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Linking Setup Question

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I have a table with employees
I have a table with courses
I have a table with course attendance
I have a table with training days
I have a table with skills

Courses have linked Skills
Course Attendance has linked Courses & linked Employees (who attended)
I can use Lookup to show Skills next to Course Attendance

Training Days have linked Skills & linked Employees (who attended, lets call this LE1)

I can list Linked Skills next to Employee using a Lookup for Training and a Lookup for Course Attendance.

I’ve got this working up to this point using “Link to another record” type fields.

Training Days and Courses expire after a period of time (no longer competent).

I want the Employee to show only linked Skills from Courses and Training that haven’t expired. I can do this using “Link to another record” type fields with “Limit record selection to a view” and limiting the view to records that haven’t expired.

PROBLEM: using “Limit record selection to a view” on “Link to another record” type fields adds an extra field of linked Employees (LE2) to each one - which I don’t want because it could get out of sync with LE1.

My head is battered. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Best answer by Alexey_Gusev

Hi,
That’s the typical novice problem, which I encountered when just started to work with Airtable.
“Limit record selection to a view” (same as “Allow multiple links”) working in a different way, than it sounds.
These settings not maintained on table level, so if you link to a record in other table that present in selected view and then change the view so that record will not be present, it will not remove link. Also, you can set two or more links from other table records to your record even if you uncheck ‘allow multiple links’.

these setting are just ‘UI helpers’ for manual linking and nothing more.

in order to achieve your goal you should set a field in Courses and/or Training for ‘expired/not expired’ and use conditions in Lookup, like this:

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4 replies

Alexey_Gusev
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  • Alexey_Gusev
  • Brainy
  • 1152 replies
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  • August 22, 2022

Hi,
That’s the typical novice problem, which I encountered when just started to work with Airtable.
“Limit record selection to a view” (same as “Allow multiple links”) working in a different way, than it sounds.
These settings not maintained on table level, so if you link to a record in other table that present in selected view and then change the view so that record will not be present, it will not remove link. Also, you can set two or more links from other table records to your record even if you uncheck ‘allow multiple links’.

these setting are just ‘UI helpers’ for manual linking and nothing more.

in order to achieve your goal you should set a field in Courses and/or Training for ‘expired/not expired’ and use conditions in Lookup, like this:

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    Simon_Forster
TheTimeSavingCo
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Hey Simon, I made a few assumptions about your base setup, so let me know what doesn’t fit and I’ll fix it up for you. Here’s a link to the base

Adam, Consultant @ thetimesaving.company
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    Simon_Forster
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  • Simon_Forster
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  • August 22, 2022
Alexey_Gusev wrote:

Hi,
That’s the typical novice problem, which I encountered when just started to work with Airtable.
“Limit record selection to a view” (same as “Allow multiple links”) working in a different way, than it sounds.
These settings not maintained on table level, so if you link to a record in other table that present in selected view and then change the view so that record will not be present, it will not remove link. Also, you can set two or more links from other table records to your record even if you uncheck ‘allow multiple links’.

these setting are just ‘UI helpers’ for manual linking and nothing more.

in order to achieve your goal you should set a field in Courses and/or Training for ‘expired/not expired’ and use conditions in Lookup, like this:


Thank you - that’s fixed the issue. I’m now working to merge the two skills lists into one.

I’ve also used a simple flag system;

Formula field with name Valid? and the following formula

IF(DATETIME_DIFF({Date}, TODAY(), 'years') < 0, "🟥", "🟩")
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  • Simon_Forster
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  • August 22, 2022
TheTimeSavingCo wrote:

Hey Simon, I made a few assumptions about your base setup, so let me know what doesn’t fit and I’ll fix it up for you. Here’s a link to the base


Thanks - I believe this is the same as Alexey - appreciate you taking the time

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