Automatic link creation based on conditions

1

OK, I bet this is achievable, hopefully I can explain it properly. It’s another weird film thing :stuck_out_tongue:

Table A - contains my Scenes
Table B - Contains my Characters
Table C - Contains my Call Sheet/Filming Day details

Everything is built to lead back to Table C, to create a final document. It starts with - A DATE. Let’s say June 1st, 2025.

The Scenes Table B has all kinds of information, and is linked to the Record in Table C.
Let’s say, Scene 1, 2, 5 & 7 are connected to June 1st.

One of the Scenes connections is Characters. Which can then pull in other needed relationals.
Let’s say, John Wayne is in Scene 1 and 5. Which are now connected to film on June 1st.

Which is fine if I just needed relations. BUT.

John Wayne needs to also be directly connected to the June 1st Call Sheet, because of a 3rd party system I need the info for (DocsAutomator, which is awesome and I hope we get a direct integration for it soon)

Is there a way to have a field that says “OK, John Wayne is in some scenes that are connected to this Call Sheet, June 1st. So add a direct relation connection to John Wayne (but only once)”

I’m doing the checks and connections manually, but that allows for human error.

You are all amazing, and I’ve been playing with Coda for less than a week and I am SO blown away by what it can do, and how far superior it is to AirTable (which is what I have been using for over 4 years)

2

Hi @Shannon_Bradley,

I’m not sure if I understood what you meant by conditions, but I think what you need is just pull the actors from the scenes assigned to a day, combine them into a single list with ListCombine() and then display only unique values with Unique().

Here’s a little example:

Hope this helps,

Pablo

3

WOW. This selection of examples is amazing, bookmarked!

I will play around with what you said here, but I’m not 100% if it is what I need. Ultimately the Scene and the Actor need to be independently connected to the Call Sheet, even though the breakdown of information happens through the Scene. Connected display lists I can do no problem.

Once I have the first part figured out, the second part is that there are TWO options - Connect in one field if they have the Main Cast tag and in a different field if they are Background lol

4

Ultimately the Scene and the Actor need to be independently connected to the Call Sheet, even though the breakdown of information happens through the Scene.

Don’t you assign actors to scenes and then decide what scenes are filmed on a day? Why would you need to manually assign actors to days other than pulling the actors that appear on those scenes?

Once I have the first part figured out, the second part is that there are TWO options - Connect in one field if they have the Main Cast tag and in a different field if they are Background lol

Just adjusted the example to show separately the Main cast and the background.

Pay attention that those columns are calculated, I’m not selecting the items manually.

5

Yeah it’s weird, but the 3rd party program that creates my pretty, very specifically designed Call Sheets pulls details based on direct linked line items.

That said, Coda has more flexibility than AirTable did, and I know the dev is working on a possible pack for Coda which may work differently. So I will use what you are showing here (Thank you!!) and see if we can make it connect the way we want!

6

Still don’t understand what you mean with that. Do you mean that instead of having all the information in a single call sheet row, you would need a line per day-scen-actor?

So instead of this

image
image530×294 19.4 KB

You would need another a table with many more rows like

3/12/2025 | Scene 1 | John Wayne
3/12/2025 | Scene 1 | Maureen O’Hara
3/12/2025 | Scene 1 | James Stewart
3/12/2025 | Scene 1 | Katherine Hepburn
3/12/2025 | Scene 4 | Maureen O’Hara
etc.

7

Not quite. For reference, here is my original AirTable with the relevant fields:

image
image1504×299 29.1 KB

The far right column is the lookup of the characters attached to all the scenes for the day. But because of how my 3rd party system works, it can’t pull the nested details (cast#, call time, notes etc) through the lookup. So I have to manually connect them directly, shown in the 2nd and 3rd columns.

I’m not ready to give up my 3rd party because the way it formats the end doc is amazing lol. Many things I can have an online setup (of which Coda is CLEARLY superior at providing) but film folk are very set in their ways and need a printed call sheet that looks a very specific way lol

I appreciate you delving into my weird little setup :star_struck:

8

I just recreated that layout on the demo, except for ‘# Atmos’, which I don’t know how to calculate.

Hope that helps!

Pablo

9

Yeah that one uses another field. Amazing, thank you! One step closer to perfection :wink:

10

I’m thinking that what I was hoping for might not be feasible. In your great demo setup, what we SHOULD end up with is another column/field on the Actors Table that is a direct relation to the Call Sheets table (So the Call Sheet is directly relationally linked to both the Scenes and the Actors) but without me having to populate it manually.
Basically the Call Sheets would be pulling the relevant actors from the scenes, and then auto linking back to Actors.

I DID learn things from this (that listcombine.unique bit I will absolutely be using in another area!)

And now another setup I am working on IS trying that other thing you mentioned lol. I want to take that Unique characters field and use it to automatically fill another table, 1 line per actor per Call Sheet :zany_face:. That one is stumping me too, but I persist!

11

I just added this to the demo. It only took 2 clicks!

image
image1157×808 83 KB

12

Wait wait waaaait. So I set the field up, formula to display the relevant records from another field, then tell the system “oh yeah, this is actually those linked records so show it that way” and it doesn’t get confused?

Will take me some time to absorb how amazing this system is…

And I super appreciate your time showing me!

2 Likes