Automatically mark resource as available upon end of project

#1

Hi all,

Hope someone can help me out for a little bit here.

First, I know my explanation will be confusing, so I am attaching a link to a base showing what I want to accomplish: https://airtable.com/shr6FQZzExhS9nMXK/tbloqyvdM3fTPGRs7/viweFLF5nx2Fn54Du

I have 2 tables, referencing each other:
Project - all my projects
Equipment - devices used in the projects.

When a project ends (shown by the ProjectFinished date field), I want the DeviceName in the CurrentDevice-field to be moved to the DeviceUsed-field.
The FileteredView-view is filtered on todays date, so whenever a record is in this view, I would like the move to happen.

The reason is that I donā€™t want equipment attached to a project that is not running anymore, I want it to be ā€œfreeā€ for a new project.

I assume this can be done through Zapier, but I have not figured out how. Even better of course if it can be done directly in Airtable.

Thanks in advance!

#2

I think that, depending on how often you need to move your equipments to the {DeviceUsed} field, you simply can do it by hand within Airtable by cutting (Ctrl + x) the device in {CurrentDevice} and pasting it (Ctrl + v) into the {DeviceUsed} field.

For Zapier, I donā€™t know as Iā€™m not using it ā€¦

Edit :
I think, in fact, that you can cut and paste the entire field from {CurrentDevice} to your {DeviceUsed}when youā€™re on your filtered view.

#3

Hi,

ItĀ“s what I do today actually, but over time itĀ“s not very scaleable, so something automatic would be to prefer.

#4

@Eivind_Augum -

Hereā€™s how I would do it.

Rather than bother with changing linked-record fields to indicate device availability, Iā€™d add a few fields to my device record. Now, whenever you are configuring a new [Project], you select the plus sign in the {Device} field and select a record from the list of devices. The first field in the [Equipment] record indicates whether the device is available or not; if the user selects an unavailable device, an alert appears in the linked record, and (if your plan supports record colors), the affected [Project] and [Equipment] records are tagged red.

Within the [Equipment] table, each device record may be linked to multiple [Project] records; only one linked [Project] may be active at any given time. Through the use of interlocking rollups, the date and name of the most recent project with which that device was associated are displayed.

With this approach, devices are automatically tagged as available on the day following the date the most recent project concluded. No middleware or manual toggling of active/inactive devices is required.

Note: Renamed post from ā€œMove record from one field to anotherā€ to ā€œAutomatically mark resource as available upon end of projectā€ to aid future searchers of the ā€˜Ask the Communityā€™ forum.

#5

Thanks, this is great! I will be able to tweak this to fit my production base!