Linked records within automations

Automations give you more opportunities for flexibility than ever, allowing you to easily automate previously manual workflows. The linked record field allows you to capture the dynamic relationships between your records, to ensure your data is consistent across your different tables. When you use automations to automatically link records together for you is when things really get interesting! If you are unfamiliar with creating records via automations we recommend reading this guide for context before reading on. 

You can use both the "Create record" and/or the "Update record" actions to link new or existing records, depending on the workflow you are building out. You can link records together by using either 1. the primary field value of the record in the corresponding table you'd like to link to or; 2. by using the record ID of the record in the corresponding table you'd like to link to.

If you are linking a single record you can choose to use either the record ID, or the primary field value for the record you'd like to link to:

You can also link multiple records to a single record by looking under the header for "Make a new list of...", and choosing either "Airtable record ID" or "Field values":

You may end up first having to use the "Find record" action to get a reference to the records you want to link, if you are attempting to link pre-existing records in your tables. We recommend checking out this guide for an example of finding and linking records. Check out our Automations troubleshooting guide if you run into any problems along the way.