Team accounts: databases that belong to the team

Every database lives in an account, and there are two kinds. Your personal account is only ever you, and it's where your databases have always lived. Share one of them with a colleague and it is still yours — they are a guest in it.

A team account is the other kind. Call it "Acme": a name, a list of people, and databases that belong to Acme rather than to whoever happened to make them. A new hire joins Acme and is in every database the team has opened to it, in one step. Someone leaves and nothing they built leaves with them. The team's work stops depending on whose login it was made under.

Make one

If the database already exists, start from its Share dialog: one you own, in your personal account. Choose Make it the team's, under Who else can open it.

1. Give the account a name — your team or your company.
2. Choose what everyone in the account can do with this database. Can view is chosen for you; the three settings are explained below.
3. The people already on the database are listed, each ticked, to be invited to the account as members. Untick anyone who shouldn't join; they keep their access to this database either way.
4. Choose Make account.

The database moves into the new account with everything in it, and nobody loses access. You're the account's first admin, and the dialog links to its page.

To start a team with a new database instead, choose New database, set Make it in to New team account…, give it a name, and pick a start — Blank, an example, or Import a spreadsheet. The account and its first database are made together, and you land in the database, as with any new one. Invite people whenever you're ready.

The page opens with ← All databases, the way back to home, and the account's name. Below it, People is who is in the account and as what; an admin invites from the top of it by email, as Admin or Member. The invitation works the way a database invitation does: one link, good once, for 7 days, and opening it signs the person in — creating their login if the address never had one. Until it's used it waits in the list with its expiry date and an × to withdraw it. Inviting someone who is already in simply changes their role.

Databases is what you can open there — admins see every one — each with a line saying who in the account can open it. Admins also see Billing — one line on what the account pays, and Open billing for the rest — and Settings.

Admins and members

Everyone in a team account is one or the other.

• Admins run the account: they invite people, change roles, remove people, withdraw invitations and rename it. They also move and delete its databases, and transfer the ones they own — all covered below.
• Members make databases in it. So do admins.

Everyone in the account sees who else is in it.

Neither role, on its own, opens a database. What you can open comes from two places: the database's setting for everyone in the account, and anything shared with you individually. An admin sees every database in the account by name on its page, and can move or delete one they were never added to — but they open only the ones the account's setting or an individual share lets them into. A database nobody has let them into is marked "not shared with you" on that page.

An account always keeps at least one admin. Making the last admin a member, or letting them leave, is refused, and the message names who could be made admin first.

If your account's only admin has gone and can't be reached, write to support@tabladb.com. Once we've checked it with your team, we can make one of you an admin; the admins already there — including the one who left — are emailed that we did. Then remove the person who left from the account's page: until then they're still its longest-serving admin, which can keep the account on their limits.

Who in the account can open a database

Open the Share dialog of a database in a team account and there is a setting for the whole team: Everyone in Acme, set to one of three things.

• Can edit — everyone in Acme edits it.
• Can view — everyone in Acme opens and reads it.
• Only people added — only the people it's shared with individually.

A database made in a team account starts at Can view, so the team can see it from the first moment — including anyone who joins later. Its owners change the setting; everyone else sees it as text. The setting stops at editing: ownership is still given one person at a time.

The people the setting lets in are listed under it as a count — "3 people" — that opens into names. They have no controls of their own, because the setting governs them. You can't remove one of them from this database alone, or give them less than the setting gives everyone, so the dialog doesn't offer either. To take someone's access away, change the setting, or remove them from the account.

Sharing a database with someone individually works exactly as it always has, on top of the setting. That is how someone outside the account gets in, and how one person inside it gets more than the rest: whoever is both gets the higher of the two.

Databases in a personal account have no such setting. Nothing about sharing them has changed.

Where it shows up

Making a database. The new-database screen asks Make it in above the starter cards: Personal (where it goes unless you choose), any team account you're in by name, or New team account….

Home. Once you're in two or more accounts, home groups your databases by account: Personal first, then each team account (Manage, beside its name, opens its page), then Shared with you for databases in accounts you're not part of. A team account you're in always has its heading there, even before it holds a database you can open. In one account, home is the plain list it always was.

Moving a database

A database can move from one account to another — out of your personal account into Acme, say, when a side project becomes the team's.

Who: an admin of the account it's in — for your personal account, that's you — into any other account they're in. Where: the ⋮ on the database's card on home → Move to another account…, or the arrows beside it on the account's page.

Before anything happens, the dialog lists by name who would lose access. Then, when you choose Move:

• It lands at Only people added. A move never widens who can open it; to open it to the new team, an owner changes the setting afterward.
• People it's shared with individually keep their access, and so do you.
• People who could open it only through the old account lose it.
• Everything travels with it — tables, records, files, views, forms, webhooks, public view links, comments and history — and every address stays the same. Forms keep taking submissions, webhooks keep firing, public links keep working, and an integration whose key still has access needs no change.

If the account it's moving into couldn't hold it within its limits, the move is refused and the message names the limit. And a database you can't open yourself can only move into another team account, never your personal one, where nobody who could manage it would ever find it again.

Transferring a database to someone else

Moving only reaches accounts you're in. To hand a database to someone else so it becomes theirs — an agency giving a finished database to its client, or a colleague taking over — transfer it.

1. Open its Share dialog. If they aren't on the database yet, add them first; Viewer is free.
2. Open the role menu beside their name and choose Transfer to …, then Send transfer. Before you send it, the dialog names anyone who would lose access once it's accepted.

Only an owner who is also an admin of the account it's in can transfer it — in your personal account, that's you.

They get an email. Its link opens a page where, signed in as that address, they choose which of their accounts it goes into and press Accept. It then moves exactly as above, they become an owner, and you keep your own access.

Nothing moves until they accept. Their row says the transfer is waiting, with its expiry date; it lasts 7 days, and Withdraw transfer in the same menu takes it back. They can also decline it. It stops working if whoever sent it stops being an admin of the account, or if the database moves first.

Leaving, or removing someone

Leave Acme, at the foot of the account's page, is there for everyone except an account's only person. An admin removes someone with the trash icon on their row. Either way the effect is the same, and immediate: the person loses access to everything in the account at once — every database in it, including any that were shared with them individually — and their pending invitations to its databases are canceled. Coming back takes a new invitation from an admin. Their records stay where they are, stamped as theirs.

No database is left without an owner. One that the leaving person was the only owner of passes to whoever in the account has been on it longest among the people who can edit it. If nobody in the account can edit it, it goes to the admin who removed them, or else to the longest-serving admin. The new owner gets an email saying so.

Deleting

A database in a team account is deleted by the account's admins — from the account's page, or from the database's own menus — and by nobody else, so an owner who is a member can't. In a personal account, its owners delete it, as before. Either way it's permanent, behind a typed name; archiving is the undoable alternative and stays with the database's owners.

The whole account is deleted by an admin, with Delete Acme… on its page. The confirmation lists every database in it — with Move first… beside any that can go somewhere else — and every person who loses access, and asks for the account's name typed out. Anyone who can open a database can export it first, free, from its own menu. Every database in the account is then deleted for everyone, permanently.

Session recording

Tabla records how its screens are used, so we can find bugs and confusing spots: what's in your records is hidden, only Tabla's own team can watch, it's never shown or handed to your organization, and recordings are deleted after 30 days. An admin can switch it off for the whole account under Settings → Session recording on its page — it's on until someone does. Switched off, nobody in the account is recorded anywhere in Tabla, their personal databases included. Members don't see the switch.

Limits

An account's limits — 10 databases, 300 tables, 2,000,000 records and 100 GB of files — are one person's. Your personal account uses yours. A team account uses one of its people's: its longest-serving admin who can edit something in it; failing that, its longest-standing member who can; failing that, its longest-serving admin. Every account that uses the same person's limits shares them. A team account you've just made uses yours, so making another account doesn't add room.

Over the API

Every database the API returns carries account_id. POST https://tabladb.com/api/databases makes the new database in your personal account unless account_id names another account you're in; an account you're not in answers 404, the same as one that doesn't exist. Made in a team account, it starts at Can view for everyone in it, as on screen.

Accounts themselves — and moving, transferring or accepting a database — are managed in the app; the API has no door for them.

The questions people ask

Can an admin read every database in the account? No. Admins see every database's name, so they can move, delete or tidy up after someone, but opening one takes the account's setting or an individual share like anyone else.

Does moving a database break my forms or webhooks? No. Nothing is copied and no address changes; the database just belongs to a different account.

I left by mistake. Can I get back in? An admin invites you again. What the account's settings gave you comes back with the invitation; individual shares have to be given again.

Our organization's rules don't allow screen recording. Can we turn it off? Yes — an admin switches Session recording off under Settings on the account's page, and nobody in the account is recorded from then on.