Two Way Sync - Walk Through Help

[Drew_Nemer]

I have seen several posts with different solutions on how to sync the bases two ways, but none really to fit what I hope to do.

So I have this one base where our leasing officers are tracking our lease-ups with one “Status” field used to track the Status of the process.

One of the status is “W9 Review”. I created a special view where it is synced to another base where our Property Owner Data Manager will review the W9 and mark approval or denial.

[I want it to be another base because our Data Manager has other unrelated tasks on their base that I want to keep separate from the other department]

So I synced the base to the other table and added another field where they can mark approve or deny and also an attachment field where they can put in a form or document.

I want these two additional fields to be then sync back to the other base upon approval, update the original base Status from “W9 Review” to “W9 Approved” based off of the trigger/automation/script set by the approval status on the Data Manager Base [Child Base] table.

Is this possible? What is the best method? A button with a script? is there an automation? or perhaps is there a way to have a button or script send a record to the Data Manager and then he presses a button on his end that sends it back and updates the field based on relating the fields.

[ScottWorld]

You would have to script this or use an external automation tool like Make.com.

However, there might be a different workflow that may (or may not) work for you, and could be setup in just a few seconds of your time.

Instead of worrying about synchronizing the data back to the original record, you could just add a button to the destination record that “opens the source record”.

Your user could click on that button, and that will jump him back into the original record (in the original base), and he can manually approve or deny there — as well as uploading the attachment.

So, the person would still be jumping back to the original base, but it would be quick & painless for him to do so.

[Drew_Nemer]

Hello,

The button for original source record is an option on the table, it isn’t perfect because I was hoping to learn the solution with a script or an external automation tool if another situation arises for a new base down the line.

I signed up for Make.com, but I am not sure exactly how to employ this type of action. How would I make it work through Make.com?

Drew

[ScottWorld]

Yeah, setting it up via scripting or Make would be a relatively lengthy process.

Setting it up via Make would take me at least an hour or two to setup, so it would be way too much for me to outline here for free. (If your company has a budget to hire a consultant, please feel free to contact me through my Airtable consulting website.)

In general, though, you would want to grab both the Record ID from the destination table, and the Record ID from the original record in the original table (which you could get by pulling that information into your sync destination table).

Then, you would update the original record with values that you pull from the record in the destination table.

And you could trigger it all on a schedule, or you could trigger it immediately by having an Integromat webhook that is waiting to be called.

[Kamille_Parks · Accepted solution]

A simpler solution would be to create a separate table in your original base called “W9 Approvals”. That form will have a Link Records field to select the original W9, a single select with “approve” or “deny” as options, your other attachment field, and any other data you want to attach to the approval.

Your synced table will just have a link to that form with the W9 record prefilled.

From there a simple Automation or Make scenario could update the status field, or you could just use a Lookup to pull in the linked Approval record’s single select field. Use lookups for the attachment was well.

[ScottWorld]

Good idea! Nice and simple!