Gathering Data from 1 Table into Another

[LaurenMaine]

Hello--

We're developing an Affiliate program where the affiliates offer a free month on our app. We're gathering new user data from Typeform forms that are automatically dropping in the information into different Airtable sheets as shown below.

I'd like for all of the new users to then be put into another table that I can sort by start date, but I'm not sure how to do that.  Thanks in advance!

[VikasVimal]

I see a table name 'Danny'. Are you creating separate table for each affiliate?

That's not a very good use of a database and will lead to issues later. 

1 (Your way): Ensure each affiliate table has EXACTLY the same field names that you want to copy data from into All signups table. Set a separate automation for each table: When new record created in, say, 'Danny', create a new record in 'All' table. Note that this will consume automations. You can use scripts, but scripts will not handle a field name difference Across all tables by as much as one extra space. If you need a new field, you'll need to do add it in all the affiliate tables. More headache overall.

2 (my way): Get rid of 'Danny' table. Update the Typeform to contain a URL parameter '?referrer=Danny'. Then create all records in 'All' table, and fill a source/referrer field with the url parameter that comes with the form submission. Or generate separate typeforms for each affiliate and fill in the text value as their name whenever a submission is received from their link.

[matthew_b]

Hi!

As @VikasVimal mentioned, if you have more than 2 or 3 affiliates, you may want to reconsider your base architecture.

Instead of using separate tables for each affiliate you could put all form submissions into a single table and then use Airtable views to work with the data. For example, you could create a view that only shows Danny's submissions and so on and so forth.

If you do decide you'd like to keep the same architecture, you could use Airtable Automations to take data from each table and send it to an "everything". The automation would be something along the lines of:

• When a new record gets created in the "Danny" table, create a new record in the "everything" table.

You would then repeat that automation for each child table.

[LaurenMaine]

Hi all-- Thanks so much. Yeah it doesn't make sense the way I had it. The problem is that with a separate Typeform for each affiliate, I can't figure out how to dump the name selected (I just added a question on the Typeform like, please select the name below of who referred you --with just 1 name option) into the same field in Airtable. Typeform is giving me an error because the two lists for that question need to be aligned exactly, but we don't want to give users a list of 10-20 affiliates to choose from on the Typeform question. Unless I'm totally missing how to do it. I couldn't figure out how to add the URL parameter... 

[LaurenMaine · Accepted solution]

Here's what I ended up doing. I made the field in Typeform a text field which isn't ideal because people may type the affiliate's names incorrectly, but that way I can keep it all in 1 table in Airtable and correct mistakes as I see them.  This will work perfectly for me now. Thanks for the sanity, all!

[matthew_b]

awesome!