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At the moment the form only allows input of new data. Can we have a form for editing existing records? At the moment we can only edit in the table meaning I can’t present the records the way I want. Can’t even hide columns on mobile, meaning the users are free to wreak havoc on the existing data :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
we run an annual conference. each session has associated data that is editable by administrators (like Room Assignment, Skill Level, etc) and data editable by Session Planners. A form would allow planners to be able to look up their sessions and make changes (say… a speaker needs to be removed) without having access to things they can break.
We have a few different scenarios where we want to use forms to allow certain people to edit data.
Scenario 1: The Collaborative Customer
This is the most common scenario we run into. We have a number of customers we attempt to collaborate with on Airtable. We’re currently letting the customer export their Airtable view, make edits to the CSV, and then submit back to us so that we can update the Airtable manually for them.
We need to restrict the customer to just their filtered view though because we track all our customers in one base and even on that same table.
I would be fine with allowing them to update their filtered view directly in Grid view via one of the public obfuscated share links. With that said, it would be better from the client perspective if we could give them a controlled easy-to-use interface to edit the data.
What we’re doing is tracking the employees at our customer’s companies that we provide our professional services to. We also track a number of other financial details around the services and subscriptions offered to those customers. Then we’re tracking equipment that belongs to each of these customers and that’s where our “Collaborative Customer” comes into play. Certain people at our customer’s offices want to be able to read/write to their list of equipment so that they can have a data conversation with us.
We already have their HR department add new “employees” via a form view, but it would be great if we could also have them remove “employees” via the form view we’re talking about now. Similarly, the technical contacts would use that form view to update the equipment for these employees.
Scenario 2: The Casual Colleague
The Casual Colleague is a common one for us. It’s someone on our staff we don’t want to train on using Airtable fully, and that we don’t want sifting through the all the data, but we do want them to be able to modify specific tables.
It seems like the ideal way to allow a colleague to edit the data with the least amount of training would be if we gave them an easy-to-use and self-explanatory form.
Scenario 3: The Private Collaborator
This is basically just like scenario 1, but some of our data is a little more private and we’d like to be able to invite guests to a form and force them to sign-up for an Airtable account. Better yet, I’d even love the ability to require that they confirm a cell phone and use 2FA. This would signal to our customers that we take the protection of their data seriously even though we’ve made it easily accessible to them.
Slightly on a tangent from this scenario but relevant to security. I would also really like a way to lock-down filtered views so that internal creators can’t accidentally expose information on a view by un-filtering data. It would be great if only owners could change filters on publicly shared views.
Conclusion
Like I said, I think the starting point is with editable (restricted) grid view for external collaborators.
Looking forward to seeing what’s next for Airtable. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss further and/or have us test any of this.
I’m just wanting to throw my hat in the ring that this ability to edit records using forms is HIGHLY important. I work in an organization with a lot of volunteers and volunteer turnover. I don’t want to be putting people in front of rows and rows of data in a table. I want to have them search for a specific record, view it in the form, and edit information within that record in the form view, to avoid accidentally editing the wrong row/record when looking at many lines in a table.
This is a HUGE deal and a huge request that would greatly enhance my ability to use AirTable. Please don’t make me go back to using MS Access to support my organization. This is even a feature I’d be willing to pay small rate for a premium account to be able to use…
Any update from Airtable team about this request? To sum it up, account admin can have the ability to limit user access to specific data records and allow them to edit those records via a form. Not all users should be allowed to access the entire data table. This is one big important function that will make Airtable so much more powerful.
We love AirTable, but the ability to restrict users’ access to selected data and activities would be a massive improvement. If we had those abilities we would allow more people access to our database, which would mean more users and more revenue for Airtable.
We are a business services company and we would love for our field techs to be able to edit existing records (e.g. customer contact info) in the field without having to grant them access to the entire database with the ability to mass-delete records or tables.
We would prefer our users to be logged in when editing so we have audit history and so that only our employees can make changes - so we’d rather this functionality is accomplished within the app rather than with a form that doesn’t require login.
Following up to my comment a few moments ago, perhaps a solution would be to allow users’ access to be restricted to only certain Views when they login (without the ability to edit the settings of those Views). And within each of the Views they have access to, enable the ability to turn on or off their ability to a) add records, b) delete records, and c) edit records.
My org has different tier of users as well. Our workflow would greatly benefit from the ability to specify which fields to lock. I understand that changes are tracked for each item; however, when we’re dealing with thousands of row entries, it’s not possible for our small company to keep an eye out for each entry mistakes made. Thanks.
Since you asked for detailed examples of how we’d use this feature . . . I’m working with a volunteer organization which staffs a Helpline for the county agricultural agent. We would like to have volunteers log in for their shift, and to record Helpline calls from the public. Many of the volunteers are borderline computer-literate; if there was edit capability for specific views, this would allow volunteers to edit the records they populate, but there would be some control over unintended mistakes.
We have a database for new students who will be joining our school, we have a table with a list of the student’s names and the schools they will be joining from, into each row I would like to add a bunch of other data but I want their current teachers at their current schools to do this.
Unless I want to give the teachers full access to wreak havoc with the data, the only option I have is to create a new table with a link to the records in the first table, have the teachers create new rows in that table and then export, correlate and import the data back into the original table which is going to be very time-consuming and prone to error.
EDIT:Possible Workaround
I’ve found a kind of way to do this based on my above suggestion.
1- Create a new table with a form which can link to a record in the table you want to edit data in (Here by edit I really mean fill out empty fields in an already existing row)
2- In the new table create a matching set of columns for the ones you wish to add data to in the original table and set them to “Lookup” data from the records as they are linked
3- Share a form to your second table
This way you can populate empty fields without giving access to the data which is already in the first table.
