Separate tables or different views with types (contacts, companies, customers, suppliers etc.)

[Festival_Camper]

I have seen the same question asked elsewhere (link below) but it didn't really deal with another implication of combining a table and separating items by a type record.

My question is, what is the best practice for setting up a contacts table in Airtable where those contacts could be clients or suppliers etc. If I was designing this in a traditional database my practice would be to make 1 contacts table and distinguish these by a field that indicates what type they are. The advantage is I dont need to maintain all of the different fields needed for a contact across multiple tables. 

The issue with doing this in airtable seems to be that I cannot easily create forms to add a contact or add a supplier (where the default values are hidden from the user) and as a result I cannot seem to trigger any automations from these actions. 

I dont want to spend time working on work arounds to achieve what I would like to do.

So what do most developers do? Is there a best practice? Do you maintain separate contact tables for suppliers, customers etc.?

https://community.airtable.com/t5/base-design/do-i-create-different-views-or-different-table/td-p/13...

[gaomeile]

Also struggling. 

If working within the Data I prefer having People in a People Table and Company in a Company Table with views for each Type. It's a lot simpler when scripting.

Running into horrible problems with the Interface (where my team lives). I can set up different Pages for different people so that I can design the Record Detail or Create Record Form appropriately but if I am opening up record details on People in a different Table (the whole joy of linked fields) then I'm screwed.

Use case: 

Literary Agent and Publisher: Both People in my People Table. But very different fields.

In my List of Meetings I can create a meeting by selecting people from one field but if I open up the linked record it doesn't work - I'm stuck with viewing my literary agent through a publisher format.

Argh. 

Is there a workaround?