Launched: conditional relational fields (lookup, rollup, and count)

[Katherine_Duh]

You can now add custom filter conditions to lookup, rollup, and count fields to limit which records are included in the results. Here’s how to do it:

1. Create a valid lookup, rollup, or count field (if you don’t already have one in your table, you’ll need to create a valid linked record field first).
2. In the field customization menu, turn on the “Only include records which match certain conditions” toggle.
3. Specify the relevant filters for your use case.

This also means that if you have been using helper formula fields as a workaround to achieve this same functionality, you can transition off those fields for a cleaner, clearer base! 🌅

Learn more about this new feature with the conditional counts, lookups, and rollups support article.

[ScottWorld]

Yep, sadly, I just discovered this myself once I actually started playing around with this feature. Makes this feature very half-baked, so it’s not anywhere near as useful or powerful as we all thought it was going to be. :frowning: Back to the drawing board with workarounds, extra fields, hidden fields, etc.! :frowning:

@Katherine_Duh, is there any way for professional Airtable consultants/developers/power users like myself to become more involved with communicating with the Airtable team to help improve the platform moving forward? Building a community around your best & brightest customers can only help to improve & grow the platform. :blush:

What’s personally frustrating to me about being a professional Airtable consultant/developer is that I really love Airtable — but there seems to be a silence between Airtable’s team and their customers (primarily their power users & professional developers). My personal frustration is that it seems like there is very little outreach/communication between Airtable and their power users about how to improve the platform moving forward — no discussions, no outreach, no surveys, no product roadmaps, not even a community-building effort like an annual conference or even a dedicated private forum amongst Airtable team members & power users. Now who knows, maybe all of this actually DOES exist, but I don’t know anything about it. :winking_face:

I’m not saying any of this because I dislike Airtable… I’m saying it because I absolutely love Airtable and I adore Airtable and I want to see the platform grow & thrive & succeed & take over the world. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I hate seeing people leave the platform after a week of using it because his problem couldn’t be solved in Airtable. But it seems like the Airtable team is just silently doing their own thing, oblivious to (or not paying attention to) what their customers are really asking for.

What we really need is a developer’s community, where Airtable and developers/power users/consultants come together as one.

[raghavsethi]

Could you clarify? You are allowed to specify any fields in the foreign table, and you can create a formula column in the foreign table and filter on its results if you’re looking to do something more sophisticated?

[Mark_Barnes]

@raghavsethi

Creating an extra field in the foreign table only works if the data you want to use in the function is in that foreign table. But what if the data isn’t in the foreign table, but the current table?

Say I have a category field in the main table, and I only want to look up data in the foreign table that is in that category? (And before you ask, I can’t link the two tables together using the category field, because that field is a formula, and you can’t link on a formula.)

[raghavsethi]

Ah I understand. Thanks for your feedback, I’ll pass it on to the team.

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

@ScottWorld

ScottWorld:

maybe all of this actually DOES exist, but I don’t know anything about it.

I think that it probably does happen, at least to some degree, but not on these forums, and not with the people you have in mind when you use the terms “power users” and “professional developers”. I think Airtable’s core business drivers are enterprise accounts with large scale customers (they advertise that they have the business of the likes of Expedia, JetBlue, Time, etc). They have a whole department of employees that cater to helping these large scale, enterprise customers build out their business solutions. I’m betting that most of their user feedback comes from those avenues, and not from people like you and me chatting on these forums. :man_shrugging:t2:

[kuovonne]

ScottWorld:

What’s personally frustrating to me about being a professional Airtable consultant/developer is that I really love Airtable — but there seems to be a silence between Airtable’s team and their customers (primarily their power users & professional developers).

From what I have seen on this community forum, Airtable’s team cares about all their customers, not just power users or professional developers. I have seen Airtable staff reply many times to both the power user / professional developer, and to the small user who has never given Airtable any money at all.

I don’t know how Airtable’s team decides who to solicit feedback from and who to give early access to beta features, but I appreciate that they do not restrict these things to only professional developers.

While Airtable has many feature requests that haven’t been implemented yet, the same is true for any major piece of software.

[Jean_Francois_B]

True that community forum seams a dead end sometimes because not enough users are talking of a specific issue but, 1 year ago I explained in a private help chat to an Airtable employee the link field order issue, last first and first last. He wasn’t aware that was an issue for some users and told me they will look into it. Since then they have implemented the reverse order button into the linked fields. My point is as a Pro user or at any level you should talk to these guys directly via the help so they will look into your request and it will definitely weight in the feature or problem solution you are requesting.

[Olpy_Acaflo]

Hi !

I’m still a javascript Learner, I’m a Power User Aspirant and maybe one day I’ll become an Airtable Expert in my current or future job.
In any case, I’m working hard to get there.
I would like to highlight how much I agree with what @kuovonne wrote in the lines I quote below:

kuovonne:

From what I have seen on this community forum, Airtable’s team cares about all their customers, not just power users or professional developers. I have seen Airtable staff reply many times to both the power user / professional developer, and to the small user who has never given Airtable any money at all.

I don’t know how Airtable’s team decides who to solicit feedback from and who to give early access to beta features, but I appreciate that they do not restrict these things to only professional developers.

I sometimes feel a certain delay in obtaining certain improvements that I find fundamental as a user of bases and tables filled with words, sentences, text instead of numbers, while other requests from me remain unsatisfied.

But I clearly prefer this slow development of a tool (airtable) whose UX is remarkably well taken into account and very successful, of a tool protected from major issues, and this privileged contact with active Developers at airtable than to learn that a huge IT Company would have bought airtable before making this privileged communication almost impossible.

As a reminder, my 3 priority wishes because absolutely necessary in my use of airtable for my job are:

• RTF (keyword in Script-Block-Forum and in Launched) ;
• UI larger and deeper programmatic control by SCRIPT, maybe reserved to Paid-Plans to avoid tables-creation Bots attempts from anywhere ? (Script-Block is available for Free-Tiers till September 2020)
• Hooks (keyword in Script-Block-Forum and in Product Suggestion) ;

Thank you airtable and continue like that with us small “Pro Plan” accounts and with the Experts, the Consultants!

oLπ

@kuovonne
@Kasra
@Katherine_Duh
@Shrey_Banga
@Stephen_Suen
@VictoriaPlummer
@Billy_Littlefield
@Richard_Sinn
@Michelle_Valentine
@somehats

[ScottWorld]

Jean_Francois_Bodin:

True that community forum seams a dead end sometimes because not enough users are talking of a specific issue but, 1 year ago I explained in a private help chat to an Airtable employee the link field order issue, last first and first last. He wasn’t aware that was an issue for some users and told me they will look into it. Since then they have implemented the reverse order button into the linked fields. My point is as a Pro user or at any level you should talk to these guys directly via the help so they will look into your request and it will definitely weight in the feature or problem solution you are requesting.

Who did you reach out to, and how did you choose who to reach out to?

[Kamille_Parks]

In 2020 we’ve seen a very noticeable uptick in Airtable staff’s presence in the forums, and much more frequent feature releases. Things like the scripting contests give us a chance to flaunt our stuff, and give AT a chance to learn how power-users test and use the new tools, presumably to help focus new improvements down the line.

I’d kill for a product release roadmap and things aren’t perfect, but we would be remiss not to mention the recent changes as though AT has made no effort at all to engage with us.