Does anyone have a suggestion on the best way to link tables to automatically create a weekly meeting agenda?
I currently use a main table to list a number of construction projects, with each row being a certain project as per the example screenshot below. I would like to create a second table for a meeting agenda which only shows the projects ‘in construction’. A simple agenda would have the columns Item, Lead, Status, and Update/Action Items.
I’m leaning towards a second table rather than a filtered view so I can also add other items to the agenda (such as Strategy or General Business).
What’s the best way to create this?
Thanks in advance,
Andrew
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Hey @Andrew_Carville,
When it comes to Airtable database architecture, you really want to get it right as I cannot stress how important that is for scaling your system in the near future.
What sounds strange to me is that you seem to be making reference to projects on one side, and agenda items on the other side. These items do not seem to share the same attributes/properties. Having said that it seems that they should not share a table.
What I would suggest doing is having two tables:
Projects Tasks (or Agenda, however you want to call it).
Projects table would have attributes (fields) really specific to Projects. Name Status Description Address etc
Tasks table would have attributes (fields) really specific to Tasks. Name Description Start Date Due Date Project
Project could be left blank if you will be also including random strategy tasks non related to a specific project. Otherwise, if it is project specific then you will actually link a project to the task. To make sure that you can only select from In construction projects you will want to Filter Record Selection by a Condition -see screenshot below for further context!
If you’d like to go through this together, feel free to grab a slot using this link. I’d be happy to show you around on a quick call.
Not fully related, but if you’d like to see how a scalable project management system with pre defined tasks can be easily set up, you might want to check out this YouTube video :D
What if you had an automation that ran once a week that’d grab all the ‘In Construction’ products and dump them into an ‘Agenda’ table with a date for the meeting?
Here’s what that might look like in practice. Instead of that checkbox field you’d set your automation to trigger automatically on Monday morning or something. This assumes that you’re setting up the agenda items on the same day as the meeting, if you’re not we can just tweak that bit
Thanks for the ideas, Mike and Brainy - apologies its taken so long to reply.
Mike - the reason I refer to them as projects on one side and agenda items on the other is because we track all of our projects on the main table (projects at all various stages), but at our weekly meetings we only discuss certain projects which may have issues to be resolved. Those specific projects become the agenda items but only for the purpose of adding Updates or Action Items, as in the third column below).
I guess what I was hoping to achieve was something similar to the agenda example below, where I can have agenda items NOT in the main table (such as General Business and New Acquisitions), and then automatically populate the sites in construction from the main table. I’m assuming this can’t be done in Airtable as pictured below as this is a mix of different things in the same column. Is there another way this could be achieved, or something similar?
Cheers,
Andrew
Hi Brainy,
Thanks for the idea on automating the process. Whether it was timed or updated using a button, either would be a good outcome.
I’ve just played around with the template example you set up, and it’s giving multiple instances of the same “agenda items” for some reason. Is it because I’ve checked every box in the Run Automation column? Is there a way to filter the agenda items so there are no multiple instances recorded (ie. recording what date it was added to the agenda, or the date of the meeting is not important)?
Hi Brainy - for some reason the screenshots of the example didn’t load with the post above...
And the example agenda:
I’ve just played around with the template example you set up, and it’s giving multiple instances of the same “agenda items” for some reason. Is it because I’ve checked every box in the Run Automation column?
Yeap, it’s going to create records every time you check the box
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Is there a way to filter the agenda items so there are no multiple instances recorded (ie. recording what date it was added to the agenda, or the date of the meeting is not important)?
Hm, sorry, I’m not sure I follow! For me I would use the Agenda table by grouping by the ‘Meeting Date’ field, and that way I’d see each meeting’s agenda items, which would allow me to add notes to our discussions on Project 1 on 14 Sept, and separately add notes for discussions about Project 1 on 22 Sept, does that make sense?
