Enabling Access to Record URLs for Non-Airtable Users in a Shared Table

[edwardcarillo]

I have a shared table that is accessible to users who are not using Airtable. They can view the table using the link I provided without any issues. Within this table, there's a "notes" column where I want to refer to another record by saying "please see here," with "here" being a URL link to another record.

As an Airtable user, I can click the link and access the other record, but non-Airtable users encounter a block. They are prompted to request access to the entire database, which I'd like to avoid. Is there a way for non-Airtable users to access the record URLs in the comments section without the need to create a new column for linked records?

[kuovonne]

To have the link open the other record, you need a public link to that record, not the link to the record in the base. Can you share a view of the table containing the other record, and then build the url of the record in that shared view?

[ScottWorld]

@edwardcarillo 

Yes, you can do this, but the shared record URL is a different URL than the normal URL.

If you go to the shared view in your web browser and zoom into the details of one record, you will see the URL that would work for that particular shared view.

In other words, each record has multiple different URL's that can lead to it. Each record has a public/shared URL (which is different for each shared view), each record has a private URL for internal users (which can also change for each private view), each record can have multiple interface URLs, etc.

So this could get tricky if you want both internal users & public users to be able to access records via link, because different types of users will have different URLs. So you would need to keep track of 2 different URLs for each record. 

One expensive way to solve this in a very elegant manner would be to spend money on an Airtable front-end like Noloco. Noloco lets both internal users & public users login to view your Airtable data, but you can set it so that only internal users can CHANGE the data. 

I give a brief tutorial of Noloco on this episode of the BuiltOnAir podcast. And I presented a full one-hour webinar on Noloco called Building a Client Portal on Noloco powered by Airtable.

p.s. If you need help from an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld