Display Record URL as field automatically

Assuming you already know the table and view portions of the URL (‘tblxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ and ‘viwxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’ portions), you can simply append RECORD_ID(); e.g.,

'https://airtable.com/tblxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/viwxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/'&RECORD_ID()

Or am I missing soimething?

@W_Vann_Hall I think he wants something like RECORD_URL().

I think you could do it with Zapier.

Yes, but the table and view portions of the URL don’t appear to change — and, I would assume, for him originally to have been doing it with Zapier, are a fixed and known quantity. Or is there an ur-record URL of which I’m not aware, one unbound to table and view?

I think you could do it with Zapier.

Yes — but the OP is looking for a way to do so without using Zapier.

Thanks for the input. Here’s some more detail around the use case. I have many forms for a multi-table base. I don’t necessarily have complete data when filling out a form, so I generate a table of incomplete forms for review at the end of the day (rather than searching table by table). Since the records in the “LOG” table of incomplete forms has the record URL, I just click on the record URL to complete each record.

I do this with a Zapier formula (actually, I have one formula for EACH table in the base).
Step 1. Trigger on a new record and grab the RECORD_URL
Step 2. Find the record RECORD_URL
Step 3. Append the RECORD_URL to a field in the record (for future reference only)
Step 4. Create a record in “LOG” table with the name of the record and the record URL

This multistep zap is performing reliably but it really eats up my allotted zap total each month. I can do some of the job with IFTTT, which is free, but IFTTT can’t update an existing record.

What I was looking for, I suppose, is a formula or function or special field (like CREATED DATE). Before I made a feature request, I thought I’d check in with the users to see if there was already such as formula/function/field.

Jack

I know I must be missing something…

…and I suspect it has to do with this step:

I generate a table of incomplete forms for review at the end of the day

So, am I correct in understanding you have a table (created in some manner — perhaps another form?) that consists entirely of records containing links to records from a number of tables? And that your end-of-day activity is to go through this table of links, selecting each one and filling in the missing data?

The table (“Log registry”) is populated automatically in the fourth step of the Zap. It requires no manual actions. Think of it as a task list, collecting tasks (in my case, incomplete forms) from multiple tables in the same base. It’s marginally faster than running through each of the tables to look at an “incomplete” view. I embed my Log Registry on a web page.

JB

So your Zap checks each form for completeness and creates a list (so to speak) of all incomplete forms?

Actually, I have an “incomplete form” view in each Airtable table that filters for empty fields. When a record appears in that view, it triggers the Zapier recipe, which appends the name, table, date and record URL to the list of all incomplete forms. I have a “Today” view on the latter table, which is my daily list.

Ughhh. This is what I was looking for… a function that returns the record ID. I think @W_Vann_Hall was suggesting that a formula field of the form:

“https://airtable.com/tblyyyyyyyyyyyyyy/viwxxxxxxxxxxxxx/” & Record_ID

would work as long as I knew the table ID and the view ID. I do, and it does. Apologies for missing this before posting.

No, I’m very glad you did.

For one thing, your description of how you used Zapier to filter and identify records needing additional work opened my eyes to methods of using middleware beyond simple automation of Airtable actions — which is as far as my work with Zaps had ever taken me.

For another, I came up with three or four ways of almost doing what you wanted to do entirely within Airtable. Some I rejected because they would require you to add manual steps to your process, others because they needed Airtable to do something it currently does not do or to do it differently than it currently does; the former solutions may prove perfectly workable for other bases, and future enhancements of the product could validate the latter. While I failed to find an Airtable-only solution, I better understand the system’s potential and shortcomings.

I’m also glad to find my first reply wasn’t as off the mark as it first appeared. In the context of your application, though, I’m not sure of its benefit, as your approach still seems to require a four-step Zap. Or do you intend to modify your process to take advantage of a formula-crafted record URL?

I’ve turned off the four-step zaps (one for each table that contributes data to the Log Registry) and replaced them with IFTTT recipes:

IF - a new record appears in the “Incomplete” view of this table
THEN - create a new record in table “Log Registry” with Record Name (field) and Record URL (formula -crafted record URL)

I’ve had some hiccups with IFTTT-Airtable interactions in the past, but if it is stable then it enables me to stay comfortably within the parameters of my paid Zapier account.

Wouldn’t it be great if Airtable instituted “triggers” and “actions”? I know that one thing that makes Airtable great is its usability, but I’d prefer to keep my automation and data syncing as internal operations in Airtable.

Ah, that works! I’ve not done much with IFTTT, as it wasn’t suitable for the purpose for which I initially investigated it, so I went with Zapier. Since then, most of my integration work has been in support of someone’s questions, and typically he or she is using Zapier. (In my own projects, I’ve usually found a way to do what I needed within Airtable…)

I hadn’t realized you were adding records to a [Log Registry] table to indicate incompleteness; for some reason, I thought you were appending a line of text containing the record URL to either a document or a long text field — so that was the behavior I was trying to duplicate.

—not that it would have made any difference; I still couldn’t do that entirely within Airtable.

@John_Beaudoin @W_Vann_Hall
Thank you both for your post. I too wanted to capture the URL of my record so that I can link and get access more readily between Air Table and my CRM & ARP via a zap.

I came up with a formula to create my Records URL in Air Table. I did so by using the Concatenate formula & Record Id and the syntax that followed found by copying my record URL that is found when you hit the toggle down button. (This is the arrow next to my unique record number (1st field column)that is shown when the record is in its expanded form). In essence, I created the URL address that you’d use to enter into the address field in a chrome tab.

My actions were as follows. I created a new Formula field in my AT record, titled it “A.T Record URL” and then proceeded to enter the following formula using my table

=Concantenate(“https://airtable.com/tblyyyyyyyyyyyyyy/viwxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ ](https://airtable.com/tblyyyyyyyyyyyyyy/viwxxxxxxxxxxxxx/", Record-Id(),"?blocks=hide")

Sorry, if this explanation is a bit rudimentary. I’m new to this and so not a developer, at all! So if there is a cleaner way to find the URL for a record let me know. I’d also love to know if it helps as well.