Ability to see which fields and views rely on a given field

[Roman_Scher]

It would be amazing to be able to see which fields and views rely on a given field (via linkages, formulas, and filters). Currently when we want to change a field’s type, format, values, or delete the field altogether, we are blind to which other fields or views will be impacted by that change.

To help address this for our bases, we have built a separate metadata base to visually map all the metadata of our other bases. We have a nightly process that crawls the schema of our bases and builds out a map of all Bases, Tables, Fields and Views, including which fields directly rely on other fields. Now, whenever we make a change to a field, we always check the metadata base to understand what other fields and parts of the system will be impacted, so we can ensure there are no hidden breakages and the base continues to work as expected.

[Michael_Berman]

This is an awesome idea! Have to put some though into how the dependents would be presented, but I’ve dragging a lot of junk around because I don’t remember if it affects anything important…

[Arlo_Haskell]

YES. A big +1 to this idea.

I’ve been using Airtable for almost two years now. I’ve learned A LOT and my base has grown A LOT. I’m now at the point where I know how to do things, especially with formula fields, much better and cleaner than when I started.

Some of my tables have over 100 fields and it has become very hard to keep track of which ones are still performing important functions and which fields were experiments that never panned out or that I improved on later. I want to start to “clean up” or “optimize” my base, removing and/or combining redundant fields.

I’d love to be able to look at field X and know that fields A, B, and C all rely on it; or, alternately, that no other fields rely on X and that, therefore, X can be deleted without causing unintended breakages elsewhere.

[Optimi]

Roman_Scher:

We have a nightly process that crawls the schema of our bases and builds out a map of all Bases, Tables, Fields and Views, including which fields directly rely on other fields.

@Roman_Scher how did you do this?