Invite your collaborators

1. Invite your collaborators to your base or workspace

First up, it’s time to invite your collaborators in—at the right level. Collaborators can be added directly to specific bases, or to your entire workspace. Keep in mind that workspace-level invites will give them access to every base in that workspace. 

Before you invite them in, you’ll be asked to select their permission levels. Here’s how to think that through.

Understand the right permission levels for your collaborators

Airtable has four permission levels that you can assign to different collaborators:

• Creators have full edit access and control. This is best for teammates who want to make updates to the information and structure of a base. 

• Editors can add or edit records and views, but aren’t able to change the base structure (like adding fields or tables).

• Commenters have full visibility, but can only leave comments on records and create personal views.

• Read-only collaborators can only view the data within a base.

You might also find it helpful, at this stage, to look back on the map you created for your workflow and list out each step’s stakeholders. Does every stakeholder now have the right access?

Using the share icon, you can add people to a specific base, or to your entire workspace (and all your bases in that workspace). You can generate a link to share, or have an invite sent through Airtable to individual email addresses; either way, you can control the access each person has.

2. Set up guardrails to protect your data

Part of the collaboration process is establishing who can see—and who can edit—various parts of a base. Not all people require all levels of access, and you can more efficiently run a workflow by limiting where and when people can make edits. 

There are three different ways of preventing unwanted changes:

1. Locked views

These let you maintain the configuration of your most important views. Depending on a user’s permission level, they can add, delete, and edit records—just not alter the view itself.

If your view is connected to an integration, is part of an automation, or could otherwise impact workflows, you should lock it. Learn more about locked views here.

2. Field edit permissions

These permissions control who can edit information in specific, important fields. For example, you may want only a project owner to be able to update the status, or only select teammates to be able to change the name of a client.

3. Table edit permissions

Similarly, table edit permissions allow you to set controls for an entire table within a base. These permissions define who has the ability to create or delete records within that table—for instance, anyone can add to a task list, but only certain people can mark tasks completed (or vice versa).

3. Empower your teammates with personal views

A personal view can only be updated by that view’s owner. In advance of sharing your base, you can establish and assign personal views to various colleagues or teams, giving the most relevant information to each stakeholder in a view only they can update. 

This gives each teammate their own space to get to know your new workflow—and you can tailor each view to their individual working styles and the information they need to get work done.

4. Assign ownership with a collaborator field

Collaborator fields are a special type of select field that allows you to tag your coworkers by picking their name from a list. 

You can limit this field to a single person, or allow multiple collaborators to be assigned. You also can opt to notify assignees when they’re added—or not. 

With your collaborators on board, and your team in place, it’s time to start thinking about your collaborative process—the topic of our next section.