Need to Populate a Linked Record Field with Automation

[Webs]

Big Picture: Im trying to accomplish a process to automatically link records between tables. 

The use case is automating a process where when a user updates their membership in an external system, airtable creates a new membership record and links it to a user account in our airtable database.  Basically our CRM's membership data doesnt talk to AirTable.  So Im using automations to export the data an ingest it into airtable.  Once its ingested, the membership data needs to be linked with a user record in airtable.

The steps I think need to be accomplished.
1. In table A, we Create a record with a {user account number} from a database not linked to airtable.

2. In table B, I want to take the that {user account number} from Table A and match it to a record in Table B.

3. Update a linked record field in Table B with the matched record from step 2.

Im struggling with step 3 in particular.  Both the external database, and the airtable user accounts table have the common "known" {user account number}.  I've seen this question in various forms, but haven't seen any solutions that seems relevant to our use case. Based on what I've read in the forums, I need to use javascript.  I had a look at Make, but that seems more complicated than getting a script written.

TIA

[Stephen_Orr1 · Accepted solution]

You can accomplish this with Airtable's no-code automations. Here's what it would look like:

• Trigger: When a record is created in Table A
• Action: Find Records (to lookup the record in Table B that matches the new entry in table A)
• Action: with conditional logic -> if record found in table B, update the found record to populate the recordID from the trigger record in the linked record field, otherwise (if no record found), create a record in table B with the recordID from the trigger record as the Table A linked record field's value.

Your Find Records step will look for some unique identifier like the account number or email address.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

[Webs · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

Success - Thanks for the help.  I wasnt able to completely follow your instructions to the letter (more than likely I didnt describe my scenario correctly), but you absolutely pointed me in the right direction I needed to go.  The key I was missing was using find to perform the match function.  My final result didnt require the conditional action.