCMR’s and the department managers could review summaries or individual reports based on the data gathered.

I’m running into the same issue and would LOVE a solution! One of my tables is a database of people with various bits of identifying information. I created a FORM which I today emailed, all of them, a link to fill out. This form was for them to update their information for a select set of fields in my database. Many filled out the form and submitted their new information. What i have now is a ton of duplicate people! How can create a form that once information is submitted, it populates each person’s own line of fields instead of creating a “new” person? Thanks!

In my case, I’m setting up a database for after school classes. Previously, the school was using Google Sheets. The new setup I have using Airtable is superior to what simple spreadsheets offer.

I have a form for vendors to fill out their info such as contact info, classes they offer, fees, and so on. It’s great that I can send a link of the form out for the vendors to fill out their own info. What I need is that “after” a vendor has submitted their profile info, they may need to update their info later on. So instead of me having to manually update the records, one would think why can’t I just send each vendor a private link so they can update their own record?

That is, each record can have its own private link that the user can edit the data. So we are going from level of sharing Base, Table, and then the individual Record.

Hope this make sense.

Steven

My example is very simple. I have a table of people, and a table of transactions containing a lookup column on the people table. This creates linked fields between the tables. My users are not database savvy. When they go into the people table to correct a data entry error because they put the phone number in wrong, they can currently accidentally delete a link to a transaction, thus scuppering the entire system.

This is almost a show stopper for me. I love AirTable but this and lack of reporting mean we may have to look elsewhere.

Complex records are just too difficulty to edit in a table form

So in the vein of having specific requests for how we would use this feature:

I have a table that has tons and tons of detail about people’s history/biographies/accomplishments. It’s a way of keeping track of what we learn about people who have been involved in a program. I would love to be able to send them, as a group, a way to update specific fields.

A way that I can imagine this working is a tool that takes a grid view with a field for email addresses, and sends each email address a way to update the fields for only that record. Ideally it would exclude hidden columns (or at least have some way of specifying which fields will be available for them to edit) and wouldn’t go to rows that have been filtered out.

That’s the idea - not sure it makes sense but I’m happy to try to explain in more detail! :slightly_smiling_face: