Airtable collaborators can be given specific permissions that determine what they can and cannot edit in a workspace or base. Permissions are an important part of healthy team collaboration: with the right permissions, you can ensure that only certain people are permitted to change the information in your bases.
There are two ways to add collaborators: on the workspace level, and on the base level. If you add a workspace collaborator, they will have access to every base in the workspace at the permission level they are assigned. If you add a base collaborator, they will only have access to that specific base at the permission level they are assigned.
For more information about viewing and editing current base and workspace collaborator permissions, see this support article. For more information about how adding collaborators to your workspace affects your billing, see this FAQ.
This article outlines the different actions that can be taken by collaborators on each permissions level.
Base Actions
| |
Owner/Creator |
Editor |
Commenter |
Read-Only |
| Access/view the entire base |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
Record actions
|
| Comment on records |
✅ |
✅ |
✅ |
|
| Add, delete, modify records |
✅ |
✅ |
|
|
View actions
|
| Add, delete, modify views |
✅ |
✅ |
✅
personal views only |
|
| Lock and unlock views |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Delete other collaborators' personal views |
✅ |
|
|
|
Field actions
|
| Add, delete, rename and customize fields |
✅ |
|
|
|
Table actions
|
| Add, delete, and rename tables |
✅ |
|
|
|
Other actions
|
| Rename the base |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Create or remove a base collaborator invite link |
✅ |
|
|
|
Workspace-level collaborators at the Owner and Creator levels have extra permissions regarding the workspace itself, which are outlined below.
Workspace Actions for workspace-level collaborators
| |
Owner |
Creator |
Editor |
Commenter |
Read-Only |
| Rename the workspace |
✅ |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Add and delete bases in the workspace |
✅ |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Rearrange bases within the workspace |
✅ |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Move a base from the workspace to another workspace |
✅ |
✅ |
|
|
|
| Adjust the billing settings, upgrade the workspace |
✅ |
|
|
|
|
| Grant owner permissions |
✅ |
|
|
|
|
Owner permission level
You will have the Owner permission level if you are the owner of a workspace. A few things to note about owners:
- A workspace can have multiple owners.
- Only another owner can grant owner permissions.
- By default, the person who created the workspace is the owner.
- To change the owner from the default, you will need to ask the owner to make another person an owner. (After that, the new owner can remove the old owner's owner permissions or the old owner can remove their own owner permissions.)
- If you are the sole owner of a workspace with multiple members, you will need to transfer ownership of that workspace to another member before deleting your account.
- Only account owners receive notifications when potential collaborators request access to a particular base. These notifications arrive via email and/or within the app (bell icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page).
Tips with Permissions
When inviting workspace or base collaborators, it’s always a good idea to invite the collaborators in with Read-only permissions. By first inviting in your collaborators with read-only permissions, you can avoid incurring billable collaborator charges. Once invited, you can then determine the necessary permissions to provide to the collaborator.
When managing a larger team of collaborators within a workspace, it’s always best to consider having at least two workspace owners. The reason for this is that if one workspace owner is on leave, the workspace is not stuck in a position of not being able to perform workspace administrative duties.
Note that when collaborators are workspace collaborators, they will access all bases within the workspace and view the contents of the base. To prevent collaborators from accessing sensitive or confidential information, it’s a good idea to invite collaborators to individual bases. For example, say you had two teams within your workspace, a marketing team, and a logistics team. While it would be a good idea to have two different bases designated for each team, it might not be best to have each team be able to view each other’s bases. This is where you would set your collaborators to base collaborators and not workspace collaborators.