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Is there a way I can share just a single record with an individual, via a customized link?  My nonprofit runs a program where people apply and then their application goes through various stages.  We have an Airtable form (as the application), which links to a base where each person’s application is displayed as a separate record.  We would like a way for people to automatically view the status of their application, so we are trying to see if there is a way to share their own record with them, but only their record-- not anyone else’s records in the base.

 

Obviously, we could copy and paste their record and send it to them, but we often are contacted multiple times by people who are wanting to know about the status of their application as it moves through the phases, so we are curious whether we could create a custom link that we can send to people after they initially submit their application.  The idea would be that they can then return to the same link periodically to see updates in their record, rather than contacting us and us having to relay the information.  

 

Again, emphasis on the fact that we would want to only share the individual’s record with them-- no one else’s records. 

Ooh I got here first so I get to say Fillout! 

You can link a form to a single record so it will show all the record fields you want to display, and for this instance just hid the submit button to prevent people from editing their record. Then they just need to keep the URL to view progress.


@OBCDC 

Haha! ​@DisraeliGears01 is 100% correct!

The way to do this is to use Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable.

Fillout offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including the ability to share a single record with users — and give them the ability to edit it or not. You can also have people update Airtable records using a form, you can display Airtable lookup fields & Airtable rollup fields & Airtable attachments & formulas on forms, you can control access to a form via SSO or email domains, you can perform math or other live calculations on your forms, you can accept payments on forms, collect signatures on a form, create multi-page forms with conditional paths, create new linked records on a form, connect a single form to dozens of external apps simultaneously, add CAPTCHAs to your form, and much more.

I show how to use a few of the advanced features of Fillout on these 2 Airtable podcast episodes:

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


Lol ​@DisraeliGears01!!!

@OBCDC, fully agree with the above answers. You’ll want to use Fillout to such effect -probably an Update record form (and hide the submit button as mentioned above). You’ll get a dynamic url including the Record ID which you can store on Airtable under a formula field for every single record. In such way you can easily share that with each individual.

1. You can read more about differences between Fillout forms and Airtable forms here.

2. It is about time that we submit more and more feature requests to get Airtable to level up their game when it comes to Forms. We are hyping Fillout on a daily basis on this Community for something we’d be happy to handle natively in Airtable (I love Fillout, but I would avoid it if Airtable itself could handle it).


Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation


If you prefer to stick with Airtable and avoid third-party forms, you can achieve this using prefilled forms.

I’ve written a detailed article on how to do it , feel free to check it out!

Taha, Airtable Advisor


@OBCDC 

Note that using Airtable’s prefilled links come with serious downsides that you will want to be aware of:

  1. You will have to continually send out updated prefilled links to your users that always contain the newest data. If the user accidentally clicks on an outdated link, they will be taken to old data in the form. So they would never be able to re-use a link or bookmark a link as an “Update My Account Profile” link.
  2. Airtable’s prefilled links do not work with all field types… particularly attachment fields or lengthy long text fields that exceed URL limits.
  3. If you need the data to remain private or secure, Airtable’s prefilled links reveal all the data within the link. With Fillout’s links, you get one simple, non-changing link per user that doesn’t reveal any data, and you can even add multiple different layers of security to the form if necessary, including SSO login or email login.
  4. Airtable’s prefilled links still won’t update old records… they always create new records, and then you will need to write an automation that handles the overwriting of the old data.
  5. You lose all the advanced features of Fillout’s forms.

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


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