Linking records in Airtable

Note

Prefer a hands on tutorial? Try it in Airtable.

Step 1: Define your relationships

Before you start building relationships between your records, you’ll want to make sure you know what those relationships should look like.

What information you’re tracking, and how it connects together, is completely dependent on your workflow. You might have a list of projects, a list of action items, and a list of clients. Or maybe you have a list of events, a list of attendees, and a list of venues.

In Airtable, it’s a best practice to capture each of these lists in a separate table, where you can store each item and all of its details. But keeping your lists in separate tables doesn’t mean they have to live in isolation—and they shouldn’t! Our projects have related action items, events have attendees, and so on. In the next step, we’ll talk about how to create these connections in your Airtable base.

For now, think about your workflow and map out which information you want to connect together. Make sure you have each piece of information stored in the right table before you move on (if you want more help thinking through the right table setup, check out this guide to structuring your base effectively).

Step 2: Create your relationships

You can either create a link between records in two different tables or create a link between records from the same table. The first step in creating those valuable relationships in your workflow—projects to action items or attendees to events—is to create a linked record field.

1. Navigate to your home screen.

2. Open a base and table where you want to add a linked record field.

3. Click the + button at the far right end of your field names to add a new field.

   1. Alternatively, you can click the dropdown arrow next to the name of an existing field and then either click ← Insert left or → Insert right to add the new field.

4. Next, find and click the Link to another record option. You might also just type “Link” into the search bar to reveal the Link to another record option.

5. Once you have your linked record field created, clicking the + icon will bring up the records of the linked table to select from. You can now link individual records together, relating this project to these action items, for example. This will create the relationship between those two specific records.

   1. Anytime you link two records together, you’ll notice that the association is mirrored in the other table. These reciprocal links allow you to see related information in each table so you know which action items are related to which project and which projects are associated with which action items.

Step 3: Leverage your relationships

Workflows are always evolving and so is the information they contain. With relationships established between your different tables, you can use your linked record fields to see relevant information at a glance and create a single source of truth.

• Want to see the status of action items related to a project without leaving your table? Enlarge the linked record field to see additional fields for each linked record.

• Want to further hone in on a specific action item? Expand any linked record to see all of its details and fields.

With your linked record fields, you can also keep consistent information across your workflow. Using a lookup field, you can dynamically display information stored in linked records. Any updates to the original field will persist in the lookup.

Say you want to keep an eye on the project due date for your action items. To do so, you can create a lookup field in your action items table that will pull in each linked project’s due date. Any changes to the project due date will be automatically reflected across all action items tied to that project. Now you have a single place to update your information which gets rippled across your workflow keeping your information consistent and eliminating any duplicative data entry.

Try accessing your connected information across tables by expanding a linked record to view all of its details. Next, create lookup fields so you can see the information where you need it for any fields that could be relevant across linked tables.

Using AI in linked records

Users who are creating linked record fields in a workspace where AI has been enabled can have AI help to generate top matches, which helps users to quickly find the closest matching linked record in order to send a record to the right person, team, or view/interface for review, approval, or to inform decision-making. Ultimately, this feature will have AI suggest relevant records that match the values in similar records. This means that results can get better over time as you continue to build linked record relationships across your tables.

• Owners or creators will configure which fields on the origin table and linked record table are relevant for the matching.

• End users viewing the linked record picker will then see AI-powered “Top matches” in addition to being able to choose from any of the linked records.

To turn on AI powered linked record matching:

1. Visit your Airtable home screen.

2. Create or open your preferred base.

3. Add or edit a field.

4. Search for and select Link to another record.

5. Toggle on the “Use AI to show top matches when selecting a record” option.

6. You’ll then need to select one or more fields in each table for the AI to understand the context of the record that you are working in. This also can help the AI to ignore certain fields that may not contain information that will be relevant to the linked record field. More in the best practices section below.

7. Once you have finished configuring the fields click Create field if this is a new formula field or click Save if this is an existing formula field that you modified.

Linking records within the same table

Self-linked records are linked record fields that connect records within the same table, which can be used to show relationships like:

• Team members and their managers

• Tasks and their subtasks

• Projects and their subprojects

• Related items that reference each other

When creating a linked record field that references your current table, Airtable automatically creates a corresponding reciprocal linked record field. This reciprocal field will be named "From field: [Your Field Name]" and shows the inverse relationship. Self-linked records examples:

• When creating a "Manager" field, Airtable automatically creates a "From field: Manager" field that can be renamed "Direct Reports."

• When creating a "Parent Task" field, Airtable automatically creates a "From field: Parent Task" field that can be renamed "Subtasks."

Note

• Adding or changing links in either field automatically updates the corresponding records.

• Links can be added or removed in both directions.

To create self-linked record fields:

1. Open your Airtable home screen.

2. Open the base where you want to crate a self-linked field.

3. Click the + icon the right of the your base’s last field.

   1. Alternatively, you can click the dropdown arrow next to the name of an existing field and then either click ← Insert left or → Insert right to add the new field.

4. Search for and select Link to another record.

5. When prompted to select a table to link to, choose your current table

   1. Airtable will automatically create the reciprocal field named "From field: [Your Field Name]."

   2. You can then rename reciprocal field.

FAQs