Forms: Linked Field Security

[mweis]

Hi there-- 

When working with the Form builder (NOT the interface or the form view), I get the following message when I go to publish a form with a linked field. Does this mean that the linked record itself is somehow exposed, or is this warning just in regards to the fact that the linked field in the form builder can be configured to show additional fields and not just the primary field? Thanks in advance for any help.

Linked records will be visible to anyone on the web.

To hide sensitive data, edit the linked record field to limit what users can select.

[ScottWorld]

The form builder can’t be configured to show additional fields besides the primary field in a linked record field.

That is only something that you can get with Fillout’s advanced forms for Airtable, which also offers hundreds of other advanced form features that Airtable does not offer — all for 100% free. 

Regarding the warning, it is kind of silly & unnecessary. It basically means that if you share your form publicly, then everything on your form is public. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Anybody who accesses your form can see all the same values that you can see in your linked record field. But just the primary field… nothing more than that. So a person or a robot could scrape all of the primary field values from your linked record field.

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 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

re: Does this mean that the linked record itself is somehow exposed, or is this warning just in regards to the fact that the linked field in the form builder can be configured to show additional fields and not just the primary field?

It's to warn you that the primary field of the table your linked field is referencing will be visible to anyone with access to the form

For example, maybe you've created a form for customer support people to log interactions with customers and have a linked field to the 'Customers' table so that your staff can select the person they spoke to.  If the primary field of the Customers table is the customer's full name, then anyone with access to this form will see your full customer list, does that make sense?

Linked fields in the form builder cannot display additional fields at this point

[mweis]

Hi Scott and Adam --

Thank you both for explaining. It's reassuring to know that it's just referencing the visible data.

I know you both shared that you can't display additional fields through form builder. When I pull in a linked field, it does look like I have the option to show additional fields, so long as my linked field is displaying as a card and not **bleep**:

I've tested and these fields do appear as visible for non-logged in users if the form is published to the web. I'm not sure if this is a newer feature or if what I'm using is not actually the form builder (I'm navigating there from the top ribbon from within the database).

Thank you both again.

[ScottWorld]

@mweis 

Oh, that's a cool discovery that you found there! Thanks for pointing that out.

It looks like that must be a relatively new feature, but unfortunately, it also looks like it has been very poorly implemented by Airtable.

Airtable won't let you choose attachment fields, and even worse, Airtable will take all of the fields that you choose and it will cut off their contents by squishing all of them down into a very small horizontal space, making them unreadable.

Now if you're only selecting 1 or 2 fields (maybe 3 fields), that might work okay, but outside of that, I would highly recommend checking out Fillout, which is not only free, but it also displays the full contents of the fields that you choose.

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

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Oooh that's exciting, thanks for the heads up!