Is an editable Bi-directional relationship possible without Automation?

[Ryan_Martens]

Your welcome

If you spent hours trying to figure out this functionality I think that’s good feedback for the team as an indication to document the functionality better in the help files.

But I think the real solution is yet to come, when we finally get a truly bidirectional lookup (without formulas and without automation) like exists in AirTable.

[ABp]

@Ryan_Martens thanks!

Yes, this is a pain point with me since I started extensive use of Coda about a year ago. I am not a developer, but well-versed in most other productivity apps out there, and fairly proficient in Excel outside of formulas and functions. I have found that I will hit a roadblock between beginning something I am trying to set up in Coda, and getting to the end of making it work as I desire.

I am not sure how many users of my skillset are in Coda now, and if this is the target segment of the vision of Coda. I would say about 90% of what I read in the community is on a very advanced level, so if the sample of users here is where Coda is targeting moving forward, I am probably not an ideal user/Maker. In fact, I’ve started to think that Coda may head in the direction of multiple other frameworks out there that are basically platforms for development given the expertise needed to master it and the time necessary to gain that expertise, especially if you are not a developer.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the fact that nowadays there are dedicated teams, not just individual positions, within larger software companies for Jira admins. I find Jira actually less complex than Coda, but it’s complex enough all the same to require companies to hire specialists. I could see companies actually hiring “Coda admins” over time.

The bottom line for me is that I will spend a lot of time looking at things I am setting up and getting stuck in the “why isn’t this working as I think it should,” which usually leads to those hours of time spent trying to figure out what’s going on. Almost all the time these roadblocks wind up with me having to work through some formulas which challenge me if I’m trying to do anything with a level of sophistication such as here:

Column value pulling from multiple lookup rows?

Hi, Sorry if this has been covered, but I couldn’t easily find an answer. In the example Table, I have three types of lookups that I’m pulling in - Project, Task, Product. They each have their own lookups from another table called Status. So “Project” can have the status “In Progress” just like “Task” in its own table. So can I set up this “Status” column in this table to read each of the lookups and pull its status? I suppose I’d get a conflict if more than one of the first three columns …

And just in case this is useful feedback for others in the forum, I can say that I had a lot of trouble for a while mastering the notion of “thisrow” in formulas. I think it would be great to see a dedicated section in the Coda Knowledge Base about thisrow, written for novice Makers. Thisrow is an essential in the Coda Formula Language, but not easy to master at all if you are not a developer used to formulas.

I hope all that is useful! Thanks again for responding!

[Anthony_Yam]

Hello @Al_Chen_Coda, are bi-directional editable relationships something that you’re still considering on a foreseeable timeline? It would make Coda so much more usable. Tables and relationships between them are at the core of Coda’s value, and this seems like an essential step to advance them.

[ABp]

Second this. Would really like to see Coda releasing something that allows for more arbitrary connection of rows. It is still quite a few steps when you are in “flow” mode working in Coda to create relationships, at least that is my experience.

[ChrisR]

Another vote here, connecting data in a intuitive way and making editing existing and adding new connections is at the code of information management. I’m trying to set up a personal Knowledge base, as a Notion user I’m used to creating multiple tables (databases, silo’s, whatever you wanna call them) and then linking all of them together to surface relevant information on the right dashboards.

As it is right now coda has a lot of superior features to Notion which is why I’m looking to switch over, but the lack of relation management between tables is potentially a blocker.

[Mike_Ray]

+1 for this feature. Please implement soon as this is the main reason I can’t fully move to Coda right now.

In addition, now that Notion is adding API access, I think you’ll lose even more customers as Notion catches up with Coda in this area.

[Bryan_Rios]

@Jean_Pierre_Traets

Creating a bi-directional row-level relationship between two tables

+1 for this as well, Having to get really inventive to work around this is fun for me but not so much for my team

[Daniel_Velho]

Please, Im struggling with a question:
I have 2 tables, one fore parent and other for children. I connected both through a lookup column and added a lookup reference on the other. The relation can be edited one way, whereas back in Notion it could easily be edited both ways. But I cant edit it bothways because “a formula field cannot be edited”. How can I solve this problem without the “six-column and lots of formulas” or the automation workarrounds?

[jeo]

@GJ_Roelofs, @Alexandra_Samuel, @ALN, @Ryan_Martens, @ABp, @Anthony_Yam, @ChrisR, @Mike_Ray, @Bryan_Rios, @Daniel_Velho, & anyone else

Please click through to
(2021-04-01)

Feedback requested: How would you build reverse lookups in Coda?

This week is Coda’s quarterly Hackathon! We’re exploring different ways lookup columns and reverse lookups could work in Coda. To describe the scenario, a canonical example of Lookups and Reverse Lookups currently work is shown here: [image.png] Notice how the Tasks table has a lookup to the Project table. And the Project table has a “reverse lookup” to the Tasks table. A few observations of the current pattern: The reverse lookup is defined as a formula The reverse lookup column does no…