We have a relatively large team using Airtable across multiple departments. It would be awesome if the Collaborator field could be pared down to just the collaborators in a particular department. For instance, if we have a Collaborator field called Production, we would be able to only see the collaborators in the Production department. As it is, everyone from every department has to look through all the names to find there name.
Agreed! In the meantime you could try having each collaborator paired a record in a “Collaborators” table that uses a single select field to identify departments. Since you can say “only allow selection from this view” for link fields, you could create a view for each department. Then in place of your collaborator fields you would use a link to another record field limited to the appropriate view instead to assign records. (You could bring in the collaborator field as a lookup)
The above workaround isn’t ideal, but does sort of highlight how there’s precedent for Airtable allowing you to filter a list of available selections. I would like to see similar functionality for Collaborator field types, but this may require them to add a “users” panel for bases/workspaces so you can define who’s in what department/category/etc.
Thanks for the suggestion @Kamille_Parks! I don’t think that work around will work for us, but I will give it a closer look and see.
I was actually thinking of something like the permissions capability. Just a toggle switch beside each collaborator to determine if they are viewable in the dropdown. That doesn’t seem like a huge deal to implement, but it’s probably not going to be at the top of the list anytime soon. Just thought I would throw it out there.
I agree- a toggle would be excellent. What the proposed work around does not include is the collaborator field’s ability to notify collaborators. I work for ASU, which recently enterprised Airtable, but now everyone, including students, are starting to populate in the dropdown. Toggling to the workspace or base would be great!
Our company has gone with the enterprise plan as well. I am constantly having to clean up select fields to remove the type-o’s and non-standard entries. This is a much needed feature. There are also other opportunities to create user groups with more granular rights to better control data entry.
