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Conditional/Dynamic Linking


Hi Guys,


I was playing around with the “Find Records” automation and found the following Conditions option. It enables you to set a condition as static or dynamic. It would be amazing if this was rolled out to the rest of the platform. I would love to see this on linked record, count, and roll up fields.


@airtable: Will this functionality ever extend to the meat and bones of the platform?



I think the reason these types of feature requests don’t get many upvotes is because everyone calls them something different. Some are requesting

-conditional drop downs(this would accomplish that).

-data validation.

-Some are calling it link filtering.


Every person who requests this functionality, is more or less looking for the same thing, yet describes it completely differently. Hopefully we can standardize what this functionality would be called. Doing so may help Airtable realize that this is something allot of users want.

11 replies

ScottWorld
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  • Brainy
  • 8705 replies
  • April 13, 2021

I completely agree that this is one of the biggest missing features & one of the biggest drawbacks in Airtable right now.


You summed it up perfectly above, but please be sure to also email all of the above to support@airtable.com as well. They rarely read our posts here.


  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • 75 replies
  • April 15, 2021

Hey Scott,


Airtable sent me this response in regards to my functionality request/inquiry ,


“I completely see how this could be useful! I’m not sure when this kind of functionality might be available, but you can stay up to date with product improvements on our what’s new page.”.


I’m not any more optimistic after the response, that said fingers still crossed.


ScottWorld
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  • Brainy
  • 8705 replies
  • April 15, 2021
Allen_Moldovan wrote:

Hey Scott,


Airtable sent me this response in regards to my functionality request/inquiry ,


“I completely see how this could be useful! I’m not sure when this kind of functionality might be available, but you can stay up to date with product improvements on our what’s new page.”.


I’m not any more optimistic after the response, that said fingers still crossed.


Yeah, that’s such a generic & disconnected response. Welcome to Airtable! :crazy_face:


Thanks for the follow up! 🙂


Honestly, after all these years, if this was anywhere near their priority orbit, they’d have said something lol. Airtable has a lot of qualities but they’re obviously catering to the widest possible demographic and there’s a substantial volume of anti-automation decisions to be observed in their product design.


  • Known Participant
  • 18 replies
  • October 30, 2021

Am I right in assuming this still hasn’t been fixed?


I want to link records from 3 different tables: Projects, Sprints & Work Days.

When I log a new Work Day I link that record to the corresponding Project. Then I want to link it to one of the corresponding Sprints of that Project, without having to scroll through all Sprints of all Projects…


I looked around a bit, but it still doesn’t seem to be natively supported - am I right?


  • Known Participant
  • 18 replies
  • October 30, 2021

…Also wondering if it’s not possible creating a workaround using a script…


I don’t know anything about scripts, though… Couldn’t you tell it something like: “Only show me linked records that match the linked {Project} field of this record”? :face_with_monocle:


  • Participating Frequently
  • 10 replies
  • November 28, 2021

We absolutely need this feature


  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • 75 replies
  • June 1, 2022

I feel like Airtable was designed for people who struggle to perform a vlook-up.


Airtable gets you 90 percent of the way there without code. the other 10 percent can only be accomplished via JavaScript.


Coda on the other hand leverages low code better. you can get 90% percent of the way there without any code, the other 10% can be accomplished via the low-code formula language. for those competent in excel, the learning curve is marginal(unlike java scripting).


Coda’s rate of feature releases is also exponentially higher.


Check out how this works in CODA



ScottWorld
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  • Brainy
  • 8705 replies
  • June 1, 2022

It’s truly sad that Airtable doesn’t offer this basic database functionality.


blaclair
  • New Participant
  • 3 replies
  • July 21, 2023

It doesn't make sense why the dynamic/static capability feature is only available on some fields and not others. Airtable is really missing the buck on this one. 


  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • September 19, 2023

Conditional Lookups (like Coda seems to do and Excel absolutely does - with dynamic arrays, vlookup, or index/match) is in my top two features that would be most valuable to enterprise customers. 
100% agree this should be considered a MUST HAVE.


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