Help

Re: Prevent interface users from seeing all other users

Solved
Jump to Solution
4705 0
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
RayThacher
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast
In the Airtable interface it came to my attention today that Read Only users can see all other users who have access to the same interface. I simply assumed they couldn't share or see this information.
Does anyone know how I disable sharing for read only users, or the ability to see who it is shared with?

This is totally work stopping for me on my current project. In fact this is preventing me from wanting to use Airtable interfaces for any public facing work, even for people who have paid Airtable accounts. 
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Unfortunately, this is one of the big limitations & drawbacks of Airtable. There is no privacy in Airtable, whether you are using interfaces or the original data views (grid view, calendar view, etc.).

Airtable believes that their product was designed to be used by internal members of a team where everybody knows each other, so they always display the full list of names & email addresses of everybody who is using the app. Even read-only users can see this list of names & email addresses.

However, there is one exception to this. The exception to this is creating "shared views", which can be shared publicly without revealing any names & email addresses.

Shared views are significantly more limited than interfaces (for example, shared views can't be filtered to only show the currently logged-in user their own records), and nobody can ever edit any data on shared views. Everybody is always a read-only user on shared views.

But if all of your users are read-only users — and you don't mind manually creating different shared views for different users to view their own records — shared views might be a good compromise solution for you.

In general, though, it might be a good idea to start looking at external portal apps that work with Airtable.

If you need to create your own public-facing interfaces where some people are editors and some people are read-only users — and you want to maintain everyone's privacy — the best way to do this would probably be to pay extra money to use an external portal tool for your interfaces, such as Noloco, Softr, JetAdmin, or Glide.

Noloco is probably the most powerful portal available for Airtable. I give a brief tutorial of Noloco on this episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast.

And I also presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

However, if you need a database app that has complete privacy built into it from the ground up, I would recommend taking a look at FileMaker. I used to be a FileMaker Developer for almost 30 years before becoming an Airtable consultant. Feel free to reach out to me through my website if you'd like me to turn you onto some excellent FileMaker developers, or if you need to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of your Airtable needs.

See Solution in Thread

5 Replies 5
ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

Unfortunately, this is one of the big limitations & drawbacks of Airtable. There is no privacy in Airtable, whether you are using interfaces or the original data views (grid view, calendar view, etc.).

Airtable believes that their product was designed to be used by internal members of a team where everybody knows each other, so they always display the full list of names & email addresses of everybody who is using the app. Even read-only users can see this list of names & email addresses.

However, there is one exception to this. The exception to this is creating "shared views", which can be shared publicly without revealing any names & email addresses.

Shared views are significantly more limited than interfaces (for example, shared views can't be filtered to only show the currently logged-in user their own records), and nobody can ever edit any data on shared views. Everybody is always a read-only user on shared views.

But if all of your users are read-only users — and you don't mind manually creating different shared views for different users to view their own records — shared views might be a good compromise solution for you.

In general, though, it might be a good idea to start looking at external portal apps that work with Airtable.

If you need to create your own public-facing interfaces where some people are editors and some people are read-only users — and you want to maintain everyone's privacy — the best way to do this would probably be to pay extra money to use an external portal tool for your interfaces, such as Noloco, Softr, JetAdmin, or Glide.

Noloco is probably the most powerful portal available for Airtable. I give a brief tutorial of Noloco on this episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast.

And I also presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

However, if you need a database app that has complete privacy built into it from the ground up, I would recommend taking a look at FileMaker. I used to be a FileMaker Developer for almost 30 years before becoming an Airtable consultant. Feel free to reach out to me through my website if you'd like me to turn you onto some excellent FileMaker developers, or if you need to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of your Airtable needs.

RayThacher
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Thanks Scott, 
   I've used Shared Views and Interfaces with my enterprise clients before, but as they look to bring in contractors with limited access we're able to reduce down literally everything they can see in the interfaces using the new advanced filtering except annoyingly, the user list. We use Stacker a *lot* and have been looking at moving to JetAdmin but Airtable interfaces has done 100% of what we need up to this one problem. 

Noloco seems fast, but I've seen no examples of it displaying data with as much design as I can get out of the Airtable interfaces. I'll check out your videos, maybe I can find something there that others have missed. 

ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

It is true that Noloco's advanced interfaces for Airtable aren't quite as beautifully designed as Airtable's, but you might be surprised at how many different types of elements you can put on the screen. It really shines in power over design. Softr, for example, shines in design over power. Each tool will have its strengths and weaknesses.

Update: An Airtable engineer has shared with us some excellent insights on this issue in this post: https://community.airtable.com/t5/product-operations/adding-a-user-to-interface-only/m-p/169332/high...

idodan
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This is a shame! If Airtable truly wants to live by its vision of becoming a platform for app building, this limitation is ridiculous. Virtually no app requires no privacy. I am about to loose a project because of that.

Can we get an official response from Airtable Product Team?
@ScottWorld