Published Universe Template Not Accurate

[barreea]

Hello. I've been working on a database template to share with other organizations doing similar work. I've recently published that template to the Airtable Universe, but two views are not transferring correctly. These two views are filtered views, and they are filtered based on the values in a lookup field. They are working in my base, but in the published version, the filter remains, but the values are listed as "unnamed position." Those look-up fields are themselves looking up data from a linked field that meets certain criteria. I'm assuming there is something that is breaking in all the steps necessary to carry this over. Any ideas?

[ScottWorld · Accepted solution]

That's very unfortunate to hear. I don't have a solution for you, but you may want to send an email to support@airtable.com to see if they can look into this for you.

If they're able to solve this for you, please let us know!

It's also highly likely that there won't be any solution at all, because unfortunately, as far as I know, Airtable has essentially abandoned the Airtable Universe (even though it is still lurking around at the bottom of the homepage and in the lower left corner of the Airtable workspace page).

As far as I know, Airtable has not put any resources into the Airtable Universe in many, many, many years. I think they last worked on the Universe in 2015 or 2016, and it only supports features that were in Airtable at that time.

The universe doesn't support a ton of things that we can do in bases these days. I can't remember off the top of my head what doesn't work, but I think that interfaces, automations, scripting, and extensions are 4 of the many things that don't work in universe apps.

Airtable revamped filtering on lookup fields in the last year or two, so the Airtable Universe probably hasn't been updated to handle that.

— 
ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

[barreea]

That's really helpful information! It sounds like there may be other aspects of the base that will not carry over, as well. One last question for you: do you have any suggestions for how groups might share database structures with one another if not via Universe? 

[ScottWorld]

Unfortunately, Airtable doesn't really offer any good way of doing this.

The only 2 ways of doing this would be to:

1. Invite people into your base as a full creator of the base, and then they could duplicate a copy of it into their own workspace. But during that time period, you might be charged by Airtable for adding them as creators of your base.

2. Alternatively, you could do it the other way around. This is the better option, because it prevents them from coming into your base where they might make inadvertent changes to it. You could ask THEM to add you as a creator to THEIR workspace, and then YOU can duplicate your base into THEIR workspace. Similarly as above, they might also get charged for you during that time period as well.

Note: Some people might think that sharing the base using the "Share" button is a good way of doing this, but that won't work at all if you use automations or scripting or extensions. Similar to the Airtable Universe, "sharing" the base (and checking the checkbox to give people the ability to copy the base for their own needs) will remove all automations & extensions & scripting from the base. It might not even work with the filtered lookup fields, which is the problem you had before.

Some people might refer to Airtable as a "platform of limitations". 😜

— 
ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

[barreea]

Thanks! This is very helpful, yet again (especially the tip about moving the other direction so that they can't mess with the original base). I do have scripts and automation in my base, so this is going to be disappointing to those organizations that wanted to use my scheme in an easy way, but at least we have something of a plan to share. I lied about the last question above, because I have one more: I've developed data dashboards and data entry forms through interfaces--do those attach to the base? Or would I need to share those separately? 

[ScottWorld]

You're welcome! Those attach to the base.

[barreea]

Great! Just checked and the interface came through just fine. Appreciate all your help today!