Master Dynamic Linking in Forms 👨‍💻 with Airtable & Fillout!

Form submissions and user input are integral aspects of data management in any organizational process, particularly for businesses engaging with customers or clients. Predominantly, user data is captured through a specifically tailored form that incorporates necessary fields. However, this process often requires a feature known as dynamic linking, a system of intelligently limiting user choices based on previously entered information. This blog will walk you through understanding and implementing dynamic filtering in forms using Airtable and Fillout.

Airtable has emerged as one of the leading tools in the ‘No-Code’ space for its powerful and intuitive Database capabilities. It's simplified yet robust features enable us to build and manage databases efficiently. Fillout, a formidable contender in form building software, complements and extends Airtable's capabilities by offering dynamic linking options that are not natively available in Airtable.

To illustrate, consider a basic form where users firstly specify a country they are located in and then input a city. Based on the country they choose, the city-options must dynamically update to display only cities from the selected country. To the user end, this sounds simple, but it requires a system that can efficiently link data dynamically. There are an increasing number of use-cases that require similar dynamic linking in applications such as customer profiling, survey forms, event registrations, and service queries, to name just a few.

Establishing a foundation for dynamic linking begins with a properly set-up database schema, in this example, having country and city as separate entities connected to a third entity “Form submissions”. The “Form submissions” will hold the final data accumulated from user submissions. To construct this in Airtable, create a table for 'Countries', say Germany, France, and Italy. A separate 'Cities' table records Paris, Berlin, Venice, and so forth, connecting each with its corresponding country.

Enter Fillout, with its seamless integration with Airtable and its competent handling of dynamic linking tasks. Fillout, like its contemporaries, allows forms to be built from scratch or in liaison with an existing backend database such as Airtable. Upon connecting to Airtable, Fillout can access the tables and take advantage of the field structures for form construction.

When you create a form question for 'Country', set it to pull options directly from Airtable's 'Countries’ table. Similarly, for 'City', link the question to utilize options from the 'Cities' table. Fillout's powerful Inbuilt form logic and filter options empower you to apply dynamic linking to your form. It allows your form to filter the choices for 'City' based on the 'Country' previously chosen by the user.

A significant aspect of Fillout's user-friendly platform is the ‘Logic’ feature allowing you to control when form elements are displayed based on the user’s response to previous questions. For instance, by setting an 'is not empty' condition for the 'Country' question, you ensure that the 'City' question is only displayed after a user has selected a country.

By utilizing Fillout's dynamic filter and logic setting options you create smarter forms, reducing room for errors and improving user experience. Once designed and published, this form is ready for deployment, bridging the gap between Airtable's robust database capabilities and dynamic filtering requirements.

Divulging workarounds like these empowers businesses to operate more efficiently using ‘no code’ tools, thus saving time and increasing productivity. This example is just one of the countless ways how dynamic linking can revolutionize form submissions. In a world where data is king, systems that enhance data organization and automation can hugely impact business operations.

In conclusion, while Airtable does an excellent job as a database, it lacks features for dynamic linking in forms. The integration with Fillout, however, breathes life into this missing functionality. With a seamless link between the two, you can create dynamically filtered forms for multiple applications and that too without any in-depth coding knowledge. Enhance business productivity today with this dynamic duo.