Linking entries via automation

With the help of automations, you no longer have to link entries in your tables manually, but can have these steps performed automatically. Simply define a corresponding automation for any table view.

Linking entries via automation

Creating the automation

First define a trigger event for the automation.

Then select "Add links" as the automated action.

Finally, select a column to be associated with the selected table and define a specific condition that must be met for the automation to be performed.

Finally, confirm the automation by clicking Submit.

Application example

A concrete use case for this type of automation could occur, for example, if you work in a company's accounting department. In this case, you want to maintain both a table with all payments that are received into an account of the company(Payments) and a table with all invoices that need to be paid to the company(Invoices).

In the Payments table, in addition to the transaction numbers of the payments (P-0001 etc.), you already enter the amounts of the various payments (" Value" column ).

Meanwhile, your Invoices table contains the invoice numbers (" Invoice-No" column ) and the respective invoice amounts (" Price Total" column ).

Using automation, you now want to link the Payments and Invoices tables so that you can automatically assign payments received to an invoice based on their invoice numbers.

Automation preparation

Before you can create the automation, you must first add two columns in the Payments table. In the "Inv-No" column, you manually enter the invoice numbers that belong to the respective payments - which will later trigger the automation. In the "Invoices" column, the linked entries from the Invoices table will be added automatically after the automation has been created.

In the Invoices table you also need another column ("Collected Payments"), in which the linked entries of the Payments table are added in the course of automation.

You can then create an automation for the Payments table.

Creating the automation

First, give the automation a name and select the Payments table with the view of the same name in which it should act.

As a trigger event of the automation, you select the option "Entries meet certain conditions after processing". Add as a filter condition that the two columns "Inv-No" and "Value" of the table "Payments" are not empty. This condition is useful because the automation should be triggered as soon as there are entries in these columns.

Finally, you define the action "Add a linked column to the table" as the automated action of the automation.

The "Invoices" column is the column to which the linked entries are to be added in the course of automation.

In the last step of the automation definition, you should define one more condition that must be met in order to add a linked entry to the column. In this example, it is defined that every entry that is added to the "Inv-No" column must also be found in the "Invoice-No" column of the Invoices table.

Specifically, this means that any invoice number that you manually assign to a payment in the Payments table must already be found in the Invoices table so that the corresponding entries of both tables can be linked to each other.

Testing the automation

If you then enter an invoice number in the "Inv-No" column of the Payments table that can already be found in the Invoices table, the corresponding linked entry is automatically added to the table in the "Invoices" column.

Clicking on the linked entry opens a window where you can view the contents of the linked entry from the Invoices table.

In addition, the linked entries from the Payments table are also added to the Invoices table when the automation is triggered. In doing so, the corresponding payment number (P-000X) is automatically assigned to each invoice number in the "Collected Payments" column. As a result of the automation, you can view the associated payment for each invoice and quickly determine which invoices have been paid and which invoices are still open.

Also in this table you can click on the linked entry to open a window where you can view the contents of the linked entry from the Payments table.

More helpful articles in the Automations section:

• Overview of automations
• How automation works
• Create an automation
• Manage and edit automations
• Stop automations
• Delete automations
• Show execution log of an automation
• Why can't I find automations in my base?
• Automation trigger
• Automation actions
• rows Lock by automation

Other interesting examples of automations:

• rows Lock by automation
• rows Add via automation
• Add entries to other tables via automation
• Send notifications via automation
• E-mail dispatch via automation