Downgrading from Workspace Collaborator to Base Collaborator

Erin_Thiele · ‎Jul 06, 2020

I have a workspace collaborator that I want to make a base-only collaborator. If I delete them from the workspace, before adding them back to base only, will I lose their connections as Contributor in that base also be removed?

ScottWorld · ‎Jul 06, 2020

I’m not an Airtable employee so I don’t know with 100% certainty, but I don’t believe you would have a problem with this.

The collaborator feature seems pretty “dumb” — meaning that it just looks for a matching first name & last name. So, if you have 2 collaborators named “John Smith”, Airtable can’t even distinguish between the two of them.

So, if you delete someone and re-add them again as a different type of collaborator, I’m sure that Airtable will just match the old person with the new person, if the name is identical.

You can also test this by just creating a test user account and see what happens.

Erin_Thiele · ‎Jul 07, 2020

Solution steps to verify:

I created another dummy account for myself. I added myself as a workspace collaborator, creator level.
Went into my base and added my name in a column marked for other collaborators.
Went back to the workspace collaborator settings, deleted myself.
Went back to the base and saw that my name was greyed out, but not deleted (yay!)
Went to the base collaborator settings, added myself only to the base.
Went back to the base again and my name was still in the same location, now full color.
The issue was that I initially created this workspace, not realizing there was a difference in where I was adding people (base vs workspace). I had three users still under the workspace collaborator setting. Which was fine when I only had one major base. But I wanted to create another base as a testing platform that others didn’t have access to. I was nervous about deleting them from the workspace and losing their names in my original base.
TLDR: A quick delete from a workspace and adding to a singular base doesn’t result in loss of data.

ScottWorld · ‎Jul 07, 2020

Great! Glad that worked out for you!! I’m glad that you were able to confirm how “dumb” (yet helpful) the collaborator field is! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Makes it very easy to make changes like this! :slightly_smiling_face: