Updating Airtable records with advanced Fillout forms

[@GarethPronovost]

Learn the fundamentals of no-code automation with our free training 👉👉 garethpronovost.com/webinar-registration Get started with Fillout 📝📝 fillout.com/?ref=gapconsulting

[@fillout]

Awesome overview of update forms in Fillout. Thank you, Gareth! Your videos are the best in the business.

[@GarethPronovost]

Thanks Fillout! We love your software!

[@chefmeg]

THANK YOU for making this possible :)

[@alsaukh3]

WOW😍, This tool is exactly what I hoped for, the update functionality opens up to a ton of different use cases, Thank you so much, YOU ARE THE BEST👍

[@GarethPronovost]

Happy to help! 🤝

[@VIPULDJHAVERI]

wonderful this is incredible and so much useful for all no coders thanka GAP for bringing out still wondering how i have missed this for whole one year 🌺

[@GarethPronovost]

Glad to help!

[@johnphilpin2246]

I rarely comment on KZbin ... this is that exception that proved the rule. Quite simply the best demo learning tool I have ever watched. Thank you. Used Airtable for a while - never heard of Fallout until last week - I had a rudimentary first go up in less than 10 minutes. I edited and changed and totally broke what I built. I then thought more about it for a while and a week later - I have a pretty robust solution in place and bowled over. I am NOT a coder/programmer/developer - Marvelous stuff.

[@GarethPronovost]

Thank you so much for the comment and for breaking your YT silence - it means a lot to hear from our viewers who have successfully implemented these tools. This is the fuel that keeps us motivated to produce more content, so thank YOU!!!

[@dgriley7280]

I love fillout / airtable. I just wish you could put a table in the form so that my engineers can fill out a table in the format it would be presented in. It would really help! Hopefully that’s an update in the future.

[@JoshSorensonJosh]

Been using fillout since last year and absolutely love it, currently embedding it in glide apps to make custom forms for our internal tools. It has lots of features that glide doesn't have in its forms so this is awesome.

[@GarethPronovost]

It's super helpful in so many ways! 🙌

[@habelika]

This is incredibly helpful!

[@jakedunbar4063]

My favourite thing about Fillout is that even if you close a form half way through when you reopen it asks if you want to continue or start fresh. This is such a little thing, but so important.

[@GarethPronovost]

Cool! Didn't know this!

[@rastariza]

This video is brilliantly done! Love it! I have one itty-bitty challenge. I wish the URL could automatically appear in the review submission page on Fillout and be able to be sent to the users email. Is that possible?

[@GarethPronovost]

Thanks! You can definitely send the link to users, but I don't know of a way to include it on the review submission page

[@ryanhughes9515]

Absolutely love this! Can the unique update record link be put in the email automation inside of Airtable?

[@GarethPronovost]

Yes indeed!

[@dawonbaker345]

Thanks for this. I am having some trouble, my users are creating a form, and it is showing up in airtable as a blank submission. I know it's populating something because it's creating a new row in the base, but none of the name, email, etc. information that we collect is populating. Shows up on fillout form and excel fine. Any advice?

[@ChristopherBerndt]

this is awesome! Thx Gareth & FillOut! Some Questions for me to make it work for me: - Can I be notified if a change is made via this link (and *not* inside of Airtable)? - "Who" is logged in Airtable as having made this change? Can I see that it was not a team member but someone outside? - Can I show AT Fields that are not changeable (basically pre-filled form fields)? - Would it be possible to give the possibility to change a form a "countdown"? For example change is only possible 30days after submission? Thx and cheers!

[@JoshSorensonJosh]

1. Yep, there is a notification setting in Fillout that will email you with the submission. 2. You technically can, you'd setup a field in airtable and have the form update that field when it's updated from the form. Heck even just a check box. 3. Yep, you can read from any airtable field, you just can't write to unwritable field. 4. Yep, I have a form that closes each week at 9am CST on Tuesday. It just reads from airtable if the form is active or not. If it is active then it lets you fill it out, if it isn't then it doesn't. You could simply setup on the record a date field and then another field that shows active or inactive and have it calculate if it's been less than 30 days since the date. Then change how the form behaves based on that field.

[@ChristopherBerndt]

@@JoshSorensonJosh this is incredibly awesome! I will check it out - thx for the quick reply!

[@GarethPronovost]

Thanks @josh!

[@jaredgrubka5794]

Is there a good way to have 1 form that updates multiple records? For example, lets say I have 2 tables in my airtable base (organizations and offices)... Where offices are linked to their organization If I want to send 1 form that allows them to update all of their offices, is there a way to pre-fill and include all the offices that belong to the organization within 1 form?

[@GarethPronovost]

Yes, this is known as dynamic linking. In this example, when you select an oganization, because it is linked to one or more offices, you can immediately filter down the office options in your second field. Fillout does offer this, and so do native Airtable links

[@kevinrichardson9579]

Is there a way to set it up where you approve the updates before they go live in your Airtable table using Fillout forms? We're building a public directory and want folks to be able to edit their entries, but have a step where we review them before making them go live. Right now I have it set up using a standard Airtable interface form and an "updates" table that won't pass through the updates to the original directory table until we approve it by changing a status toggle. Thank you!

[@GarethPronovost]

For the public directory, I'd suggest using a filter to only show the records that are approved. Then I'd bring in all the form data and set a default status to "Pending" - this way you can control it before displaying it publicly.

[@עידופיוטרקובסקי]

Hey @Gareth, Is there a way to create a generic link that allow the user to pick which record he want to updates?

[@GarethPronovost]

You can let them pick a record on page one and then show the record details (allowing updates) on the next page. Be warned that this will expose all the records in your base, however.

[@agoogleuser6937]

Please make a video about workarounds so that submitters can edit linked records, not just adding, selecting and unselecting.

[@GarethPronovost]

We have some videos on this topic already!

[@ŠpelaUlbin]

Great video, thanks! I have one question though.. when updating records, can I add one extra field? For example, I want to send form to customers, for filling out their personal information and information of the product they want to return (but they are not sending it back yet). When we check their information and approve it, then they can send the item back to us. In this step I want to upade form, by adding the field "tracking number". Is this possible?

[@GarethPronovost]

Yes this is possible! You'll want to create automated workflows around these two steps, each workflow including a separate form

[@GerardPais]

Is there a way to update linked records? So my use case is i have a company table and a contacts table. I want my customer to update their company's data which includes two contacts. The form is pre filled with the data. At the moment, the linked (contacts) data cannot be edited. I.e. the user can pick contacts from the table or add a new contact but if a contact is picked, cannot edit it which is rather limiting... Am I missing something?

[@agoogleuser6937]

Can we make the fillout “update record form” to DISPLAY images of the record being updated?

[@GarethPronovost]

Should be able to - if there's an image stored in the record, you should be able to pass the variable to the form to display it just like any other variable

[@HenryGreenhut]

Thanks! Quick question -- is it possible to have a dropdown where a user could "select" the record they want to edit, and then update a specific field? So for your example, you could see a dropdown of all of the records in your Update Records with Fillout Table, and then once you selected one, you could update it's information?

[@ekbergpeter6987]

No I have been trying for two days. There is a workaround if you are on a paid plan. I am not.

[@DustinBajer]

Thank's that's very helpful, but is there a way to share a single form link that updates records in my Airtable? Ex. If the email address matches an email address in an existing record, update the existing record. If the email address does not match an email in an existing record, create a new record.

[@GarethPronovost]

Sure! For this, build an automation that triggers from (any) form submission. Form received, search for matching email address. If found, update. If not, create new

[@DustinBajer]

@@GarethPronovost Much appreciated, Gareth!

[@ekbergpeter6987]

I don't get it. If you already are in the database why you need a form? It would be much better if it was dynamically looking up the record to prefill from depending on what record selected with the record picker.

[@GarethPronovost]

One example use case is in regards to sharing a read-only view from your solution with buttons that others can use to make changes to specific data. Often there are times when those who need to make updates won't be actual users in your workspace

[@ekbergpeter6987]

@@GarethPronovost But how do you update a record that are dynamically selected in the form? Lets say for example you would like to update the status from a form? I think that would be very useful if you have a third part that not has access to your table.

[@GarethPronovost]

@@ekbergpeter6987 exactly - in that case we typically see the unique form link (for the specific record in question) shared with the corresponding party, often through an automation

[@ekbergpeter6987]

@@GarethPronovost Haha you don't get it. There is no link, there is a record picker that I use to select the record I want to change. And when I selected I would like it to fetch the data automatically and prefill the field dynamic.. That would be much more useful. It can't be hard to implement that. I used to code for ten years and could write an sql query for that in 5 minutes.

[@franceswilson4004]

Hi Gareth, I've created a form to update airtable records, can i make some fields read only? Fran

[@GarethPronovost]

Hi Fran, you cannot make fields read only in a form. However, you can share a link to the data received that is read only so that people can review submissions

[@justthoughts8254]

somehow, the link does not populate the old information for some.

[@GarethPronovost]

It works for some but not for all records? Depending on your plan, you may run out of form submissions...

[@ChandrikaShenoy-n2g]

Is there a way to update a record using the airtable interface?

[@GarethPronovost]

absolutely - give the ability to edit the data in a record and there you have it!

[@ChandrikaShenoy-n2g]

@@GarethPronovost - Thank you

[@javiergarcia7807]

great!

[@GarethPronovost]

Thanks for watching!

[@jaywbus]

#smartsuite support coming?

[@GarethPronovost]

I think we'll let SmartSuite support their software, but we do offer consulting!

[@fillout]

In case you mean Fillout + SmartSuite, we are actually partnering on an integration to be released this month :) Stay tuned!

[@jaywbus]

appears #smartsuite has landed w/ @@fillout support! 😀

[@sara_no_h_92]

okay...but let's take it a step further. Say all of these people we have in the table are "outsiders" instead of employees. Now we want to send the unique URL for each person/entry to them for them to update their information. How is the easiest way to automate sending each person their unique URL? Is there another video for that? lol

[@GarethPronovost]

This is certainly possible with an automation. What would you want to be the trigger? Let us know and we can work on creating this video!