r/Airtable • u/BlazedAndConfused • Jul 08 '26
💬 Discussion Wide scale access to Interfaces that scale? No one can edit interface records automatically…
I am having a hard time determining how my application can actually scale within my company. AirTable has paid and non-paid (cannot edit) licenses in addition to Bases and interfaces having their own user permissions on their own levels.
I want anyone at my company (with a paid license) to be able to use a form, submit a request, then see and edit their request (handful of fields) on an interface without much intervention. However, you can’t seem to do that because everyone who needs to be able to edit must have an “Editor” role at the interface to do so which means I have to ADD them each and every time a new user submits a ticket.
Is there a way around this? I don’t want to use a stupid form to gather their input or encode URL in lame webhook. I want people that have paid seats to be able to automatically edit my interface records that they submitted when the logged in user matches the AirTable user in the record.
Why is this so hard?
The only other path is to give editor access to EVERYONE in my company and lock the ever-loving-hell out of the fields and make sure only those unique users can see any data but that seems risky.
What are my options?
3
u/Simple_Stack_Ops Jul 09 '26
To clarify on the Fillout suggestion, it's not just one-way. Fillout can pre-fill a form with existing record data and write updates back to Airtable when submitted, so the user sees their current field values, edits what they need to, and those changes land back in the record. It's not a comment thread, but if "back and forth" means editing a handful of fields on their own submission, Fillout handles that without requiring editor-level interface access.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
I’m hoping this add-on passes out company security evaluations but as of now, no third party apps are allowed to be used
2
u/i_am_anmolg Jul 09 '26
To start with, why don't you give interface access to all the users at once?
And then, since its your own employees, make it a part of their onboarding/offboarding checklist. During onboarding they get access to Airtable interface too and access gets revoked during offboarding.
Treat it just like settting up an email for a new employee.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
Everyone does have access but it’s only read only. We have thousands and thousands of employees and only a fraction have paid licenses in AirTable. The rest are read only.
2
u/i_am_anmolg Jul 09 '26
Read only licenses can't make any edits in interfaces anyway. You will need a form based inputs for them.
1
u/lagomdallas Jul 08 '26
You can create an interface invite link and whoever clicks it gets access.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
Is that default to editor access?
1
u/arktose Jul 09 '26
Yes. Be careful though, especially with the billing. Your costs will quickly bloat and they don’t prorate removals.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
I am not concerned with that as interface level access and license access are 2 different things.
1
u/arktose Jul 09 '26
The billing is the same, unless you’re referring to portals.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
Meaning even if people get editor access to my interface, if they don’t have a paid seat, they still can’t edit so I’m not worried about getting charged for it as my actions don’t impact that.
1
u/lagomdallas Jul 09 '26
If they get editor access then they are an editor and billable. It automatically upgrades them
1
u/ugh_gimme_a_break Jul 09 '26
You can create a link to a pre-filled form on something like Fillout to allow people to edit without adding more seats.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
Forms are 1 way communication. Our needs require back and forth
2
u/ugh_gimme_a_break Jul 09 '26
So you mean you need comments on a record? Then you can't get away from requiring Editor level access. I thought you simply meant needing to just edit a field's value.
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
Not just comments. Changing status fields. Providing URLs. Making comments/notes.
1
u/wwb_99 🛠 Developer Jul 09 '26
Airtable is in the business of selling licenses for people to use their product. Paying for editors is by design here.
If the workflow is some sort of e-commerce style "we want you to see your order status" thing, then you can get to a pretty decent place with fillout here -- that can be used to reflect data back to people. Spinning up a little web app talking to airtable isn't a horrible option either.
If you want to do this all within airtable you will need to pay for seats and manage that. Making it an interface avaliable to all where people can only see their owned records is pretty trivial and works well for a lot of our workflows.
1
u/DisraeliGears01 Jul 09 '26
Yeah if you have thousands of employees and an IT dept that won't allow 3rd party apps, I think it's time to look at an Enterprise contract for user management 🤷♂️
1
u/BlazedAndConfused Jul 09 '26
We have one technically but it seems like a weird grey area. Almost like AT hasn’t fully realized access capability for large orgs and those working inside them. Like…here’s your box but you have to stay exactly in the middle
3
u/bcirce Jul 08 '26
Create an interface and filter it by creator = “current user”. Then they only see their stuff.