So happy that someone finally filled the void left by Dabble DB.
One of the features I found most useful there, but can’t seem to do in Airtable, is linking to entries in another Base. Often, one will have multiple bases which handle distinct aspects of a business or project, but in which one piece of data overlaps.
Example: A political campaign may want Bases for contacting voters, managing events, and recording donations. Those are distinct domains which need their own Bases, but which could benefit from linking parts of them together. For example, it would be great to link donations to the event they occurred at, or voters to donations, or record who attended each event.
In Airtable at present one has to either cram all of those bases into one, or foregoe the linkage which makes this software so great. It may seem like a small thing, but once you can link bases, the sky is really the limit.
@Katherine_Duh @Andrew @Airtable_Team I’m adding my +1 as well - and the main thing really pushing me towards the need for discrete, but linked bases is your new blocks feature (which is amazing… amazing!).
Here’s a quick rundown of my use-case:
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My company performs over 200 different test methods for the construction industry, and we participate in about 30 different proficiency sample testing programs covering some number of those test methods
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I use Airtable to track our results on those proficiency samples, and used to keep them all in a single base, with a table holding all our test methods which were linked to the appropriate proficiency sample tables
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Blocks made visual reporting of our historical ratings on proficiency sample tests an absolute joy; however, I had to create 3 bar graphs per proficiency sample table - one for each of our labs - to see each lab’s historical data for that sample type - that’s over 90 graphs, resulting in a Blocks dashboard that was entirely unwieldy
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My solution - split each proficiency sample type into its own base - now I have a Blocks dashboard with only 3 graphs in each base; this is great, but now I have to copy my table of test methods into each of my 30+ bases, and update each one if we add a new test method to our repertoire, remove a method, or if a designation changes, or the method’s documentation changes, etc
Linked bases would allow me to have a single test methods base linked out to all my different proficiency sample bases to keep them all updated if one of our test methods changes. I would be entirely in favor of this being a “Pro” only feature.
And I agree with everyone else in the desire to at least hear something by way of an update from the Airtable team on their current thinking regarding this feature request.
Thank you, Airtable - much love, and blessings! :vulcan_salute:t2:
Another +1 for linking bases as a premium plan only option.
Ideally including look-up functionality if not roll-up.
It finally dawned on me:
To Airtable this topic is not about being challenged on the software side. This is about finances.
If your base reaches 1200 records, you need to upgrade to a paid membership.
By linking bases you can avoid this.
Also for pro users, when your base reaches 50k records.
Linking bases means: less income.
It finally dawned on me:
To Airtable this topic is not about being challenged on the software side. This is about finances.
If your base reaches 1200 records, you need to upgrade to a paid membership.
By linking bases you can avoid this.
Also for pro users, when your base reaches 50k records.
Linking bases means: less income.
That would be true if the linking of bases were available to “Free” workspaces.
This is why so many of us commenting above have suggested, or else expressed consent with the idea that this should be a feature only available to “Pro” or “Enterprise” workspaces. This would preclude the possibility that Airtable would lose revenue due to this feature.
They have a team of developers who work hard to produce this software as a means of making a living to provide for their families, so I absolutely think they deserve the revenue from implementing a feature like this. I really do think it’s a software challenge for them, not a reluctance to lose revenue.
That would be true if the linking of bases were available to “Free” workspaces.
This is why so many of us commenting above have suggested, or else expressed consent with the idea that this should be a feature only available to “Pro” or “Enterprise” workspaces. This would preclude the possibility that Airtable would lose revenue due to this feature.
They have a team of developers who work hard to produce this software as a means of making a living to provide for their families, so I absolutely think they deserve the revenue from implementing a feature like this. I really do think it’s a software challenge for them, not a reluctance to lose revenue.
And I fully agree on that.
I do think that Airtable would be reluctant to make this available to pro users. It probably will be premium users only.
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:
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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)?
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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?
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(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:
All of the above!
- Permission delegation, where a team can manage their own Base & Tables, but they link to a “Master" table/base which they can only read from. At the same time enabling to keep a single “normalized” copy of that “Master” data. One example is a “Customers” or “Contacts” table which is used by several teams in the company for different purposes in different bases and tables.
- I don’t see this as urgent, but I can see how someone may need to consolidate data from multiple tables.
- Even if you implement table and record level permissions and ways to hide/show Tables in a Base, it goes against all useful information navigation features you provide: Workspaces -> Bases -> Tables -> Records… Now I’m forced to pile all tables in a single Base and single Workspace if I need to link data. Navigation and Separation of information is important as you have more users and data… it makes easy to find what you’re looking for, what is the context of the data you’re looking at, etc.
Regarding permissions implementation. Today Base permissions can be [read, editor, commenter and creator] granted to a [specific user]. The change will require to extend permissions to target [everyone] with ANY permission on [Target Base]
I think this could also be solved by putting an organizational system internal to a base
all i have are tabs and a pretty poor popover. what i’d love would be a tree or folder system for grouping and navigating tables—then i actually prefer base being a boundary for linkage, as it makes me think clearly about the purpose of each base.
some utility other than copy and paste for moving tables between bases would then round out the solution, users would have a wonderful organization system for their organization system
I think this could also be solved by putting an organizational system internal to a base
all i have are tabs and a pretty poor popover. what i’d love would be a tree or folder system for grouping and navigating tables—then i actually prefer base being a boundary for linkage, as it makes me think clearly about the purpose of each base.
some utility other than copy and paste for moving tables between bases would then round out the solution, users would have a wonderful organization system for their organization system
@Airtable_Team ^ problem solved, holler @rosssclafani
Yesss!! I vote for this request as well!
#Crickets
Airtable, would be awesome if you can share your plans for this. :cricket: :cricket: :cricket:
Another +1 for linking bases
+1 please we need we need !!!
+1 this functionality would be very useful!
+1 This is really needed. For us to create a personal todo list for employees that are active in different departments it would be a great addition.
+1- it’s the only thing stopping Airtable from being the primary organizational tool for my biz.
Hi, just signed on to demo. But without the feature of being able to link data from other bases it just won’t work for me.
I’d be willing to sign on if I knew that it was coming soon.
This is truly needed. Is it even in the road map? The way it is now works perfectly for small projects and personal use, but not being able to link to different bases makes it bit harder to use Airtable to it’s full potential in a larger organisation.
This is so necessary for business or any organizations with a hierarchy using this. It’s not possible to have a “manager view” of all information and then separate views for the employees. This is important for sensitive data or just overall protection of a client database. I can’t share all of our clients with every marketing/sales person, but if I separate the data into separate bases, I can’t see the marketing and sales progress holistically. Super disappointing.
+1 on this big time pretty please!
+1 on this one! Super important functionality!
This is a big one for enterprise requirements and I’m able to do this relatively easy in Excel and Google Sheets at the moment, so it’s hard to justify moving everything over just yet. Is this a planned feature?
+1 - combing unrelated tables is not feasible. any update on this?
+1! There are so many reasons why this is a necessary addition. I just recently started getting into AT from excel because I needed a lot more flexibility. I work communications, marketing, and event planning for a regional non-profit and excel just wasn’t cutting it anymore, especially with regard to event planning.
Here is my current struggle:
I have a master contact base which consists of businesses/organizations and that links to the individual contacts I have for those businesses/orgs. These businesses are sponsors, vendors, service providers and donors for the events we host. This list grows continually as we’re adding sponsors and service providers and making new connections with each event.
Each event then has it’s own base which manages the entire individual event. Only some of my contacts are used in each event base. Most of them are not.
For now, my only solution is to maintain mini contact lists in each event base, but this is not a time saver and it’s a duplication of effort when I already have that contact in my master contacts base. It would save me tons of time and frustration to pull from that master list into my individual events, rather than have to find a workaround to get them in the event without having to retype all the same information in for each one. As it is now, I’m in the same boat I was in with excel. I also then have to maintain two lists during the course of each event, in case of an address or contact person change, and for documenting which businesses contributed to specific events.
I’m getting really frustrated trying to figure out a better way before our next big fundraiser in October.
Very much +1 on this. @Airtable_Team would be great to hear your thoughts. <3
