Locked views

Locked views allow collaborators with creator or owner permissions to prevent all collaborators from altering a view's configuration (i.e., the customizable settings of a view like filtering conditions, field visibility, field order, row heights, and record coloring) until it's been explicitly unlocked by another collaborator with creator or owner permissions.

Introduction

It's useful to lock a view when unexpected changes to that view's configuration could potentially disrupt your team's workflow. Here are a few examples of when you might want to lock a view:

• You've carefully constructed a view to power an app or a Zapier /Slack integration
• You've made a filtered view that's being used for a view share link or embed, and changing the filtering conditions could inadvertently expose sensitive information
• You've created a view for a team or process that many collaborators look at on a frequent basis

Please be aware that locking a view is only related to view configuration; locked views do not have an effect on any collaborators' abilities to view or make changes to the contents of records. Whether or not collaborators can make changes to records is determined by their permission levels.

Locking a view

If you are in a base in a workspace that is on a Pro plan, and you have either creator- or owner-level permissions to that base, you can lock views. To start, click on the view switcher and go to the view you would like to lock (or create a new view and configure it to your specifications).

Next, click on the view mode button next to the name of the view. This will open up the view mode menu, which you can use to choose the view mode that you want for the currently selected view. By default, the view will be collaborative, meaning that all collaborators with editor permissions and above can edit the view's configuration; select the Locked option to lock the view. (You can also choose to make a view into a personal view from this menu—learn more about personal views here.)

Leaving a lock message

Before locking the view, you can choose to add a message that will appear whenever a collaborator tries to unlock a view; you can use this message to give your fellow collaborators more context for why a view has been locked. Once you're ready, click the blue Lock view button.

Lock icon locations

Once a view has been locked, you'll see that the view mode button next to the name of the view has changed into a lock icon.

When you open up the view switcher, all locked views will show lock icons next to their view names.

Once a view has been locked, collaborators will not be able to adjust any of the view configuration settings until the view has been unlocked.

What do editors see?

Editors who open any of the view configuration menus (e.g. field visibility menu, filter menu, etc.) will be able to see the locked view's configuration settings, but not interact with or change them in any way. They will also see a blue option that they can use to duplicate the current view as a personal view.

What do owners/creators see?

Similarly, creators and owners who open view configuration menus will be able to see the locked view's configuration settings, but not interact with or change them in any way. Unlike editors, however, they will see a blue option that they can use to potentially unlock the view.

Unlocking a view

If you would like to make it so that all collaborators with editor permissions and above can edit the view's configuration, you can unlock the view by returning it to collaborative view mode. (Alternatively, you can choose to make a locked view into a personal view—learn more about personal views here.) To unlock a locked view, you must have creator or owner-level permissions for the base/workspace in which the locked view is located. There are two ways you can unlock the view:

1. The first is by clicking on the view mode button (which will resemble a lock) right next to the name of the view. This will open up the view mode menu. Select the Collaborative view option to unlock the view. You can also choose the Personal view option if needed.
2. Another way to unlock a view is to click on any of the view configuration menus in the view bar (e.g. field visibility menu, filter menu, etc.). Doing this will bring up the locked view's current configuration, as well as a blue link for Unlock options. Click the Unlock options link to unlock the view.

Before you finally unlock the view, a modal will appear asking you to confirm that you would like to unlock the view. If the person who originally locked the view left a lock message with some context explaining why the view was locked, you'll see it here. At this point, you can cancel and leave the locked view as is, duplicate the current locked view as a personal view, or click the blue Unlock button to confirm that you would like to return the view to collaborative mode.