Data entry card - Permissions Issue (Creation vs. Editing)

Ask for Help
1

Hello,

Context: We use Grist exclusively for collaboration with logged-in users. We manage a highly sensitive table that maps identities to multiple IDs. To protect the data, I’ve set table permissions so that only owners can temporarily update or delete records. However, users need to be able to create new entries. We use Grist forms for this, which also allowed us to automatically collect the author’s email address for each new row—ensuring data quality and traceability.

Issue: The latest Grist update no longer allows us to collect information about the form submitter. I tried replacing the form with a card for data entry, but this creates another problem: creation rights only allow users to fill in the initial column required to create a new row. To complete the remaining columns for the same record, edit rights are needed. Since it’s easy to accidentally modify other entries while navigating the table, I cannot grant edit permissions to users.

Question: Do you have any workarounds? For now, I’m stuck using an older version of Grist.

Thank you!

2

Apologies for this disruption to your workflow. Indeed, there was an update to treat all form submissions as anonymous. The reason is that forms weren’t giving any visibility or control to the submitter that their email address could be recorded, which creates a privacy concern.

The right solution would be to add new options (perhaps like Google Forms, which has an option to collect signed-in users’ emails, and the user gets a checkbox for whether to include it).

You can add an email field for the submitter to fill in, but there is no way to get the verified sign-in information for them at this time.

One alternative you could consider is to generate a random key for each user (e.g. using UUID() function), and construct an individual form link for each using the recent ability to include URL values in form submissions (Form - Grist Help Center). That can allow you to tie each submission to a user who used that link.