Automatic linking for form responses back to a database (e.g. match up customer survey responses to their customer profile by an ID or email address)

[Zero_Gravity]

Is there a way to automatically link responses that come in from an airtable form, to a database that already exists?

In my use case, we have a database of customers and their information (including their email address) on Airtable. I would like to send them all an Airtable form to complete. If they also supply their email address in this form, would it be able to automatically link to their record on the database without me going in and linking each one individually?

So an automation in the form table, checking whether this email address exists in the database and then automatically linked to their customer record in the database if it does?

Hopefully this makes sense!

[Joseph_Abraham]

You can accomplish this with an automation. When a new form submission is populated in the Forms table, the automation will find the matching record in the People table and then link the two records. The finished automation will look like this:

You will first want to create a field to accept the customer’s email and a new linked record field in the Forms table.

Now you can start building the automation. The trigger is a new record being created in the Forms table.

The first action we want to run is “Find Records”. This will find the customer in the People table based on the email address they submitted on the form.

Under conditions, we’re saying only return the record in the People table who’s Email field matches the Email field in the Forms table.

Now that we found the matching customer record, it’s time to link the records. Add a new “Update record” action after the “Find records” step.

Here we’re saying go back and find the record ID of the new form submission that triggered the automation and then put the record ID of the matching customer record we found into the linked field in the Forms table.

Let me know if you need help with any of these steps!

[Joseph_Abraham]

I also suggest checking out how to prefill forms. You can use a formula field to automatically create these links.

Obviously, this automation will fail if the email they entered on the form doesn’t exactly match the email you have on file for them in the People table. Prefilling helps prevent cases where the customer has a typo in the email field, mismatched capital letters, or enters a different email entirely. Also saves the customer from taking the time to enter their email because it’s already prefilled!