SOLVED: How to share only part of a Notion database II Granular Database Permissions in Notion

Learn how to partially share a Notion database while retaining full control over your data and solve one of Notion's biggest remaining problems.

Up until now, Notion still had a huge problem. It's not possible to give someone access to just a part of a database. While other popular solutions like airtable support sharing parts of a database, Notion requires you to give access to everything or manually share individual pages. Neither are great solutions, particularly if you're running your business in Notion.

And there are a lot of situations where you would need more granular database permissions in Notion. If you work with clients, you might want to share all your open tasks without exposing your work with other clients. Or you might want to share only the specific data with your employees that is relevant to their specific role.

Thanks to this workaround, you'll finally be able to do share the equivalent of a locked Notion Database View. Best of all? This solution is easy to implement, scales well and can be adapted to accommodate for virtually any use case you can think of.

It's time to share the right data with the right person.

Looking to learn more about Automations or ways to leverage Notion and the AI?

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How to learn Notion Full Tutorial:

Notion Databases: Everything you ever need to know

Notion Formulas: Everything you ever need to know

The Perfect Notion Setup:

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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:21 How to share only a part of a Notion database
03:03 Set up the Notion backend for one-way sync
06:48 Set up your automation account for granular Notion permissions
07:21 Create your one-way sync automation
07:41 Add your first Notion module
11:45 How to push new entries to the public Notion database
16:29 How to update existing entries in the public Notion database
20:56 How to remove entries from the public Notion database
24:15 Troubleshooting the Notion automation
26:20 Modify the Notion backend for two-way sync
28:13 Create your two-way sync automation
33:49 Schedule your automations
35:37 Outro

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Notion and the Notion logo are trademarks of Notion Labs, Inc., and are used here with permission.

[mfreihaendig]

Important Update 2: Since Notion released their new formulas, you can't just check for the "Last Edited by" property with a simple comparison. Instead, you first need to extract the name of the user (in our case Make). So the new formula needs to look like this: prop("Last edited by").name()!="Make"

Important Update 1 😅 forgot it in the video, but to completely avoid a loop-of-death between your automations, you should also implement a "User Update?" Filter for the first automation. You can see the exact instructions for that in the blog post.

[dk]

You’re the greatest. I paid you twice once for a template and you automatically replied offering a refund but your contributions have been so immense that I didn’t even bother replying.

[arwilegal]

I typed an entire comment asking for help with getting the sync to work and it never posted but I figured it out! On your blog post the User Update formula uses quotations which was causing a false hit for me. I guess it was looking for the Last Edited By property to show "Make" and wasn't recognizing Make without the quotations. All I did was go into the formula and change the quotations to apostrophes. So the formula goes from prop("Lasted Edited by") != "Make" to prop("Lasted Edited by") != 'Make' . And now it works perfectly!! You did an awesome job explaining the steps and I really appreciate it! I'm a beginner to coding and formulas but I'm an attorney from the MySpace generation so making the connections between logic equations and building pretty web pages is so satisfying!! Lol!

[mushroomthump]

I just went back & forth with notion support over this exact thing, then found your video. Will setting this up tomorrow!

[allisongunn]

Thanks for the tutorial, once I get this implemented this will be great for sharing updates with my team! I am running into an issue however with getting the Public Database to update. When I test the Search Objects function it works, however when I add the Update a Database Item it is not making any updates. I've retested, double checked and despite following the steps it is not updating. Do you know if there was an update to Notion or something that may have changed the process? Or is there a place you would recommend starting at for troubleshooting?

[NeilGoel]

This is maybe the most helpful video I've ever seen. Thanks!

[shahafdar]

This is Wonderful! Thanks a lot! I want to mention that for the FREE version of MAKE you only get to do 2 scenarios

[shrvn]

ok, the past few days ive been working on figuring this out, found good solutions and then you come up with this video! WOOHOOO!

[AnitaSlocombe]

Thank you so much for taking the time to help create a solution for definitely a standard feature required to manage clients and projects.

I set up the one-way sync and wondered how you would share the public database within a client portal (page)? As databases views aren't shown when shared. Would you have to share the database as well? Do you offer a service to set up a custom/ advanced database? With more columns to be synced? My other solution was to embed my current clickup database, but would love to move all my business info into one system.

Thank you again🙌

[AIWOOD.]

Hey Matthias can you please tell us that is it Possible, To move the Content Inside the Page From One Database to other not only Properties of Pages

[antoniodangelo]

I just found a great workaround... to share images and videos, we have now a property URL, which has a link to a Google Drive folder. In this way we are "fixing" the main problem of this solution! I hope that can help who was in trouble as me before :-)

[christianmagill]

Thanks, Make seems super powerful for Notion. I agree this granualar permissions issue is one of the biggest issues in Notion, along with no way to templatize projects with nested tasks.

[davemence]

Such an amazing tutorial, thanks Matthias! I've followed it in great detail, and have built out an even more complex set of scenarios that allow for a 2-way sync with one public database and a 1-way sync for another public database, both with the same private database. I'd love to show you the setup, I think you'd find it cool as an extrapolation of what you've taught how to do here :)

[lauringerdes]

Hey Matthias, thank you very much for the video, really very helpful. I have one question: In the second automation, you insert an "invisible" space in the last step so that the "Last edited by" property jumps back to Make. In my case, Make automatically deletes the space again... I have already tried it with a protected space, but it doesn't work either. Do you have any tips on how I can fix this problem? Thank you very much!

[christianmagill]

Do you know if it's possible to use the Notion API to maintain consistency of properties between two databases? Like if a new property or option gets added to a mater database, the automation adds it to a second database?

[santi-leoni]

Hey Matthias, to do thi like private, public 1, public 2, public 3 setting this would need to have a new corresponding id column for each public db right? if so i wont be able to use it for my setup :/

[TristanS-yn]

For the update record workflow, is it possible to only update where the specfic cells are different, rather than copying the whole record?

[EmmaMuir-pqhs]

Hello Matthias - thank you so much for this, it is working well for me! I have one extra ask though... my private database has a relation to another DB with multiple records. I don't need to share all these records, but would like to just display the Name as text in my public database.
The scenario is I have a Versions DB, and each Version has Issues related to it from my Issues DB. I want to share the Versions publicly, and would like to show just the names of the Issues in each Version, without having the full Issue details show. Is this possible? Or is there a way to just flatten that related list to text maybe?

[_Silke]

Thanks Matthias, this is great. I'm running into an issue early on though - when setting the first filter, my 'Condition' dropdown list doesn't include 'Properties Value: Sync?'. The 'Sync?' is missing from my list. Do you know how I get that option to show up in my list so that I can select it?

[rafalpotasz]

Great video, great solution and I am still left with a rather disappointed feeling that this is not inbuilt. I like opting for simplest solutions and the fact that this is the simplest one I found is somehow upsetting! Great systemisation though, well done sir.