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.
I am sure Airtable does understand the importance of this feature but they are not able to figure out the right solution I guess.
+1 for solutions that allow data to be shared between bases. Our use cases are similar to others described above. For example, we would like to start a secondary base for a social media intern to draft posts and we would like the secondary base to pull some data (social handles but not sensitive info) from the CRM in our primary base. Ideally, the intern would have the ability to update those social handles, pushing the change back to the CRM, although that’s not the priority. Having the data flow from our CRM to the Intern’s base is the more important priority. We’re excited to see if this is something that can happen someday in Airtable. Thanks.
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.
So we can’t link databases as of now? How about linking information from columns?
I think this would be a MAJOR win for Airtable users. Please consider it!!
This is the most significant missing feature I’ve noticed since I started using Airtable recently.
Please add this feature, major hassle at the moment…
This feature will unlock so much potential for me and my team.
Actually, the main reason a part of my team considers moving to Monday,
is because of the clutter we’ll have if we decide to manage all our projects on one base (with all of the other tables).
I’ve been on and off thinking that I can use Airtable for the last 7 months to replace my existing solution. This is yet another feature than pains me.
Base cross linking lets me keep my static info(admin base) protected from the data entry base(used by everyone). Additionally, this would help greatly with managing the number of tables in a single base, its a bit tedious scrolling through all my many tables.
Any updates on this? Does airtable have a timeline for implementation? This would be a huge benefit…
+1 We are new to Airtable and this was one of the first pieces of functionality we were looking for.
Crucial feature. Please implement.
@Airtable_Support @Katherine_Duh It would be nice to have an update on this. This feature is really holding back what I would like to do in my business. I don’t want every single one of my airtable users to have access to my main base. It would be amazing to have linking between bases to restrict what a user can see of the primary base by linking to a more limited base.
Also, I don’t want one base to be source of every type of data (revenue vs inventory on product vs KPIs). It’s not relevant for my staff to have access to all of it.
A web based “database” that can’t even link to itself?! This is a joke, surely?!
I don’t know where to begin. I’ve been waiting years to get rid of our collection of excel spreadsheets and link them into our SQL database. I’ve spent months waiting to move to AirTable - and sat down sketch in hand to start… and within 3 minutes (literally!) started trying to link two bases…
My use case:
- I want a CRM of companies & contacts (similar to your CRM - which was my base)
- I want a collection of details about actual customers for management
These share:
- Offices/products - I want/need a single list of
- Companies - I want the companies I speak to to end up in offices. I want their phone number, email, LinkedIn profile etc etc to be the same - not have the same data in two places
I just want to have look-ups that source data from another table. The permissions in my case is implicit - if I’m letting you pick a look-up you can see the items in it. If you click on it - you can only see what your permissions allow (which may be nothing - and it may then be just text)
I do not want a base that contains all of my sales data and another, island of data with all my actual customers in!
Why even offer multiple bases if they can’t work together! The relational database was designed in 1970 - that’s nearly 50 years ago!!!
@Airtable_Support I would move all my team to premium in a nanosecond if I could link two base.
Why is this other post of mine marked down? I did not do anything offensive, and I was not promoting other products. I was pointing out that other products had this feature, but had weaknesses compared to Airtable.
This is constructive input to the Airtable team.
A product team and product manager should know what other products can do. So without mentioning other products by name - other products with some Airtable like features(but not all, and certainly Airtable has great strengths - see I promote Airtable here…) , these other products have some capability of linking between tables and databases.
+1 For me as assets are used across multiple bases, such as images (social media base, AND articles base). At the moment, we are duplicating uploads to Airtable which shouldn’t really be necessary.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but this is huge! In our specific use case, we have setup ‘Regional’ bases to track all client projects, activity, contacts, etc…per specific global region. It would be wonderful if this data could roll-up into a larger base that reflected the entire client base. Airtable - would love an update on timing for adding this to the platform. Thanks!
we would need this feature too
Everyday Airtable does not have granular permissions is another day they loose out on huge enterprise clients.
Granular user permissions would take Airtable to another level.
Which one of the modular database companies are going to do it first??
Every single day companies are looking for a solution. Airtable is always an initial “ah-ha!” Then it usually turns into “Oh no!” after they figure out the lack of user permissions.
Privacy is a HUGE topic of conversation these days. It is more important than EVER to be able to hide/lock fields based on user/role.
@Airtable_Support @Katherine_Duh It would be nice to have an update on this. This feature is really holding back what I would like to do in my business. I don’t want every single one of my airtable users to have access to my main base. It would be amazing to have linking between bases to restrict what a user can see of the primary base by linking to a more limited base.
Also, I don’t want one base to be source of every type of data (revenue vs inventory on product vs KPIs). It’s not relevant for my staff to have access to all of it.
“It’s not relevant for my staff to see all of it”
Well said.
+1, this is likely the basis of a purchase decision for my team. Major handicap to not have this…
I like the idea of having better organization of tables including colors, hiding, nesting and tagging/foldering.
All of this would help organize tables in a base. Once this organization structure is in place, roles could utilize a base’s views of tables the same way a table uses views of records.
Then, sharing data between bases could be as simple as allowing a table to be synced between bases or allowing a table to reside in multiple bases but tables and fields would be filtered based on a base’s view.
In other words, isn’t the best approach to just make a base into a glorified tag of tables and then restrict those tables and fields with user views and roles?
This one feature would make AirTable the center of our app galaxy rather than just a huge star!
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.
Linking bases means: less income.
Your workarounds are logical, however Airtable could always make it possible but expensive. We don’t have the option of linking bases at any price point.
Linking bases means: less income.
Your workarounds are logical, however Airtable could always make it possible but expensive. We don’t have the option of linking bases at any price point.
While I definitely agree this should be a paid feature, I also believe we would be vastly increasing our number of users if we could link bases. And, these increases in paid user subscriptions would reward AirTable with much deserved increases in revenue.
Shared bases could also increase revenue by connecting to AirTable managed bases with data supplied by 3rd parties or other fancy integrations. —I’m just saying if this is about the business model…let’s sort it out because securely linking bases is going to be essential for any company looking to make AirTable their primary source for truth.
