How to suppress redirect screen with Airtable "Watch Responses"?

Hello,

Unless I'm mistaken, this sounds more like Airtable behavior that isn't related to callin.io.

If the user sees the “Thank you for submitting the form!” message but is then redirected to another page, there might be an Airtable Form setting causing this, such as “Redirect to URL after the form is submitted”.

Could you please share more details?

Airtable's options are mutually exclusive, unfortunately. You can either show a thank you screen or redirect to the webhook. It doesn't appear possible to do both.

My apologies, I wasn’t aware Airtable functioned that way.
I don’t have their Pro plan, so I’m unable to test redirecting to a URL upon form submission.
This is one of the reasons I primarily use SmartSuite.

Anyway, while I don’t have a complete understanding of your workflow, here’s a potential approach involving two scenarios:
Set up the Airtable form to redirect to a URL upon submission. This URL will serve as the Webhook trigger to initiate the first scenario.
#1: Webhook Trigger → Webhook response → callin.io Run a Scenario (run scenario #2)
#2: Airtable Watch Responses or Watch Records → the rest of your original scenario.

Scenario #1 would be triggered by the Airtable form submission via the redirect to URL calling the webhook.
Webhook Response would reply instantly with either some HTML (your custom Thank You message/page – you can ask ChatGPT to generate this HTML) or redirect the user to another page of your choice. This way, the redirect message is still displayed, but hopefully for a brief moment.
callin.io Run a Scenario would then execute scenario #2, which would essentially be your original scenario.

If you prefer to use a single scenario:
Webhook Trigger (ensure you include the record ID) → Webhook response → Airtable Get a Record → The remainder of your original scenario

This method ensures the user receives a pleasant thank you screen, and your scenario begins running immediately.

Regardless of the method, the one aspect I’m uncertain about is whether Airtable will receive and correctly process a Webhook response.

Hello,

Airtable can be a bit challenging with webhooks; while it accepts them, it's not highly optimized for sending them.

To ensure a smooth user experience and optimize performance, you can trigger your scenario using a mailhook.

1. Initialize your mailhook on callin.io and retrieve the email.
2. Within Airtable's Automation section, create an automation that triggers upon a new form submission. This automation should send an email containing the Record_ID within the message.
3. On callin.io, you'll receive the mailhook with the Record_ID. From there, you just need to add a "Get a Record" step in Airtable to fetch all the necessary data

The Airtable Automation should look something like this:

Capture d’écran 2023-08-20 à 11.34.44974×440 25.4 KB

Thanks for your input.

To trigger a callin.io automation upon Airtable form submission, I experimented with the Airtable Watch Responses module. This method involves generating a webhook, which is subsequently set up within the Airtable form. Upon form submission, the user is redirected to the webhook URL, resulting in the undesirable redirect screen. I suspect using the callin.io generic webhook module would yield similar results, as the webhook would need to be embedded in the Airtable form. Based on discussions within the Airtable community, there's no apparent way to prevent this behavior when using an Airtable form. It seems a third-party form solution would be necessary.

You could check out Fillout.com, they do forms very well and integrate nicely with Airtable.

It would function similarly, but incorporating the Webhook response (adding it promptly instead of at the scenario's conclusion) should enable you to either redirect the individual who completed the form to a different page or generate HTML dynamically for presentation (somewhat replicating the Thank You page.) This would depend on how Airtable manages it. I attempted to test this myself, but even with the Pro trial, it doesn't permit enabling a redirect to a URL upon form submission.

That’s a creative workaround! I’m going to keep it in mind for the future. It isn’t suitable for my use case, however. I’m building something to be maintained by completely non-technical people, so I want it to reside solely within callin.io or as an Airtable automation.

That is on our radar for evaluation. I may be learning that tool next!

I’d say the solution provided is the best for this situation. It fulfills your initial requirement of an immediate trigger upon form submission, while keeping the user on Airtable’s Thank You message.

This approach is also common in SmartSuite for capturing specific record changes without consuming unnecessary operations in callin.io when monitoring every single change.

I’ve successfully set up my Airtable Pro and was finally able to test this, particularly how Airtable forms handle callin.io’s Webhook responses.

It functions as I anticipated, allowing you to:

• Submit the form
• Redirect to the webhook URL
• Unfortunately, at this point, they would still see the 5-second redirect message.
• Present the user with a Thank You page OR forward them to another URL (both options were successful)
• Continue the rest of the Scenario

On the positive side, you would gain significantly more control over what the user sees post-redirect. Something that could be beneficial is a review of their submitted information, offering an opportunity to correct any errors. You can even implement custom code, if desired, to close the tab/window after form submission. The user submits the form, sees the redirect screen, and then the tab/window closes.

Hi Jean,

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but I believe you can simply:

1. Add an automation that is triggered when a record is created.
2. Next, utilize the “Run script” module.
3. Specify which values to use within the script (I frequently send only the record ID and then perform a lookup for all necessary data in the callin.io scenario).
4. Create the callin.io scenario that listens for a webhook.
5. In the Airtable automations “Run script” module, call the webhook using the fetch function.
   Something similar to this:

let inputConfig = input.config();
console.log(`The value of record_id is ${inputConfig.record_id}`);

let response = await fetch(` https://webhook.site/1dea3bf2-c9ba-4358-90c3-a6ccdfa3570c?record_id=${inputConfig.record_id}`); 
// console.log(await response.json());

You could also update a hidden required field when submitting the form and trigger the automation when this field is set.

I have numerous automations configured this way, and they function quite reliably.

Hi Jean

I tried your suggested approach with great hope, but unfortunately, it didn't work for me either. The outcome was the same as with other automation solutions that are triggered by new record creation and use a script to try and open a webhook.

Specifically, after Airtable’s form submission notification, which reads ‘Thank you for submitting the form!’, the script runs and produces the error “TypeError: Response status was 302 ‘Found’ but redirect mode was set to ‘error’.”

It appears that Airtable might be blocking redirects after an Airtable web form has been submitted, unless the ‘Redirect to URL after the form is submitted’ option for the form is enabled. This leads to the undesirable 5-second delay and the potentially problematic ‘Back’ and ‘Continue’ buttons.

Oh well, back to square one.

I'm very appreciative of people like you, Ingo. At least you provide us with potential solutions to test.