Advanced User Permissions

[Jonathan_Fuller]

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?

You all are awesome. Thanks!

[Brad_Sattin]

I love airtable, but as the others mentioned, we’re having to look elsewhere because of the permissions/privacy issue. We’re in video production, and are trying to create tables for Admins, Creators of the video projects, and Clients. Admins have access to everything, Creators access to the project(s) they’re working on only, and clients have basic read-only info on the status of their individual project. I absolutely LOVE the ease of use of Airtable, but as a new company, I worry about putting too much time into it if can’t really meet our needs by inviting others in.

[Gabriel_Stiritz]

+1 These are the two core features that we need for this platform to be the most useful app I’ve found vs. slightly better than Google Sheets.

[Stephen_Leach]

I am very surprised by the omission of this feature, which is a complete show-stopper for using Airtable. Firstly there is an obvious use-case for a read-only API - and since any future enhancement will encompass that, you might as well get on and do it. Like yesterday. The other big use case is for an API that acts like a collaborator. So being able to create a ‘dummy’ collaborator and then operate the API with the permissions of that collaborator is extremely simple to explain, simple to manage, requires very very little extra UI, and does everything.

[Kasra]

Firstly there is an obvious use-case for a read-only API…

Per-API-key base permissions are on our roadmap, but just wanted to point out that you can already accomplish this by creating a separate Airtable account and giving it read-only access to your base, then using that account’s API key.

[Jasmine_Ruth]

Tuur:

I love Airtable, but I have to say the permissions in Smartsheet are really slick. It's almost a shame it's lacking in the database area. :winking_face: From the link: locking columns single row updates (would also make sense without payed AT account) editable sharing

Agree on all of these. The locking columns would be so amazing. We really love Airtable but dislike it’s all or nothing. If someone has read access they can only see the main view as it’s currently filtered. When someone has edit they can edit anything and everything and then creator is barely a step above that. There’s no middle ground for restrictive access. Also, when discussing moving towards paid versions, we’d love a client to have access to on column only to update but it doesn’t make sense for us to pay for them for a whole year when they’ll only need access for one event, and we don’t want them to have edit access, only edit on one column. Lots of opportunities for improvement on the access levels here.

[Stephen_Leach]

Thanks for flagging that up - that seems like a decent workaround.

[Daniel_Payne]

This is the solution we all need. Have permissions for views (this solves table and field dilemmas)

[Jenna_Johnson]

I love airtable on a personal level, but I can’t convince my company to adopt it yet because there are minimal permission options.

Here is my use case:
Industry: Manufacturing
Users: ~20-30

We are currently using Asana for this, but I think with permissions, AirTable would be better. We have three main teams that use Asana to track issues: Sales, Service, and Production. Each team uses Asana to track problems they see in the field or things they need fixed/updated (think tech/marketing/service issues). Every week we have an in-house production meeting, where we go through all production issues from sales, service, and production. Right now each team has their own board where they can post requests and other issues, and the cards that pertain to multiple people are added to the correct corresponding boards in other departments. While this works fine for now, it doesn’t have the search and sort functionality that I need. Airtable would allow me to re-order everything by different parameters which would help our team better identify priority issues. Our problem lies in that the three different groups don’t need to see everything on each others tables, just the entries that pertain to them. They all also need to be able to edit and comment on things shared with them.

We have many other uses for airtable as well, but until I can get more permissions, it will not meet our needs, but it is so close!

[Ruth_Merenda]

I love the iCal subscription link which enables me to share each band member’s tailored gig calendar for all appearances where they are named in the personnel column. I would really like to be able to limit their viewing permissions, tho, to specific fields (venue, address, sound check time, lodging, etc.) Instead they can click thru and see all fields - including the more sensitive money info.

For me I’d be thrilled if each calendar view could have a “hidden fields” feature like other views have.

Or, another solution would be to have some “private” fields that are viewable only by Creator-level or Edit-level users (NOT by anyone with an iCal subscription link.)

Thanks for working on this! It seems like lots of folks are chomping at the bit for a similar feature.

Long live Airtable!

[Oli_Steadman]

Hey there @Ruth_Merenda, I’m running a band too and would love to ask how to get that iCal subscription happening… is it easy to setup? I have looked (even in the Blocks thing I’m beta-testing for Airtable) and can’t find it!