Filtered group or junction table?

[Cycle_Cycle]

:wave: Hey there!

Im trying to learn more about Airtable best practice in terms of overall schema/base design and structure. My question is: How can I more quickly add data to tables and cut out some manual work? Here’s the specific context.

I currently have a document with three tables

1. Students (Database table, one record per student)
2. Classes (Database table, one record per class)
3. Enrollments (Junction table, handling the many-many relationships between students and classes)

Currently, the junction table only has three columns (Name, Student, Class)

But to add a New Enrollment, it feels very clunky and like there is a lot of manual work. You have to select both the student and the class each time.

• What If I need to add a lot of students to classes at once? Is there any easy way to do that? For example, could I batch select 35 students and with one action add them all to a target class?
• What if I want to continually add x amount of students to the beginner class? Is there an easy way to not have to keep selecting the beginner record in the class column every time? For example, could I set a “value for new records” so every time I create a new record, it populates the class with the desired selection and then all I have to select is the student?
  • I know I can do that with an automation, but I need the solution to be more agile. Because in 1 minute I may add 15 students to a beginner class, and then 5 minutes later I may add 20 students to the intermediate class

Here’s how Im currently doing it, but it still feels like a lot of clicks

[Kamille_Parks]

Cycle_Cycle:

Is there any easy way to do that? For example, could I batch select 35 students and with one action add them all to a target class?

I made the Junction Assistant App, and what you described is one of its features. The feature is called “Quick Select” and is described in this help article .

Airtable

Junction Assistant - Apps - Airtable Marketplace

Quickly build junction table records linked to one or many records on Airtable with the Junction Assistant app.

Here’s a video demo of the app in action.

[Cycle_Cycle]

Thanks for that! I’ve seen the app and might end up using it but still trying to get a feel for Airtable capabilities without add on apps.

Anyone else have thoughts?

Thanks!

[Kamille_Parks · Accepted solution]

Your closest bet using native Airtable functionality without some sort of Script or Automation would be to:

1. Create a Grid View in your Enrollments Table that is grouped by the {Class} field,
2. Select a cell in the last record of whatever group you’re trying to add to
3. Hit SHIFT+ENTER a bunch of times to make new records. These will come in with that {Class} prefilled with whatever the group value is
4. Go back and fill in the student for each of those records

This is also annoying, but is less annoying than the workflow shown in your example using Gallery view.

[Cycle_Cycle]

Ooooooooo that is annoying for sure - but also better than what I was doing. I’ll for sure check out your junction app!