Linking One Column of Records to multiple tables

[Mollie_Turbak]

Hello! I am trying to figure out a way to link 1 column of records to multiple tables. For example, I have a master list of students on one table and have additional tables of info that I would like to link to the master list so that when I add or delete a student on the master list, it adds or deletes that record on all of the other tables. Is there a way to do this?

[ScottWorld]

That is not possible, because Airtable has no automations built into the platform. Everything in Airtable is triggered manually by the user.

Automations are all handled by external tools, and partial automations can be handled by JavaScript.

You could create some JavaScript scripts to do this and then manually trigger those JavaScript scripts from within Airtable, but they wouldn’t run automatically based on adding or deleting students.

If you wanted to fully automate this process, you would need to turn to On2Air: Actions, which works in conjunction with Zapier. On2Air Actions is the only tool available which triggers automations based on deleting records.

If you don’t care about the deletion of records, you could turn to Integromat, which I consider to be the vastly-superior platform to Zapier.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’re looking to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you out with this project, feel free to send me a private message! :slightly_smiling_face:

[Justin_Barrett]

Welcome to the community, @Mollie_Turbak! :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: If you really want a multiple-table solution, then @ScottWorld has great ideas. However, tracking different info for the same students across multiple tables isn’t very efficient. I suggest putting everything into a single table, and using filtered views to control what’s seen at a given time.

I teach an online class, and that’s how I have my class database set up. I have one table named [Students] that contains all student info, and that table has about a dozen different views. One view is where I enter all key student info: first name, last name, student ID, etc. Another view is where I keep track of the grades for extra credit challenges they’ve submitted. A few other views are used for more complex grading in certain weeks of the course. All told, I’ve got 80 fields used in various ways across all views, but it’s all for the same set of student records. When I’m looking at the record for John Smith in the main data view, it’s the same John Smith record that I see in the Extra Credit view, only with different fields showing.

To read more about using Views in Airtable, check out this page:

Airtable - Support

Guide to views

This article provides an overview of views within Airtable—what they are, why they're important, and how to make new ones. This article is primarily focused on grid views—to learn more about our ot...

[ScottWorld]

Very true what @Justin_Barrett said!

@Mollie_Turbak, I never considered the possibility that your tables might not be setup properly to begin with. Be 100% sure that you have the proper database & table structure for your system, to make your life much easier moving forward! @Justin_Barrett has given you some wonderful information & resources.

[Heather_Hale]

I have the same question/need:

My Use Case = I want to know the referral source(s) and sometimes that's a person (from my People table) and other times it's a Company. I'd love ALL the referral sources to be linked into one column. 

I'm curious @Mollie_Turbak if you figured out a solution in the past three years? (i.e.: one you figured out how to do natively in Airtable without resorting to integrating third party apps or hiring a consultant to custom build for you)