I’m trying to move a tool my organization uses from excel to airtable.
Previously, we would update a data sheet in excel with components, and their individual unit costs. On another sheet, someone could enter the component name (ie, “widget”) and they’d excel would calculate the average cost of that component across the data set OR let someone know it’s not a component we’ve ever used. I’m okay with the “widget” query also returning results that include widget, such as “long widget.”
Is there a good way to do this in Airtable? Am I wrong to think an interface is the best bet?
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Hmm, could you talk more about calculating the average cost of the component across the data set?
Assuming your data looks like this:
Then when your users are selecting the components from another table this is what they’d see:
And they’d need to click that + icon to add a new component
Them being unable to find a component in this manner basically would indicate that it doesn’t exist and they’d need to create it
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An Interface’s probably your best bet, yeah. Gives you a lot more control over what your users are interacting with and how they’re interacting with it. If you could talk a bit more about the full workflow that’d be helpful!
Workflow info: Right now someone (usually me) is entering new components and their details, so an interface could be helpful for that, but not a priority. Then someone (sometimes me, my manager, others) could be looking for the component averages.
Interesting to handle it via 2 sheets. It looks like there isn’t an airtable template well-suited for this.
Hey @JimmyOBrien,
Exactly as pointed out above, you will need two tables. One for the main entity “Components” and one for “Components Costs” given that one Component can have multiple (different) costs throughout time.
If I’m following correctly, you could have a rollup field on the Components table that will rollup the Average(values) of the Cost field from the Component Costs table. More on Airtable rollup fields in this other Article.
If you search by Component, you’ll either find it (together with the average) or not find it at all (in case you’ll probably want to create it).
Hmm, when I think about looking for the averages, I think about just doing a search within the table of components itself like how I’d use a normal spreadsheet? Sorry, not too sure I’m following what you’re trying to do
