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Hi AirTable community! I have a problem that I can't, for the life of me, find a solution to.

I have an Event table that includes a linked column for Personnel attending the event. I also have a separate table where I have profiles for each person for each event ("Travel needs"). So, if Event A has Person 1, Person 2, and Person 3 attending, then the Travel needs table would have 3 profiles in it: Event A:Person 1, Event A:Person 2, and Event A:Person 3.

I am trying to create an automation where, if I add a person in the linked Personnel column of an event, it automatically creates a Travel needs profile for that person for that event. The problem is, if I add Person 1, then it generates Travel need record: Event A:Person 1. But then I wait a moment, and add Person 2, and it generates: Event A: Person 1 (again), Event, A:Person 2. It creates new records for every single Person linked to the Event, not just the new ones.

I've tried using Find Records in my automation, but I can't seem to get them to work. I feel like this must be doable though! Thank you in advance to anyone who can help!

You're on the right track! To avoid duplicate records, you need to check if a Travel Needs profile already exists before creating a new one.

Try this:

  1. Use "Find Records" to check if a Travel Needs profile for that event and person already exists.
  2. Only create a new record if no matching record is found.

This should reduce duplicates!

Need help setting this up fully? Let me know, and I’ll guide you through the rest!

Hi Marvel, thank you for this. The problem I'm running into when I try to build a Find Records step like that is that I can add the condition for the Event contains Event Title, but I can't seem to make the condition for Attendee contains Personnel (the name of the cell for all the attendees linked to that event record). I wonder if this is because it's a linked field that allows linking of multiple records, but there's no way around that for what we need.

 

 

Hi Marvel, thank you for this. The problem I'm running into when I try to build a Find Records step like that is that I can add the condition for the Event contains Event Title, but I can't seem to make the condition for Attendee contains Personnel (the name of the cell for all the attendees linked to that event record). I wonder if this is because it's a linked field that allows linking of multiple records, but there's no way around that for what we need.

 

 


You're right—the issue comes from the linked field allowing multiple records. Airtable’s Find Records doesn’t directly check if a specific person exists inside a multi-link field. But here’s a workaround:

  1. Use "Find Records" to get all Travel Needs records for that event.
  2. Use a conditional action: Convert the found records into text and check if the new person’s name exists inside it.
  3. Only create a new record if the name is not already there.

If this still feels tricky, let me know, and I’ll guide you through it step by step!

A step by step guide would be incredible, thank you! Specifically for:

Use a conditional action: Convert the found records into text and check if the new person’s name exists inside it.

Can this all be done within the automation? Or will it require actually creating a new field in the table?

A step by step guide would be incredible, thank you! Specifically for:

Use a conditional action: Convert the found records into text and check if the new person’s name exists inside it.

Can this all be done within the automation? Or will it require actually creating a new field in the table?


You're welcome! this can all be done within the automation without needing a new field! You can use a conditional action to check if the new person’s name exists inside the list of found records.

 Let me know how you’d like to proceed with the step-by-step guide

Right, I'm stuck on which action it would be?

 

 

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