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.

[Mike_11]

We need this feature

[Asher_Terpstra]

This would massively increase the value of Airtable to the teams that I work with. I definitely want to see this feature as soon as possible as it would kill off quite a few burdensome solutions we wouldn’t need if this was implemented.

[Jay_DeDapper]

Still waiting. Really this is a MUST HAVE for Airtable to be fully functional in a complex environment.

[Brian_Zawislak]

Please see below. The last response was from a year ago. I don’t understand why they have a “Product Suggestion” forum if they aren’t going to comment on the suggestions, especially one that’s so popular. It’s disappointing. I don’t know where all their VC money is going. For instance, the iOS app is crippled and hasn’t had any functionality added since it was created. You can only open grid views and need to use their website for forms, blocks, etc… So frustrating!

[Megan_Krym]

Linking to separate bases would help our productivity and transparency as well. Permissions are a big piece of this, with our proprietary information. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to attach documents in multiple places without downloading and re-attaching again (assuming you don’t have access to the original scanned document). Click and drag without having to download again would be a very helpful feature!

[Adnan_Ahmed]

If you’re viewing the records in a Grid view, you can actually just CTRL+C (copy) on the attachment field, and CTRL+V (paste) on another attachment field, even on a different base. It’s very quick and easy

It’s not a workaround for permissions, just letting you know how I attach multiple documents quickly in case it helps you as well :slightly_smiling_face:

[Mariane_Wangira]

This feature would be essential for workflow at my organisation. We use Airtable as a contacts database for contacts across a number of different areas - media, government, general public, donors, public servants, board and committee members and other stakeholders. Each of these ‘categories’ has a completely different set of data associated with it. For instance, media contacts are linked to specific programs and reports, donors have all donor history and event attendance, board and committee members have details of the meetings they’ve attended, and so on. Currently we have an enormous spreadsheet with so many different views that it’s almost impossible to manage.

In addition to this, we also have a second base called ‘key metrics’, which basically pulls together all meetings had by our CEO and program directors, and categorises them into type, eg. speech, presentation, forum, media mention, etc. This information needs to be kept completely separate from the contact database, but the names of people met with and their organisation will come from the central list. Currently we have a lot of issues of data integrity. It’s not possible to create another view in the central list for the metrics because the information is completely different and we already have 18 views just for contacts, based on the information that we need about each.

Linking bases would literally make life so much easier for us. We could have all our contacts in the central list, then have a separate base for metrics , another base for donor history, another for events - pulling names and organisations across where appropriate but storing a completely different dataset.

[HammerOz]

Yep. backend table libraries are what are needed. Like a real database. eg create new base, select tables to include. viola …

[Shawn_Peters]

Would it be possible to simply have a table that is duplicated, placed within another base directly linked to its origin (table to table link)? Instead of database permissions being granted, only table permissions.

Keeping assets that are utilized for multiple projects in a single base that can be access externally would also be useful.
The concept of everything in one base also fills storage limits much more quickly, especially with movie projects.

Thanks! Love Airtable!

[Trevor_Hawley]

The lack of this function is a fundamental flaw that contradicts the universal organization of a business.

Business is fundamentally about coordinating tasks between different facilitators (employees) to produce a product. A product has lifecycle stages (production, marketing, sales, customer service) that require different departments to facilitate it’s fulfillment, as well as departments to facilitate internal business items (legal, finance, admin, biz dev, R&D). Departments are grouped based on common skillsets and knowledge and have their own systems/procedures/data/assets etc which require different access levels - because you don’t want your production team looking at your sales pipeline and seeing how much money you make in your financials or viewing employee reviews and sensitive data in HR.

All business data is created around one central thing: the business! Therefore, a business’s data must be collective and relational, yet must be compartmentalized via different departments.

This is the problem with project management software - it is usually created with only one or 2 departments in mind, because it’s extremely challenging to make something that indeed does combine all data yet compartmentalize: you need a database program to do it…

Airtable is nearly the unicorn where you can actually run an entire business with all tasks and data in one place between different departments. The visualizations and functions are unbelievably amazing - yet you don’t allow the compartmentalization of departments through different bases, which fundamentally contradicts business.

To properly have collective relational data you must currently have all departments in one base, which means 1x base is theoretically the equivalent to 1x entire company, which makes Workspaces obsolete, and violates the rule of the need for department compartmentalization.

I would say the day is saved if zapier had a ‘update record then updates another record’ capability to sync records but I only see ‘new record updates another record’ so that means records cannot sync between bases through zapier… I hope I’m wrong and there’s a solution here…???

If you fix this one function a teenager could run a fortune 500 conglomerate from a Starbucks… hope it happens! :slightly_smiling_face:

** Edit - just found @openside.com so that’ll prob do the trick, def a little pricey but well worth it I’m sure.