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"Created by" field type (or username called by formula)

  • May 31, 2018
  • 42 replies
  • 202 views

Hi there:

Part of how I use Airtable is as a CRM, and I am setting up a table that my staff can use to track customer interactions. We are interacting with hundreds of customers, and it’s very useful to be able to know which staff member was involved in previous communications with a customer. Just like there is a “created time” field type, it would be great to have a “created by” field type. Alternatively, a formula that returned the username of the active user would also be a potential solution.

Thanks,
Paul

42 replies

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A workaround you could use to achieve something similar would be to have a “View” for each staff member that is Filtered to show only “Communications” records where the “Collaborator” field has that staff member’s name in it. When the staff member is working on communications, they would work in that view and add a record for each “contact” they make with a customer, and link them to that customer. When you create a new record in a “View” filtered on “Collaborator”, it will automatically fill the “Collaborator” field so that the record is not filtered out of the “View” it was created in.

My suggestion may not fit in with your current base structure or workflow, but hopefully the root concept there makes sense at least.


  • Author
  • Participating Frequently
  • June 4, 2018

Yes, that does make sense. I hadn’t thought of doing it that way, but it would work. In this particular instance I think that would be too clumsy, but I can think of a few other bases I have where that workaround be feasible.

At this point, we’re going off of the record revision history in the expanded view. This base is on the Pro plan, so 1 year of revision history should be sufficient for my purposes. Ideally I would like to have the username listed in a field so that information is available for >1 yr, but so be it - it seems like that’s what’s available now.


  • New Participant
  • October 15, 2018

This would be very useful to me too, and it’s hard to move forward without this feature.

My use case is recording daily patient events in a healthcare setting.

I have a table where multiple people could be creating records using a form as they’ll have no editing privileges. Whomever creates a record has an ongoing responsibility for the accuracy of what they’ve recorded. It’s therefore important that creator information isn’t lost once the reversion history expires. I also want to remove the opportunity for the creator to be mis-recorded as someone else. Therefore allowing the person to select their name from a list of team members wouldn’t be suitable for these records.


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  • Known Participant
  • October 19, 2018

It would seem like this could be added as simply an option under the Collaborator field type (e.g., a switch that would automatically make the collaborator the person who created the given record).

This would be useful in forms so that team members submitting the form don’t have to annoyingly select themselves each time (e.g., for usability test observations, feature requests, etc.).


  • Participating Frequently
  • December 7, 2018

Is it possible to add the value of who created a record as a field in a table?


  • Participating Frequently
  • December 7, 2018

Is it possible to add the value of who created a record as a field in a table?


Thank you @Katherine_Duh!


Thank you @Katherine_Duh!


Hey! Is there a solution to link automatically the creator in the end?


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  • Known Participant
  • February 11, 2019

Any progress on this feature please?


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  • Known Participant
  • April 25, 2019

This would be very helpful for me as well. I’m wanting users to login as a read only collaborator to reserve machines in the Makerspace through a form view, but it doesn’t automatically log who created the machine reservation so they have to choose their name from a dropdown. This is very problematic because other users could place resevations in someone else’s name. Please add this as a formula at least!


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  • Known Participant
  • August 14, 2019

+1 This would be an extremely useful feature. In fact, without it Airtable is a bit of compromise for us. For example, we have multiple people creating records about grant opportunities in their areas of responsibility. Unless everyone remembers every time to manually add themselves into a “created by” field, year-end analysis about individual efforts will be inaccurate.


  • New Participant
  • August 20, 2019

I would also like to see this feature added. I agree it could be similar to Created Time, but instead would be ‘Created By’. This would end confusion about who originally entered the line item, and would streamline data entry.


  • New Participant
  • September 2, 2019

Thank you @Katherine_Duh!


What was @Katherine_Duh solution?


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I agree that this is necessary functionality. AirTable is designed to be collaborative and if you have hundreds or thousands of records created by dozens of people…well you get my point. +1 on this suggestion.


  • New Participant
  • September 12, 2019

Bumping this up… please tell me there is a way to return value of the record creator.


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  • Inspiring
  • September 12, 2019

+1 This would be SO useful for medium and large teams

Similar to Dynamic filter based on collaborator field ("Me" view)


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  • Participating Frequently
  • September 24, 2019

Any update on the ‘CREATED BY’ field. We have this in the Activity / Comments section, however this is buried until you pull up and expand the record making it of little use for us. Can this be pulled out with a formula or some other work around? We want to use an ‘interactions’ table for our client contacts and want it to automatically populate the team member name and created by time stamp related to each comment.


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  • Participating Frequently
  • January 2, 2020

I’m very new to airtable, but this is almost the first feature I wanted to use once I started setting up my CRM-style base… genuinely surprised it’s missing and eagerly anticipating the update!


  • New Participant
  • January 7, 2020

Please I need this feature as well


  • New Participant
  • January 10, 2020

+1 Would like to see this function added as well.


  • New Participant
  • January 13, 2020

+1 I need this feature also. Is this being worked on?


  • New Participant
  • January 30, 2020

Also need it! Can we get it? Should be fast and simple to code or?


  • New Participant
  • February 12, 2020

+1 To add a “Default to Creator” switch to the collaborator field


Definitely need this as well so +1.

In the meantime is there a way to pull the creator out of a record with the scripting block?


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The Record Revision History Activity often has the data we want to use. Has anyone figured out how to search and use this data (in a formula)?


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+1 for this feature!