How to Create a Form in Airtable: Streamline Your Information Gathering

Whether you need to gather product feedback, job applications, or project requests, collecting essential information from others is crucial for your work. With Airtable forms, you can easily create custom forms that seamlessly integrate into your workflow. In this guide, we’ll take you through the step-by-step process of creating, customizing, and sharing an Airtable form. By the end, you’ll be able to collect information from anyone and put it to use, all within Airtable.

Introduction

Plan Availability
All plan types/levels

Permissions
“Owner” or “Creator” permissions are needed to create new form views as described in the article below

Platform(s)
Web/Browser, Mac app, and Windows app

Related Reading

• Guide to using the form view – Other form view considerations are covered in this article.
• Interface layout: Form – If you have an audience that uses an interface, consider creating a form layout in an interface instead.
• Linked Record Field – Helpful for tracking submissions and/or connecting submissions to other parts of your base.
• User field type – If your form is internal-facing and submitters have base access, consider using this field to track submissions.

Try it in Airtable
Create a form

Step 1: Create Your Form

Collecting information from teammates or external stakeholders can quickly become chaotic. Whether you’re reviewing job applications or receiving project requests, there are many details to manage, and you don’t want anything important to get overlooked.

With Airtable, you can streamline your work by creating a structured form that captures every detail submitted. Imagine collecting content requests from your team. By creating a custom form in Airtable, you can standardize the information submitted, ensuring you have all the necessary context to start working immediately.

Streamline Information Gathering

A table in Airtable contains a list of items of the same type, such as people, ideas, or projects. The organization of your table depends on your workflow. For example, the “Content calendar” base has several tables tracking different aspects of the workflow: Content pipeline, campaigns, team, and assets.

When you want to capture new information in a table, creating an Airtable form presents an excellent opportunity. With a form, you can collect information from anyone and save it automatically to any table in your base. For instance, in the “Content pipeline” table, new form submissions will populate alongside existing content.

To get started, decide which table you want to collect information in. You can either follow along using the provided “Content calendar” template or create your own. The steps to creating a form are the same regardless of your workflow.

Create Your New Form

Creating a new form tailored to your existing way of working is a breeze. Simply add a form view to the table where you want to capture new information. Airtable forms are automatically generated based on the fields you’ve already added to your table, saving you time and effort.

To capture the right information in your form, match each field type to the key information you want to collect. If you need additional information, you can add more fields in the form builder.

To create your own form, go to the table where you want to collect information. Expand the view sidebar and select “Form +” under “Create a view”. Give your form a name that reflects its purpose, such as “job application form” or “new content request form”.

Step 2: Customize Your Form

Don’t let long or confusing forms hinder great work. Regardless of the type of information you’re collecting, it’s important to ensure that your form is simple and easy to navigate for those filling it out.

Now that you’ve created your form, it’s time to customize it to your specific needs using the form builder. This drag-and-drop tool allows you to tailor the form to your desired look and functionality.

Create Clarity for Submitters with Custom, Relevant Fields

Your form contains different fields. With Airtable forms, you have the flexibility to customize which fields are visible, how they look, and in what order they are displayed. This customization ensures that only relevant fields are shown to the submitters.

To hide or change the order of fields in your form, simply click on the field name and drag it to the desired position. Rearrange the fields to prioritize the most important ones at the top, ensuring that submitters see them first.

To provide submitters with the necessary context, add custom names and help text to each field in your form. Frame your field names as questions that submitters can easily respond to. These display changes won’t affect the field names in your base.

Feel free to start customizing the fields in your form. Simply select the field and update the field header to create custom field names.

Keep Submitters Focused with Required Fields and Conditional Logic

When dealing with multiple fields, it’s essential to guide submitters on what is important and ensure that they complete all necessary fields. Airtable forms allow you to do this by adding required fields and conditional form fields.

Make important fields required by enabling the “Required” toggle. Required fields must be completed before the form can be successfully submitted.

You can also create conditional fields to keep submitters focused and save them time. Conditional fields are displayed in the form based on the values the submitter chooses in previous fields. This way, submitters only see relevant fields and can complete the form more quickly.

Try adding a conditional field to your form by toggling on the “show field only when conditions are met” option. Configure the conditions based on which the field should appear. Test the form to ensure that the conditions work as expected.

Level up Your Form with Your Logo or a Cover Image

Add a personal touch to your form by incorporating your company’s logo or a cover image (available on premium plans).

To add a cover image, click on the header next to “Add a cover image”, upload your desired image, and adjust its size. For a logo, select “Add a logo” and upload the image directly to the dialog.

Step 3: Share Your Form & Collect Submissions

With your form created and customized, it’s time to put it into action. Share your form to start collecting information from anyone, whether they are part of your organization or external stakeholders.

Share Your Form with Anyone You Want

By sharing your form’s unique URL, anyone can submit requests directly into your base without the need to sign in to Airtable.

To share your form, select “Share form” on the view bar. This will generate a URL that you can copy and send to whomever you want. Preview your form to see how it will look for submitters.

If your form contains sensitive information, the Pro or Enterprise plan allows you to add extra protection by setting a password or limiting access to specific email domains.

With your form shared, you’ll start receiving submissions. Customize your post-submission form settings to receive email notifications, display custom messages, or redirect submitters to a specific URL.

Customize How You Organize and Review New Submissions

One of the advantages of using a form in Airtable is that all the information submitted goes directly to your base. Create a filtered view to see only new submissions or view them alongside existing work, allowing you to stay on top of every new submission.

Take action on new submissions by reviewing them in your table. Each submission will appear as a new record in the table you created the form in. Update field values or change status based on the submissions.

Recap

Great work! You’ve now completed three key steps to create a form in Airtable:

• Step 1: You created a form that captures essential details.
• Step 2: You customized your form, making it easy to navigate.
• Step 3: You shared your form and reviewed submissions, all in one place.

With your custom form in Airtable, you can now collect crucial information from anyone, anywhere, directly within your workflow. From creation to customization to sharing, you can capture the details that matter most with an Airtable form.

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