How to create a master 'plan' or Kanban pulling same data from different tables

[Ruth_Frost]

Hi

Novice Airtable user question - advice gratefully received.

I want to create a master ‘to do list’ - which I will primarily view as Kanban - which I can both add new ‘tasks’ and also pull in items from other tables; using the status field in the other tables to then organise the master to do list. The Airtable is helping me with my professional development covering working on a new business idea, networking, job hunting, writing etc.

1. What is the cleanest way to create a grid that has ‘new items’ and linked records?
2. How can I pull records in from multiple other tables into my master plan and create a status field in the master document that pulls from the status fields in the separate tables? So I might have some networking activities to do, some writing to finish, a job to apply for etc - each of these are currently in separate tables?

I hope that makes sense.

As a note, the sub tables (job hunting, writing etc.) aren’t just about ‘tasks’ - as they serve as repositories of information etc. also. But they do all have a status field which is what I’m hoping to use as the connecting field into the master plan.

[Zach_Manzi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ruth_Frost,

Welcome to the Airtable Community! It sounds like your goal of task tracking could be accomplished with one table with multiple views. In Airtable, it’s a best practice for information of the same ‘species’ to live within one table. So, if you’re looking to track tasks, even if they’re of different categories, I’d recommend having them in one ‘tasks’ table. Then, you can differentiate among them by category and status using single select fields. The kanban view is built with a single select field, so you could determine the structure of your kanban using the status field. You can also make views for each status and/or category if you like, among other conditions like filters and groups.

In regard to having repositories of information related to the categories and tasks, I would suggest creating separate tables for these and using linked record fields in your tasks table to link them.