How do I create a field that can be edited in both tables?

[JulianStrong]

Hi so I’m pretty new to airtable and I was wondering the following:

We have a CRM with a Leads Table and a Sales Calls table. The sales calls now have linked fields to the names of the leads. But I would like to be able to adjust the status of a lead in the Sales Calls table as well.

However, I see that when I use a lookup field, it only get the status from the Leads Table, and I’m not allowed to adjust the status in the Sales Calls Table. Is there a solution for this, so that the two are linked and I’m able to change them in either table?

Thanks!

[Justin_Barrett]

Welcome to the community, Julian! Unfortunately the kind of functionality you’re seeking isn’t currently possible. As you’ve found, a field can be either manually editable, or pull its data from somewhere else via a lookup, rollup, formula, etc., but not both at once.

The only way where you can have two points (A and B) to modify the same data is if the data isn’t actually stored with either A or B, but is actually stored in a separate location ©. In that case, A and B simply become interfaces, both referencing and modifying the data stored in C. Unfortunately Airtable doesn’t work that way. To allow data to be manually edited in a field, it has to be stored in that field.

[JulianStrong]

Thanks for responding. So would it be possible to let the field in table B influence a field in table A, but that I would still be able to manually select a dropdown option in the field from table A if I wanted to?

And how would I go about doing this?

[Julian_Kirkness]

Hi Julian

You could do this with Integromat or Zapier (I prefer Integromat personally). It wouldn’t be instant (because Airtable can’t trigger either app instantly at the moment) but would work - trigger on a new Sales Call record and then use an update step to update the connected Lead.

You may need to use a view to filter for records where the Status is not blank - then use a trigger based on this view rather than the table itself. In this way, if you add a status in the Sales Call record you would update the related Lead.

Hope this helps?

Julian

[Justin_Barrett]

As I said in my initial response, this isn’t possible. To have the field in table A be influenced by the field in table B, the field in A has to be a lookup, rollup, formula, etc. Those are reactionary field types. The data isn’t pushed from B into A. A reacts based on what happens in B. However, a field can only be a single type. It can’t be both reactionary and manual entry. The suggestion from @Julian_Kirkness might work, though, because it doesn’t rely on Airtable’s own field behavior.

[Elias_Gomez_Sai]

Some ideas:

• What about adding the calls from the Leads table?
• You could make the Status of the Lead a formula, depending on data from Calls table (I do this on my Events management base).
• The third one is the @Julian_Kirkness suggestion hehe.

[Tristan_Scifo]

Hey all, I’m also looking for this functionality. We’re moving across from Monday.com where this feature is already available. It would be great to see this feature of two-way mirroring available in Airtable too.