Help

Adding daily updates to item in base

Topic Labels: Base design
1414 2
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Gary_Hanes
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

I am trying to set up a base to track animals that are brought to a disaster relief center for care. It was fairly easy to create all of the fields that we need to record such as animal ID or breed. What I am having trouble figuring out his how can I set up a field where we enter daily updates about each patient? Is that simply a field with multiple lines available? Is there a way to automatically insert a date for each entry and also include descriptions of the update?

2 Replies 2

Welcome to the community, @Gary_Hanes! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: I recommend creating a separate [Updates] table for daily updates. Each record in that table would be a single daily update for a single animal (linked to that animal’s record). When looking at the animal record in the [Animals] table (guessing the name), you would see links to all of its updates. You could create a formula field in this [Updates] table to create a clean formatted version of each update including the date and notes, then add a rollup field in [Animals] that aggregates all of these formatted updates using the ARRAYJOIN() function.

You sound very knowledgeable about Airtable. I’m new at this and a veterinarian by training so I don’t have a lot of experience with database software. When you refer to an Updates table, are you referring to a new field in the patient’s record or starting a new Base? Not sure about formulas either.

If you would consider a phone consultation, I am willing to offer to pay for some help. I live in California and most evenings are free (6:30-10pm PDT). Perhaps there’s a way to share the database online to explain things. If not, I appreciate your input.