Re: Group By One Name When Multi-Linked

Mari_Goerlich · ‎Mar 25, 2022

New here! I work with a Continuing Education company in Course Logistics. I have a ‘Course Details’ table that has a column “Instructors” which multi-links to a ‘Course Contacts’ table. I’d like to be able to make a grid view where the instructor’s courses are listed under their name (grouped by instructor). This works great if there is only one instructor for the course, but for the courses that have two instructors it puts those courses listed in a separate group together. Is there a way to get the courses listed under each name separately so they don’t miss seeing any of their upcoming courses due to it being put in a separate group? (see screenshot)

ScottWorld · ‎Mar 25, 2022

Welcome to the community, @Mari_Goerlich!

The only way to solve this would be to change the structure of your entire database, by creating a many-to-many relationship between courses and instructors.

Airtable’s instructions on this is located at the first link below, but if you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with this, please feel free to contact me through my website (see 2nd link below).

Mari_Goerlich · ‎Mar 25, 2022

Thank you, Scott! Is this something that can only be done using a junction table? I tried making the instructors their own table with the many to many relationship and that didn’t give me the results I’m looking for either. I haven’t tried a junction table yet. I am not super familiar with how they work but I’ll go watch some YouTube videos…fun times! :winking_face: Thanks again!

ScottWorld · ‎Mar 25, 2022

Yes, the instructors table is a required step, but then you would need to create a 3rd table after that.

That 3rd table is your junction table, which acts as the intersection between instructors & courses.

So you would have 3 tables:

Instructors
Courses
Junction table