Airtable's June 2020 Updates: Buttons, Created by, and Last Modified Fields

Another month in the books, and some fantastic new features from Airtable! In this post, I'll be detailing my three favorite new Airtable features with the June 2020 update. Specifically, I'll be detailing three new fields:

1. Created by
2. Last Modified by
3. Button

It's uncommon that we see one new field type released, but to have three new fields all drop at once is really exciting! These fields are dependent field types. That is, they derive their values from other fields and can't be directly edited. The Button Field, most excitingly, has a slew of functions that it can perform. Essentially, this field allows you to establish rules so that when you "push the button" specific things happen!

In this video I outline an imagined use-case for these three fields. I create new Contacts in my database (instantly seeing who is responsible for each new contact using the "Created by" field).

Then, I use a button to attach an image to each contact. To do this, I built a button that opens the Pexels Block, allowing me to quickly search for a royalty free image. Once I select one, it updates my record and also shows me the user who made the last update, utilizing the "Last Modified by" field.

Lastly, I wrap things up with a more advanced button that sends an email to the contact in question and even attaches the corresponding image to the email. To get this over the line, I used some pretty gnarly formulas, so I'll be sure to include the nastiest of those (a formula that 'scrapes' the URL of an image) here below:

MID({Photo Text},FIND(" (",{Photo Text})+2,FIND(")",{Photo Text})-FIND(" (",{Photo Text})-2)

That's it for this post - let me know what new use-cases you start implementing for your buttons... I can't wait to further explore the new features!