Again running into issues with not having more granular control of User Permissions. Wondering if this is on the Roadmap and if so (Though I know you can’t say when) is it one of the higher priority items?
I use freelancers to work on projects for me. I want them to be able to mark off tasks as done, but I don’t want them to see all tasks. I want them to only see their own tasks.
I can create a view that only shows them their tasks, but if they are a collaborator, they can still change this to see all tasks.
You guys should see this kind of situation as a potential for user-base growth. If @Garland_Coulson invites a freelancer to collaborate on his base for a period of time, and that freelancer has not seen Airtable before, he has now not only been exposed to your service, but actually used it in an already functional base - he has seen what it can do, how user-friendly it is, how beautiful it is to behold when he compares it to his Google Sheet that has grown unwieldy with time. When @Garland_Coulson boots the freelancer from his base at the end of a project, said freelancer finds himself missing Airtable’s lovely interface and powerful entity relationships, and decides he’s going use that account he already had to make in order to take a job with @Garland_Coulson and make his own bases in it, moving his own workflow into Airtable… and sooner or later, Airtable rules the world! (ok, a step to far)
– I’m inserting this after having written the rest of the post to make it clear up front that this is not an angry post - only a plea in the cause of this #feature-requests –
Different use-cases aside, I think there’s a pretty clear argument to be made that extending user-permissions to the level of a Table and a View is a win-win-win. There are just so many use-cases that could make use of one or other of these collaboration levels that it seems an inevitable necessity for you guys to implement.
And when it comes to billing, you could justify charging the same for a collaborator at any level - you already do that with Workspace vs Base collaborators at any permission level, and while there may be some complaining on the forums about that, most of us are fine with it and pay what you ask, because we recognize that this is quality software, and the service is worth the cost to us.
You’re concerned about ease of use and UI/UX clarity, and rightfully so - but I don’t think this represents a major challenge to that. I think users will understand the options here: Do you want to invite this person to collaborate on -
The Workspace?
The Base?
The Table?
The View?
So I guess the biggest question becomes, is this possible with your current software structure?
It seems like it should be, given that every element within Airtable - with the exception of a Field and a Cell - has a unique URL associated with it. And you’ve figured out a way to hide fields from “Shared Views” that we do not want viewers to see, so it seems you should be able to do the same with, for example, expanded records in a view where the collaborator expanding the record only has permission to see that view - she/he cannot unhide hidden fields or group by hidden fields, only reorder/sort what they have permission to see, and add/update the records they can see.
There are some challenges that @Katherine_Duh has brought up in other areas of the forum pertaining to how to deal with the display of linked records, for example - and those are valid challenges. But I am paying monthly for your SaaS so that you will continue to overcome those challenges.
I’m sure you can see the details of my account, so you know that I have 6 workspaces with 65 bases across them. A few of my bases have collaborators, but the majority of them don’t. And the #1 reason for that is the lack of granular user permissions. I do a lot of data entry that could (really should) be done by other people in my company to free up my time to focus on - perk up your ears - moving MORE of our workflows into Airtable and bringing you more paid users. The reason I can’t do this is because I can’t afford to have a base entirely exposed to any one of my data entry co-workers, for various reasons that span the gamut of reasons for why you wouldn’t want a user to have access to certain portions of a database.
I think you guys have done a fantastic job with the collaboration and permissions that you have implemented so far, but I think you are alienating large groups of users by not making this #feature-requests a priority, and thus leaving money on the table.
As a followup to @Jeremy_Oglesby comment, I am a professional speaker who reaches thousands of people a year with my workshops, online courses and webinars.
I regularly recommend my favorite tools to my followers and I have brought a fair number of people to Airtable already.
I know the usually assumption is that you have a team of people that stays fairly static but more and more people work with a wide range of freelancers.
Over a 1 year period, I will use different freelancers for:
virtual assistants (probably 3-6 over a year)
web design
graphic design
copywriting
content writing
keyword researcher
SEO consultants
Already nearly at 10 people I might use, all with their own tasks. I only want myself (or maybe a manager I hire) to see all the tasks.
In addition, I use Airtable to gather potential webinar instructors and run joint webinar events with them. I want to give them tasks/checklists for the event. I could have hundreds of instructors eventually.
Not only is the issue of each collaborator seeing all the tasks a problem, this is also a problem for Airtable pricing.
If I have 10-20 freelancers and 100 instructors I am working with, there is NO hope of staying upgraded to pro pricing. $24/month x 120 = $2,880 per MONTH.
I am an entrepreneur working from my home office. I do make my full time living online but there is no way I can justify $2,880 a month for Airtable. So none of the premium features can be available to me.
Just wanted to provide some perspective on how important it is to be able to provide “by view” collaborators who can’t see the rest and to give some thought to how pricing can work for small business owners.
Hi, just adding my +1 on this. I work with a lot of freelancers, too, and need to segment permissions (if it’s not possible to link between bases). For airtable to work for us long-term, we need to be able to share single views or individual tables.
Is this on the roadmap? If so, what’s the status? Is there a beta in the works?
+1 on this, we have to be able to lock columns to avoid record deletions - even a prompt when about to delete a record would be helpful. We are using in a manufacturing setting where we need to keep people from accessing views that are unrelated to their workspace, and limit them to only simple inputs.
+1
My use case:
The first app I want to build is for project and task management.
The ideal scenario, for my users, is the ability to create tasks and projects privately, publicly, for selected users and (ideally, but not critically) user groups - and change those audiences as required on a task-by-task and project-by-project basis.
You’ve created a great product. This is the biggest road block I can see which is a matter of data security.
We’re looking for collaborator level permissions so you can set views for specific collaborators. E.g. I create the Howie view, and only you can see, edit, modify the data in that view.
A workaround could have been to use web views but these are read only.
The case study here is an organisation with all their order data in Airtable.
Different teams work on different parts of the order (like an assembly line). Each team only needs to see their view and data they need to input to help complete the order. They don’t want or need access to the entire base with all the views. This seems to me like it would be a common requirement when thinking about how organisations work in teams with shared data.
