Prevent collaborators from deleting records?

[scotty321]

Is there any way to allow a collaborator to EDIT records, but NOT DELETE any records?

[Justin_Barrett]

Not currently. Those are lumped together under one permission option. You could add a suggestion to the Product Suggestions category. In the meantime, drill the “don’t delete stuff without asking first” concept into your collaborators’ heads. (Frankly I don’t understand why that’s such a hard thing for people to understand, but apparently it is or you wouldn’t be asking this question.)

[scotty321]

Thanks for the info, @Justin_Barrett! :slightly_smiling_face: I will definitely suggest it in the product suggestions category.

[openside]

The typical approach is to provide read-only access to the data, then provide a form for users to create/update a record and use zapier to perform that update. Either by using the default airtable forms or using an external solution like nanoform or jotform to perform updates.

[Nathalie_Collin]

openside:

typical approach is to provide read-only access to the data

While that option works for new records, the OP was asking about editing records. As you mentioned, @openside, there are many workarounds that involve 3rd party apps, but a more granular permission control in house would be ideal. It almost seems like the permissions were put in long before the focus on collaboration was put in. The more collaborators you have, the more finite the permission groups you need.

Justin_Barrett:

drill the “don’t delete stuff without asking first” concept into your collaborators’ heads

I wish it were that simple. :rofl: :joy:

[Tom_Zehrbach]

When developing user experiences, the key rule is “Don’t make me think”; the bigger the manual, the greater the failure at achieving this goal. Now lets add additional systems into the mix for which Airtable is the system of record. Airtable has a nice API, but you can only read from and push to Airtable; Airtable can’t notify external systems when records are deleted. When users haven’t read the manual and delete records in Airtable, the auxiliary systems are now out of sync.

This situation will get worse over time because the initial users of the system may have it drilled into their heads not to delete records, but they’ll get promoted or leave the company and their successors may not have a good hand-off, the institutional knowledge will be lost, eventually someone will “clean up” the data in Airtable and now data within the various systems are completely out of sync.

Now you need to create a data validation system which will periodically compare data within the various connected systems to find and fix the orphans. All because Airtable doesn’t allow me to prevent record deletion.

[Justin_Stone-Di]

Such a simple thing. Hope they give us the option soon.

[Prixa_Tech]

Above are valid points. So, when can we see it (preventing deletion and record update/delete notifiication) happen, this should be P0/P1? @Justin_Barrett

It’s been almost a year with no updates.

[Justin_Barrett]

Sorry, but I’m just a member of the community like you. I don’t work for Airtable.

[Jamie25]

Using Field & Table Editing Permissions | Airtable Support

Here it is!