Searching Base for any records that clash

[YargJay]

Hi there!

I'm building a booking system for a Go Kart hire company. I need to be able to detect if a new booking I am making will clash with other bookings.

I have a date field "Date" and multi-select "Race Time" field (with races or selections every 10 mins starting at 9:00am up until 9:00pm). It needs to be multi-select to avoid mis-spellings.

I would need an automation or formula that lets me know if any bookings are clashing based on both the Date and Race Times. I have also considered Make.com (Integromat) but I can't quite get the Airtable functions right it seems.

It would also need to be able to indicate which record the booking is clashing with.

Is there any way to do this?

[kuovonne]

It is possible to do this with an automation script. You would probably need a script that is customized to your base. Of the different options, a script is the method I would personally choose. This script would not be a good fit for someone new to writing code.

It is also possible to do this with Make.com, although building the logic in the Make scenario may require the skills of a developer who is familiar with both Make and Airtable. There are at least two different ways of identifying the conflicting records. One method requires building an Airtable formula with REGEX patterns, which can be tricky. The other method requires splitting your multi-select into different values, looping to search on each value, and then combining the results of the different searches and removing duplicates.

You cannot do this with Airtable formulas, as formulas do not work across records/rows.