Process Critique / Automatic Record Population

Brett_Cannon · ‎May 01, 2019

First describing my goal and the way I’m trying to setup my tables, so looking for a critique on the process (maybe there’s a better way I could be doing this?) but also looking for a direct answer in regards to auto populating a record when added through a linked table.

Goal: Every year I put a conference together and I want to make the booking process easier by having a full database of past speakers, years they spoke, and targets for next years’ conference in terms of who I want to speak.

I created a “Speakers” table, which has the names and all of the contact information about each speaker. I also created a “Years Spoke” table, which lists all of the years I’ve done the conference.
I also created an intermediary table, which I’m calling “Master List” which will list all of the speakers, years they’ve spoke and gives me the ability to quickly sort the list by years spoke, etc.

Am I building this process correctly?

When I add the name of a speaker in the “Speakers” table, I want it to auto-populate in the “Master List” table. How can I do this?

JonathanBowen · ‎May 01, 2019

Hi @Brett_Cannon - Lots of ways to do this but I would approach this base in this way:

3 tables - one for speakers, one for conferences and one that joins speakers to conferences:

This structure allows you to capture speaker, conference and speech information independently, but by linking the tables information in one table can be linked to or looked up in another. It also allows for variances in some attributes over time, e.g. a speaker may not always deliver the same subject matter every year. Sorting and grouping can be used to get the appropriate views of the data for your process.

Your “Master List” table is a bit like my Conference Speakers table, but I’m not sure what you mean by:

In my example, the table links allow you to populate the speaker field with an existing speaker rather than auto-populating.

Hope this helps

JB