Hallo any update on this feature ? this is becoming a block in our development to the point we have to look for other solutions. We have tried using a workaround but the CRM we are using will not work, as we cannot insure privacy and will result in a single huge base with countless tables.

PLS any advise?

Thanks

Luca

Hallo and thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately podio is not what we would need.

We need a database to be able to manage our sourcing and product database while podio is more of a project management tool for teams.

We are creating a database library of products and specifications which would need to be used in many project to create books of specifications and BoQ.

Hence the need for the multi DB connection.

We have used RAGIC which allows to connect different bases and seems to work but is not visually simple as Airtable.

Airtable only misses multi DB connection

Best

Luca

Hi Luca,

I’d be more than happy to hop on a call to see how you can proceed.

Here’s my self serve scheduling. My Email

Hope to hear from you soon.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn

+1

This feature is a MUST for agencies. IMHO.

Would gladly pay for a plan only for this feature.

Airtable will be flawless with this kind of upgrade.

I will use Integromat to “cheat” and obtain a similar effect in the mean time, but hope the full feature will appear soon

My mind is blown away by Airtable and I consider teaching it as an Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) in my university lectures, the lack of this feature and a slight tweak on the description and timeline blocks are the only things that make me hesitate!

Need this, keeping me from using Airtable across organisaton. Want to use Airtable for contract management but contracts are usually located in different projects

I’m going to +1000 this as well. We have many bases for each of our customers who require daily access to their base and thus creating a master one with different filters is not viable for us. What happens is we have to go into each base and try to figure out what each of us needs to do. I’m going to try a few of the workarounds in the meantime, but this is something any company who works with multiple customers would need. Please AirTable, let us know where this is on the feature roadmap.

Here is the rub with this. If I share a view with someone who has editor permissions. As in, I would like them to be able to edit certain fields in a table, if they expand the record in the grid view, they can see the hidden fields associated with that record when they expand the hidden fields. We have somewhat sensitive information in those hidden fields, and I don’t want people to see that information.

Has anyone found any workaround for this, using 3rd party integrations like zapier, etc?

I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to come to Airtable anytime soon (based on their lack of response) so would love to hear of anyone’s found any workarounds in the meantime

@Jarvis a workaround using Zapier to copy records between two bases is described by @Gareth_Pronovost in his YouTube video here https://youtu.be/ZES7gSuypdw. (Thanks @Gareth_Pronovost for such a great YouTube channel — highly recommended one to subscribe to everyone! Lots of helpful Airtable tips!)

Zapier really isn’t a viable option for a work around, it only works for very basic functions since you have to create so many seperate Zaps and they break so easily. There really is no good work around unfortunately. We have been using powershell to access the data via the API. Airtable is such a great product with the exception of this one massive flaw, I don’t understand how this topic has been open for so long with no response from Airtable regarding a realistic timeline for this functionality.

This is a major flaw of airtable for me. Bases quickly feel cramped with a lot of tables, and I like to have different bases for different projects, but I often need information from one specific table across all my bases, a table that is regularly growing and updated, so copy-paste will not do it. Being able to link across bases would tremendously increase my productivity.

Yeah I’ve seen that video earlier and unfortunately it syncs in one direction only. If there were something that syncs both ways that would be ideal. I saw @openside and their product and I’m interested to learn if and how I can sync perfectly, so would love anyone’s experience with that as well… Personally though I think its subscription is too expensive (double the price of an Airtable Pro subscription!)

Still might give it a try if there’s no other solution

Hi @Jarvis - thanks for the shoutout. Yes, performing a sync is possible with On2Air: Actions. It currently requires setting up 2 1-way syncs.

Regarding the price, just to clarify our pricing is not per-user, so although it may be more expensive than a single pro user, it does not increase with more users. So for any company with a handle of airtable users, our pricing is much more inline.

I don’t see the ability to allow another user to edit a record from the shared views… Where is that? I can see the password protection and all, but not edit.

Also, I need some users to be notified that they need to view or take action on a record, but I only want them to see two or three fields, and be able to edit those fields only. I don’t want them to be able to see the hidden fields in expanded records, or even if they can create their own view to not see records that don’t pertain to their role.

In Airtable it’s like that - either you set permissions as Editor/Creator, where they can see + edit every table, record and field, or as Commenter where they can still see every table/field but only comment on them, or as Read Only (the one with password protected views) where they can see limited things but not edit them at all. To be honest, this setup sucks, and has been a top feature-request since we started using Airtable for our organization

More about this in this long thread here: Advanced User Permissions

In a way both these feature requests - “link to other bases” and “advanced user permissions” are kind of similar, so solving one naturally solves the other

Seems obvious not implementing this is not just Airtable ignoring requests, but that there is some significant hurdle in implementing this based on their existing architecture.

What I don’t understand is why in the mean time they don’t at least offer some workarounds that would work for some users. As one example, from a UI perspective, they could create a sidebar with links it it that would “pretend” to switch between different bases, revealing a completely new set of tabs for each “fake” base. But all the links would actually represent would be a view or filter that showed all the tabs related to that “base”. So along the sidebar might be:

• Project 1


• Project 2


• Etc.

And when you select each of those, you’d then see all the tabs related to them.

I realize this would only work for a subset of users, but for those of us with smaller teams, it could work very well.

Evaluating options for my org and I think Airtable is the solid choice. However, not being able to link record across bases throws a wrench in things.

My use case:

We are a trade association that interacts with our membership throughout the year. Twice a year we host a trade show.

I would like to create a base to manage all of our contacts of various types.

I would like to create a base to manage our event i.e. exhibitors, attendees, project timelines, contracts, floor plans, food and beverage, etc.

I need to pull in contact records for our membership, anyone that will be attending a show, into the trade show base.

As I understand it, I would have to duplicate records out of my contacts base and import them into the trade show base. Duplicating records and potential for error, this is exactly what we are trying to avoid by switching away from Google Sheets.

Please add this functionality!

I’ve been impressed with Airtable functionality and seen it as an amazing replacement of our Google Sheet approach with potential to run our business end-to-end.

Unfortunately without the ability to check data from another base the tool isn’t fit for purpose.

Am I right assuming that there is no equivalent to =VLOOKUP()?

I just want to restate my high interest in this. After using Airtable as a semi-complex CRM for a couple years, the number of tables I need to have access to in other tables is so high that my bases grow very large and unwieldy. Being able to reference other bases would be tremendous in that it’d allow me to break down my bases into smaller bases, and then reuse them to be referenced by similar bases.

We need this feature

This would massively increase the value of Airtable to the teams that I work with. I definitely want to see this feature as soon as possible as it would kill off quite a few burdensome solutions we wouldn’t need if this was implemented.

Still waiting. Really this is a MUST HAVE for Airtable to be fully functional in a complex environment.

Please see below. The last response was from a year ago. I don’t understand why they have a “Product Suggestion” forum if they aren’t going to comment on the suggestions, especially one that’s so popular. It’s disappointing. I don’t know where all their VC money is going. For instance, the iOS app is crippled and hasn’t had any functionality added since it was created. You can only open grid views and need to use their website for forms, blocks, etc… So frustrating!

Linking to separate bases would help our productivity and transparency as well. Permissions are a big piece of this, with our proprietary information. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to attach documents in multiple places without downloading and re-attaching again (assuming you don’t have access to the original scanned document). Click and drag without having to download again would be a very helpful feature!