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John_Bacino
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

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.

495 Comments
Paul_Warren
8 - Airtable Astronomer
8 - Airtable Astronomer

For my company, this is all about permissions. Stacker looks amazing, but I think Airtable is leaning too heavily on 3rd party support. It makes Airtable even more expensive to use, especially when you add up several 3rd party apps and some charge per record.

Please create granular permissions that provide the following functionality:

  1. Permissions can be granted/removed by: Table, View, Field, and record

  2. Access to VIEW can be granted or removed separately from edit access.

  3. Permission profiles can be customized and collaborators be assigned to a profile giving a range of users the same permissions. Additionally, it would be great to then be able to edit the individuals permissions after assigning the permission profile (essentially using the permission profile as a template).

We are grateful for the efforts to implement permissions, but those recently implemented mostly just protect against someone editing data on accident or maliciously. The functionality of Airtable was not expanded significantly. The added security is nice, but not game changing.

Adnan_Ahmed
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Thanks, this is a really good review. I wanted to get into Fibery, but first wanted a deep dive that tells its strengths and weaknesses in details. This review seems to do just that. Even more surprising that it’s written by the CEO and he’s not sugarcoating any of Fibery’s weaknesses, which gives me more confidence to try it out actually

George_Baker
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

For me its actually all points (sorry for being so needy…)

Two bases. Base A and Base B. Base A is the master containing ALL details for ALL employees within the company, base B is a sub-base that I will send out to external companies, such as a travel agent to book hotels for the employees when they are on a certain job, so needs to be editable but not effect the data in Base A(which is a kind of default). So I would need a feature in base B to pull certain fields from base A. ‘Link Fields 1, 2 and 3 from Base A, Table 1 when the value in Base A, Table 1 Field 4 is EXAMPLE JOB’. Base B would then become populated with only the details the travel agent needed, protecting certain private details of the employees.

Within Base A, I would also like to only grant access/views of some fields to certain people. For example, Managers should have access to all data within the base - but Juniors should not be able to see the field regarding individuals salaries, but do need to be able to edit the contact details of every employee.

Udi_Golan
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

+1 for linking tables across different bases.

As noted by other people, higher granularity permissions and even aggregation + hiding of tables tab won’t resolve the need.
Collapsing all company’s bases into one means over loaded base which would serve poorly our company users (even if permissions are there it would be extremely hard to manage).
Compartmentalizing using bases is one of AT strength points and we’d better not sacrifice it.

syncbases_com
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Another approach that might work, depending of your use case, is to sync bases instead of linking them.
I built a tool internally and now it’s in beta, you can have a look here.
In short you can set exactly which records, fields, or view you want to sync with the other bases. And automate it to sync update every minute so it’s always up to date. It sync changes two-way as well.

Sam_Bevis
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Also desperately needing to link bases.

Ill use a third party app to get going, but it’s a must for me.

Brian_Cugelman
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I was going to build a similar tool out of frustration. Thanks for this. It fills a massive gap and I’ll try your product out.

kbitz
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I think the biggest issue here is the total lack of communication on the #1 most popular forum topic in Airtable’s forum. They could answer definitively that they have no plans to do this, etc. I am not clear why there is a such a lack of transparency on something that clearly people want. It is hard to make decisions related to a product when you don’t know where it’s going.

Chris_Rudek
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

This topic started in 2015 and is still open ? It is one of the first features I am struggling with. Can anyone give me a few idea where I can invite someone outside my company to have access to a base where I am only sharing one table ? That they can see and edit. I also need to hide fields from them. This is why I thought I could share specific data from one base to another.

Chris_Rudek
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

It is one of the first features I am struggling with. Can anyone give me a few idea where I can invite someone outside my company to have access to a base where I am only sharing one table ? That they can see and edit. I also need to hide fields from them. This is why I thought I could share specific data from one base to another.