Odd relation behaviour when duplicating a row

[Bjoern_Martens]

I’m observing odd behaviour with two tables linked via a relation.

Table 1 (Templates)
Table 2 (Variants)

I pull table 1 in via a relation column (“message templates”).

When I duplicate a row in Table 1, the newly DUPLICATED row is the one linked with Table 2. How is that possible?

Here’s a link to the doc.

I have described the problem in this loom video.

(bonus: I have another question in the loom about deleted cell references.

Many thanks!
Rob

[Jono_Bouwmeester]

Hey @Bjoern_Martens

Thanks for taking the time to create Looms and explain your question so clearly. Soo many people post questions to the community without sharing a doc, and it makes it quite difficult to understand them, let alone provide assistance.

Your doc is unfortunately only shared with “read-only” access, and you’ve disabled the ability to copy the doc, so I can’t interact with your buttons, nor see how your columns are setup. So my reply is just a hunch. If I’m off the mark, please update your share settings and I’ll happily take another look for you.

I’ve encountered this odd behaviour before, and I do agree with you that this is a bug and not expected behavior. When I ran into this before, the cause was that the second table (“Templates” in your case) was setup as a “Linked Relation” and had “Allow Edits” enabled. When I switched that “Allow edits” off, then this weird behavior stopped happening.

In terms of those deleted row references, Paul has a great video overviewing how this works and detailing how you can manage them. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdvuJUnJ5Ro

Hope that helps!

[Bjoern_Martens]

Hi, thanks a lot for your help!

I tried your suggestion (switch off “Allow edits”, but it seems like it did not work. Maybe something else is going on?

Here’s the link to my doc - weirdly enough, I’d set it to “allow copy”, but maybe I shared the wrong link?

I set it to editable.

Thanks!

[Jono_Bouwmeester]

Hey @Bjoern_Martens

Thanks for updating your sharing settings - I was able to get into the doc and take another look.

It turns out it was exactly what I suspected. It was a linked relation column with edits enabled. I just couldn’t see how your schema was setup when your doc was in read-only mode.

If you open the column options for your Message Templates relation column on your Variants table, you’ll see the “Linked columns” displays “Message variant builder (All message templates)”. That’s the table and column this relation is linked to. You can click the “Open table” link above there to navigate to that table.

When you open up that column’s options, you’ll see that “allow edits” was indeed enabled. I’ve switched it off, and now if you try that same user flow you recorded in your Loom, you’ll see that cloning the row in “Templates” no longer causes the relation column to update to the cloned row.

All fixed!

[Bjoern_Martens]

Brilliant. Thanks a lot!