Hi Meredith,
No problem. I’m happy to have any excuse to procrastinate in learning code lol.
For real, I am a bit unclear about your context. How is the {Post text} field getting populated? Are you asking the automation to search for multiple issues in the same post? Under what circumstances would a post be linked to more than one issue? Are the records linked to going to change for any particular record in [All Posts], or is this a set-it-and-forget it type thing?
I’ve created a mock-up base for your review. There may need to be some changes made based on the answers to the questions above.
The [All Posts] table contains the following fields:
1- {Issue placeholder}: a linked records field that links to [Issues] table and does not allow for linking to multiple records.
2-{All issues for automation}: a formula field that asks two questions. 1. is there content in {All issues} and 2. does the content in {Issues placeholder} already exist in {All issues}. This formula combines all unique records in {All issues} + {Issue placeholder} to create a string that, through an automation, replaces whatever is in {All issues}.
3-{All issues}: A linked records field that links to [Issues] table and allows for linking to multiple records. This is the end product.
As you can see, when the automation finds “food insecurity” in {Post text}, in Step 1, it links to “Food insecurity” from the [Issues] table in the {Issue placeholder} field (overriding whatever was in {Issue placeholder} previously). In step 2, the automation copies/pastes {All issues for automation} into {All issues}. If you wanted, you could add a third step to the automation that would clear {Issue placeholder} after running the first two steps. It’s unnecessary, but might be a bit cleaner if you’re manually interacting with any of those fields.
Again, the solution you need might be a bit different based on your particular requirements. Also, FWIW, I’m pretty new to programming, so, as I said before, totally possible that there are more elegant solutions than this one.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Finally, here’s a diagram of what {All issues for automation} is doing, in case you want to see.