Building Scheduling in Airtable?

For creating the event date/times in the schedule table, if your events are extremely structured you could use an automation to build the event records every week (or month, etc).

First I’d create a week’s worth of events manually, with correct date/time. Then add a formula field with DATEADD 7 days, which provides the date/time for next week’s records. Then set up an automation that triggers every Sunday at 1AM, which finds all records in the past 7 days, and then runs a repeating group record creation that populates the event date/time with the DATEADD formula field (and you can move over other data as relevant). 

I just used week for example, you could do it monthly or some other timeframe. 

Hey ​@WiggleWiggleWiggle!

Would you mind providing some more context of the use case? Not the Airtable side of it, but how it works. Eg. Our clients subscribe to attend x amount of events. We have a fixed amount of scheduled events per week.. etc etc etc. just as an example. 
 

The above will allow me to further understand the question 😁. 
 

Also, feel free to schedule a brief call and we can go throgh it together.  

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

Hi DisraeliGears01, it’s a pretty set schedule, so that could work… would you have the automation create new records or new fields? 

I’m building this for a friend’s company as a favor, so I am trying to build something that they will be able to operate without me, as I don’t actually work there… Assuming the automation runs properly, I assume this will require very little upkeep on their part, which is ideal. I am teaching their EA how it all works, but I just want to make sure that I am building something that will be fairly self-sustaining for them.

Thank you for all your advice!

MER

Hi Mike,

My friend runs a dog walking company, and I am helping him automate their backend so their EA isn’t spending so much of her time on repetitive tasks (like messaging the dog owners every week to confirm which days that they want dog walks, and counting the walks that happened, to deduct from the “Walk Bank” that each client has paid for), and can use her time on more human-required tasks.

So every week the “Walk Blocks” (as I’ve dubbed them) are the same, but the dogs that are part of each group can change depending on any number of factors, so each week, I need the “Walk Blocks” to duplicate and allow the Dog Owners to fill out a weekly form to confirm, instead of having it all be done manually. 

I’m really trying to figure out how to structure the Table that is the “Walk Bank”, where walks are added as they are paid for, and removed when they are used. I am also trying to structure the Table that is the “Schedule”, where we track the “Walk Blocks”, the Dogs participating in each, and then to subtract that from the total in the Walk Bank.

Ideally, as Evergreen as possible, as I am doing this as a favor, I don’t actually work there, and I want them to be able to operate what I’ve built without needed an external resource constantly, as it’s a 2-person operation (plus the walkers), and this is meant to save them time, not create a bigger mess (🤞) . My main career is as a marketer, I just learned how to build this stuff while working at startups without anyone to delegate to, so I’m also learning as I go here!

Thank you so much for all your advice!

MER

Hey ​@WiggleWiggleWiggle!

As I see it, basic architecture should probably be:

Contacts (First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone Number, Dogs -linked records allowing for multiple links assuming that some contacts might have more than 1 dog)
Dogs (Name, Breed, Notes, Contacts -linked record to Contacts)
Walkers (First Name, Last Name, etc)
Schedules (Start Date & Time, End Date & Time, Walker -linked record to Walker)

Do you need to keep track of data a single specific dog level per schedule?
e.g.

Dog A - Schedule A: Attended
Dog B - Schedule A: Did not Attend
Dog C - Schedule A: Attended

Dog A - Schedule B: Attended
Dog B - Schedule B: Did not Attend
Dog C - Schedule B: Did not Attend

or just high level?
e.g.
Schedule A - Dog A, Dog C
Schedule B - Dog A

If the first, then you’ll want an additional table called for example Schedule Details (Dog -linked, Schedule -linked, Attendance)

I guess the above will also depend on how walks are being paid for? On a walk by walk basis? Package of walks regardless of whether they are used? Pack of walks and only those which attend are actually deducted from the package?

Please let me know if this brings some clarity to the issue.

Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation

Automations can’t create new fields, only populate existing ones, unless you mean generating new linked field records, which sure! If you have the dates linked to another field, just add the primary id in at the linked record field. 

The automation I mentioned should run pretty well by itself, but if the schedule changes it might result in pre-created records that are unnecessary, and if you delete them then they won’t auto-create for the next week. So the end user would need to pay attention to whenever they add flex shifts, and it would have a hard time dealing with a ton of irregular shifts