Looking to build app from a spreadsheet

[JonnyGarf]

What I'm after *should* be easy. I have spreadsheets of information that I manage informally. The rows of each spreadsheet are records that would ought to filled & updated by outsiders. Obviously there's a limit to how much we can do via Google Spreadsheets -- I can't assign ownership to each row.  So it seems like this is where people upgrade to AirTable. 

So here's the things I need, beyond what I see in the demo tool:

1. It's a fair assumption that the first row is the field name. The second row is my description / help text. Can the import tool support that?
2. Data is often never as primitive as we like. Is a map type supported? This could be edited through the form. 
3. I need to broker access to each row. I'd like to click on each row, "assign to group", and then email the owner of that group; they can then manage access for others who would update that row. How would they be charged? I imagine I should have to pay something for that access, but not $20/month, maybe $1.
4. Maybe they mis-entered a field value, and our fancy AI validation didn't catch it. As the app (and total data owner) I want to one-click a field and send a note to the row owner, saying for Field X, you wrote Y, but we're looking for Z, and here's the link to update it.
5. Data definitions evolve with time. Let's say I (as the app owner) wishes to change a field definition or add a new field. We all know how maddening that is in the SQL world, but, in my ideal world, I want a notification going out to data owners like the above. (example: I'm doing a vendor comparison sheet, and I'm keying in pricing details in text, and eventually convert it to a map)
6. Export the data structure so that data owners can supply their data directly via JSON.  🙂

[Ron_Daniel]

@JonnyGarf 
Regarding question 1:
- Your row 2 help text would be used when initially setting up Airtable's fields. When creating each one, you'd click "Add description" and paste in the help text.
- In Google Sheets, you'd delete row 2, and then download as a CSV. In Airtable, the CSV import extension will match your CSV's row 1 column names to the Airtable table's field names the best it can (column and its corresponding field named identically is the easiest way). But you can also manually match them.

[JonnyGarf]

thanks, that's helpful! 
Now to get insight for the rest of the questions.

[Kenneth_Raghuna]

2. There are no direct map field types, but one could say that the key-value data points could be translated to field-value pairs instead. Hard to know if this would suffice without a clearer understanding of the full scope of the project.

3. The cheapest option Airtable currently has for guest seats is $8/month. Using a third party tool like Softr would likely allow you to distribute management and access permissions in a closer manner to what you're looking for.

4. You can definitely create automations and/or extensions for this.

5. Afaik, there is no system built into AT for this. There might be functionality/tools for this in the Enterprise plans that I'm not aware of though.

6. I think you'd need to bring in third party tools to handle this.