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Hi there. I have a table "business partners" with records of type "supplier" and "brand" which are linked between each other. a record of type "supplier" can be linked to multiple records of type "brand" but a brand can only be linked to one supplier. 

i always want the links to be two way. i.e. if i add the record "Gmail" to the table and link it to the existing record (of the same table) called "Google", i want airtable to automatically identify that there is a missing backlink (ie. record Gmail has "Google" in its "link" field, but record "Google" does not have anything in its link field) and link the record "Google" to "Gmail" automatically. i have an automation that can trigger based on view conditions correctly. i want the automation to trigger, then "find" the linked record (i.e. Google) by ID and then copy whatever existing links are in the "link" field and add "Gmail" to that. However automations refuses to find a record in a table based on the values of a "link" field. even if i add a formula field that outputs the ID of the linked record, automations cannot correctly find the record by ID. how can i achieve this?

Here is a similar topic
I don't think I need Automation, but it seems that pretty much everyone uses it.

https://community.airtable.com/t5/base-design/field-to-show-source-of-linked-field/td-p/158124

 

This situation is a bit different from the one that Sho linked to. In that other thread, it made sense to use same table links because everything in the table was the same type—everything was an organization. Thus, I recommended my same-table-back links script. 

However, in this case, your table is holding two types of things that are not the same: suppliers and brands. In this case, I think you should split the data into two tables, one for suppliers and another for brands. Once you have two tables, you will get links and back links that work automatically. You will also be able to set preferences to say that suppliers can be linked to multiple brands, but each brand should have only one supplier.

This situation is a bit different from the one that Sho linked to. In that other thread, it made sense to use same table links because everything in the table was the same type—everything was an organization. Thus, I recommended my same-table-back links script. 

However, in this case, your table is holding two types of things that are not the same: suppliers and brands. In this case, I think you should split the data into two tables, one for suppliers and another for brands. Once you have two tables, you will get links and back links that work automatically. You will also be able to set preferences to say that suppliers can be linked to multiple brands, but each brand should have only one supplier.


Hm, I consider suppliers and brands to both be instances of "organisations" that are held by the table "organisations", however they are of different types of organisations. Splitting that data into two tables has both advantages and disadvantages. I think with the new List-View it might be possible to get around some of the disadvantages.


Airtable has backlinks now!

  1. Create a new “Link to another record” field (if you want to do this to an existing field, you’ll have to copy the contents of that field into this new one)
  2. (You’ll get a “Add lookup fields?” popup. That’s not used for this, so you can hit Skip)
  3. Another hidden “Link to another record” will be automatically generated with the name “From field: nNew field name]”. This field is your backlink field

Let’s say you have records Parent, Child1, and Child2. If you link Parent to Child1 and Child2 via your new field, then those two records will automatically populate Parent in their backlink cell

(Interestingly, it works the other way around. If you “backlink” Child3 to Parent via the backlink field, Parent will automatically be linked to Child3.)

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