Has anyone figured out how to use an action button to like / save an item?
In my case, I want the user to be able to save jobs to their profile - thus, I need to somehow send the job field to the user’s linked record field, but without deleting the jobs that have been saved there already. I saw the “save button” snipped on Softr, but that one is not working anymore - happy to also hear about other workarounds to make that happen
Make an alternative field to your linked jobs on airtable to accept the new id of the liked job.
Make a formula field to grab the ids of both linked record fields
Setup an automation that will fire when alternative linked record field gets updated, grab the ids from the previous formula field and put those on the reference linked record field that you want your users to store their favorited listings.
This is a great idea, let me look into that!
I was hoping to not have to use Airtable automations because if thousands of people save jobs, I’ll reach the 50,000 runs super quickly.
Any idea how to not involve automations or to automate it with another tool such as make.com so that I don’t get to the Airtable limit?
It would work, but it would also include an automation run every time someone saves a job, so that wouldn’t last very long unfortunately with the 50,000 automation runs
Wish the action button could update a record and not just replace it, that would be a dream
@Tim_ClimatEU, what do you mean by updating the record vs. replacing it? Do you rather mean like appending into linked record (or alternatively adding new linked record) ?
I have the same problem! It would also help me if users could see how often a product was liked. Airtable should therefore be able to count and display the number of likes, does anyone happen to know you?
Yes, I mean the option to append data to a field and not just replace it, so that no automation is needed. For example, if I have already liked the user “Artur”, that I can like the user “Tim” and it adds “, Tim” to the field so that both have been tagged, just like in the Airtable automations.
That would make it possible to build like buttons and have users create lists easily. With a few thousand users it escalates quickly otherwise and the Airtable business plan starts at 1,400€ per month, unfortunately.
I just tried this, but unfortunately if I like the job simoultaenously with two different accounts, the automation is too slow to grab both. It will end up saving one “like” and the other automation will come back as an error. Any idea how to avoid this? @softrsimon does your solution not have that issue?
Hi Tim,
As I don’t have too many users yet, I didn’t bother, but I ran into the same problem.
One solution I had in mind is to create a buffer field from which the Airtable automation can load / update the “likes” field one after the other.
You would need a new field, that is connected to the like button on Softr using the “add” action. This way any number of users can click the button and the automation can take all the time it needs.
How would you go about adding that buffer field though? It would work if there was a 2 seconds delay or so on the action, but I can’t wrap my head around how to do it. I’d need some automation to copy the data into the buffer field.
By the time the automation runs, another like has come in, and so, it can’t grab the user’s email in time.
Or what do you mean by “add” action? I’m doing this on the list view, not the details view, so there is no add action unfortunately, only the one-click update, edit record, or delete record.
Following up:
It takes Airtable automations 9 seconds to save the job via a one-click action, so if there is any other like action within these 9 seconds then it doesn’t work and it will only save the second “like”, so that’s not really scalable Not sure how to circumvent that, any idea?
It takes roughly 2 seconds for the like to be added via the one-click update, and then another 7 seconds for the linked record field to be updated
You are right. I thought there was a native “add” action.
In that case, it is only possible on a detail page/modal.
Another option would be to use a helper table.
I do that for some of my interaction buttons for climesumer.com.
It’s essentially a table that logs the
User (Peter Fox)
the table from where the action was taken (products)
The action (like)
You can use a form with only hidden fields.
Then use an automation to add / update the corresponding fields. Not ideal if you have many users and want to save automations.
@artur is it feasible / on the roadmap for Softr to add an “append” option to the “Replace existing value with” option that the one-click update has now?