Find, Group & Sort Similar Records

Hi,
I think it's doable by automation.
You can't make it work with 'When a record created' for manual user input, because when you create a new record, it is empty. You should put other trigger, and usually it is something to be filled or updated AFTER mentioned 2 fields.

If you set trigger to a condition 'specific service' not empty AND 'keyword' not empty, it will run exactly after user chose option from drop-down list and enter the first letter of a keyword. This is not you want. 
But if you change fields order, user can enter keyword at first, then select from drop-down list, in such way automation can work as expected, with both fields completely filled.
You can also add checkbox and set trigger to run when fields are not empty and checkbox is checked.

Hmm, "Specific service" is a select field and so you're looking at doing an exact match for that one, is that right?

For the "Focus Keyword" bit I see that you've got a ";" divider there.  I take it that means that, if "The Anatomy of a Roof" was the post in question, you'd want it to find posts with either of the keyword groups "Roof defined" and "Roof parts"?

Yes you're on the right track, thank you -- it's just a matter of grouping and sorting the blog article topics together:

1. The field SPECIFIC SERVICE is a dropdown select of about a dozen services the roofer offers -- yes, it would be an exact match.

2. Focus Keyword can be anything the SEO strategist deems "findable" in order to keep the blog posts GROUPED together -- and look for DUPLICATES -- or similarities -- between posts because we blog away on specific topics, parts of topics, general topics, you name it, nothing stops us from explaining anything and everything! (Let's face it, SEO is all about domain authority).

IN CASE THIS HELPS: For example, what got us interested in Airtable in the first place was we saw this screenshot (attached) in an FAQ post and asked how it was set up, but support declined to answer:

"If Category is [Current Item in dropdown], OR "Focus Keyword" includes [something similar], then...

Thanks for any and all suggestions! Darci

Yes we DO want the action to run exactly after the user chooses the option from the drop-down list and entering the keyword! This would work well as we create blog articles that are very similar to each other all the time.

Thanks for all the suggestions, sorry to say it but we are newbies here -- can you give us an idea of how to:

1.  set trigger to a condition 'specific service' not empty AND 'keyword' not empty.

2. change fields order, user can enter keyword at first, then select from drop-down list, in such way automation can work as expected, with both fields completely filled.

3. We know how a checkbox and set trigger work, but any examples are most welcome.

Thanks again, Darci

Thanks for the details!  The dropdown select will be really straightforward and that's what's in your screenshot as well.  To do that, you'd use conditional groups: https://support.airtable.com/docs/conditional-groups-of-automation-actions

Link to base 

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The Focus Keywords bit is the tricky one.  Assuming an exact match on multiple values where you're using the ";" as a divider (i.e. For "The Anatomy of a Roof", you'd want it to find posts with either of the keyword groups "Roof defined" and "Roof parts"), then you could potentially do this with an additional multiple select field and an automation that'll convert the text to multiple select options and then do the search there

If you want similar matches on multiple values, e.g. for the keyword group "Roof defined" you want any posts with the keywords "Roof" or "Defined" to show up, that's also possible but would need to be set up differently.  The results of this search would probably be pretty broad though and I don't know how useful that'd be

The meaning of "similar" is pretty broad here, and so if you could provide some examples of posts and how you'd expect them to be found (e.g. this is a duplicate, this is a similarity) and how that logic works that'd be most helpful!

Hi,
It's quite easy
1. 

2. Just click and drag field. 
Tip: when you have many fields (20 or more) you can avoid scrolling left/right but use Hide fields menu instead. Just click anchor at the right (3x2 dots) and drag to reorder.
The same works when you need to reorder tables in a base.

Thanks Adam,

Working with the conditional logic is much more difficult than originally thought!

I read carefully thru your reply and might be close to a solution, but who knows? Can you help me understand why when setting up the "Sort" logic, the "Select input list" choices are all grayed out? That's as far as we can go at this time. 

You'll need to use a "Find Record" step before the "Sort" step.  The "Sort" step uses the result of the "Find Record" step, does that make sense?

Yes thanks kindly, it makes sense! Wish Airtable would include that kind of information (must use Find logic prior to Sort). 

We've created 2 automations that test out nicely -- but nothing happens when we're in the Base and after adding a new record. So...dumbest question of all, but shouldn't the Automation run on the Base itself? Again, we see that the Automation runs in the test -- but not in the Base 😛

Yeap it will.  Do note that automations don't run on records that already meet the trigger conditions when you turn it on; it'll only run on records that newly meet the conditions

To run it on historical records you'll need to trigger the automation manually, perhaps with a checkbox field

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The trigger for your automation might not be ideal as well unless you're planning on creating one automation per possible condition? 

Thanks Adam,

You would think that "When a record matches conditions" (meaning a new record created), or "When a record is created" (meaning a new record), or "When a record is updated" (meaning a change to a record) ------ that any one of those triggers would effect the one new record within the Base -- for example we expect to see the trigger find similar records and sort them together -- but we are seeing no movement at all.

Our understanding of the conditional logic is much better, thank you! -- meaning there's a good chance we have used workable triggers and logic (see screenshots), however, nothing effects the data when a record is "created", "updated", or when "matches conditions" -- it's nada!!

Any ideas here? Thanks always, Darci

Hm those conditions look fine, especially the "When record is created one".  To troubleshoot this I'd suggest viewing the run history for that automation to see what happened after it triggered and where it failed: https://support.airtable.com/docs/getting-started-with-airtable-automations#using-the-run-history

I'll check it out in detail shortly.

Adam, thanks so much for all your help, we are much obliged! 

It could be that our automation request is too simple -- meaning if we keep the Base in a "grouped" and "sorted" view, then we can achieve our "find duplicates" or "find similar records" that way. But it's more of a sure bet if an automation does it.

Was hoping to impress the boss 😅 But we might have to stick with Google Sheets as that app "groups" and "sorts" all the same. So you see, we were looking for a real records/database app that could ensure the rules.

all my best, Darci Oltman (marketing project manager)