Are your users using Airtable directly, or have you built an app that uses Airtable as the backend? What are your “screens” and how do you control flow from screen to screen?

The users access the app, which sends and retrieves the data from Airtable, so Airtable is the back end. A button fills in one field with a record ID, that record ID gets copied into the linked/relational field, Airtable then creates an array of record IDs with a rollup, and then the app user is navigated to the next screen.

If the array of record IDs related to the linked field is not ready in time, the list won’t show up properly because the app is trying to grab the data from Airtable before it’s there.

That’s where an instant copy-paste from text to linked field would help. The API hasn’t successfully allowed record IDs to be inserted directly into the linked/relational field from Adalo, which is why I’m using the workaround with the copy-paste automation.

What are you using to build your front end? Is there a reason why your front end needs to rely on an automation? Can the code behind the button that gets the record ID also create the links?

I’m not sure what you mean since this is related to Airtable data. I either need an instant copy-paste from text fields to linked fields or the ability to update a linked relational field directly through the API, which hasn’t been working with Adalo.

Or maybe there’s a clever workaround I haven’t discovered yet?

Sorry, I was under the impression that you were using Airtable only for your back end. Then the workaround would be to have your app create the links directly instead of having an automation do it. That way you would know exactly when the fields would be updated.

I don’t know of any way to speed up automations.

No problem, thanks for checking in about it.