I would love to be able to have a record appear in two groups when using a multiple select field, rather than having the record create a new group that is the combination:
i.e. Record 1 — A Record 2 — B Record 3 — A,B
Group A Record 1 Record 3
Group B Record 1 Record 3
Current functionality creates a new group called Group A,B and each group then only has one record.
Found this ‘‘count’’ field. Thing is it tells me this: ''You need a link field to create a count. Create the link field before configuring this count field.
And then when I click on Create field, it tells me this: ‘‘Sorry, there was a problem creating this field. The options are not valid.’’ … I don’t follow here.
@Luc_Poitras My gut says that @Andrew_Tennison is referring to a link field, not a multiple-select field. That’s the only use case where his suggestion works because count fields won’t work with multiple-select fields.
What he’s suggesting is to make a count field that counts linked records from a link field, add a filter to only show records where that count equals 1, then group by the link field.
I agree that this functionality would be very useful! I understand the technical challenge that Justin described, but since Airtable’s answer to reporting is the Group feature, I hope someone is working on a way to solve it!
That doesn’t feel like an accurate statement from my experience. While many users clearly want the group feature to be used for reporting, I don’t believe that Airtable ever intended for it to be used as such, which is why I don’t believe that it’s necessarily a problem that needs to be solved. My impression is that apps (formerly blocks) are where they see reporting happening, or possibly through solutions that tap into the Airtable data via the REST API.
That’s a completely different statement than “Airtable’s answer to reporting is the Group feature.” Yes, you can use grouped records to create reports, but that doesn’t imply that it’s designed to be the perfect reporting mechanism for all use cases.
FWIW we use Wrike for project management and it does precisely this. I can create a multiple select custom field with a set of choices and create a report that groups by those choices. I get a report with a group for each choice that displays the record in the group no matter what other choices are selected in the multiple select field. It’s perfect for when I have multiple resources or attributes on the same project and want to see the project reported under each resource or attribute.
There are a lot of other users asking similar questions. The response is frequently “use a linked table for the values.” While this is part of the solution, it doesn’t solve the core pain. It’s unintuitive to go to a different table to see a certain grouping, and it doesn’t afford the same editing experience. I understand that it “breaks database convention” by showing the same record multiple times in one table, but we’re already breaking convention by visualizing the data in groups. Data as visualized ≠ data as stored. This many people (see just a fraction listed below) asking for the feature is a sign that the feature is valuable.
For example, say I have a Roles table and a Teams table, a Role could be part of many Teams, and a Team is therefore composed of many Roles. If I want to see the Roles grouped by Team, I currently have to go to the Teams table to effectively view this. What I really want is to be in the Roles table and see a grouping by per Team, where the Role records is listed under each Team, and makes multiple appearances where applicable. IMO this should be the default; I’m struggling to think of a use case for the existing grouping behavior.
