Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

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Kuovonne's Guide to Airtable

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Link to multiple records based on select choices
Link to multiple records based on select choices

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Inspiration

this post in the Airtable community⁠

, a user fills out a form with a series of single select fields. For each single select field that is marked “yes”, the new record needs to be linked to a specific record.

At first the poster used a series of conditional actions, with one condition for each single select field. However, that did not work because only one conditional action actually runs.

Trying a conditional action for each combination of options

If there were only two or three single select fields, it would be possible to use conditional actions, with one conditional group for each combination.

Two single selects would require three conditions:

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Option 1 only

Option 2 only

Option 1 and Option 2

Three single selects would require seven conditions

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Option 1 only

Option 1 and Option 2

Option 1 and Option 3

Option 1, Option 2, and Option 3

Option 2 only

Option 2 and Option 3

Option 3 only

However, this is clearly not sustainable. Keeping track of all the different combinations is too much work.

Using a formula field

A better option is to use a formula field to calculate which options to link to and have the automation copy the formula result to the linked record field.

The formula does the heavy lifting of determining which records to link to, and the automation just creates the link.

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Here is the configuration of the formula in the screen shot above.

For each single select field, have an IF() function that outputs the primary field value of the record to link.

Concatenate the primary field value with a comma so that there will be commas in between the choices. (This assumes that there will be no commas in any of the primary field values.)

Join all of the primary field values with CONCATENATE().

Use REGEX_REPLACE() to remove the final trailing comma.

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Then the automation is a simple matter of updating the linked record field with the formula result.

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Multiple different linked record fields

If there will be multiple different linked record fields, use a helper formula field for each linked record field, and update all of the linked record fields with the results of their corresponding helper formula fields.

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Link to multiple records based on select choicesLink to multiple records based on select choices

Inspiration

Trying a conditional action for each combination of options

Using a formula field

Multiple different linked record fields

Link to multiple records based on select choices
Link to multiple records based on select choices