I second this request.

Yes please, this would help alot.

This would be super useful.

I Third that request!

This would be perfect for my business.

The absence of this functionality is making it difficult to implement this in the way that my org needs.

As John Bacino stated, one either has to put all that information into the form of tables in a single base, or to replicate that information in different bases (and/or update it manually wherever we’d like this data to be referenced).

A for-instance: We have a master member directory which I am using to connect information regarding anything from volunteers, positions, programs, purchasing, vendors, programs, etc. As it stands right now, I have a single base with a steadily growing number of tables, where it would be simpler for people entering the data to have separate to access. The only alternate I see would be the manual input/update of input in these different tables so that things would line up for reports.

That said, this is an amazing platform, and the implementation of forms (form view, links directly to the forms, being able to integrate it directly into a webpage) is perfect for our needs. Thank you for making this available to us.

I’m looking forward to the day when we can link records between bases.

I’m with everyone above! Being able to link to a record in a separate base would make this awesome tool even better.

This feature is definitely on our roadmap. Unfortunately it’s a pretty big undertaking for technical reasons, and we haven’t had the chance to tackle it yet. We hear and appreciate your feedback on this though, apologies for not acknowledging it earlier.

I know enough to know that I have only the smallest grasp on the amount of work needed to implement a change like that.

When/if the day comes where we can link to a record in a separate base comes, there will be much rejoicing. For now, I’m still throwing everything I can think of at it to try and make it a “one-stop shop” for data for my org.

Thanks for the response @Andrew, and thanks @Airtable for making this platform. I’ve already found it to be very useful.

Hi there - I am a novise at this and only discovered Airtable this morning.
I had a thought, can you use zapier and sheets to send two zaps?
1 - when a record is created > sheet row, then another zap sees the new row and pushes it to another base?
Is anyone better technically than me, would this work?
Dan

Hi Dan,

It’s a clever idea, but there’s a few limitations that will make it somewhat unusable. First a Zap will fire only once for a single record, hence you won’t see any updates after the zap fires. Second, most records in Airtable are created empty and then get updated as you fill in the data. As the zap can fire at any time, you’ll likely get lots of partially completed records. Third, the cost of Zapier for such a use case may be a concern.

If you want to play with it further, you could try creating an Airtable view that only reflects stable records and then Zapier could sync all of those to another base.

Lastly, we’ve always wanted to build a beautiful user experience around linking across bases and we think hard about how to do that.

Cheers!
Alex

Count me as another vote for this functionality!

+1. I would like several teams to update their bases and have a management team with the same bases but with all the data aggregated.

+1 – When this feature becomes available, all of my dreams will come true. Seriously, this will be a huge game changer for me and the many folks I’d like to onboard to this tool.

I would love this feature!!!

I second everyone’s request for this feature. It is available in your standard Excel spreadsheet files, so I am surprised isn’t already available in Airtable. That being said, you guys are doing an awesome job and I love all of the features Airtable has that Excel doesn’t have (or Google Sheets for that matter). Keep up the good work!

Me three!

-=<|[{O}]|>=-

Would be very nice to have…

This is a feature that would tremendously improve AirTable’s utility for our nonprofit organization. In our ideal world, we would have a Contacts base with names that could then be linked back to from other bases such as Events, Projects, Donations, Grants, etc.

Clearly, this is a very popular feature request! As Andrew said above, it’s certainly something that we are thinking about, though there are a variety of technical hurdles that would need to be cleared first. Since this is a huge undertaking, we want to make sure that we approach this in the correct way. Any specific ideas on how and why you’d want linked bases to work would be greatly appreciated!

Based on your responses, it seems like there are at least few reasons why one might want to link across bases, all of which raise interesting questions that we need to consider going forward:

1. Linking across bases could work as a form of granular permissioning (e.g. the Sales team has access to the sales base, and the PR team has access to the PR base, and though they might be able to see selected data from the other team’s base, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to alter it or read all of it). If this is your main reason for wanting cross-base linking: would your needs be met by Airtable implementing more granular permissioning controls at the table level or even the field level (e.g., password protected/hidden/redacted tables/fields that certain users are not allowed to see)? Is it more important to you that different users have access to different bases for privacy reasons (i.e. it’s mission critical that certain users don’t see certain bits of information), or for convenience reasons (i.e. I don’t want all users to see everything in one big base because not all of that data is relevant to their interests)?

2. Using linking across bases in order to create a manager/“master” base, which draws information from a number of sub-bases. Would your needs be met in this case by some sort of reporting functionality that takes information from many bases, or is it particularly important that this information takes the form of another base?

3. (Please correct me if I’m wrong about this.) A general sense that a large base with many tables feels cramped—that you have to “cram” what feels like too much data into one place. If this describes you, can you articulate why you feel this way? Is it because of how a base with many tables looks? Is it because of loading times? Is it because you feel like having too much information in one place is overwhelming?

Other considerations: How would you like linking across bases to interact with permissions? Say there are two bases, A and B. A user has access to Base A but not access to Base B, and Base A includes links to Base B. What should the user see when they look at Base A? How would linking across bases work with editing? Should you be able to edit the contents of Base B while in Base A, or should you have to go to Base B first?

There are so many things to say about linking bases, but this is enough for now, I think. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Total Newb here…

In addition to technical hurdles, this would affect the revenue model. If I can split my row count amongst multiple bases and still have them do things together then I can get around the 1200 row limit easily… Wouldn’t be hard to fix.

To answer the previous questioner:

1. Not important for my work (small catering company), we’re pretty transparent. just kidding, this is important!! See example below about employee directory as a subset of the “HR + Scheduling + Hiring Base”

2. Reports! That seems really cool. I could see someone making a hacked together Quickbooks. And I don’t see a use case for our organization… yet. However, if we were tracking which employees were at which events and where we got the best feedback and then some third variable related to the hiring process??? Seems complicated

3. This feels true for me/intuitively sensing this about other posters Compared to GoogleSheets the stacking of tables makes it easier to see where they are.

Here are some ideas for improving the cramping

• Design Templates as Modular Tables or Sets of Tables that can be added to a base instead of setting up a whole new Base. The current template system encourages a proliferation of bases whereas that is not the correct design path to be taken from a DB architecture (or revenue maximizing) standpoint in my limited observation

• Alongside the permission/granularity tool there could be a “table of contents” or some other kind of “tutorial” overlay that might allow for someone who only needs to see a part of the base to have a streamlined/guided interaction with the parts that matter. This could be a link that allows the recipient to have a particular view or “portal” into the base, basically like the embedded view but with more power.

For example: We track applicants and existing employees in the applicant base, since we hire some people only a few times and others full time and that changes year to year we want all their info there… we’re now getting ready to use that info to schedule folks for specific job roles (pizza maker, server, driver) and want to optimize for everything from days off to skillset to training and loyalty/seniority. If I had a way to just show the “company directory” part of that base I would love to share it with everyone. Another “view” or “portal” would allow employees with certain skills to schedule themselves for the shifts they want with some parameters

I have barely started using this tool and I LOVE IT! Now I just want to get our catering event management system to integrate with your tools!) info.gatherhere.com/platform

+1
I see some community benefits like reduced tables redundancy and by the way, cloud space saving.

+1 me too. this would help us a lot.

As for 1, we would totally benefit from having granular permissions, for both fields and tables. There’s information that once it enters the base it should not be changed, and I’m in constant panic that if anybody makes a simple error (like pasting to a cell too many), we could end up in big trouble. I also would like to link records to another table that some users should not be able to access.

Regarding 2, we do need something like that but haven’t thought about it too seriously because we know that Airtable doesn’t currently allow us to do that. A reporting functionality that draws from many bases could, however, do part of the trick, but not sure what you’d be thinking about. The part ithat reporting wouldn’t cover is that we’d need the main base to be able to edit info in the sub-bases.

Re: number 3. Nahhh For me not a sufficiently strong reason to bug you to implement linking bases.

re: @Mics_Sky comment – We have ended up with a lot of duplicate data because of the need to separate information due to a conflict with permissions. We’d be saving space by linking tables.

I have ideas about your final comment/question @Katherine_Duh , so if you want me to share our thoughts about that, let me know where it would be best to do so. Thanks!

Yep. This would be awesome. Although I realize that this is a work around sub upgrades. Think about it, there is a limit for each base. If this feature was granted, then more people would be creating bases so that storage in each base would decrease. That’s just unfair to the company. You might as well pay for it. It’s a good product anyways. Go support them. lol