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Hi,

Being somewhat new, I have a couple of questions about sharing views.

I have a base for a book club.  It has a Members table and a Books Read table.  The Books Read table contains Date, Title, Author and Member who proposed the book.  This field uses a link to the Members table itself.  Works good so far.

First question:
I'd like to send an email to the members with a link to the grid view.  I click "Share" from that view and copy the URL link, then add it to an email.  Will that URL link change if I add records to the table, or if I add fields to the table?  If not, I can continue to use that same link, right?

Second question:
Assuming the link doesn't change, I created a QR code with QR Tiger for that link.  I'd like to embed the QR in the body of the email, along with the pasted link, so the recipient can either click/tap the link or use their camera to access the grid view.  Is there any way to store the qr code itself (a png file) in the Airtable base?

Finally:
Assuming favorable answers to the questions above, is it possible to have Airtable itself send out those emails (email address is included with each record in Members table)?  I currently have the free plan.

Thanks for any help...

Hi Ron,

The link to a view will not change until you change it regardless of the number of records in a view.  The answers to both questions 2 and 3 are yes.  However, please consider these things.

If you share the data through an interface, you can share only the book that the users have read to be shared with that user.  Or, the user can mark a book as private or public.  This is a generally better approach than sharing views at the database level.  By using the interfaces, you don't have to store unique QR codes for each view.  You could have just one QR code for the entire interface.

Hi Ron,

The link to a view will not change until you change it regardless of the number of records in a view.  The answers to both questions 2 and 3 are yes.  However, please consider these things.

If you share the data through an interface, you can share only the book that the users have read to be shared with that user.  Or, the user can mark a book as private or public.  This is a generally better approach than sharing views at the database level.  By using the interfaces, you don't have to store unique QR codes for each view.  You could have just one QR code for the entire interface.


Thanks for the quick reply, Dan. 

I think I mis-stated question 1.  Of course the link won't change when you add records.  I wasn't sure that was true if you change the table structure by adding fields.

Your last paragraph makes a lot of sense, and for a more complex base I would agree.  Since this is a book group, and all I really want to accomplish is distributing the current book list to the members (who are not Airtable users).  There is no requirement to filter it, or mark any records private.  Therefore, I think in this case simply sharing the data view of that table is fine.

Is there any suggestion of how to store the QR code (which is a png impage) in the base, and how to automate emails to the members which would include both the link and the qr code in the body of the email?

I was picturing adding a table which would contain the link and the QR code in a single record.  Depending on how I trigger it, I would like to create an email, address it to everyone in the Members table (which has an email address field), then build a message which would include some text, the link and the QR code, then send to all of the addresses.

Thanks again...

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