Using Airtable as a database - groups with multiple drop down

[ambermaitland]

Hello everyone. I am using airtable as a database for participants in programs, and every time a student attends a program, we have to make a new record for them instead of being able to hold all the info in one line. 

The reason is because if I make the program field a multiple select drop down (which is linked to another sheet with program information), if I group by program, anyone who has multiple programs in their program field will not appear in the group. 

Is there a smart way around this? At the moment, when students have multiple entries we have a checkbox field for duplicate records. This is inefficient. 

[ScottWorld]

You will need to restructure your database as a many-to-many relationship, which means that you will be using 3 tables instead of 2 tables.

The 3rd table is a "join table", and you can learn more about this here: https://support.airtable.com/docs/understanding-linked-record-relationships-in-airtable

Then, you will do all of your grouping, sorting, and searching from the "join table".

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld