Hm try using an Interface for this?  I’ve something up here for you to check out and you can duplicate it into your own workspace to try it out

The idea is to use a Blank interface, put in a Record Selector element and pick the job you want.  Then in this grid view of all the items, you can select how much of each you want and check the In Use checkbox, and then hit the button that will trigger an automation

This automation will create one record per selected item in a new table called Renovation Line Items.  This lets you keep all of this item level data because if not, like the next time you create a job, all this information will be lost.

One thing to note about this solution is that if you are in an organization with more than one employee, this solution will only work if one person is creating an estimate at a particular time.

That’s because the checkboxes are shared amongst all users.

One workaround for this is to use a “user” field instead of a “checkbox” field, where the user chooses their name instead of a checkbox.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant 

One workaround for this is to use a “user” field instead of a “checkbox” field, where the user chooses their name instead of a checkbox.

Interesting!  How does this help?

Your solution wouldn’t work if 2 people are checking checkboxes at the same time, because everybody would be sharing the same checked list. If everybody chooses their own name from a list of names, then everybody has their own separate list.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Thanks everyone.

Very helpful input here but I’ve ended up going back to a regular spreadsheet. I found a formula that achieves just what I was looking for.

Ah so there’s one user field per person?  

No, just one user field where they would choose their own name from the dropdown list of users within the user field.

Hmm...how would that work with the rest of the automation?  I’m trying to imagine how it all ties together and can’t really see how to do it easily

In your automation, instead of finding the “checked items”, you would find “that particular user’s items” based on the user who took the action.

Then you would use a repeating group to loop through the found items to create the new line items.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

Ah right, but then how would we deselect the items?  

As part of the repeating group, you would clear out the user field of each found item (after that found item’s line item is created).

This would only work if you allowed only one user to be selected per user field at a time.

If you allow multiple users to be selected per user field, you would need a script to remove just the current user and leave the other users intact.

- ScottWorld, Expert Airtable Consultant

However, if there’s a small enough number of users, your idea of having multiple fields — one field per user — could work too. That would be even easier to clear out. You could even use checkbox fields — one checkbox field per user. Of course, this would cause other complexities in the automation, since Airtable can’t combine repeating groups and conditionals within the same automation.

Yeah, I was hoping there was some new trick for handling user field updates without scripting, but I couldn’t see how it would actually work cleanly, either.  Seems like a checkbox per person might be the simplest option even if it’s a little clunky!