Let me walk you through my scenario to see if someone has an idea on how to handle it.
Let’s pretend we have a Softr app with AirTable as the database. We then have 2 main tables, one is a list of contacts and the other is a list of equipment with typical metadata. An equipment item can be ‘used’ by one contact. This is modeled as a ‘Link’ in AirTable.
Now, in Softr, I have a list block of equipment. I want to be able to add or edit an equipment item and associated it with a contact. So in the add and edit screens, I use a dropdown linked and synced with AirTable. That list will display the key (first column) of the AirTable table, so I made sure that ‘Name’ is the key.
So far, so good. Now, my problem is that there are obviously duplicate names as the contact list gets bigger. There are a lot of ‘John Smith’s out there. So a user wouldn’t know which John Smith to select unless I show them some other field from the contact table (such as email, or company name). How would I do that? Or is there some better way to implement this?
Maybe you try with a formular as primary field (don’t know if this is possible AT) and there you put all the informations you need so that they’re visible as a quick solution.
I thought about that. But then it’s likely too long for the field to display in the edit dialog. Also deathly afraid of what that will break now that this is built and working. lol
Within the contact you could create a formula the combines the full name and email. You could make this the drop down variable. Realistically, the email is in a way the individual identifier not the name. Also, kind of wild that our emails are now our individual identifier.
Thanks J - problem with that is two fold -
1 - There are many other places that I’m displaying the contact name is being displayed elsewhere and email would make it unreadable and mess up the format
2 - I don’t think the dropdown will be able to show the full name + email address space wise. So it’ll likely be equally not useful.
I may have to force them to look-up by email to your point. This will make it less user friendly, but will ensure correctness. But was hoping for a more graceful solution.
I worked around it using a Fillout form connected to the same AirTable with some custom code to pass the AirTable record ID to the fallout. That way when I want to do this type of assignment, I open the Fillout form in a modal. Fillout allows you to: show multiple fields, add new fields, etc.