Embedded View options for Linked tables and better record picker

[Nathaniel_Hamme]

Hi All,

Airtable definitely needs a way to change the record picker when using linked records from a synced table(or any table for that matter) or even allow a better search mechanism when picking those records. Right now you can search your linked records but not using any criteria of the lookup fields associated with them.
Example would be that I have an Employee’s Full Names associated with an Employee ID #. When using the record picker, I can only search by the employee’s ID Number, No criteria matching that employee (First Name , Last Name). I have 250 IDs on file and have to add 20-50 records at a time with data. I cant memorize every employee ID. See Below trying to search with criteria shown in the record picker window

I also just learned that if you use a synced table and change the view on that synced table it also changes all the data on ALL other tables that was attached to it. Example: I have employees directory that keeps track of Employee information specifically if they are active or inactive. I have that table synced to another base that keeps track of all employee time on jobs. I have around 8000 records and over 3 years of data. When I changed to synced table view to only show active employees, all of my inactive employees employee data from another table was lost. The record existed but the employee data had vanished. Around 3000 records were gone by filtering a shared tables data.

[Kamille_Parks]

Nathaniel_Hammersmit:

When I changed to synced table view to only show active employees, all of my inactive employees employee data from another table was lost.

Did you enable the Record Retention feature? Airtable has a specific option when setting up your sync to leave record in place in the synced table if they were removed from the original source View. Also, it is generally best practice to not to change the configuration settings of a view controlling a synced table anyway.

Airtable Support

Airtable Sync - Advanced options

Watch a training! Get started faster with Airtable Sync   Introduction After reading through the support article on Airtable Sync's basic setup, it may be worth your time to dive into some of ...

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EDIT: I believe I misunderstood your issue. Best practice is still to configure a source view for syncing and then lock it as the support article suggests, but data loss is still a potential issue if a record is filtered/deleted out of a synced view.

[Nathaniel_Hamme]

Kamille,

Thank you for that article! that should help! After I did lose some of the data I found the locking feature of the sync table then went through all my bases and locked the configurations.

The whole reason I was having an issue with what I was viewing was because the way the record picker acts. On my other data base systems similar to this , i.e QuickBase, I was able to configure a record picker based on a related table that housed all the data but was filtered out through the use of an embedded table. This was really useful when dealing with large amount of data. We for example, one have Jobs that have five work orders created for every job. To help with data entry, I was able to only show open work orders that needed to be closed eliminating data duplication and making the data entry side more efficient.
It would be nice to be able to search anything related to that record in the record picker, and/or setup the record picker to be able to filter out data that is no longer relevant ie a job is closed, and employee is inactive ect.

Thank you for your response!

[Kamille_Parks]

Nathaniel_Hammersmit:

It would be nice to be able to search anything related to that record in the record picker,

While this isn’t possible…

Nathaniel_Hammersmit:

or setup the record picker to be able to filter out data that is no longer relevant ie a job is closed, and employee is inactive ect.

This is. Change the link field’s configuration to only allow picking from a certain view, and in that view filter out “closed” jobs.

Airtable Support

Limiting linked record selection to a view

You may have seen the option to "Limit record selection to a view" in the field customization window of a linked record field. This article will walk you through the ins and outs of this ...

[Nathaniel_Hamme]

Thank you again Kamille. That does help a lot!

[Jeanne_Wallace]

I think another decent solution to the problem raised by @Nathaniel_Hammersmit is to have the 1st column (the record field) be a CONCATENATION of the first and last name, and move the employee ID to the second field (column). This would let you easily search and select the correct record when using the record picker. It would also free up additional fields that show below (4 fields will be in this view, so you can selective what you want there—ID, department, status, date of hire? last review?).

If you need to be able to search for a record by employee name OR ID, then I would use Formulate to concatenate the name and ID together into the first field.