Skip to main content

Automatic bidirectional linked records in same table


Show first post

84 replies

Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • January 31, 2021

+1 ! Pleaaaaaase build this :slightly_smiling_face:


  • New Participant
  • 2 replies
  • February 8, 2021

Adding another vote here - this seems like a massive oversight that it is not already a feature! I need parent-child relationships to work and be accessible from either direction


  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • March 2, 2021

+1 ! Really need this one.


Forum|alt.badge.img+7

Also +1 vote for this feature.

I have a list of companies and some of them are parent to other companies (while these other ones - are the child companies).

Whenever I mark company A as parent to company B - I need to have a cell next to company B which indicates that it’s a under a parent company A.


Forum|alt.badge.img+6
  • Known Participant
  • 14 replies
  • March 3, 2021

+1 from me, as well.


I’m trying to use this for dependencies on a game design floor plan. If I add a link to another room as an option for a direction for someone to go to, I have to go to that record and add the link to the previous record manually. I should be able to link to one and have the dependency exist.


+1 I am trying to use this like Jira which has tasks and sub-tasks within the product backlog table


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • New Participant
  • 2 replies
  • May 9, 2021

+1 I need this for a User Story hierarchy. When a User Story turns out to be too big to do in one sprint, we change it to an epic create a bunch of User Stories under it to do a phased implementation. Each of these stories has the Epic in a Parent field. I want another field that shows all the Children of the Epic. And no running of scripts. It should work exactly the same as when I link records between table.

I could easily see a tick box or on/off switch on the LInk to … dialog when creating a link to the same table. The switch would ask “Create reverse linking field?” and if you say “Yes”, it lets you provide a name for . Much like the automatic lookup is offered after linking to field in a different table. So easy to do! Why is this taking so long.


Forum|alt.badge.img+12

+1
In Table A I have 2 columns :

  • LinkToA
  • ReverseA

There is no way for ReverseA to see A that Link to me.


Forum|alt.badge.img+13
  • Known Participant
  • 40 replies
  • May 27, 2021

Adding my +1 to this feature, it would be immensely helpful. I’m feeling a little stuck now that I just learned that there is NOT bi-directional linking within the same table… it has made my information more clunky :frowning:


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • New Participant
  • 3 replies
  • May 30, 2021

+1 also need this. This is very useful


Forum|alt.badge.img+4

+1 on this too, would be super useful


Forum|alt.badge.img
  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • July 5, 2021

+1
absolutely need to be able to cross-link records in a single table


likewise, not being able to have bidirectional links in the same table is causing me a shiz ton of extra work.


  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • July 12, 2021

+1 - we have had multiple instances in our base where this feature would have saved us a lot of time and effort


Forum|alt.badge.img+8
  • Participating Frequently
  • 6 replies
  • August 12, 2021
Jeremy_Oglesby wrote:

@Brazzells_To_Austral


Really looking forward to trying this! I have zero formal knowledge of coding/scripting, but have reached my wit’s end trying to accomplish this with an automation—everything I’ve tried with automations looks like it should work, but fails and I can’t figure out why the inputs aren’t valid. You may have just saved me (and my company) many more hours of extreme frustration or manual input (or both). Many thanks!!


  • New Participant
  • 2 replies
  • August 31, 2021

+1 this would be a super useful feature, I’m really surprised it does not exist yet. Seems like a no-brainer


Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • Participating Frequently
  • 7 replies
  • September 17, 2021

Yes please, adding my support for this capability being built natively in Airtable without having to use scripting and automations


Please add this function asap!


Forum|alt.badge.img+6
  • Known Participant
  • 12 replies
  • October 4, 2021

Adding my voice to this one: please add!


Forum|alt.badge.img+7
  • Participating Frequently
  • 10 replies
  • December 13, 2021

+1000 for this feature


kuovonne
Forum|alt.badge.img+27
  • Brainy
  • 6001 replies
  • December 14, 2021

I sell an automation script for maintaining same table backlinks.

Using this script requires no coding knowledge, and no edits to the code. Copy/paste the script into your automation, and setup the input variables as shown in the video. Note that if you want to be able to edit either link, you will need to use two different automations.


Voting for this - absolutely crazy they don’t already have this, especially when so much of Airtable is table-centric and built so that data should be in one table.


Hannah_Wiginton
Forum|alt.badge.img+18

We have the “same table linked records” feature plus 60+ more Airtable functions in the On2Air Actions app.

Here’s a tutorial:


Adding a +1 on this too. Can’t believe users have been asking for this since 2018 :upside_down_face: Also on other threads which have been closed since, it seems.

We use an “organisations” table which lists startups, investors, research institutes, foundations, etc. When adding a link between say, an investor and a startup, there should be a reciprocal link in the startup entry to that list all its investors.

The reason why we put all organisations in the same table is because it’s much easier to handle all organisations from the same table (for instance when you have a “People” table and you want to show their affiliation to an organisation, and not have multiple “organisation” fields")


Reply