Stacker Customers

It's not possible at the moment out the box, and I'm not familiar enough with Airtable's comments system to suggest a workaround.

Please do add a request on the <https://feedback.stackerhq.com/|feedback board> with any extra context for what you're trying to achieve! :pray::skin-tone-2:

Not possible as standard I'm afraid, but please do add a request on our <https://feedback.stackerhq.com/|feedback board>.

The community may have found a workaround with custom JS, but will let them comment on that!

Good question! I think from my read of <https://support.airtable.com/docs/two-way-syncing-in-airtable|their docs> you _should_ be able to sync back updates from a target base to the source base, but not create new records there.

From our end, there's nothing we'd need to enable - we'd just make the request of the base to update it, and Airtable will let us do it or not.

image.png

Thanks <@U03G3BA8ZE3> - I just get an error in Stacker if I try to save an updated record that's stored in the sync'd version of the table...

Hm, I'd say it's worth reaching out to support for this one. From looking at the Airtable community it seems like some people are having issues with it just using Airtable. We can try and diagnose via support!

I’d like to see two way sync between a Stacker table (as the source) and Airtable. This would mean new records are only able to be created in the Stacker base and interface but I’d still have a way to show and access this same data on the Airtable side of things. Right now I can’t do that at all.

Interesting, what's your use case there <@U018GV7AYUV>?

I’m trying to eliminate base tables from Airtable when and where I can so as to not be dependent on Airtable synchronization or up time. Those tables that then get created in Stacker mostly contain static data that end-users never need to update or modify. These Stacker tables are only maintained by Admins but form the basis for tagging other record relationships so I do need to build related record links in Stacker too in order to connect between Airtable data sources and Stacker table sources.

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but it would also be useful to then be able to sync those same Stacker base tables back to Airtable for the few instances where a limited number of Airtable users might want to modify and update records either directly or via Airtable interfaces. Without a synced table, I can’t refresh record relationships properly from Airtable, even though those Airtable users would never have a need to be creating new source records.

To be more specific about the use case, I have a “species” table in Stacker that contains a list of all species important to a pest identification record. The pest identification table in Airtable is a data source in Stacker and from within the Stacker interface, users that create new ID records can link those IDs back to the related species records via the Stacker defined relationship. For end users this works fine and handles most data entry needs. However, if I want to offer Airtable users similar functionality, I don’t have a read-only, synced Stacker table to reference in Airtable so I can’t build out a similar interface over there. Make sense?

Yes, I think that make sense. I'll feed that back to the team, appreciate you taking the time to explain!

They would need to allow embedding in general, but they could also focus on allowing embeds from stackerhq,com

Hi Juraj, you should be able to do this with a new “Feedback” table that would be empty to start.  You could link to the Feedback create page using “Quick link” widgets on the detail page or Custom Pages. Let us know if you have any questions on this!

<@U040KEGR3RA> i mean the visual side of the solution - the form itself that would be available (perhaps for just a single submit?) on a specific record. say, we have Trainings and Instructors and we want the instructor to provide a feedback on each training they attended. such form should be available for each training, but just for a single submit per instructor.

(the single submit isn't necessarily a must-have)

Hi Juraj, I created a quick outline for a possible solution:
You can create a “Feedback” table. Link it to your Users and Link it to the Trainings table:
1. On the Trainings detail page have the Quick link at the bottom for the feedback table, use conditional visibility so that the users can only see this if the linked field (Users -&gt; feedback) does not contain current user. (Edited: to change the filter option)
2. Set a “Created by field” using the linked field (users-&gt; Feedback) on the Feedback table. 
3. Use the Autofill formula for the Training -&gt; Feedback field (Article on how to set up an Autofill: <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409799378835-Auto-filling-values-into-create-forms>) 
4. Place the Autofill URL into your Quick Links Widget

thx for the write-up, great ideas and inspiration :slightly_smiling_face: i'll experiment based on that!

i mean, i could use a formula to calculate percentage based on total vs actual number (e.g. hours logged in the system), but I don't quite understand how do I then show the resulting number as completion percent, or perhaps even as gauge graphic

Hi Juraj, you may need to use an automation (either on Airtable if you are using it or on Zapier) to fill a new cell with the result from another cell. It wouldn’t be possible to use the percentage field icons with a formula field.

<@U040KEGR3RA> can zapier update a stacker field? the trouble is, i'm using salesforce as a backend and need to use stacker fields to display these numbers, as there's no way(?) to tell stacker to display a number field (imported from sfdc) as, say, a bar.

aaah, nevermind, it actually does exactly that, but i've been either blind or overworked :slightly_smiling_face: thanks, anyway!

<@U0534ACTYE5> What kind of a field is this percentage field? It looks like an alphanumeric sort instead of purely numeric. In alphanumeric sorting, 0 comes before 1 because the values themselves don’t matter—only which number digit comes first

it was a formula field, and I tried using VALUE() function, which, as I understand, should return numerical version of the passed-in string.
however, i've managed to resolve this differently, so I have deleted the formula fields.
what you're saying makes sense, though, so consider this resolved, i'll keep that in mind for the future.

Hi Helen, I’ve seen that you have contacted support on this issue and it is now sorted. I’ll pass on your feedback as well.

Hey <@U0393AW3D37>. If you’re still seeing slowness, please contact us through the support widget (question mark icon &gt; contact us) and we’ll be happy to take a look.

We _could_ theoretically send you an IP, but the problem with that is that the IP can change. Any DNS provider should be able to do a domain rather than an IP. If you haven’t already, it might be worth contacting their support

I did reach out to their support and explain the same about the IP address..but they are insisting that they need the IP address for the A record. So while I'm able to have &lt;<http://www.sitename.com>|www.&lt;sitename&gt;.com&gt; go to <http://connect.stacker.app|connect.stacker.app>, &lt;sitename&gt;.com doesn't

It's not possible to use a CNAME record on the "naked domain name" (the domain name without something like "www"). You always have to use an IP address. It's a DNS limitation and not a limitation of your registrar or DNS provider. What some DNS providers can do is configure a redirect from &lt;<http://sitename.com|sitename.com>&gt; to &lt;<http://www.sitename.com|www.sitename.com>&gt;. I've done this on <http://Gandi.net|Gandi.net> in the past and they even configure a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate on the naked domain name so both HTTP and HTTPS redirects will work properly.

<@U03EJB5AUAH> thanks for the details! Chatgpt gave me a similar answer to the problem:sweat_smile: but I wasn't sure if it's the right one

Looks like <http://Crazydomains.au|Crazydomains.au> cannot do this redirect:neutral_face:

if you could clarify, what is the difference between "handling questions" and "answering incidents"?

sorry, my English is not quite perfect.
In detail, it is about truck drivers having problems (is not unloaded / is late) and report them to the dispatchers. At the moment, this is done mainly by email and is very chaotic (because several hundred truck drivers).
We are in the process of managing parts of the company with Airtable and Stacker and would like to integrate this part into it. Driver sends problem - dispatcher answers or sends a query in response - driver answers again - dispatcher clarifies and closes case.
I hope this is a bit more understandable. Thanks a lot!

sounds like a standard ticketing system to me. perhaps a bit more chat-like, in order to make it faster.
that said, i'm curious myself how would others suggest to build this.
i'd say stacker is not really optimal for such thing, though (since it provides user-friendly options to manupulate text fields embedded in a record), it could technically be possible.

Hi Kevin, One option could be to have a table of Deliveries and on each Record (or truck delivery) use a Status update using an <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/4573808512531-Action-Buttons|action button> that Truck drivers could press saying: “Delivered” or “Late” that the Dispatch can then see and using the <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/9098515184019-Detail-Activity-Tab|Activity Tab> would be able to reach out to truck drivers to ask questions if needed.

You can also use an <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/16299184422547-Intercom-Integration|intercom integration> to have live chat with your users.

Are there any screenshots to see how the integration of Intercom looks like on the Stacker interface ?

Hi Kevin, It should look like the Intercom widget we use on Stacker for customers (such as yourself) to reach out to our support team!

Hi there! Sorry if this is too late ... I just happened to see your question. We actually set up a support ticket system using Airtable + Stacker. We needed something custom that we could link to existing resources and directories housed in Airtable.

Basically, we can have a table with "incidents" and a form that gets filled out (type - request/troubleshooting/incident, details, staff member reporting the incident - staff populate from a linked table and you could set this up to auto-populate using Stacker's "created by" setting).

When the form is submitted, the record (or incident) goes to "processing" where another staff member reviews the ticket and assigns it to the right person (also pulled from our staff directory that has names, emails, etc.).

The assignee gets a notification via automation.

They can update the status to "needs attention" then use Stacker's activity feature to tag the original staff member about the ticket and ask follow up questions.

When the issue is finally resolved, the assignee writes up the response (in a field for recording purposes) and marks the ticket "done."

The staff member who submitted the ticket gets an auto-email that the ticket has been resolved and a copy of the response.

We have a couple other features set up - like notifications when the ticket hasn't been resolved after 3 days, the ability to rate responses, etc.

It's really handy for pulling reports and grouping data!

If you need more info, please let me know ...

Cloudflare offers free DNS and I generally find it superb

<@UMTMCG109> Does Cloudflare allow URL redirection from <http://sitename.com|sitename.com> to <http://www.sitename.com|www.sitename.com>, that seems to be the main issue right now for me.

Yep they have 3 page rules free per domain, which allow you to do things like that.

Hi <@U01CDA2JYNS>

Role updates sometimes taking a bit to propagate is currently expected, though we might revisit this in the future.

<@U02N890SW84> Do you have any ideas for workarounds that cold help speed up the process? Maybe updating a Stacker field instead of an Airtable field?

Hi Mark
There’s no way to speed up the process right now—at least that I know of. That said, I’ll double-check with the engineering team and get back to you.

I can confirm that the way roles update _can_ be instant, but it can also take up to a minute or two to be reflected. There’s no way to speed this up right now.

+1 vote on this one from me as well. I wanted to do this a while back to force new users to watch onboarding materials before accessing the full app, but the delay in updates to user roles prevented this from working.

Hi <@U02L0AH2DHV>

Thanks for your questions, and for all the investigation you’ve done on your end. Here are some notes:
• You should be able to let users see and edit only themselves using ownership filters in permissions. 
• We could definitely handle email changes more gracefully. Right now the user would indeed need to log out and log back in to see all the changes. We might revisit this in the future.
• Right now it is not possible to change your email within Stacker’s My Settings


<@U02N890SW84> thanks for the notes and confirming the current functionality!

<@U02L0AH2DHV> I can confirm that what <@U02N890SW84> said is correct - you can use permissions on the table itself to allow users to only see their own data. This is better practice in the long run as it automatically catches any new views you create which might show the data in another place.

Hey Peter, thanks for flagging.

While we haven’t actively considered Passkeys yet, we might consider them in the future. :simple_smile:

Hi <@U045AV7A57A>, Action buttons used within Stacker are used to update records and they can’t create new records. But there are a few other ways to do this.

A few options to choose from that will work best for your workflow:
1. You could use the Action button with Zapier to create a new record when the Button is pressed (should work with all data sources)
2. Airtable Automations (if your data source is Airtable)
3. Use an Autofill formula - <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409799378835-Auto-filling-values-into-create-forms|How to set up an Auto fill>
Hope this helps and if you have other questions about any of the setups please let us know!

<@U045AV7A57A> i believe there is a feature request for associating actions (such as button clicks) with users (who actually clicked the button), which might enable this sign-up scenario of yours.
until then, i'd say you're better off with a (embedded/linked) form that pushes data into your backend system (we do it this way currently)

Thanks all. I built an Airtable automation to use for the time being. 

Joel, the approach I’ve taken is to use <https://bit.ly/TryFillout|Fillout> to create forms that include their built in Stripe integration. I create a tab on a detail layout where a user logged into their account, seeing only their own records, can click on the tab to view the embedded Fillout form in their Stacker layout. I have found Fillout forms to be way more flexible in terms of the features you can build in for data entry. The Stacker update functions are very limited while Fillout just keeps improving. They will likely have a native PayPal integration soon too, but for now you can manage that payment process similar to how my payment choices are shown in this example and the multi-page form logic let’s you build out a thorough user experience. Fillout supports both Airtable and GoogleSheets integration too.

Thanks for this <@U018GV7AYUV> - super helpful. The only downside is this use-case only really works for “a-la-carte” payments for single items, right? In other words, you can’t really use that to manage an active subscription or recurring charge, that kind of thing…?

I think you could solve that by using a related table lookup in your Airtable&lt;&gt;Stacker base by presenting the end user with a list of subscription options they could choose from and then tying that choice to a product set you define in Stripe. I know you can create subscriptions and handle more complex product set definitions in Stripe, I just haven’t got around to trying out some of those scenarios yet and tying it back to a forms interface using Fillout. If anyone else has, I’d love to hear about it.

<@U018GV7AYUV> This is exactly what I've been noodling over. Thank you for the details!

Great thoughts.. I tested a Fillout form with single select options that dynamically update the Square price when clicking the final buy/purchase button. That’s great for one-off orders. Haven’t tested with a subscription-based use case yet. 

Its a little bit complicated to set up (at least in my case) but it works super well

Hi <@U01B1LTTYQJ>,
thanks for your feedback and a nice example with Polyphia :grin:

That looks awesome. I also did a test and it works pretty slick. 
It is pretty interesting to see that you use it on a detail page. How do you get the data for this specific item? Do you pass it with a query that you have in Airtable for this record?

It has been some time since I worked with Data/Looker Studio :slightly_smiling_face:

CleanShot 2023-06-07 at 16.16.19.jpg

uploading a new screenshot without that info for anyone referencing this convo in the future

to answer your question — You can pass through variables into Looker Studio via URL.  It’s a little tricky, but basically you have a URL parameter for the Airtable Record ID you want to pass,

then Looker filters that Airtable Record ID

So this is off topic for stacker but: You get data out if Airtable directly into Looker? Do you use an extension for this?

I sync to Postgres using <http://sequin.io|sequin.io> or <http://usebracket.com|usebracket.com> then plug Looker into that

Thanks. 
One more question if I may:
That looks like a lot of data. I guess you don't keep all this in Airtable after you wrote it to Postgres. 
Airtable works for me now and maybe the next year but then I will reach the limits in terms of records to keep in Airtable.

I would be interested to hear how you handle this.
Thanks in advance!

I archive historical data in Postgres and have working data in Airtable (sync’d to Postgres).  Then I merge the two tables in Looker to link the working table with the data warehouse

Awesome. Thank you very much. You helped me a lot and give me some ideas how to prepare our stack for the future!

As far as Stacker itself, that button is present (or not) based on the permissions you have set for the user/role/table. However, it should be possible to hide it using custom Javascript if your plan allows for that, so maybe you could somehow make that contingent on some specific data. Not 100% certain as I haven’t seen/heard something that specific before, but it may be worth a shot. :)

So far the ways I've been able to hide the new button is through;
1. Custom CSS, which affects all roles
2. Disabling create access to all fields for a role
Other than this you can hack it in some cases.. Like if it's a related record list then show a different list depending on the attribute, and set it to not allow new.

These are the only ways I've been able to do this so far

hi! I'm having trouble creating linked fields based on the created by field. Our users belong to "groups", and I'd like to have that group as a field in a "reports" table. I have the username in the created by field, but I can't use that for looking up the group for some reason.

just an idea: do a soft delete (mark a kind of a "IsDeleted" field as TRUE) and filter the soft-deleted records out..?

You could set a checkbox and then use an Airtable script to delete the record if the box is checked. Assuming you use Airtable as the backend.

This may also be possible with the Zapier integration. Haven't tried it myself.

Can you elaborate a bit? Are you talking about access to documents in cloud storage accounts from Stacker (and maybe Airtable too?). My go to cloud storage solution is *Box* thanks to it’s enterprise class feature set and <https://support.airtable.com/docs/airtable-sync-integration-box|Airtable integration> too. I’m currently exploring ways to provide internal users access to a folder on Box that is tied to each user record in Airtable but I don’t have enough progress on that front to report back yet.

Or are you actually talking about being able to collaborate on a document that can be found and viewed via the Stacker app interface?

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone using <https://coda.io/packs/airtable-11262|Coda integration with Airtable> to provide document level access and features and thus some sort of possible connection to Stacker too.

I have an app that needs documents. The documents are in a SharePoint drive with heavy use of the meta data (no folders!).
When a document is uploaded via Stacker to Airtable an automation is triggered in Airtable which calls a sequence in Make.
This uploads the document to SharePoint and also to an Airtable base. Thus I mirror the SharePoint drive in Airtable. 
I use the automatic link in Stacker to link it to specific person IDs.
The good thing is that I can delete the whole Airtable and still have all the structured data in the SharePoint drive (i.e. database based in meta data).
Users can also delete documents via Stacker.
I could replace the storage with something else if I need to or only keep a limited amount of data in Airtable but still have all in SharePoint.

I am also interested in other ways to solve this.

<@U018GV7AYUV> Yes, I am looking into what is possible with regards to both, 1. Access to documents in cloud storage &amp; 2. Collaboration on documents
I wanted to know if anyone has tried it, what is the User experience like. Would love to hear any updates on the Box access to users once you've worked on it.

<@U055D1TDU2Z> this is a great way to handle this. Can you tell me, do you have to give access to Sharepoint to each user? Something similar can be done with Google, but then the users' will need a Google email to access.

Stacker lends itself to creating portals so easily, however a big part of client/partner/internal portals is sharing and working on documents. Any integration with these tools would be so beneficial!

<@U01QZ40HRFW> Users don't access the data in the SharePoint Drive directly. I created a SharePoint with permissions to access data anonymously and when the file is uploaded I generate the share link for the file and save this in Airtable. Users can access the file via this link and don't need to be logged into SharePoint.
We need to give access to files also to people outside of the company. I can control this via Roles in Stacker. 
I can also delete the share link for each file and it will not be accessible from the outside. It is an ok solution for now. 

The SharePoint API is a pain so having the data available in Airtable makes my life easier.

In case of a solution for Stacker you will need to find some cloud service that syncs the file database of the service to Airtable and make sure you have a link to access the file.
CRUD operations will need to be added by some automations on your own via the middle layer called Airtable.

You should make yourself clear, if you want to use a file storage or a DMS. You then either build the DMS yourself in Airtable/Stacker or mirror the DMS in Airtable.
The latter let's me sleep better because if somehow my DMS layer in Airtable gets broken or deleted I can rebuild it with a click if a button.

AT Box mobile view.png

Box fields.png

Most of my use cases don’t have a need for the end users in Stacker to access files in the third party cloud storage solution. A typical workflow for them might be using the Airtable&lt;&gt;Stacker combo to fill out forms which then produce PDF files of those forms as they move through various phases of submission, approval and completion. Resulting PDF forms get stored and displayed in Stacker as needed but generally there is no end user collaboration going on with the document itself.

The *Airtable&lt;&gt;Box* integration. in very useful for the internal team document management though. What it provides is an Airtable base of the complete Box file directory at whatever level you specify when nyou set up the integration. No complicated Make or Zapier scripting necessary. It gives you Airtable button-level access to any file out in that cloud directory. The Box filepath information gets added to the Box directory base in Airtable automatically, making it very. easy to navigate back to the source file.

And of course you then have. full access to all the other feature rich integration options. that your Box account gives you, including the ability to open and. work on a given. document in a fully collaborative fashion. That includes both Microsoft and Apple software suites BTW.

The view below shows how Box cloud storage is presented on a mobile device.  Pretty easy to look up and work on a file from any device, but again, for my typical workflows, the web. portal end user is not a defined user on Box or any other third party app being used in the overall solution.  Only internal team members, for example, would be defined users on the Box account. You can, of course define a publicly accessible file directory in Box and share that too, I just haven’t experimented much with doing that.

I’d love to see a native Stacker table implementation of the same type of. Box integration that Airtable offers.

Oh, didn't realise this was a time bound thing :flushed:

Hi all! Fast sync will be turned off after June 9th and the data syncing will go to 15minutes.  By upgrading your connection you will be able to use Real Time Sync at no extra cost! <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/14372703347219-Upgrading-Airtable-data-connections#airtable-data-connection-upgrade-explained-0-0|Read more about real time sync upgrading here>! Thank you :slightly_smiling_face:

<@U040KEGR3RA> To confirm, if we have an app that uses Fast sync, it will automatically switch back to data syncing? No action required on our end?

<@U02FFUNTK18> That is how it should work, yes.

Yes, just click on the heading in edit layout mode. It'll allow you to edit it.

Hey <@U03MZJ71DUZ>, can definitely see the value in that. Not possible out the box at the moment but please do request it <https://feedback.stackerhq.com/|here>.

<@U03MZJ71DUZ> you could probably do something with custom JS and the Airtable API. Would take a bit of work to get it going, but possible. This would not be a native feature inside of Stacker.

I think that <@U0146FKFCKE> would be able to help you implement this if you're unsure of how to do it.

While technically possible to do it using the Airtable API directly, I’d advise against it for various reasons. (or, to build a caching server in-between, but that’s a lot of work/money just to get this feature)

Unfortunately, Stacker doesn’t give us the tools to read the data it holds, so using the data inside Stacker is not possible at this time (possible on older workspace versions, though)

Please talk to your end users first. Do they really require to be notified right away?
If email is too much, why should push help?
Is it really that urgent?

Maybe think about a good way to summarize Todo work for them in Stacker.

Or maybe you have any kind of chat solution in place (teams, slack) where you can send the message to.

<@U0534ACTYE5> We’ll be happy to help, but please contact us through the support widget. In the app, question mark icon &gt; Contact us

Hi Juraj, I see you have reached out to support! We will continue the conversation there so we can look at your app directly. Thank you!

was there any information about dropping support for the salesforce connector, please?

Hi <@U0534ACTYE5>

We didn’t have any downtime or an update that should break things, but we will continue looking into this with you over the support channels.

Hey <@U02R50CHQ4R>, it’s not in our immediate plans, but it definitely is on our radar. That said, we do offer SSO on our Enterprise plan, which does allow you to force 2FA through your Identity Provider (IDP)

Like within an app, if an employee wanted to access private documents, they have to enter a password to view?

No, it isn’t possible to restrict access by “page” as Stacker uses a database model rather than being a collection of static webpages. But you could use permissions and roles to restrict who has access to specific tables, etc.: <https://support.stackerhq.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409598249619-Introduction-to-Permissions->