Can an "update record" automation link multiple records in one "Link to another record" field?

[Erin_Laird]

I’m trying to create an automation that finds Coaching IDs in one table and then links them all together in a “Master” sheet. Basically, every time a coaching session happens for a participant, I want all of their data linked so I can see everything about their coaching progress. Right now, when my automation runs it finds the newest instance of that ID and then replaces the previous “link to another record” with the newest one it finds, but what I want is for it to add it to this so there are multiple records there.

Table of coaching information (Please ignore the coach names, I made this as an example and used my dog’s nicknames for a bunch of the examples):

What I want to happen is the one that says EL1103 (I did that manually) but what usually happens when it runs is that it replaces the previous one with the newest one so there is only one link (like in the second record JG0904)

I’m unsure if it’s even possible to do this so I wanted to ask. I would just do a work around where I have a ton of “Link to another record” fields but I don’t know how many coaching sessions one person will get. I can of course alternatively do this manually but at some point this study will likely have 100s of participants with at least 50 coaching sessions each so I was hoping to automate this.

[Kamille_Parks]

Issue with Automatically Updating Linked Field Automations

For any array type field: if you don’t want to override the current array with a new value and instead simply append the new value to the existing array, you need to include the value of the existing array then add a comma then add the new value to the end.

[David_Galetar]

Hello Airtable World!

So, as the title says, I’m trying to link 2 tables with an automation! I feel like I’m 95% there… but…

I have table1: Customers & table2: Vehicles

Obviously, 1 Customer can own MANY Vehicles. While each Vehicle can only have ONE Customer.

So, I have it so that when a Vehicle is added to the Vehicles table, it comes in WITH the Customer number (using zappier).

The automation then finds the Customer’s name from the Customers table and adds the name to the Vehicles table.

The problem is when I then try and reciprocate. IF a Customer has more than ONE Vehicle, the automation ‘overwrites’ any previous entries.

Oh, and please, I’m on the free version, so no ‘code’ or anything that I can’t access. And I’m very new, so explanations & screenshots are VERY welcomed!

And that is where I’m stuck! I’m gonna run and put together some screenshots that might help.

So until then, THANKS for your time!

dg

[kuovonne]

When you have linked record fields that join two tables, you can update the link from either table, and the corresponding “backlink” in the other table will update.

Since you are updating the linked record field from the [Vehicles] side, you do not need to also update the linked field in the [Customers] table. Airtable will do that for you, and you won’t loose any existing vehicles.