Collaborators : ability to see tables vs restricted views

[Matt_Wood]

I have an open-access data collection form that my members can fill in.

Members are in different organisations with their own email domain.

I want to be able to restrict views of the results by domain so that people can only see the responses from others in their organisation - which Airtable lets me do via the restrictions options built in to the view.

So I created a View, gave it the name of the company in question and restricted the view by domain. However when somebody is invited to collaborate on the base they just see everything in the table/view and the view itself isn’t restricted by domain - I think the difference between being invited as a full base collaborator (with commenter permissions) and simply having a link to a view without being invited to to the base.

I believe I need these members to be collaborators, as opposed to simply being sent a link. If they only had a link to a restricted view they wouldn’t (necessarily) have an Airtable account and the domain-restricted permissions wouldn’t work?

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

If the users need the ability to add comments, they need to be base collaborators and will be able to see everything in the base. Also, depending on your subscription level, you will have to pay for them.

If you only use shared views that are restricted by domain, your users will need to have Airtable accounts, but will not be collaborators on the base and will not be able to leave record comments. The also will not be able to view record comments. You could have these users leave feedback by creating new linked records using a form instead of using comments.

[Matt_Wood]

Thanks kuovonne!

So it looks like I will just share views restricted by domain. Users will have to create an account to access the view linked to their email/domain. I like your suggestions of users able to leave feedback by creating new linked records - thank you for that idea as I will need to make this functionality available.

One other question if I may, please:

When it comes to the original form entry, am I correct to assume that there is no way I can authenticate these users before they submit a record to ensure they don’t just make up a name/email etc and submit a bogus record?

If I was inviting them to the base, they would be authenticated but I don’t want to invite them to the base and give them the ability to see all the records.

[kuovonne]

Matt_Wood:

authenticate these users before they submit a record to ensure they don’t just make up a name/email etc and submit a bogus record?

The most you can do is limit access to the form by password or domain. Once someone has access to the form, it is possible for that person to fill in the form with bogus info and you will have no way of knowing who did it. At best you would know that the record was submitted y someone at the specified domain.