Custom Registration Flow: Claiming Existing Athlete Profiles

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Hi everyone!

I’m building a sports ranking platform and have a question about a somewhat unconventional registration flow. I’m wondering if this is achievable in Softr without manual intervention.

Context: I have a database with existing athlete profiles, many of which already have linked competition results. I’d like to offer two registration paths:

  1. Claim an existing profile – for athletes who are already in the database with historical results

  2. Create a new account – standard registration for newcomers

The question: Is there a way to implement an onboarding flow where a newly registered user can search for and claim an existing athlete record in the database?

Ideally, the flow would be:

  • User signs up

  • During onboarding, they can search for their name in the athletes table

  • If found, they link their account to that existing profile

  • If not found, they continue as a new athlete

Has anyone built something similar or have ideas on how to approach this?

Thanks in advance!

2

Hey @konrad.par Yes, you can do this in Softr, but it will require a bit of setup. Here’s a simple approach:

  1. User signs up normally.

  2. Onboarding page: add a search block linked to your Athletes table so users can look up their name.

  3. If found: use a workflow or a custom field to link their Softr user account to the existing athlete record (e.g., store the Athlete ID in a user field).

  4. If not found: continue with standard “create new athlete” flow, which writes a new record to the Athletes table and links it to the user.

The key is storing a reference between the Softr user and the athlete record. You can do this with a user field pointing to the record ID. Some people use Airtable automations or Make/Zapier if you want extra checks, but it’s possible entirely within Softr.

This setup essentially gives you the “claim or create” logic you’re looking for.

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3

Thanks @Hassaan12 :raising_hands:t3:

I got it working! Here’s how I implemented it:

  1. Disabled automatic user sync to database. Sync only happens when the ‘Email’ field in the database is not empty (populated by automation).

  2. Custom onboarding flow via vibe-code block. After registration, users enter their athlete name. The component shows matching profiles from the database. If no match found, a “Create New Athlete Profile” button appears instead.

  3. Workflow with logged-in user email. I use a Softr workflow that captures {LOGGED_IN_USER:email} and writes it to the Email field of the selected athlete record. This triggers the user sync automatically.

This gives me the two registration paths I needed: claim existing profile (with historical results already attached) or create fresh athlete account :partying_face:.

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