Digital forms are a superpower for any industry – finance, nonprofit, education, real estate, legal, and more. We all use forms every day, even when you don’t realize it. Forms can track a variety of data and centralize it into one location for you and your company to use for business.
You can add new employees to the staff roster, log research data, track event attendees, add new members to an industry community group, or capture new leads on your website.
Forms, combined with the power of a database in Airtable, make business processes and data collection easy for any team member in your business. With Airtable forms, you can capture data anytime and even add conditional logic to show only the most relevant fields to your user.
In this article
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to set up a form in Airtable to add new members into a pilot club. We’ll also use conditional logic to display a field only when a previous field is completed with a ‘Yes’ answer. Once you create this form, you can embed the form on your website or you can set up a laptop at your next meeting or event.
When to use a form in Airtable?
Forms can be used anytime you want to capture information quickly or get information from someone who doesn’t need to see all the information in your base.
A form can be useful for gathering information through your website, at an event, out in the field on a sales call, or you can use it as an order form.
Before creating this form, you need
- At least 2 tables in your Airtable base – Members and Companies
- In the Members table, you need fields for:
- First Name (Single line text field type)
- Last Name (Single line text field type)
- Email (Email field type)
- Relation to the Companies table (Linked Record field type)
- Do you have a LinkedIn Profile? (Single Select Field Type with Yes or No as the 2 options)
- LinkedIn Profile URL (URL field type)
- In the Companies table, you need fields for:
- Company Name (Single line text field type with a few companies added)
To create your new member form
- Open the Views sidebar in the Members table
- Select Form view
- Name the form
- Click remove all to remove all fields that are automatically added to the form
- Drag the fields – First Name, Last Name, Email, Associated Companies, Do you have a LinkedIn Profile?, and LinkedIn URL – into the form section
- For the conditional logic in the form, we want the LinkedIn URL field to display ONLY when the LinkedIn Profile question is answered Yes
- Once all fields are added to the form, the conditional logic should automatically generate
If not, let’s add the conditional logic into the form field
- In the LinkedIn URL field, turn on (green) the option Show field only when conditions are met
- Select Add condition
- Select When ‘Do you have a LinkedIn Profile?’ is Yes
Now, test your new form!
- Click Share form at the top
- Select the Preview arrow icon to view the form as a user
- Enter information into each form field
- In the LinkedIn question field, select Yes to ensure you can see the LinkedIn URL field
- Click Submit
- You’ve now used a form to add a new club member to your Airtable base!
Need to add special features to your form such as prefilling the form fields, showing only certain data from your base (such as only specific companies), or even update a record already in your base?
On2Air: Forms is the answer to the more advanced features you need.
Even More Dynamic and Advanced Forms with On2Air: Forms
Forms in Airtable make it easy to capture information directly into your base. However, the forms in Airtable have multiple limitations.
On2Air: Forms allows you to create advanced forms. With On2Air: Forms for Airtable, you can prefill form data, add conditional logic and conditional lookups, and much more. Create dynamic, customized forms to fit your specific business needs.
What can On2Air: Forms do?
- Let users search your data from your form
- Use hidden fields in your form
- Personalize your form with dynamically displayed values
- Generate personalized prefilled forms
- Use conditional logic to display only what needs to be seen
- Connect to over 2,500 apps
- Insert a form value entered by the user into another location in your form
- Create custom filters
- Send your form submissions to Airtable and other software tools
Current Limitations in Airtable Forms
- Conditional logic is very limited
✅ On2Air: Forms is able to incorporate a variety of conditional logic options
- Can’t use custom Formulas
✅ On2Air: Forms allows you to customize your form even further with custom formulas
- No app integrations with other apps you use
✅ On2Air: Forms has integrations with Airtable, Zapier, JotForm, and any other service using a webhook
- Can’t use information added by the user into other areas of the form
✅ On2Air: Forms can take user information added into a field and use it in another location on the form
- Limited customization options for the look and style of your form
✅ On2Air: Forms allows you to use HTML and Markdown. You can also use a variety of options available in JotForm.
- Unable to personalize forms to display only what is needed per user or a specific set of users
✅ On2Air: Forms allows you to create specific URLs (URL parameters) for any audience
- Unable to display fields in multiple ways
✅ On2Air: Forms allows you to display your forms as dropdowns or lists with checkboxes, both visually appealing on desktop and mobile
- Lacks multiple advanced integrations
✅ On2Air is a suite of multiple apps to make your business information in Airtable even better
On2Air: Forms allows you to create and configure dynamic forms using your Airtable data. Enhance your Airtable forms with more options, such as prefilled data, custom search, placeholders, hidden fields, read-only fields, display order sorting, default values, and much more.
On2Air: Forms Is Part of the On2Air App Toolkit
You not only get the advanced features of On2Air: Forms, you get an additional 6 apps in the On2Air toolkit to use with your Airtable bases!