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    Using Airtable Portals for external collaborators
    • 12 Nov 2024
    • 4 Minutes to read
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    Using Airtable Portals for external collaborators

    • Updated on 12 Nov 2024
    • 4 Minutes to read
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    Article summary

    Plan availability

    • All Team plan workspaces have the ability to add this beta feature onto their workspace plan

    • Business and Enterprise Scale customers should contact an Airtable representative to be added to this beta

    Permissions

    • Owners - Can add on the beta Portals feature and invite/manage guest user access.

    • Creators - Can invite/manage guest user access.

    • End-users/Guest users - (Learn more here)

    Platform(s)

    Web/Browser, Mac app, and Windows app

    Related reading

    What are portals?

    • With Airtable Portals, companies can provide a branded experience for external users to support use cases like vendor-client relationships, contractors, etc.

    • Airtable Portals leverages the Interface Designer feature to give external collaborators access to a subset of data directly related to their work.

    • Builders will soon be able to configure a custom sign-in page for external users with a logo, image, and URL.

    How do you get started?

    Gaining access to the beta

    • Enterprise Scale and Business customers should contact their Airtable representative to request access to the Portals feature.

    • Team plan workspace owners can purchase the Portals add-on by following these steps:

      1. First, navigate to your account page.

      2. Next, under the “Workspace settings” section on the left, select the team workspace where you want to add the portals beta feature.

      3. Under “Workspace plan” click Change plan. This will open the page plan where you will click the Choose Team option.

      4. Next, you will toggle on the Portals option. Once the add-on has been toggled on, you will see a dropdown appear that allows you to choose from 5 different guest user/portal packages. Select a package and then click Change plan at the bottom of the checkout page.

    Sharing portals with external collaborators

    1. In your Interfaces, you’ll be able to see a new “Invite guest users” option in the interface “Share” dialog:

    2. Once enabled, any users who are invited this way will see a semi– blank labeled sign-in screen when they come to the portal. Inside, they’ll see an experience very similar to regular interface users but they won’t be able to share or navigate back to their Airtable home.

    Understanding portal permissions

    Guest users who are invited to collaborate in a portal will have the same permissions as internal interface-only collaborators to interact within the interface(s) shared with them. Learn more about interface-only editor, commentor, and read-only permissions here.

    The main difference with guest users is that they:

    • Have reduced options in the account menu: all of the Airtable-specific settings are removed.

    • They cannot share the interface further with any users: no share button will appear.

    • They will have a read-only version of the navigation options: interface icons will only appear if they are set to something other than the default Airtable logo (Enterprise custom logos will still appear).

    Note

    End-users who only have read-only access to a portal or portals shared with them are not considered billable. For Team plan customers it’s important to remember that if an end-user is given a higher level of access than read-only, then they will be considered billable.

    What’s supported during the beta?

    Feature

    Currently supported ✅

    Enabling & disabling portals

    • You can enable this for any app (interface)

    Inviting guest users to your portal

    All plans:

    • You can invite and manage guest users in the share dialog.

    • Guest users will not be able to have access to the underlying base or be invited as a regular user to interfaces.

    Business and Enterprise Scale plans only:

    • Guest users will be required to be on a different domain than your company’s domain(s).

    • You will only be able to invite guest users to 1 portal per org.

    Sign-in screen for portal users

    • Semi-blank labeled screen:

    Tips for optimal usage

    You can use Portals with our other Interface permissions-related features to help create a custom experience for your external collaborators.

    • Use Interface sections to create sections that can be shared to different audiences.

    • Use filters to identify records that are associated with a current user, so external users only see what’s relevant to them.

    FAQs

    How much does Airtable Portals cost?

    The Portals add-on is available for Team plan customers starting at $120 per month for 15 guests and 1 portal. Billable seats for guest users will be counted when a guest user is invited to your portal app with editor or commenter permissions on the Team plan. Read-only end users are not considered billable.

    Additionally, guest users will be charged as a full collaborator seat if they are added to multiple apps in your organization or if they are invited to the underlying base for your app.

    For Business and Enterprise Scale customers, custom pricing is available. Bulk discounts are available for large volumes of guests. Enterprise Scale and Business customers should contact their Airtable representative to discuss pricing and being added to the beta.

    What features are coming soon?

    • We’d love to get your feedback on Portals to help us inform what we might build before this is generally available.

    • This may be subject to change, but we’re currently planning to build:

      • Ability to add a logo and background image to the sign-in screen

      • Bulk managing access for Portal users

      • Admin controls, like the ability to turn on/off portals for your org and audit log support

      • Mobile support

    How do we determine who is external to your company?

    For Teams plan customers:

    • Your organization’s owners will need to be using a work-related email address to use Portals (no personal email addresses like gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc)

    • We determine the email addresses that belong to your company by looking at all of the email addresses of your workspace owners.

    Can I use Portals for internal users?

    No, guest users will be required to be external to your company.

    When will guest users be charged as a regular seat?

    • If they are added to multiple apps in your organization and they have permission levels set on those apps that are not read-only

    • If they are invited to the underlying Data tab for your app

    • If they are invited to a whole workspace as a collaborator

    Other questions or feedback?

    We’re still in the early beta phases of this feature, so please reach out to us and let us know what you’d like to see improved. You can submit feedback here.

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