Automating Status Updates Across Linked Tables — Best Approach?

Hi Airtable community! 👋

I’m working on a base where I need status updates in one table to automatically reflect in another table — and I’d love advice on the best way to build this.

Background

I have two tables:

📌 Projects

• Project Name

• Status (e.g., “Planning”, “In Progress”, “Completed”)

📌 Tasks

• Task Name

• Linked Project

• Task Status

I want to automatically update the Project’s Status based on the status of its linked Tasks. For example:

• If all Tasks are “Completed”, set Project Status to Completed

• If any Task is “In Progress”, set Project Status to In Progress

• Otherwise, Project Status should remain Planning

Right now I’m using rollups and a formula field, but I’m wondering if there’s a cleaner or more reliable approach — especially when tasks are added or changed frequently.

Specific Questions

1. Rollup + Formula strategy:
   Is using a rollup of Task Statuses with a conditional formula the best practice for this?

2. Automations:
   Would a script in Airtable Automations perform this more reliably? If so, does anyone have examples?

3. Performance:
   Are there scalability concerns (e.g., base slowing down) with either approach when there are hundreds of linked records?

What I’ve Tried

• Rollup with an array of statuses and a formula that checks for key values (“Completed”, “In Progress”) — works okay but feels clunky.

• Basic automation that triggers when a Task Status changes — doesn’t always fire as expected.

Would love to hear how others handle this kind of multi-table dependency! Any sample formulas or scripts would be especially helpful 🙌

Thanks! ✨