Restricting the Owner from editing any data, settings or structure.

Hey ​@csquared2511,

You have different ways to achieve this.

1. Assuming that you are using two accounts/seats (one for you as a developer, and one for the business owner), you could share the business only Interface access rather than full base access (you would do this from the interface itself, by clicking on the Share Interface button.

2. Alternative, you have have yourself with Owner permissions on the full base and give the business owner Editor permissions on the full base. Editors cannot create or edit new fields. You would be able to do this by clicking on the Share button (not on the Share interface button).

 

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation 
YouTube Channel 

Thanks Mike, but I don’t even want him to be able to edit records in the tables or make changes to automations or forms.  I would just like him to have editor permissions to the interfaces until the base is fully functional.  Everything I’ve read and watched suggests that when someone is an owner you can’t ‘downgrade’ them.  And he is literally the paying owner of the interface (he has set me up as an owner too).  But how do builders normally deal with the risk of the owners (who are really just users) making changes to the base?  

​@csquared2511 

Every base is required to have at least one owner. If you don’t want him editing anything, you have a few choices:

1. He can create a new account for himself that has editor privileges, and then he should only log in with that editor account instead of his owner account.
2. He can make you an owner, and then his original account can be downgraded to editor afterwards. That could be a dangerous option for him, because then you are in charge of his entire workspace instead of him.
3. You can do a one-way sync of the data that you want him to see into another Airtable base, and have him only log into that other base. All of the data in that other base will be read-only and won’t be editable at all. (If you want him to edit individual records, you could use Fillout, which lets you update individual records through a form.)
4. Don’t have him log into Airtable at all, and instead have him log into a 3rd-party portal that communicates with his Airtable base. You can then set the desired permissions in the portal itself. A few portals are Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, MiniExtensions, and Glide.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Thanks Scott.  To be honest I think he would let me downgrade him to editor for the moment, but as I’m not fully skilled in all this yet, I’m really not happy doing that myself.  AndI don’t really consider your other options a real option for me right now and so it feels I will need to take the risk of him accidentally making changes in the data, automation and form sections instead of just the Interface.
What is considered best practice in this situation?

An owner can only be added at the workspace level (not the base level), so he would need to go back to the main Airtable home page, click on his workspace in the left margin (underneath “Workspaces”), and then in the right margin, there is a “Share” button.

After clicking on the “Share” button, he can invite you as an “owner” of the workspace.

That will make both of you owners of the workspace.

After you are both owners of the workspace, either one of you can go back to the same “Share” button and click on the “People with Access” section, and either one of you can downgrade his account from Owner to Editor.

Hope this helps!

If you have a budget and you’d like to hire the best Airtable consultant to help you with this or anything else that is Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Thanks for the clarification Scott.