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Possibility to enable/disable record creation from linked columns.

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Kim_Trager1
9 - Sun
9 - Sun
Status: New Ideas
What is the proposed idea/solution?

The best yet most annoying feature - is being able to create record straight from a linked column

Despite being a feature that sometimes are valuable this feature has created more trouble than anything else.

To save tab space we often bunch different items under the same tab. We often use a combination of a locked filter that forces a category into a single select column and thereby split out what should be selectable in different linked columns around the base.

This works really well until someone one day realises that they can just add new entries directly from a linked column, but not understanding that they need to issue the right category to the new entry on order to make everything calculate right. This is especially difficult to explain to new people that join our organisation and who has no prior understanding of Airtable and does not understand the underlying structure of how our bases are build.

What would be really awesome is the ability to switch off this feature as sometimes it's obviously also a great quick way to add records, but our experience as soon as bases become a little more complicated this feature makes so much trouble.

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How does is solve the user problems?

It will enable our users not to make unintended duplicates and records that does not show up in the right linked columns

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How was this validated?

Through 22 users and three years of experience

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Who is the target audience?

New people you get onboards onto workspaces

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4 Comments
ScottWorld
18 - Pluto
18 - Pluto

2024 UPDATE:

If you're okay with using a form for creating new records or updating existing records, the best way of handling this in 2024 is to use Fillout's Advanced Forms for Airtable.

Fillout is 100% free and it gives you the ability to either: (a) disable creation of new linked record values, or (b) if you want your users to create new linked record values, you can actually REQUIRE the user to type in certain values, such as a "Category" field.

Fillout also offer hundreds of other advanced features that aren't natively available in Airtable.

Original Post from 2023:
Totally agree with you! One possible workaround for SOME use cases -- and it's definitely not a good workaround -- is that you can change the permissions on the linked record field to disable editing of the linked record field. However, the gigantic problem here is that not only does it disable creating new records through the linked record field, but it also prevents people from even linking to existing records in the linked record field. So this workaround might only work for 5% of the people out there.

Hope this helps! If you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with anything Airtable-related, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consultant — ScottWorld

Kim_Trager1
9 - Sun
9 - Sun

Interesting workaround, never thought about this, but as you mention I don't think that this would work in any of our bases, as we definitely need people to be able to link and create records. Just not create them without having all the guardrails (automated filters etc).

I guess another solution could be, to let the user create a record through the linked column, but use the filters in from the view you're pointing to, so it would work like as if the user created record directly in the view. So fx if your view had a filter in the view where a single select field is set to be XYZ the record would automatically get a value of XYZ in the single select field. 

Cover
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

i'm in need of this feature as well. any update on this?

 

FlyingTurtle
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I found that the most effective approach is to limit who can add records in the table that the column is linked to.

(Right-click on the linked table's header > Edit table permissions)

However, this isn't an ideal solution because it prevents them from creating new records in the table, not just through the linked column. Nonetheless, I hope this helps someone