Is automations and/or 2-way syncing relationships between bases in the works?

Welcome to the community, @Erik_Swanson! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes:

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this? If you’re looking to jump from one base to another, try the Ctrl-K (Cmd-K on Mac) hotkey. It opens a popup where you can start typing the name of a base. Enter once you’ve got it, and you’re in the other base instantly, without needing to go back to the workspace navigator first.

Actually you can. A scripting action in an automation in one base could call a webhook-triggered automation in another base. I just set this up for a client the other day.

While a webhook-triggered automation could help you pull this off, this could also be done using synced tables. In Base A, create a synced view of the table that you want to duplicate, and sync it to Base B. In Base B you can have an automation that looks for a status change in the synced table and does the duplication and anything else you want. I’ve also set this up for a client.

The 2-way syncing that you mentioned in your post subject is trickier to set up. I haven’t done something like that yet, but it’s probably doable with careful planning.

Airtable devs are notoriously tight-lipped on their development roadmap, so you’re not likely to see an answer here. Some devs are part of the forum, but this is primarily a user community, and we—like you—have no idea about Airtable’s upcoming plans.

Hi,
I just solved the task with 2-way sync “deliver questions to several colleagues, get answers and comments without let them see each other info”. For some additional and historical reasons, each colleague use his own base.
Just sync info to other base, and then sync it back to another table of your base. Use links and lookups to gather info in one table, in case of dynamically changed records, maintain new links update with automation.

There are possible scenarios, when you want to let several persons to change values in the same set of fields in the same base. I would not create separate bases for that, but use shared views of a single base in that case.

I managed to create a very simple one, where a checkbox field in 2 tables in 1 base, sync in 2 directions. Used an automation that creates a record in the 2nd table, including the same ticket number, with a link to the first one. Then 2 other automations that look for a change in the checkbox field, find the record in the other table based on the same ticket number and update that record.

Hi - I’d love to know more about how you did this, Databaser.

My context: I work at an education company and two teams, Instructors and Curriculum, each have their own base. The Curriculum team has a synced view of the Instructor Lectures table from the Instructor base, and they use that to add lessons in the curriculum which should be read before that lecture (so, a linked record that says “this lesson is a prerequisite for this lecture” that links to the synced Lectures table). Now - what I’d like to do is grab that info and port it back to the Instructor’s base, which also has a synced Curriculum Lessons table from the Curriculum base, and automatically have the original Lectures be updated in a column for “prerequisite lessons”.

I’m getting the sense that this kind of 2-way sync is going to need an automation like in this thread, but this is my first time using automations - any advice on how to configure my “Find Records” or “Update Records” actions in the way you’ve described/shown here?

Hi @Lindsey_Berlin and welcome to the community!

Automations only work between tables in the same base. So you would need to split up both automations. One in both bases.

Trigger: when record is updated (the linked field)
Action: find records (in the non-synced table, search for the same records as the one that got linked to in the other base)
Action: update records (update record from step 2 (the find record action) and add the info from the synced table to the non synced table)

Something like that :slightly_smiling_face:

Thank you so much! I tested that approach out a bit yesterday, going to revisit it today - was able to get it set up, and it’s finding the records fine, but I’m messing something up as I try to actually update the records (and the error is very vague). Thanks for the links and the walkthrough though! Glad my approach was valid, just need to get it to actually work