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Can I lock selected records?

J
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I am the owner of a workspace with pro licens and I want a user to be able to add values for selected records but nothing else. After some time I want to lock the values. Can this be done?

  • In a base there is a table that allows only creators to create/delete records.
  • The table contains sensitive data in a specific field.
  • A view of the data filters out, say, data belonging to March and is named “march-data”.
  • The view is locked
  • A user with permission “Editor” is granted edit permissions in the specific field.
  • The user can now add values in the specific field in the march-data view — great!

But

  • The user can go to the filter and “duplicate as personal view”.
  • In the view “march-data copy” the user can change the filter to display, say, February.
  • Now the user can change all data belonging to February — not so great!

If the user has permission level “commenter” the user cannot add any values — not so good.

I am stuck in between two permission levels. And I don’t think my wishes are overly complex: Allow user to users to feed in data and after some time lock this data. Hopefully I have missed something trivial or there is a clever scheme that can be applied.

Many thanks for any comments or recommendations! :winking_face:
/Jonas

Best answer by ScottWorld

Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

(a) move your “old records” into another base
and/or
(b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

(I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)

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    ScottWorld
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    • March 29, 2021

    Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

    Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

    Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

    Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

    (a) move your “old records” into another base
    and/or
    (b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

    You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

    Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

    Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

    (I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)

    J
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      Jonas_eTy
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      akshay
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    • Jonas_eTy
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    • March 29, 2021
    ScottWorld wrote:

    Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

    Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

    Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

    Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

    (a) move your “old records” into another base
    and/or
    (b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

    You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

    Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

    Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

    (I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)


    Thanks for the swift response! I will ask Airtable to add this missing feature!

    ScottWorld
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      LaTangente
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    • pathipatla
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    • November 9, 2023
    ScottWorld wrote:

    Airtable has some limited field & table locking capabilities, but not record locking. You can prevent people from viewing entire records by using interfaces, but you can't conditionally lock records on/off.

    Airtable is a relatively basic/simple database platform that doesn’t have very many advanced features like this. I would email support@airtable.com and ask them about adding record locking as a feature.

    Your best bet is probably to use an Airtable portal like Noloco to lock records, but besides that, you’d have to look at alternative apps or workarounds. 

    Some workarounds that you can consider would be to:

    (a) move your “old records” into another base
    and/or
    (b) use Airtable’s syncing feature

    You can move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then, if you still needed those records to show up in your current base, you could use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base.

    Airtable’s sync feature is a one-way sync only (from source table to destination table) and it doesn’t allow any editing of the synced records in your destination table. So this is sort of a built-in “record locking” capability. In fact, as far as I know, this is the ONLY form of “record locking” that is built into the product.

    Otherwise, for anything more advanced than this, you would probably need to turn to a more advanced database platform such as Apple’s FileMaker.

    (I am both an Airtable Consultant and a Certified FileMaker Developer. If you ever need to hire someone to help with either of these platforms, please feel free to reach out to me through my website scottworld.com.)


    Hi Scott,

    I am new to Airtable. Could you show me how to do the following?

    Move your “old records” into a completely different base altogether by exporting them from your current base and then importing them into the other base.

    And then use Airtable’s sync feature to have those records show up in your current base. Set us this sync as a one-way sync only so that these records cannot be edited in the current base.

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