Automation confusion

[Scott_Brasted]

I am trying to learn to use automations to update 2 summary tables so I do not have to keep copying and pasting every time I update a table.

Table for new record:  Donations.  Summary Table: Donation Totals Yearly Summary Report.

The two table are linked by the Donation Date primary field in the Donations table. The summary table linked field is called Donation Table.

Let me summarize what I think I need to do to accomplish this. I need to create a trigger that says When a Record is Created in the Donations table. This tests fine.

Then when I create that record in the donations table I need to have an action happen. I have chosen the Update Record in the action. That action is to update the Donation Totals Yearly Summary Report table/Donation Table field with the contents of the Donation Date field in the Donations table.

To do that I need to choose the Update record choice in the Action type field of the automations screen. Then choose the Table in the configuration section. I have chosen the Donation Totals Yearly Summary Report table.

Then it asks for the Record ID. This is where I am stuck. I do not understand what it is looking for. I have tried copying the field URL for the field in Donations and the field URL for the field in the summary report.Neither works. I have also tried to copy the record id from th trigger test. That does not wrk either. What am I missing?

I find this very frustrating. It cannot be this hard.  Can anyone provide a little clarity here? 

Thanks, Scott

[Alexey_Gusev]

Hi,

Try to clarify your goal. You have Donations table with X records  and Totals table with Y records.
You Create new record in Donations. Airtable needs to know which of Y records you want to Update in Totals. So, it asks for record ID.

indeed, 'When a Record is Created' is rarely used in real life, because it runs right after record created,  and it is empty yet. Anything you put in record after that, will not affect other data, because automation considered as run and completed.

In Airtable, each table is not a spreadsheet with rows and columns. To better understand, consider each table as a set of records (each row is a record). Each table contains list of similar entities and links define how they related to each other. Like if you have football tournament, you'll have a list of players, list of teams and list of games. Each player linked to the team, each game linked to 2 records in teams. That's how it works. (someone could create table of players for each team, but it's bad design - similar entities (players in that case) should be in the same table)



If you want to get Totals in other table, you should use core built-in functionality - linking records, lookups, rollups. It's much easier than do it by automations, when you understand how it is working (understanding is not easy, but once you get it, you will see other Airtable stuff under the right angle)

To be less confused when learning automatics, try to do something within the same table

The task like 'When I input something in Table 1, do the action in table 2" usually demand some kind of connection between records via linking or action like 'Find records' . Like 'When I type something in text field, for example "cat" then click on a checkbox. go to Table 2 and search all records having "cat" in their text field, and do something with them'