+1… the minimum for me would be to be able to restrict access to specific tables for specific users. Anything more robust than that would be totally welcome, but really being able to easily “hide” sensitive tables is what we REALLY need at the mo.

Edited to add: I would like to add that IMO there really needs to be a user type, maybe “Edit Only-Limited”, that only has “add, delete, and modify records” permissions, thus they can’t edit/create/delete views, change permissions, or invite collabs.

I think by simply adding a fourth User Type you could solve a lot of the permissions issues people are experiencing. It wouldn’t be perfect but it would be a super easy (I assume) way to deal with this permissions thing.

Hi @Howie Really enjoying Airtable - pretty new to it but I have already discovered it is a great product. Yes, more refined user permissions would certainly help us. We are a membership organisation/trade association involved with the wine industry and we hold a comprehensive wine inventory; the wines from which are used at our member events - receptions, lunches, dinners, banquets etc. We don’t trade wine as such but just buy, store and drink it

I would like to be able to control user access to certain sheets only and for that access to have view or edit options for each separate sheet. So, somewhere in sharing options some way to select permissions such as:-

Per User:

Control access as follows:

Whole base - view only, edit or restrict to certain sheets

If ‘restrict to certain sheets’ thereafter on a per sheet basis

List of sheets and some method to select, on an individual sheet basis - no access, view only or edit

I guess the ultimate would then be to control permissions on each column within a specific sheet.

This would certainly help me give controlled access to certain members of staff who are involved in stock movement. On a very basic level I could then give our store-man access to one very basic sheet to record an order when it is delivered by simply changing order status from ‘On Order’ to ‘Delivered’ and entering the number of delivered items which would then show as available stock in the base. In essence, that would be all he needed in terms of interaction with the base.

I have tried this by embedding a sheet into a web site page but it doesn’t allow me to give editing permissions to the sheet which is embedded - that would be a simple solution if it was possible to edit via an embedded sheet.

Hope all this helps you guys progress this permissions issue. Many thanks

Thanks for looking into developing permissions

industry: Healthcare Education

organizing Questions and tags for import to EXAMSOFT

Base Table List of Topics/ Course of question linked to table of questions and answers and "tags"

permissions application Want faculty to be able to access and add question only in table of the subject they teach including selecting the tag that works the best BUT should not be able edit the table of tags.

I need to be able to restrict groups of users from seeing certain fields, tables and views.

I also wish that groups of users could be restricted from making changes to views (column order, grouping, hiding, etc.)

At the moment, I can’t hide sensitive data and people keep changing my views!

Another solution to this issue would be the ability to share tables to other bases. Then we could filter only the information we need to share between different groups of users.

Thanks!

-Donald

Change requests to address the issues being experienced by most users in this thread.

Allow users with “Creator” permissions to:

1. 
   

   Determine which Views are visible to each user with Edit Only and Read Only permissions. This will allow us to invite more users into the database but share only relevant and need-to-know data with some users.

   
   


2. 
   

   Determine what specific actions each Edit Only user can take within the Views they have access to – allow turning on/off the ability to a) edit Records, b) add Records, and c) delete records. This will protect against accidental or intentional damage to the database.

   
   


3. 
   

   Determine which fields can be edited by Edit Only users within each View. This will Edit Only users to change or update only selected data.

   
   


4. 
   

   Determine whether users with Edit Only and View Only permissions are allowed to invite new users into the database. This will allow us to prevent lower level users from inviting in people that shouldn’t have access to the database.

   
   

A few examples about Advanced User Permissions:

what exactly you’re organizing with Airtable (cattle? marketing projects? job applicants?)

I think that a common(ish) application would be KPIs for teams, franchises, etc.

For example, as a manager, I want my teams to be able to add and edit “records” to their own “views” but not see or edit the records from other teams and views in the same “base.” However, I also don’t want to create a separate base for every team because then, as leader, I can’t take advantage of what Airtable does so well: collate and organize data, in this case, across teams. Also, if I go the “form” route, then my teams can’t update or edit KPIs without doing the whole form over again and then asking me to delete the incorrect record.

In summary, perhaps adding edit permissions for 1) views and 2) tables would be a practical and understandable way to implement more granularity.

I would like to use it for a project tracker, where I’d like financial rollup data to be hidden for certain team members. A view/table based permission set would easily solve my issue.

Column permissions solves at the core this issue. It would simply display or be hidden on views and if in a given table. Setting permissions per column takes more work to set up, but gives a high level of confidentiality and flexibility. Table permissions makes it simpler for entire tables (no need to do columns).

This is super important to us.

I would implement:

Managers/Admins with one or more Permission Groups made up of users who can be assigned to one or more groups. Where Managers/Admins, Groups or users can be assigned to Table or Column permissions where View, Edit, delete privileges can be set.

@Katherine_Duh

I’m aware that User Permission is a HUGE topic to cover, but one use we’d like for it (a fairly easy one, from our perspective) is to limit access to certain ‘views’ per user. This doesn’t even have to be ‘user role’ related in the meantime.

If Airtable made it possible to say:

“Ready To Print SilkScreen - Calendar View” is ONLY accessible to Admins (account owners - by default) and only specific user accounts (that an admin adds), this would save us from having our views be super cluttered with 20+ different views (seen by all).

Then, specific users on our team would be able to have a view that’s personal to them only, and they would NOT have to name the views something strange in order to differentiate where their favorite view is.

Thoughts?

Since you asked, the user permissions that would be useful to my team include user-level customization for Tables, Fields and Views. For each, I’d love to have the same permissions options we have for Bases (Hidden, View Only, or Can Edit). It would also be useful if Users could be assigned to roles/groups, from which they can inherit these permissions. Otherwise, keeping track of this much granularity could become impossible.

That said, I want to offer a round of applause to the AirTable staff, who regularly push back against “mission creep” for this product. We all (naturally) want Airtable to do everything, but if it gets bogged down in complexity, nobody wins. Keep up the good work!

I am wondering if it is going to be possible to restrict users so they can View, Edit, and Delete only their own records, the records THEY have entered into the base. Thank you!

I have great database which manages data for a youth camp. A form collects the basic registration data for each student. Additional tables are for staff data, dorm/cabin assignment data, and “family group” data.

I don’t what everyone with editing permission to be able see all of the student data, which is confidential. I want users to be able edit only specific views of the student data. For example, one view is “check in”. I want my users to be able to see that view, find the student on the alpha list and click the check box.

I want them limited only to that view. So…we need view-level permissions for read only or edit only.

Adding to the chorus of voices and use cases:

The ability to restrict View/Read/Write permissions to certain tables is critical for our use case. We have records (including sensitive personal information) on our staff located in several different countries. We need to be able to grant HR staff in one country write access to staff in their country, but NOT view/write access to records in other countries. At the same time, we’d like to create a centralized tracker that allows global leadership to view (but not write) KPIs from each country, based on those staff records. As a result, we can’t just create separate bases for each country, since you can’t link to records in different bases.

This situation would be solved if we could do one of two things:

1. Link to records across different bases


2. Set permissions at a table, rather than a base level.

It seems like accomplishing one of the two points above would account for the bulk, though obviously not all, of the cases listed above.

-Colin

Adding my voice to this. I have a language academy and want to store student and employee information but not let all employees see all student fields nor employee tables. Now it’s mid 2017 so might I ask whether this is forthcoming. If not I have to use FileMaker though I’d really rather not.

Support for input from participants outside the organization is covered through Forms, but Airtable would be useful for me as a planning tool if participants could view and edit the records they have created.

Also hoping for restrictions for fields(user can edit only certain fields, the rest is view only), like Protected cells in Excel.

One or more of these changes may go out in early 2017.

Sorry to be a pest but has this been implemented? Can you provide more details if so/not. I really need more advanced permissions otherwise I will have to look at otherwise far less attractive alternatives.

Hi guys, I am a fan of your product, actively trying to implement Airtable in my studio,

My guess is that any sort of granular permission is better than none… I get that as a developer you need to start building in the right direction, but for a platform that evidently is trying to cater to business teams it feels imperative provide some sort access restriction to data.

Is anything of the sort currently being beta-tested?

I would love to serve as guinea pig !

I might have a solution for you.

PM follows.

That topic is so important!

At the moment Airtable practically offers only two kind of permissons:

• The full access to the database for every colaborator - edit and view


• or only the view option

That is to less for practical use It would be really great if you could implent different “edit” permission for each table.

It would also help if you implement “Link to other Base”

Keep up the good work!

Advanced User Permissions would be fantastic, but I was wondering if more simplistic permissioning will become available soon. For example, is there a possibility to allow edit ability when you share a view via private link? I am making certain views external facing to people and hoping that people can make edit within my 1 table.

Google has done a fantastic job with their user permissions. To have similar control for each table in a base and also global base access controls like that would likely solve a lot of the use cases listed here.

Another point I’d like to emphasize is the value of being able to share with your whole company domain, via email addresses. You have these controls right now when “Sharing” the entire base, which is great. The problem is that I don’t want everyone in my company seeing all the tables. We want them to see a couple select tables and a particular VIEW within those tables. Leveraging the power of VIEWS I think you have an opportunity to create some powerful permission controls, but not have to accommodate permissioning for individual fields ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s that option you have under “Share,” which I really love…

All I need is for the view I share to include an option to allow the person I shared it with to edit.

I am working on a grant with a lot of info that is interconnected, and it is really annoying that I can’t just give people permission to edit the view with the info they provide. Some tables include billing info that collaborators in other departments should not have access to, but I can’t move them to a separate base but have them linked so all the connected fields can update, etc etc.

We can share views already; why not add the option to share with edit access? For now, I have to scan through dates of a number of tests for a number of study participants and try to pick out all the new test dates that were added (some are old, and the dates are being incorporated into the new table slowly, so I can’t just pick up at the last date I checked).

You can always watch out for changes in the activity bar, and people concerned can always follow that record.

I agree with all the comments above. My use case is that I have a directory of services for our organisational members. I want to give them access to edit some, but not all of the data. Like most of the others, I think simply allowing the ability to edit a table or particular view would solve my problem. Another use case I have is a volunteer database, which has lots of confidential data, but which would be useful to enable some people to access to help me manage the database. Again, a table or view-only edit access would solve the problem.

I love Airtable, but I have to say the permissions in Smartsheet are really slick. It’s almost a shame it’s lacking in the database area. :winking_face:

From the link:

• locking columns


• single row updates (would also make sense without payed AT account)


• editable sharing