Airtable collaboration overview
  • 18 Mar 2024
  • 11 Minutes to read
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Airtable collaboration overview

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Article Summary

Plan availability

All plan types

Permissions

  • Each workspace or base collaborator has a permission level  that determines what kinds of actions they can or cannot take in the workspaces or bases to which they have access. The permission level is initially set when the user is invited but can be changed later.

  • For more specific details, please consult this support article.

  • If you are a collaborator on a base and you have owner, creator, editor, or commenter permissions, you can comment on individual records in a table.

Platform(s)

Web/Browser, Mac app, Windows app, and mobile apps

Related reading

Base collaboration at a glance

Airtable is designed to support a variety of options for collaboration that will suit teams of all different sizes and needs. Learn about those options below.

Base invite options

You can invite someone as either: 

  • Workspace collaborator

  • Base collaborator

    • A workspace collaborator has access to all of the bases in a workspace, whereas a base collaborator has access to only the bases shared with them within a particular workspace.

    • Workspace and base collaborators can be added at different permission levels, which determines what kinds of actions they can or cannot take in the workspaces or bases to which they have access.

    • The number of users that have access to a workspace and the workspace's billing plan determines how much the owner of a workspace pays per month. More information on how collaboration might affect billing here.

Collaboration and the user field type

The user field type allows you to select one or more names from an automatically generated dropdown list of all the users that have access to a base. You can configure the user field to notify a user when they've been assigned to a record.

Sharing partial base access

You can use base share links and view share links to grant external collaborators access to read-only versions of bases or views.

Allowing external users to add records

If it doesn't make sense to give certain people full access to your workspace or base—like if you are working with contractors, clients, or volunteers—you can let those people add new records with forms

Using Airtable sync collaboratively

Airtable Sync improves upon the manual, static sharing models of the past such as CSV exporting/importing. Using Airtable Sync, you can sync records from a source base to one or more destination bases. These destination bases do not necessarily need to reside in a workspace that you have access to, which enables more flexibility and granularity in how you share your important information. Once a change is made in a source base, the destination can be made to automatically sync and update to show the most current data. For more information on how to enable syncing, please read our overview support article here.

Using automations to communicate

Airtable Automations can allow your team to create highly customizable notifications. Your team’s individual workflows will ultimately inform which automation actions to use, but three actions are worth mentioning specifically for collaboration:

You can find a more in-depth guide to custom notifications using automations here.

Note

Looking for an alternative way to collaborate with colleagues? Try out our Interface Designer feature which allows for more granular permission and access to the data held in an underlying Airtable base.

Workspace and base collaborators

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are two general types of collaborators in Airtable bases:

Workspace collaborators

A workspace is a collection of bases shared among a group of users. A workspace collaborator has access to all of the bases in a workspace. If you've been invited to a workspace as a workspace collaborator, that workspace will show up on your Airtable homepage.
To invite a workspace collaborator: 

  1. Return to the homescreen and open a workspace from the left sidebar.

  2. Click on the Share button near the top right part of the screen workspace to which you want to add the new collaborator. 

  3. This will open the workspace share dialog.

  4. From within the workspace share dialog, you can type in the email address of the person you wish to invite to collaborate on your workspace, set their permission level, then click the blue Send Invite button. Alternatively, if you need to invite many people to a workspace, you can create an invite link that will grant access (at the specified permission level) to anyone who opens the link.

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Note

Users with admin permissions on our Business or Enterprise Scale plan offerings can alternatively use Admin Panel to manage users and groups across their organization.

Base collaborator

Unlike a workspace collaborator, a base collaborator just has access to the particular base(s) that has been shared with them. They are unable to see or interact with any of the other bases in the workspace in which the shared base lives. If you've been invited to a base as a base collaborator, that base will show up in the Bases shared with me section of your homepage. 

To invite a new base collaborator:

  1. Go into the base you want to share with one or more users. 

  2. Then, click the Share button on the top right of the base to bring up the base share dialog.

  3. By default, the dialog will be on the Base section of the share dialog. 

  4. From here you can type in the email address of the person you wish to invite to collaborate on the base, set their permission level, then click the blue Invite button. Alternatively, if you need to invite many people to this base, you can create an invite link that will grant access (at the specified permission level) to anyone who opens the link.

To manage an existing base collaborator:

  1. Go into the base you want to share with one or more users. 

  2. Then, click the Share button on the top right of the base to bring up the base share dialog.

  3. By default, the dialog will be on the Base section of the share dialog. Click Manage to move on to the next step.

  4. From this screen you'll see both workspace and base collaborators, but you'll only be able to manage base collaborator permissions.

  5. Find the user (or search for the user) you want to manage.

  6. Below the Permission heading, alter the permissions of the user. Or if you want to remove the user, then click the checkbox next to their name and then click the Remove X collaborator(s) button that appears.

Note

Users with admin permissions on our Business or Enterprise Scale plan offerings can alternatively use Admin Panel to manage users and groups across their organization.

Collaborators and billing

Each workspace in Airtable has its own billing plan—free, Plus, Pro, or Enterprise. Which billing plan your workspace is on determines some important things, like whether you can use premium features (like Airtable Extensions or the advanced calendar feature) on the bases in those workspaces. Importantly, the billing plan also determines how much the owner of a workspace pays per month for each user with access to the workspace (including both workspace and base collaborators).

Please be aware that inviting a workspace or base collaborator may incur an additional monthly charge. Additionally, because collaborators can invite other users, everyone on your team should understand how billing works. A workspace always has at least one owner who's responsible for billing and other workspace settings, so if you have any questions about your billing plan, talk to your workspace owner. You can find out who the owner of your workspace is by going to the workspace share dialog and looking through the list of collaborators.

Please refer to our articles about billing and workspace administration if you have any further questions.

External badging in Airtable

Understanding external badging (Business and Enterprise Scale plans only)

Airtable will display an "External" badge on both the data view and on interfaces when a user from an enterprise is working on an app not owned by their enterprise. In practice, this means that a user claimed by a specific Enterprise Account ID will see an “External” badge when working on applications not owned/managed by that same/Enterprise ID.

External badging and language can be seen on several Airtable surfaces and on both mobile and desktop experiences:

  • Forms - A note that “This form is external to your organization” is shown at the bottom of the form.

  • The data layer (Bases) - An “External” badge is shown at the top right corner of a base.

  • Interfaces - An “Ext” badge is shown at the bottom left corner of the interface. When hovered over with a mouse, the message “This interface does not belong to your organization” will be shown.

Sending a record from a base

Note

Free plan users have different limits than paid plans related to this feature. For more information, jump down to the “Emailed record dependencies” section below.

How to send records from a base

  1. To email an individual record, select the record you want to send and right-click to bring up a dropdown menu. Then, click the Send record option.
    360083165953SendRecordScreenshot.png

  2. You can also send multiple records at once by selecting multiple records, right-clicking, and selecting the Send all selected records option.
    360082027374ScreenShot2020-07-30at13341PM.png

  3. Sending a single record or multiple records will bring up a setup box in which you can: 

    1. Insert the email addresses of the people to whom you would like to send the records

    2. Set a subject line for the email

    3. Write a custom message in the body of the email

    4. Toggle between using the grid layout

    5. Toggle between sending a copy of the email to yourself
      360083166313ScreenShot2020-07-30at13654PM.png

  4. Emails sent this way will come from the email address noreply@airtable.com. It's a good idea to ensure that those emails aren't flagged as spam by your mail server. At this time, there isn't a way to change the sending email address. Workarounds are listed under "advanced record sharing" in the dependencies section below.

Emailed record dependencies

Commenting and @mentioning on records 

Note

Although your workspace's payment plan limits your revision history, comments will remain until manually deleted.

Commenting and @mentioning collaborators

Comments are visible in a record's activity feed and the record-level revision history after a record has been expanded.

  • In an expanded record, you can comment in the text box at the bottom of the activity feed.

  • You can mention collaborators in the comment box by typing the @ symbol in the bottom right of a comment box.

    • After mentioning collaborators, they are notified of the mention and provided a link to the record. Remember that while drafting your message, the comment box will show which collaborators will be notified when you post your comment. 

    • Note that when mentioning collaborators, they are automatically notified of additional comments you make on that record, even if you don't directly mention them. 

  • To delete or edit a comment you previously made, click the ... icon next to the "You commented" heading.

  • To create a copy of your preferred base without comments, you can duplicate the base and uncheck the "Duplicate comments" box.

  • We do not support searching for comments.

  • Records with comments are indicated by a visible number to the left of the record's name.

Note

Enterprise Scale and Business customers are also able to tag user groups in comments and long text fields.

Watching comments

When you are watching comments on a record, you will be notified whenever someone comments on the record. To receive notifications from Airtable, you will need to ensure:

How to watch comments?

There are four general ways to start watching comments:

  1. By manually setting yourself to watch a record's comments in an expanded record

  2. By commenting on a record. 

  3. By being mentioned in a record or a comment.

  4. Finally, you'll be set to watch comments on any records when another user (or automation) adds you to a user field type with the option to "Notify users when they’re added" turned on before adding new collaborators to records.

Note

Note that if a user has previously chosen to not watch the comments for a record, then options 2, 3, and 4 above will not automatically set the user to watch the comments. That user will need to manually turn the option to watch the record back on using the expanded record method listed in option 1 above.

Expanded record watch settings

To configure your watch settings, expand a record. The right side of the dialog is the record's activity feed. At the top right, click the "Watch comments" bell icon. Clicking this will allow you to change your watch settings between "Not watching" and "Watching comments."

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If you don't want to watch comments, you can just set your status to Not watching again. At this time, it isn't possible to enable or disable watching multiple records at a time using this method.

Watching via @mentions or commenting

If you comment on a record, or if another collaborator @mentions you in a record's comments, then you will automatically be set to watch the record's comments in question. If you are not watching a record's comments, then you can also be notified if someone @mentions you in a long text field. For more on commenting and @mentioning, see the article Comment on Records and @Mention Collaborators.

Watching via a user field

When a user field type is set up to Notify users when they’re added, it will automatically cause future collaborators to also be added to watch any comments that they are assigned to.

field_user_notifications_toggle_09082022

Additionally, this makes it possible to watch multiple records' comments at one time, by copying and pasting a collaborator's information to multiple cells at the same time. You can also use the fill handle, but note that both options will overwrite rather than append any existing collaborators added previously.

1500002911022multiColab.gif

Finally, it's worth pointing out, that users will still only be able to disable watching comments one record at a time by clicking the expanded view of a record as mentioned in the "Expanded record watch settings" section above.


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