"Unnamed" Records in URL Prefill for Linked Record Field
I’m running into an issue where a URL prefill is linking the correct records to the form, but showing them as “unnamed”. I know they are the right records, because when I submit it shows the correct records. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact the the user needs to see which record is which employee, so if they need to they can remove someone that left early, for example. Anyone have any ideas how to have it show the names of the employees that definitely are not “unnamed” and have something in their primary field?
We are using Record IDs to prefill the Employees field.
Thanks in advance to anyone that has any ideas or suggestions!
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Based on some research, it seems that filling with the Record ID means that Airtable doesn’t have the information to display the names? To resolve the issue we changed the prefill to utilize the primary field, updating that primary field to include a unique identifier (to avoid issues that could occur if Employees have the same first and last name)
Hm, that’s strange because it works just fine for me when I attempt the same setup as you.
It sounds like you’ve resolved the issue, but you might want to open a support ticket with support@airtable.com to have them investigate why it wasn’t working for you.
Fillout is 100% free, and it offers hundreds of features that Airtable’s native forms don’t offer, including lots of advanced linked record features… and even the ability to update existing Airtable records from a form.
You don’t even need to use a special URL to prefill forms — although you can certainly use a special URL if you’d like to.
Check out the screenshot below for one way of autofilling multiple linked records in Fillout.
I also demonstrate some advanced Fillout tricks in the podcasts below:
Hey @Adam_Rondeau, the value shown is always that of the primary field. Primary field is the first field on the left. What I would suggest doing is having a concatenation of the First and Last Name. If you want to make sure you are selecting the correct one (in case of employees with same full name) you can also include their email or phone number.
Example formula:
{First Name}&” “&{Last Name}&” | “&{Phone Number}
In this way, you should fully understand who is being linked!
Thanks for the responses. We’ve used Fillout in other situations, but for this particular client they found it too slow on mobile. Not sure why switching to pre-filling with the primary field value resolved the issue, but it did. If it comes back, I’ll definitely reach out to Airtable Support.
