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‎Feb 12, 2025 12:02 PM
Apologies if I don't use any of the correct terminology when explaining this problem. I have a form set up and I want the information in each field in that table (Table A) to populate fields in other tables. I have managed to make some of this work using a trigger that watches for new records being created in Table A and creating a new record in Table B with linked fields that end up creating records in Tables C through E. I was able to set up an automation in using a trigger that watches for new records being created in Table C which happens automatically because of the linked records in Table B that then finds records in Table D and updates records with empty fields with information from a field in Table C. That's as far as I got but I am two automations short from having all of this work as intended. I created another similar automation to populate an email address field in Table C with information from Table A using the same record creation trigger from the first automation I made but for some reason the automation keeps failing. The last thing that I can't figure out is how to get a record from Table C that may get linked to Table B to automatically be linked to a record in Table D. I basically need to get the names of two different people into the same record. One is from a recently created record which is already being taken care of with the automation I set up. The other is of a record that is already in the table. I thought of maybe having a find and update automation as well to looked for "unnamed record" since I have to manually enter information for the primary field created in Table B but I couldn't get that automation to work either. Is there a better way of doing this? Does Airtable offer support building databases or understanding how automations are supposed to work?
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‎Feb 12, 2025 01:18 PM
Hey @OMS!
What you are trying to achieve is basically to create different records in multiple tables, and have all of them adequately linked by just making one form submission. As you might have realized by now, that is unfortunately not possible with Airtable forms, reason why you had to go through the trouble of creating all sort of crazy automations.
Rather than going that way, which would result in a clunky solution which would also consume your automation count limit and your automation run limit, I would suggest you use Fillout forms for this use case.
(You might want to check out this article for more on automation limits.)
Fillout's free plan is extremely generous, has a direct Airtable integration, and allows you to push data to multiple of your Airtable tables. This is achieved by their Parent/Child form structure for linked records..
It is crazy that Airtable does not support this feature natively, so I went ahead and submitted the corresponding Feature Request some time ago. Would love to get your Kudos on it, as to signal Airtable how important this is for us!
Let me know if you have any issue setting up your Fillout forms 🙂
Mike, Consultant @ Automatic Nation
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