Help

This Product Ideas board is currently undergoing updates, but please continue to submit your ideas.

"Created by" field type (or username called by formula)

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Paul_Teplitz
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi there:

Part of how I use Airtable is as a CRM, and I am setting up a table that my staff can use to track customer interactions. We are interacting with hundreds of customers, and it’s very useful to be able to know which staff member was involved in previous communications with a customer. Just like there is a “created time” field type, it would be great to have a “created by” field type. Alternatively, a formula that returned the username of the active user would also be a potential solution.

Thanks,
Paul

42 Comments
Jeremy_Oglesby
14 - Jupiter
14 - Jupiter

A workaround you could use to achieve something similar would be to have a “View” for each staff member that is Filtered to show only “Communications” records where the “Collaborator” field has that staff member’s name in it. When the staff member is working on communications, they would work in that view and add a record for each “contact” they make with a customer, and link them to that customer. When you create a new record in a “View” filtered on “Collaborator”, it will automatically fill the “Collaborator” field so that the record is not filtered out of the “View” it was created in.

My suggestion may not fit in with your current base structure or workflow, but hopefully the root concept there makes sense at least.
2018-05-31 10.13.29.gif

Paul_Teplitz
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Yes, that does make sense. I hadn’t thought of doing it that way, but it would work. In this particular instance I think that would be too clumsy, but I can think of a few other bases I have where that workaround be feasible.

At this point, we’re going off of the record revision history in the expanded view. This base is on the Pro plan, so 1 year of revision history should be sufficient for my purposes. Ideally I would like to have the username listed in a field so that information is available for >1 yr, but so be it - it seems like that’s what’s available now.

Adam_Clewley1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

This would be very useful to me too, and it’s hard to move forward without this feature.

My use case is recording daily patient events in a healthcare setting.

I have a table where multiple people could be creating records using a form as they’ll have no editing privileges. Whomever creates a record has an ongoing responsibility for the accuracy of what they’ve recorded. It’s therefore important that creator information isn’t lost once the reversion history expires. I also want to remove the opportunity for the creator to be mis-recorded as someone else. Therefore allowing the person to select their name from a list of team members wouldn’t be suitable for these records.

David_Krizan
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

It would seem like this could be added as simply an option under the Collaborator field type (e.g., a switch that would automatically make the collaborator the person who created the given record).

This would be useful in forms so that team members submitting the form don’t have to annoyingly select themselves each time (e.g., for usability test observations, feature requests, etc.).

Patrick_Kenned1
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Is it possible to add the value of who created a record as a field in a table?

Patrick_Kenned1
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Thank you @Katherine_Duh!

Nicolas_Lassaux
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hey! Is there a solution to link automatically the creator in the end?

Brett_D
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Any progress on this feature please?

Patrick_Ford1
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

This would be very helpful for me as well. I’m wanting users to login as a read only collaborator to reserve machines in the Makerspace through a form view, but it doesn’t automatically log who created the machine reservation so they have to choose their name from a dropdown. This is very problematic because other users could place resevations in someone else’s name. Please add this as a formula at least!

Stephen_S
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

+1 This would be an extremely useful feature. In fact, without it Airtable is a bit of compromise for us. For example, we have multiple people creating records about grant opportunities in their areas of responsibility. Unless everyone remembers every time to manually add themselves into a “created by” field, year-end analysis about individual efforts will be inaccurate.