Hello! I work in higher ed, and am trying to set up a highly automated CRM base. We’ve used Zapier for ages to create and update records in Google Sheets, and are shifting our process over to Airtable to allow more users access to the data.

The primary challenge I’m encountering is in logging interactions. I have a Contacts table (with Email as the unique identifier), and an Interactions table (with things like General Web Form, Event Registration, etc.). So if a candidate fills out the General Web Form, I can have a unique Zap with the text ‘General Web Form’ dropping into the linked records --> Interactions field and it works like a charm.

The challenge is at the second point of conversion: let’s say Event Registration. Zapier can locate the record, and then updated it – but If I use the same trick, the integration will overwrite the existing data in the linked records field, so I lose the General Web Form conversion. Ideally, those conversions would stack up in the same field (linking to multiple records).

My current workaround is to have a column for every single type of conversion on my Contacts table – which is either blank, or filled with the conversion value (so, a column called General Web Form that receives the value General Web Form if triggered by the integration. That tracks every conversion, but means I have a million columns on my Contact table – and my gallery view (which the recruiters are using) isn’t as clean as I’d like it to be.

Because we deal with thousands of contacts in a year, manually adding each conversion point is not an option. The simplest solution seems to be somehow adding multiple records from separate integrations to a single field, but that doesn’t currently seem like an option either.

I was curious if anyone had a technical solution for this issue, or perhaps a more logistical correction if I’m thinking about the structure of my base incorrectly.

Thanks!