Automation on multiple linked records

[Fernando_Martin]

Hello y’all!

I’m trying to run an automation on multiple linked records from one record, but it doesn’t work because the action expects one record id.

Do you know a way to achieve this?

My scenario is this:

• I have an invoice linked to multiple purchase records from another table
• I want to fill in a delivered date field on the invoice record and fill the purchase records dates using the automation.

Why not use a lookup field? Because sometimes there are partial deliveries or the products are damaged and returned. These would be manually corrected then.

All the best!

[Bill_Felix · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: I am seeing that you said Purchase Items instead of Purchase Orders…
but the same logic should apply

But these records are Linked? If so, are you opposed to using two Automations to achieve this?

I think you can use the Linked Record’s lookup functionality as a variable to Filter (aka become a Trigger). Have a look at this setup:

and

so we have brought over the ‘delivery_date’ from invoices (lookup) but we still have a manual ‘delivery date’ field as well.

So your first automation sets the invoice ‘delivery_date’ and then you have a second View on purchase_orders to serve as the trigger:

Cool. So the trigger is when a record enters this view and now you can set the Action. Yours may be different but I just said ‘invoice’ is not empty & ‘delivery_date from invoices)’ is not empty. Finished? Not quite…

…you have lost the thread between the Invoice and the Purchase Order as you cannot pull in a lookup field into the action:

:thinking: Welcome to Airtable! Now here is your workaround:

You create a new formula field that simply references the lookup field. In my case, ‘dd_in_actions’. Inserting this field as the input to ‘delivery date’ on purchase_orders yeilds:

So you’ll have one Automation that fires once per invoice, and a second Automation that runs for each of the purchase_orders.

From there, you do not have to worry about these automation overwriting your information because they can only be when they “enter the view” (which I hope is once, unless part of your manual process is to reuse POs :grimacing: ).

[Fernando_Martin]

You hit the bullseye! Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. Worked like a charm.

I tend to think on automations pushing data, but your approach of pulling data from the invoice and acting directly on those records made is logical.

Thanks again.

[tahsinh]

Can you discuss an automation that pulls all the purchase orders in the invoice table? Thanks!