Setting Up Rules

[Katelyn_Hill]

Can anyone provide some input on how I would go about creating a rule between tables? In my situation, I am attempting to pair students to jobs available. I have the two tables linked, but would like to set a rule that once a student has been “assigned”/linked to a position on the other table, that the move from the “unassigned” column to the “completed” column.

Another way that this may be able to work is if there is a way to limit the number of times each record can be linked. In this situation, we only want one student to be allowed to be linked to one job.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Hi @Katelyn_Hill – I think there are a couple ways you could handle this, but it is definitely possible to limit linked records to a single, one-to-one, or one-to-many relationship.

In the options for your linked record field, where you are linking Students to to Jobs, just switch off “Allow linking to multiple records”:

[Katelyn_Hill]

Thank you for your reply! My challenge here is that I do want to be able to select multiple records to link, but once those records are selected on one record/card, I don’t want them to be selected/linked again on another record. Hopefully that makes sense…but I’m not sure if this is possible to set up.

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

I think I understand, and if I do, then this is what my proposal solves. You only want to switch this multiple links option off on the Student side of the linked record relationship (the field that establishes this link in the Student table). On the Job side of the relationship, you can leave the multiple links option on, so that you can still link multiple students to one job.

Does that make sense?

If that still doesn’t do what you are wanting, we can explore other options.

[Katelyn_Hill]

I think that solves the problem in a sense, but I was hoping that there is a way that when a student is chosen to be paired with one job, they aren’t allowed to be chosen for another. When I tried that, it doesn’t seem that it is possible. But I am certainly open to other options or suggestions! I am very new to Airtable, so am learning a lot.

[Jeremy_Oglesby · Accepted solution]

Ah, I see — you are choosing Students to link from the Jobs table, not the other way around.

Ya, that’s an annoying little bug in Airtable.

So next step is to do this:

• Create a new View in your Students table, and filter this view with the filter menu at the top such that it only shows Students where the Job field is Empty
• In the options for the Linked record field in the Jobs table, where you are selecting Students for jobs, select “Limit options to a particular view”, and select this new View that you just created

I think that will get you at least closer to what you are wanting.

[Katelyn_Hill]

That definitely is helpful! Thank you so much for your time and help!