Like many others here I have the same problem and until it is sorted out I am reluctant to persevere with rolling our Airtable further. If I were to combine all of my tables it would be so very unwieldy that it would cause a problem as it can be a bit laggy when I have a poor wifi connection. Some of the parts of my business are discrete sharing only marginal data with other parts but in and of themselves they are quite complicated and data rich.

It is such a shame, I really need the feature but I can see that we are all sitting here waiting for it to happen. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been responded to by Airtable directly, or did I miss that in earlier posts on this subject, given the number of people who have felt strongly enough to post here.

I look forward to seeing it sometime in the future. The near future. Maybe?

YES, this would be amazing.

I’m not sure linking bases is the right answer to my situation. I collaborate with clients and do this by setting up individual bases in another team because views are read only and clients need to collaborate with me in airtable. This is a poor structure. I should have one table of milestones, tasks, accounts, plans and so on.

I have been thinking about a few options:

1. View sharing with editor type with more advanced privileges such as only seeing records for thier account. Then I could be working with many clients in one base. The only barrier being per user pricing of infrequent users in my pro team $$$.

2. Another option might be the ability to duplicate a base to a different team as an instance / child base that runs off the master base data and yet has it’s own privileges. Like a view except it is the whole base. :thinking:

3. Or make tables independent of bases entirely and have back end tables accessible by multiple bases. Create new base and select existing tables or create tables.

As a person who freelances in both sound and web development, it would be incredibly useful to me if I could keep gigs/info in separate bases, with a third centralized to show gross totals, calendar availability, etc. It’s possible that this is outside the scope of Airtable, but I would like to keep using this software!!
My issue with keeping it all in one base is that it’s crowded and unwieldy, and will just get more and more so with every additional project.

I’m a little surprised that this isn’t implemented yet. Is this on the roadmap for the devs?

I’ve used the second option in multiple cases.

Until there’s a native solution it works fine. :slightly_smiling_face:

Is the second option, duplicating a base, just taking a snapshot though and the data is out of date as soon as the original base is worked on? Or have I missed something?

I’d like to be able to link to a source base as part of a redaction workflow to update my Airtable Universe base on demand. Anybody have a semi- or fully automated way to repeat the redaction process?

You’re right. I’ve automated replication for AT clients.

Drop me a PM in case you’re interested. :slightly_smiling_face:

Best,

Arthur.

But you can’t have used option 2. Well not as I meant it as I was proposing a native solution / feature. It involves the duplicated base not replicating data. Rather it would be an instance of that base or view of that same base.

Can you explain your use cases? Cheers

It is a web service that (among other things) replicates data. I’ve been using it for clients in multiple scenarios. Like:

• Moving historical data to a safe read-only base (1-way)
• Communication between a centralized base and individual sales rep bases (2-way)
• Communication between a centralized base and project bases (2-way)

The first scenario makes sure no one accidentally changes e.g. invoice data. The second option is primarily for data separation per-user. The last one enables different user groups and data separation per-project.

The 2-way communication ranges from updating simple things (leads, appointments, sales, notes, etc.) back and forth to complete project management (possibility to create new products in every base with centralized validation, inventory, purchase orders, etc.).

Does this help? :slightly_smiling_face:

Best, Arthur.

Yes thanks, good to know

+1 for being able to link tables in different bases!

Dear Airtable Team,
can you tell if this feature is generally planed as a future feature for Airtable? This would be very useful for us Handeling write and view Permissions to our bases and we need to you know if we can expect that in the future.

Extremely impressed and 100% on board with Airtable so far. This is my first foray into relational databases, so I’m learning as I go along. The videos and help articles have been stellar. The only snag I have run into in converting our spreadsheets into AT bases is the lack of ability to either link bases (or subdivide a base into groups of tables as others have suggested).

My job is managing information relating to individual aid projects undertaken by a humanitarian aid org. Each aid project has its own location, implementation partner; donor(s); reports, contracts, beneficiary lists, and other documents; photos; budget, disbursements, and other financial tracking; timeline; and outcomes. Currently it’s all in one giant base (except for the financial accounting), and it’s amazing–for me and my team.

However, the rest of the org is using their own systems to manage information that overlaps and interacts with this information–there’s a lot of time wasted finding and sharing info (and occasionally crucial information is not known due to lack of coordination).

In dealing with emergency aid, projects can change focus mid-stream. New numbers of refugees can mean a change in budgets. Infrastructure problems can change timelines. A large fundraising campaign in response to a crisis would involve all of these teams. Communication is often fragmented, delayed and/or tedious due to separate databases managed by each team.

We are planning to migrate everyone over to AT from various other apps, so each team can maximize their efficiency. But we really need to be able to link records between bases and/or group tables for the entire org to really function smoothly.

Here is our setup, for context:

Programs manages all the planning, execution, and information for all aid projects. Comms team needs photos and up-to-date information on outcomes, but also needs to plan and track email blasts, blog posts, social media updates, etc–which not everyone needs access to. Finance needs the budgets, disbursements, start and end dates, contracts, but cannot have the whole team mucking around in their accounting. Devs coordinates donors for each project and needs budgets and outcomes, but access to donor information needs to be limited. The empowerment team manages refugee-run businesses that sometimes provide products for aid projects. The refugee-run businesses also provide some, but not all, items for sale in their online store.

Tables for every one of these teams in a single base is just not feasible. Setting up different views and filters for each person who needs each group of info is pretty tedious, and we haven’t even added the other teams’ tables.

We will figure out workarounds for this with Zapier and slack notifications and whatnot in the meantime, but any solution to address these issues would be worth all the marbles.

I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see this feature implemented.

Why? Probably because they would have far fewer paying customers if the free tier included unlimited linked bases :-/

Unfortunately, that might also make Airtable harder for everyone to use - paying and otherwise. I probably won’t be able to use it for what I had planned. (and I was going to get the lower paid tier!)

I suspect it would be a ‘pro’ feature.

This seems like a great idea.

I won’t speak for anyone else, but I’m personally not expecting linked bases capability to be free.

I would be happy to pay pretty much whatever they ask for this feature, because Airtable is hands down the best small-org information management tool we have tried, and linking bases would seriously solve every info management problem.

And I’m pretty sure they know linked bases would be a huge selling feature for a pro version, should they offer it.

I agree. If linked bases could solve granular access to data I would gladly pay for a premium plan.

+1 (or more) from here.

Still, I’d much rather have a full set of granular access rules to every facet of Airtable: Tables, Columns, Views, etc.

My team and I at Smarter Business Processes would really like Airtable to Link bases and are very happy to pay for the pleasure. There is a huge gap in the market so if you guys at Airtable can make it happen then you will delight your users and win lots of people like us who are waiting in the wings for such a solution. We literally have dozens of our clients who could benefit but at present the lack of functionality is holding you back. Pleeese progress this?
In the meantime we have found other ways to satisfy demand using Appsheet and Smartsheet to create… wait for it… the effect of a Relational Database. Come on guys we need you?
Richard Rymill

Happy to pay and/or be guinea pigs or whatever if it means that you can link data from one to another. :pray:

+1 for me too.

I would like to see this happen for simple task management for using Airtable to manage projects.

I am assigned tasks across multiple bases, without the ability to centralise all ‘my tasks’ it is very difficult to know what I have in my workflow/todo list at a global level. I have to check half a dozen bases every day to know what has been allocated to me, and to my team.

Also, it’s quite concerning that this has been a popular feature request for almost 2 years now, with no progress.

On board with the rest of the folks on the thread. New to Airtable and really diggin it so far, but would appreciate the ability to link across BOTH tabs and bases.

I like this concept of having a global base (or even just a global table) that could be used across multiple bases. Having a single base that contains all related information gets too cumbersome when there’s only a few relationships between various tables. Conversely having say a half dozen bases with a few linked global tables (as essentially the connective tissue between such) would be a much better solution for my users. I’ve tried to replicate this approach with duplicate tables using Zapier to try to keep them in sync, but this feels like a LOT of wasted effort and multiple potential points of failure.