How many bases to create dashboards for different clients?

[corleyre]

Hi

I'm a new Airtable user and I'm trying to determine the best approach to creating a dashboard view for each client at our firm with read only access.

I'm aware you can create 1 base and filter views but that would make it possible for clients to see each others dashboards.

Would it be better to create a single base specific to work for a single client and use that data set to create a dashboard or is there a way to prevent a client from looking at another client's dashboard if I chose to use a single base and filter views?

[TheTimeSavingCo · Accepted solution]

What if you used a shared view instead? https://support.airtable.com/docs/using-the-view-share-menu-in-airtable

You can create multiple shared views in a single table each with a unique field setup and they wouldn't have access to any of the other client views

[corleyre]

Would said clients need to be paid subscribers?

for context, our clients are homeowners who want to check on the progress of their home sale.  I don't think they would want to download an App for that information.

[Jason_Hill]

It depends on your goal. We use both interfaces and shared views. Shared views are always read-only and give the data in a table. You can customize what they see, but they can never edit the data and always see it in a table view unless you use a different view type. With an interface, you can customize what they see and how they see it, and sometimes, you can give edit access to certain data. Of course, you need to be mindful of costs. Like previous posts, interfaces can cost you depending on access levels and your account type. Both can be viewed via the web; no installation is required. As for management, views stay in your base, while interfaces are individual and show on your home screen if that setting is on.

[Dan_Montoya]

This is the perfect use case for an interface.  In the interface you can filter records based on the home owner email so they only see their own data.  

For mobile, you can only access Airtable via the mobile app. If you want home owners to be able to see their progress on mobile, they would need to use the app.

[ScottWorld]

@corleyre,

Shared views don’t require Airtable logins, but you will need to manually create each view for each client. 

A better approach might be to create a customer portal, and you can use Airtable’s interfaces feature for these purposes.

You would only need to create ONE interface for your clients, and it would be filtered to show each user only their own data.

However, you would need to be on a business/enterprise plan (or else your entire client list is made publicly available to all your clients), and each user would need to sign up for an Airtable account.

If you don’t want them to have to signup for an Airtable account, then you could use one of the many 3rd-party customer portals on the market.

Some popular Airtable portals are: Noloco, JetAdmin, Softr, Pory, and Glide.

Personally, I have spent the most time using Noloco with my Airtable consulting clients.

I give a brief demo of Noloco on this Airtable podcast episode.

And I gave an entire one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

The CEO of Noloco gave a demonstration of his product on this BuiltOnAir podcast episode.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld 

[kuovonne]

Having multiple bases with parallel structure is generally a pain to maintain. I don't recommend it if you can avoid it.

An interface could be a good option under certain circumstances:
- You don't mind forcing your clients to create Airtable accounts and see Airtable branding.
- You don't mind clients being able to see other clients OR you have a business/enterprise plan where you can hide clients on different domains.
- You can get all the dashboard features you want in an interface. (Some features of dashboard extensions are not available in interfaces.)
- Your clients only need read-only access, or you do not mind paying for them.

In your case, I'm guessing that creating an Airtable account and downloading the mobile app is too much friction for your clients. (Technically it is possible to use the web app for Airtable on a mobile device instead of the mobile app, but the screen real estate is too limited for most use situations.)

If you have very limited text to display and expect clients to make few inquiries, another option is to send the info via email without a portal. Have the clients click a button in the email to get another email with the most recent data. This can be done with a Make webhook with a URL parameter that identifies the client. The Make scenario would then retrieve the information from Airtable, and then send the email. If you want to get fancy, you can have the Make scenario retrieve the data from Airtable and then present the info in an HTML page for the user. No login. No accounts to create. One Make scenario to configure, and no third party portal to pay for. Of course, if you have lots of data to display, dynamic graphics, or need interactivity, this doesn't work well.

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Nope they wouldn't.  Given your usecase it seems like you've got a really large number of clients and it changes frequently though, so shared views probably would get pretty tedious here.  I'd definitely stick with a single base though

If you've got a Business and above plan I'd go with an Interface for this as that'd be the easiest to setup.  Your clients would all need to make Airtable accounts though.  (You can do this without a Business account, but then your clients would have the ability to see every other client's name / email address)

If that doesn't work, I'd use Softr or your portal tool of choice