I would like to make it so that if I update record A’s column “description”, a python formula could possibly cause the “description” in record B to updated to be the same text. I don’t think this is possible but it would be really useful for my application. While I can lookup another record from a trigger formula, it seems to be read-only.
Example:
Records:
A – Name: Transaction posting A, Description: test1
B – Name: Transaction posting B, Description: test2
If I edit record A so its description is “this is a real description” I can use a trigger formula to manipulate that description in record A but I don’t know how to manipulate or change the contents of another record’s “description” column (for example record B).
Thanks in advance! I’m really excited about this software, it is solving a lot of issues for my finance-related use-cases!
While this is not possible using trigger formulas, I’m wondering if using a reference may be helpful here. I created a short example here: Community #1591
We have a table of Job Postings and a table of Roles where I can add a description for each. If you had multiple job postings for a role and had a change to the description for one role, you may need to update it in several places. This is where it is helpful to maintain a table of roles and their descriptions. This way, we can reference the details in the roles table and only need to update a description once and it will update everywhere.
The Role column of the Job Postings table is a reference column that pulls data from the Roles table.
We can use this reference column to pull the other details for the role listed in the Role column. In this example, we want to pull the description. We can do this using a formula. The formula you see in the Description column of the Job Postings table is:
$Role.Description
This follows the format $[REF_COL_NAME].[COL_NAME] where [REF_COL_NAME] is the name of the reference column and [COL_NAME] is the name of the column in the referenced table from which you would like to pull data. In this example, we are using the reference column named ‘Role’ in the Job Postings table to pull data from the Description column of the Roles table.
Now, if a description needs to be updated, it can be updated in the Roles table but will automatically update anywhere that role is listed in the Job Postings table.
I hope this set up helps for your needs! If not, give us more detail on your use case and we can think through a potential solution. Providing screenshots or making the document public is helpful as well if you are using fake data. If you wish to keep the details private, please feel free to email support@getgrist.com and we can help you that way.
