Link to other base

[John_Bacino]

So happy that someone finally filled the void left by Dabble DB.

One of the features I found most useful there, but can’t seem to do in Airtable, is linking to entries in another Base. Often, one will have multiple bases which handle distinct aspects of a business or project, but in which one piece of data overlaps.

Example: A political campaign may want Bases for contacting voters, managing events, and recording donations. Those are distinct domains which need their own Bases, but which could benefit from linking parts of them together. For example, it would be great to link donations to the event they occurred at, or voters to donations, or record who attended each event.

In Airtable at present one has to either cram all of those bases into one, or foregoe the linkage which makes this software so great. It may seem like a small thing, but once you can link bases, the sky is really the limit.

[Phil_Sheard]

Hi @Airtable team. Adding some more background from a new user.

The main reason I want to be able to use linking between bases is so that I can use a single member / user database across multiple bases.

One of our use cases is for Airtable to manage internal tasks and priorities. There is a single employee list that is used across a wide range of bases: task lists, roles and responsibilities, training processes, editorial calendars, etc. It’s not practical for all this to live in one base but neither is it practical to create multiple lists of employees and try to keep these all in sync. Granular permissions would be nice also, but wouldn’t solve our particular need.

Hope this helps :slightly_smiling_face:
Phil

[Dave_Mee]

… just to chime in: I see that something like this looks obvious and straightforward, but opens a can of worms around permissions, access rights, and no end of other questions.

However, I would say that this is a +1 feature I would love to see.

[David_Jones]

I ASSUMED this would already be a feature. Now I’ve got several disparate Bases and no way for them to talk to each other. :cry:

[Rafik_Salama]

+1

Another user who would gain a lot of benefit from this feature.

[Jason_Nordin]

My use cases end up being mostly #3 (cramped with too many tables) and some of #2.
Some information I use is needed in almost all of my bases; I use a ‘art studies’ checklist sort of base, and it bleeds into many of my projects but isn’t related enough to list every time.
Aside from that, for most of my issues, this might be resolved just by being able to group or tag tables together.

As for permissions…
I see a need for a ‘can see’ and ‘can edit’, maybe ‘can comment’, ‘can add’ permissions for different bases, maybe for different tables or views. I can see ‘comments’ being a common base for that purpose, for that matter. I don’t see it as useful if those permissions aren’t held across linked bases and records.

[William_Thrashe]

I utilize Airtable to organize records for a small college. I agree that linking between table would be awesome. for the reasons stated above. However, for me, I could keep all of the information in a single base with some exceptions. Perhaps the exceptions can be remedied with current solutions. If so I apologize, if not, please consider…

1. If I could password protect a table while still sharing selected data fields with other tables that would address my need to exclude certain data while using other bits.

2. If #1 were possible the number of table “tabs” would make navigation between tables cumbersome. Perhaps the ability to link table names to a single table. That way I could create a “table of contents” for tables that are in a base. a TOC would contain the names of all of the other tables, sort and filter capabilities of course, so no matter how many tables I would have in a base I can find the specific tables I need without searching through the ever changing list…

I am new to AT but I must tell you it is an excellent product. If any of these capabilities are available and I just have not found them yet please disregard my note AFTER sending instructions on how to make it work.

Thank you for your efforts.

[Alan_Guggenheim]

We are new to Airtable. We are a small business, currently using Smartsheet, and while it does work well, it has no relational data feature, so I was looking for a relational DB in the cloud. Airtable looks great and could easily replace Smartsheets, but to be worth the effort, we need the link to other base feature.
As very well analysed by @Katherine_Duh Katherine_Duh, feature 1 is permissions: tables requiring more confidentiality or safety would be in a base with very limited access.
Then 2: complex cross-base reporting
and 3 is correct, a base with too many tables becomes harder to use,

As a temporary step, making shared views permissions more granular would help a lot:
any view would be shareable for either view, edit, add, delete, edit view definition (or combinations)

[Jorge_Ferreira]

YES!!! This is the single most wanted feature for me.

[Anthony_Painter]

+1 from me.

Relatable bases, to summarise content from a master/complete/project base into a specific collaborators base showing assigned tasks (distilling collaborators tasks from many individual bases to a singular base) is a must for our business.

Use case: each base is a construction call forward sheet containing every task to complete a project (500 plus tasks). Tasks are assigned to multiple collaborators/companies or to company employees.

The database owner and some of its users need to see the complete base for each project, all task view, to assign, comment and adjust tasks, keep the singular base/project updated. Other employees only need see task assigned to them or their division (sales/admin/contracts/estimating/scheduling/site). Sharing filtered or grouped views could achieve the filtering of internal company information/viewing by internal company collaborators.

A collaborator has tasks on multiple bases/jobs, but does not need to see all the tasks in an individual base ) they get lost/confused/just don’t need to see everything.

Consequently, linking each base/project to an individual collaborator’s “summary base” that shows only those tasks they have been assigned from each “complete base” is essential in our workflow.

This way, each collaborator is provided a link/access to one “summary” base, that they can share to all of their employees, seeing, commenting and completing only those tasks assigned to them from multiple “complete/project” bases.

A many to one and one to many type database relationship.

Sort of like what we could do with MS Access SQL databases (when MS Access was all we had) :slightly_smiling_face:

[Harald_Saevarei]

Yes, this will improve the way we use Airtable and make even more versatile.

[And I have not read all the threads]

My suggestion is to make one base in a team the master/global base, with global bases that could be linked into other bases. In the specific project base one could link to e.i the master ‘employee’ base. This lives in the master bases and just appears in the other bases for linking records purposes.

Keep up the good work @Katherine_Duh et. al.!