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Can I lock selected records?

  • March 29, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 299 views
J
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I am the owner of a workspace with pro licens and I want a user to be able to add values for selected records but nothing else. After some time I want to lock the values. Can this be done?

  • In a base there is a table that allows only creators to create/delete records.
  • The table contains sensitive data in a specific field.
  • A view of the data filters out, say, data belonging to March and is named “march-data”.
  • The view is locked
  • A user with permission “Editor” is granted edit permissions in the specific field.
  • The user can now add values in the specific field in the march-data view — great!

But

  • The user can go to the filter and “duplicate as personal view”.
  • In the view “march-data copy” the user can change the filter to display, say, February.
  • Now the user can change all data belonging to February — not so great!

If the user has permission level “commenter” the user cannot add any values — not so good.

I am stuck in between two permission levels. And I don’t think my wishes are overly complex: Allow user to users to feed in data and after some time lock this data. Hopefully I have missed something trivial or there is a clever scheme that can be applied.

Many thanks for any comments or recommendations! :winking_face:
/Jonas

Best answer by ScottWorld

2025 Update:

Business and Enterprise plans now offer the ability to conditionally show or hide fields on record detail pages in interfaces. So you could show or hide the view-only version of the field or the editable version of the field.

2024 Update:

Yes, all of this is now handled by Airtable’s interfaces in a roundabout way.

You can setup an “editable” interface page for your users, and ONLY show them the records that they are allowed to edit on that interface page.

Then, you can setup a “non-editable” (or “view-only”) interface page for your servers, and show them the records that they are allowed to view but not edit on that page.

Some additional thoughts:

  1. For more advanced ways of sharing your data that will give you even more flexibility, then you would want to turn to a 3rd-party portal software.

    The most popular portals that are currently available for Airtable are:Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, Glide, and MiniExtensions.

    I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.
  1. Also, external read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by using Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

    Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to update Airtable records using a form.

    Fillout gives you a formula that you add to your Airtable base, which automatically creates a special URL for each record.

    Read-only users in Airtable are free, and they are allowed to click on URLs. (They are also allowed to click on buttons that take them to external URLs).

    So they would click on the the URL (or button) while looking at the record, which would take them to that record in Fillout.

    I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
    - Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
    - Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.
     
  2. Additionally, external read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by triggering a custom webhook in Make, which would then automatically run an automation that marks that task as complete.

    Same setup as #3 above. You would create a formula in your Airtable base, which would automatically create a unique webhook URL for each record.

    Then, your read-only user would click on the URL (or button) while looking at the record in Airtable, which would then trigger the automation.

    I demonstrate how to do setup these custom webhooks in this Airtable podcast episode.

    Note that my podcast episode demonstrate this in the context of putting the custom webhook URL inside of an email, but you can skip that step.

    If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

Hope this helps!

If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

    3 replies

    ScottWorld
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    • ScottWorld
    • Genius
    • 9808 replies
    • Answer
    • March 29, 2021

    2025 Update:

    Business and Enterprise plans now offer the ability to conditionally show or hide fields on record detail pages in interfaces. So you could show or hide the view-only version of the field or the editable version of the field.

    2024 Update:

    Yes, all of this is now handled by Airtable’s interfaces in a roundabout way.

    You can setup an “editable” interface page for your users, and ONLY show them the records that they are allowed to edit on that interface page.

    Then, you can setup a “non-editable” (or “view-only”) interface page for your servers, and show them the records that they are allowed to view but not edit on that page.

    Some additional thoughts:

    1. For more advanced ways of sharing your data that will give you even more flexibility, then you would want to turn to a 3rd-party portal software.

      The most popular portals that are currently available for Airtable are:Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, Glide, and MiniExtensions.

      I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.
    1. Also, external read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by using Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

      Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to update Airtable records using a form.

      Fillout gives you a formula that you add to your Airtable base, which automatically creates a special URL for each record.

      Read-only users in Airtable are free, and they are allowed to click on URLs. (They are also allowed to click on buttons that take them to external URLs).

      So they would click on the the URL (or button) while looking at the record, which would take them to that record in Fillout.

      I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:
      - Using Fillout to create an eSignature approval process with PDF file creation.
      - Using Fillout to create an order entry form with line items.
       
    2. Additionally, external read-only users can edit your Airtable records for free by triggering a custom webhook in Make, which would then automatically run an automation that marks that task as complete.

      Same setup as #3 above. You would create a formula in your Airtable base, which would automatically create a unique webhook URL for each record.

      Then, your read-only user would click on the URL (or button) while looking at the record in Airtable, which would then trigger the automation.

      I demonstrate how to do setup these custom webhooks in this Airtable podcast episode.

      Note that my podcast episode demonstrate this in the context of putting the custom webhook URL inside of an email, but you can skip that step.

      If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread.

    Hope this helps!

    If you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

    J
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    • Jonas_eTy
    • Author
    • Participating Frequently
    • 8 replies
    • March 29, 2021

    Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

    Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

    Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

    Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

    (a) move your “old records” into another base
    and/or
    (b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

    You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

    Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

    Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

    (I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)


    Thanks for the swift response! I will ask Airtable to add this missing feature!

    P
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    • pathipatla
    • New Participant
    • 1 reply
    • November 9, 2023

    Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

    Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

    Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

    Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

    (a) move your “old records” into another base
    and/or
    (b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

    You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

    Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

    Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

    (I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)


    Hi Scott,

    I am new to Airtable. Could you show me how to do the following?

    Move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base. Set us this sync as a one-way sync only so that these records cannot be edited in the current base.


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