Guests without an account — Sterodata docs

What people who are not signed in can open and do in your workspace, how their changes are recorded, and the setting that turns guest access off.

A guest is anyone who opens something in your workspace without being a signed-in member: a customer with a link, a visitor on a public page, someone filling in a form. They need no account and no password.

What a guest can open

A table or view through a share link, at the link's level and with its column limits.
A page or form published to Public or to Anyone with the private link (see Pages).
A table or view shared with the Guest role on its Share sheet. Guest is everyone, so sharing a table with Guest as Viewer lets anyone who opens its address read it.

What a guest cannot do

Open anything that was not shared in one of those ways.
Get more than the link or the grant gives: a Viewer link only reads, and columns left out of a link are not sent.
Reach the tables behind a page or form. A page shows its numbers and lists; a form takes only what it asks for, and its sender cannot open the tables it writes to or read anything already in them.
Open Settings or anything that needs a member.

How a guest's changes are recorded

When a guest changes something they may change, such as a record through an Editor link, Sterodata gives them a generated name, such as Curious Otter, and records it in Created by and Updated by. If they sign in, what they change from then on carries their own name.

Signed in, but not a member

Someone with a Sterodata account who is not a member of your workspace is read as a guest on a public page or a link: they see exactly what any guest sees, and nothing more.

Turn guest access off

Guest access is on in a new workspace. To close the workspace to everyone who is not a signed-in member:

Open Settings, General, then Access.
Switch off Allow public (unauthenticated) access.
Read what it affects, such as the number of live share links, and choose Turn off.

With it off, anyone who is not signed in as a member is refused, whatever has been shared: share links, public pages and forms, and anything shared with Guest. Nothing is deleted. Switch it back on and they open again, unless they have expired or been revoked in the meantime.

Turning guest access off also stops your public forms from taking answers. Use it for a workspace that must stay closed to the outside.