Hi friends,
I’m learning Glideapps as I go. This often means unexpected surprises. I created an app that works very nicely. It has 1300 churches/ summer-camps and nonprofits in it. I invited 6 people and I shared my AirTable account with them so they could help update the data. Yesterday I got a bill for $720, $120 x 7 volunteers. I was like… WOW. I did not see that coming. I need to figure out how to allow people to update the tables/spreadsheets behind the apps. My options are
a.) redo everything in google docs (which can be shared for free)
b.) find out a way to allow people to update airtables without creating accounts that cost $120 a year.
c.) other?
Yes I know I can share the glideapps version/copy of the spreadsheets with them, but … there are certain fields in AirTable that are unique and don’t get copied over into the glideapp.
Although if they are just updating addresses, phone numbers and all that, they can do MOST of it in Glide.
Thoughts?
I don’t really know much about Air Table, so I could be way off base here.
But, if you’re giving folks access to your backend data base so they can manage records, isn’t that kind of defeating the purpose of building an app?
Is it possible to restructure things so that this data resides in Glide, in Glide Tables perhaps?
I would have to think that the best solution here is to just give these folks access to the published version of your app, with appropriate add/edit rights.
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Darren,
Ha. I’d actually already toyed around with a button that appears when someone is logged in that allows for that. I went ahead and set that back up so that only GlideApps users can edit entries using some conditional info). As you suggested this means only glide users and not airtables users are needed now.
QUESTION —> I’m guessing there is even a way to set this up so that the people with editing rights don’t need to be Glideapp users with access to the glide app. I guess that would mean I’d need to add a new sheet to a database/spreadsheet and allow the users to sign up and create logins there. Or is it only possible to have users who can create accounts and then log in and out… with an actual glide account? Make sense? —> Do “users” have to be glide users, or can I only have a couple users on Glide, but the users OF THE APP… are solely created, with data stored in the app databases. If so, how do you trigger log in/log out using just info from the database?
Hope the questions is not a confused one (newby here, but loving Glide)
Yes, of course 
Nobody should have access to the app in the builder except those that are actually building the app. Which is probably just you?
I’m guessing the Privacy Settings of your app are currently set to Public without login?
At the simplest level, all you really need to do is configure User Profiles, and then tell your collaborators that they need to sign in before they can edit anything. You’ll need to provide the means to sign in - see Show Sign-in Screen. You can add some pseudo-roles to your user profiles table, and use these to control who can see and do what once they are signed in. Note that this won’t be 100% secure, but from the sounds of it you don’t need financial industry level security anyway
Regardless, it would be worth your while to review the Glide Documentation on Security.
Here are a few more links I think you’ll find useful:
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This is perfect. Thank you so much. I have to say, the Glidecommunity page is (a) fast and (b) helpful.
Five gold stars.
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