Limit choices for time slots

[Piano_Sensei]

I want to have people sign up for time slots. Can I have it remove each one for the next person? In other words, say the options are 1:00, 1:10, 1:20, 1:30, etc. When someone fills out the form and chooses 1:00, can I have it removed from the options for the next person so each time slot only gets one person?

[ScottWorld]

Yes, if you use a linked record field for people to choose available time slots from another table.

So your first table would be people, and your second table would be time slots.

In the time slots table, you would have to create all the time slots ahead of time as individual records, and then create a view which is filtered to only show you records that don’t yet have any people linked to them from your people table.

Then, use that filtered time slots view as the conditional criteria for the linked records field in the People table.

[Piano_Sensei]

Thanks! I read that 5 times and I’m still overwhelmed, haha! How do people “sign up?” I need to create a form view, right? So which one is the form? The people or the time slots? And that would mean anyone can choose a person and assign them a time slot? That could be troublesome. . .

[ScottWorld]

I don’t know enough about what you’re trying to accomplish, but if it’s the general public signing up, then you would want to create a form view. Ideally, the form would be created in the people table for the most simplicity, but it could be from any other table that you would link to time slots.

[Piano_Sensei]

Ok then let me tell you what I’m trying to do. It’s a music festival where students sign up and play their piece of music for a judge and get a rating and an award. Instead of just assigning everyone a time, (which creates problems because some people want specific times and there are hundreds of people), I thought it would be great if they signed themselves up for a time slot. But obviously there can only be one person per time slot with the judge. So ideally this is what I want to happen: they fill out the form where they enter their name (and other info) and then choose a time slot like 1:00 or 1:10 or 1:20, etc. But obviously once they choose it, it needs to go away from the options so someone else doesn’t choose the same time slot.

[ScottWorld]

Just follow my steps above.

[Piano_Sensei]

I tried, but I’m still confused. How do they enter their names if they’re choosing names from a table?

[ScottWorld]

I would probably just have them type in their names into a text field, because you can’t have them choose their names from a table unless you shake some things up. You would typically need to create a 3rd table — a junction table — that links to both of the other tables. This would require you to create a many-to-many relationship, which is explained in the support article below.

Alternatively, you could even stick with 2 tables and put all the names in a single select field. But that is really clunky, so I wouldn’t recommend that.

I would probably just have them type in their names into a text field. You could even do it all from a different table if you wanted to, and then after the form submission, you could either link the newly-submitted record to the original Students table, or automate the data to show up in the Students table.

Remember that each new form submission creates a new record, so you would want to design your base around that concept.

Airtable Support

Airtable's guide to many-to-many relationships

What sets Airtable apart from ordinary spreadsheet applications is its ability to link related concepts together. Knowing how to represent the relationships between different groups of objects can ...

[Piano_Sensei]

Ok, but how do the time slots disappear once someone chooses one?

[ScottWorld]

As I mentioned above, you will need to limit the linked record selection to a view:

Airtable Support

Limiting linked record selection to a view

You may have seen the option to "Limit record selection to a view" in the field customization window of a linked record field. This article will walk you through the ins and outs of this feature. ...