Embedding other data in 'most-recent' date
This is either an awfully clever work-around for Airtable’s limitations on data lookup or an incredibly convoluted method to achieve something that can easily be managed within Airtable itself, had I not overlooked something basic. You tell me…
On my current project, my main table tracks items currently within a collection. An item may currently be onsite or in one of several offsite conditions – for instance, on loan, on lease, gifted, sold, lost, out for cleaning, or out for repair. The total number of on- and offsite statuses is fewer than 10. An item may pass through any number of statuses, but it can only be in one status at a time.
As I chewed my way through the base design, I quickly realized there was substantial overlap among data required to track offsite status: Who had the item, the date the item went offsite, the date it was due back (if applicable), the date it actually returned, and so on. I created an outRecord table to log each status change for an item, with a one-to-
