Automatically Select Drop Down

[Rachael_Castela]

Hey team!

When a new record is added, I would like for a drop down option to be automatically selected.

For example: When the record for Aqua Lily Pad is added, I’d like “Inventory Arrived?” to automatically select “Inventory Not Arrived” (option not shown) and “Program Status” to be “In Program”.

Is this possible?

[Databaser]

Hi @Rachael_Castelaz

If you have a paid version, you can do this easily with the automation option. Select the trigger “when a record matches conditions” and set the condition to the “Vendors” field (“when Vendors contains/is Aqua Lily Pad”). Then choose the action “update record”, select the 2 fields en fill in the value you want to see appearing.

[Rachael_Castela]

Thanks! A few things:

There will be multiple vendors added periodically, so what I’d like it to say is… “when any vendor is added (through the form view), those two drop downs columns will automatically be selected with their specific selections”

And then I’ll assume if we wanted to update the drop downs after they were automatically selected (ex moving from Inventory Not Arrived to Inventory Arrived), they could manually make that change? Or would it always automatically revert back?

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Hi @Rachael_Castelaz ,

I could be wrong, but I think using the trigger @Databaser suggested will indeed cause the value of those fields to automatically change back to “Inventory Not Arrived” and “In Program” if you were to try to manually change them, because the record would still meet the trigger condition of having the Vendor field contain “Aqua Lily Pad”.

@Databaser is right, though, that Automations are what you want to use to accomplish this. I think you’ll want to use the “When record created” trigger, since that will only ever trigger once for any given record.

However, to accomplish the “logic” you are wanting, I think you are going to have to use the “Run script” action. Since you can’t use the trigger to apply your Vendor field logic, and the other action options don’t allow for any logic or conditions, the only option is to use a script – and this means writing some JavaScript with Airtable’s scripting API’s.

If you’re new to coding/javascript, this may feel intimidating, but it’s not as bad as it might seem. I’d suggest heading that direction, and working through learning how to implement this as javascript in a script action. It will be entirely worth your time to learn how to do this, because it will open up all kinds of new possibilities within Airtable if you can learn how to do a little scripting! And there are plenty of helpful people on these forums who are willing to answer your questions and help you work out exactly how to accomplish this as you go along :slightly_smiling_face:

[Databaser]

I’m in doubt. If I understand @Rachael_Castelaz correctly, any newly added record needs to trigger an automation that fills in the other fields. If that input is always the same (eg “inventory arrived” and “in program”), then a automation would work fine. If you want different input depending on the vendor, then you would have to make multiple automations (1 per vendor) or, like @Jeremy_Oglesby mentioned, turn to scripting.

I also wonder why your primary field is a formula field and eg not a “single line text” field, as the vendors are inputted via a form?

Oh, and yes, you can change the select field after an automation has filled it in for you, but, as @Jeremy_Oglesby also mentioned, it depends on the type of trigger.