Portal: Add summary fields from user table

We are glad to inform you that we have just release an option to add a summary on the top of the portal.

It will look like this in the portal:

For more information about this feature, you can visit this article: How to show a field from User table on top of the portal?

Your feedback is valuable to us, and we would love to hear any comments or suggestions you may have. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment below or by contacting us via chat.

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WOW - Hi MiniExt Team! Love this! :revolving_hearts: Thank you so much!! I was just about to request something like this! :exploding_head: awesome!

Maybe just for some thoughts for discussion ( Nice to have but not urgent/required )

  • :thinking: +1 If we could just have some visual formatting options
  • :thinking: like airtable interface number module, was thinking if there is any additional way we can summarize based on all records in the linked table and not just records associated with user table. ( but the user table field is just useful because we can see related data :+1: )

Overall this function is just awesome! Thank you!:star::star::star::star:

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I concur!! this is AWESOME!!! :heart_decoration:

Hello @JamieZ, for your first inquiry, could you please provide more details about the specific visual formatting you are looking for?

Regarding your second concern, please note that the options to display data in a portal are limited to the functionality provided by Airtable, such as rollup, formula, and lookup fields.

Yeah, I was thinking of the same thing where I needed to replicate this functionality on Airtable. The summary on the bottom of grid view would summarize the current view based on the filtered table, and would change based on the user’s search and filter function. Basically, it would be a summary of the visible records in the portal:

I’m aware that unfortunately, Airtable doesn’t provide an API for the summary. However, you could possibly build out the function natively on MiniExtension. You could provide a calculation at the bottom of a simple function such as SUM, AVERAGE, MEDIAN, MIN, MAX. I’ve been needing this feature for a while, and I thought that summary fields would solve that. But I realized that they’re used for a different purpose where the summary is based on roll up and look up, not based on user entered filter.

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Hi @briansport13. The reason for implementing it this way is to ensure optimal performance in our portal. By initially loading only 100 records, we can maintain a smooth user experience without sacrificing performance. Using the rollup field allows us to compute the summary accurately, regardless of what is currently visible on the screen.

To better understand your specific needs, could you provide a real-life example of the problem you are trying to solve? This will help us better address your concerns and provide you with the most appropriate solution. Thank you!

I’m just guessing here since I don’t know exactly how the mini extension back end really works, but when you say the portal only loads 100 records at a time, does it call the Airtable API for the requested data based on the custom view, filter, or search query and limit the API call to 100 records and then call it again as the user scrolls, and the app needs to show the next 100 records? Or do you call the API as is, store the data, but only show them in the UI in 100s as the user scrolls? If it’s the latter, then it should be possible to aggregate all the values and perform the calculations for either SUM, AVERAGE, MEDIAN, etc. and show them in a frozen summary field at the bottom, even though the rest of the records aren’t technically shown yet in the UI since the user hasn’t scrolled to that point. But anyway, my use case for this is I have an inventory portal where users can check what items are being added and removed from the inventory. I want the users to be able to aggregate the sum of sold inventory items with a filter provided by the user, where they would be able to filter to only show sold inventory transactions for a certain product within a certain period of time. I think this kind of feature would be killer, as this is the type of data manipulation we used to do manually on Excel, piecing up different formula queries to get the value. It’s one of the main reasons I use Airtable, as I can easily see the sum, min, max in the bottom of the Airtable grid view based on filters I apply. Currently, with the summary and custom view, what I can build are all going to be predefined, like last month’s total inventory sold or total inventory sold for this particular product. And I have to keep building out a single portal to accommodate different filters that my users would need.

+1 for this request. It would be great to be able to:

  • remove/select the background color
  • custom field titles
  • custom block or font size (header / text)
  • block alignment
  • data formatting (%, $, etc)

Thank you!

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Since it seems that implementing this feature natively in miniExtension would require a change in the back-end, making it unlikely to be implemented, I decided to build out my own version of the functionality using a combination of Forms, Connecting Services (such as Make or, in my case, n8n), and a Portal. I think it would be great if you could open up a Showcase channel for me and others to show what kind of tools we’re building so that other people might find inspiration to build a functionality that is not implemented natively on miniExtension.

+1 on text font, size, background color, alignment, and field titles, but in terms of formatting, you could already create a formula field & do all kinds of formatying out of Rollup or Lookup field; I don’t think miniExtension would provide the ability to do formatting natively.

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Hi @briansport13. Thank for these information. We will take note of this feedback for future consideration.

Hi @ray and @briansport13. I have generated a ticket to address this specific request. We will ensure to keep you informed regarding any updates through this communication channel.

Yes I agree! It would be awesome to have the fields a lot smaller (or the option to choose). We’d still love the rest of the page to be really usable and visible, so having the summary fields be the same size font of the rest of the page would work great

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Hi @amandallls. I have added your vote to the ticket. We will keep you updated through this channel.

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This is a great idea. I just created this new category: Showcase - miniExtensions for Airtable
I would love to see what you have built, especially the unusual workarounds you came up with!

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Upvoting my previous comment :laughing: I’ve been using the feature more, and even the ability to adjust the height of the boxes, XS, S, M, L would be awesome!

Hello @amandallls. The modification to the summary box is scheduled to be incorporated in the upcoming release, although we don’t have a specific date for its availability at the moment.

Greetings, @amandallls, @briansport13, and @ray. We’re excited to announce that we’ve implemented modifications to the size of the summary field within the portal. Thank you for your feedback.

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Thank you so much @Abdul !! Love the new design with the cards, it feels very clean!

I did want to ask if it is possible to bump up the size of the text a little bit? It’s a bit hard to quickly glance at the new design and see which fields have a 0 vs a different number. Having the numbers be a bit bigger would be so helpful!

Would it be possible to have the option to display summaries to the side of the portal like under the header when side view is selected? That way a bunch of summaries aren’t stacked above the data pushing it down screen? Thank you!