Creating a field that lists what is linked to

[JasonF]

This is a tough one to describe in one sentence. Basically, I have a group of people who “sponsor” one another. There is no real hierarchy. Person A could sponsor Person B who could sponsor Person C who could Sponsor Person A. Some Sponsors might have multiple Sponsees.

So I have one field, “Name”, and another Field “Their Sponsor” that links to the Name field. So I can see each Sponsee’s Sponsor, and what I would like is a way to see each Sponsor’s Sponsees, ideally in the same table. And, ideally, when the field “Their Sponsor” is updated, the “Sponsor’s Sponsees” field is automatically updated.

Thanks in advance.

[Expatica_Team]

Look at us having the exact same problem at exactly the same time.

[JonathanBowen · Accepted solution]

Hi @JasonF - have a look at this post - you can use Airtable Automations to make reciprocal links:

Handling Spouses in CRM Base design

Hi @Marketing_Team - I would recommend option 1 where joint donors are separated and you can track them as individuals. But, to keep track of the fact that they are related I would have a linked column from the table to itself - like this: [Screenshot 2021-03-13 at 17.09.20] What you can also do if you have access to Airtable automations is “complete the circle” so that when you link Jenny to Jim, the link reciprocal link is automatically made: [spouse-link] There might be some work to do …

[JasonF]

Thank you, Jonathan. It looks like Automation is what I am looking for. I can’t quite work out a solution with automation (because the update record action doesn’t allowing adding to a record, only replacing), but I think that’s a subject for another thread.

[JasonF]

For those interested, that problem [update record action doesn’t allowing adding to a record, only replacing] has been solved :

Update Record step to append a record into a list of linked records rather than overwriting existing... Automations

Though I had to make some changes to get around the fact that Airtable saves a linked record as the record ID and not the string that is seen, and therefore the automation was failing. At first I created a formula field that was simply a copy of the linked record field I wanted to add a record to - in my case {All Employers}. In the automation I did as you said, but the automation was failing I think b/c AT failed to match the comma to a record in the linked table (screen shot of error message …