I’m a data-privacy aficionado prone to obsessing over security measures. So naturally proper application of row ownership and roles is of great interest. I applaud the effort the Glide team has made to protect users, their users, and shield themselves from liability.
My focus in this post is on Row Owners. There are a few areas where I’d like to get a better handle on the why(s) and suss out possible substitutes. I can’t squeeze them into one post so this will act as a Part 1.
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“Make Row Owner” shows up as an option in the drop-down for non-email column types - why? Making a phone number, name, or Row ID (in Profile sheet and others) doesn’t have the same effect. May be best to disable that option if it really isn’t one.
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There’s a case for making it possible to enable row owners for ROW or UIDs. Relations, built safely/correctly, should not be based on user emails but instead, on some other value, preferably a ROW ID. The most common method to retrieve an email when a relation is built that way is through a lookup column, which can’t have Row Owner enabled.
And since it can’t be enabled, the alternative is adding users’ email addresses to the sheet manually or using VLOOKUP formulas. Both of those options are problematic. In the first instance, if a user profile is built out enabling a user to update their email address at any point, relations could be negatively impacted (brakeage). In the second instance, there’s the risk of inadvertently wiping out that formula. And so long using a Glide table! -
In some cases, we rely on a split formula to separate a group of emails sent to a sheet, to form an array column that can then be used as a Row Owner column. A roundabout way where the flow is: Joined List column > send to sheet > split > Array > enable Row Owner. Because, again, you can’t enable Row Owner on a Joined List column.
Could we instead make it possible to enable Row Owners on delimited data in a sheet, somehow? Or certain types of Split columns?
Jump in if you have some thoughts on this, or that, or want to point out something I’ve missed (always the best).