We would like to lock access to a specific column of an item after a member has entered a value. To achieve this, I attempted to set the column to read-only via the API; however, it appears this functionality is not supported.
Is there an alternative method to accomplish this? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hey John! Welcome to the monday Community! Shannon here with the monday team. 
Column permissions may be a good alternative to look into. They allow board owners to apply editing/viewing permissions to select columns on the board. These permissions cannot be enabled to turn on after X action has occurred. However, perhaps you can limit editing to specific board members. Column permissions are only available on the Pro and Enterprise Plan tiers, so please let me know if I can help you brainstorm other alternatives! 
So it sounds like normal column permission won’t work because you want them to create the item and initially fill in a value, you just don’t want them to be able to edit once it’s set? I have a similar situation and use a workaround that I call ‘red flag’. I have a workflow that says ‘when column changes’ if ‘column is not empty’, 'return column to original (see image), and notify user
Hi Shannon,
We are currently using column permissions; however, our use case requires more granular control. Specifically, we have two columns: column1 (Number) and column2 (Status). We need to restrict access to column1—even for members who normally have permission to edit it—but only after they have entered a value in column1 and set column2 to “Submitted.”
In other words, members should be able to edit column1 until they mark the item as “Submitted” in column2, after which column1 should become read-only for them.
Our intention is to enforce this logic using API calls triggered by a webhook. However, from reviewing the API reference, it seems that dynamically modifying column-level permissions in this way is not currently supported.
Is there an existing workaround, automation strategy, or feature that could help us achieve this functionality?
Thank you for your guidance.
Got it. Thanks for the additional context! We’re on the same page now. Yes, I see now that column permissions don’t fully address your needs. Currently, we do have a feature called conditional status change. However, it’s only available to users on the Enterprise tier of the CRM product.
We don’t yet have any confirmation if this feature will be released to the other products, like Work Management. Stay tuned for updates in the future though!
I’m afraid there aren’t any native workarounds I can offer you at this time. Many users install third-party apps from the monday Marketplace to achieve these actions, such as the Workflow, Approval Workflows, Conditional Statuses, or Conditional Status Smart Column apps.
Hey @johnz02 . Welcome to the community.
Have you tried using a form? You can actually create a form to capture certain fields and take input from your team members, and connect the individual form items to particular columns. On those columns in the board setting, try restricting them to view only to your desired team members.
I believe there might be a small catch in this:
in case you restrict the users, the form input might also be restricted. In that case, just create another custom fields to take the input, and on form submission, create an automation to copy the form input field to your desired column (which is locked for them).
I know this might not be the perfect scenario for you to work, but a good alternative, and totally depends on the actual usecase of the user input. But I just wanted to share as it might be help.
Cheers.
