Snapshot fields and Importing records
I'm trying to streamline some manual processes, and running into inconsistent results.
I'm importing data into a child table. It has 4 snapshot fields that are set from the parent record.
The chi...
Forum Discussion
if I understand the challenge correctly, you are mass importing, children, and the value of the records and field in those children need to flow up to the parent record and then summarized and come down in the lookup and snapshot.
I think that you have a condition where the children are still loading while look up some snapshots are being created.
You might want to consider having a process where you first do the import, and then you run a pipeline to manually copy the value of the look up field into a manual snapshot field. By that I mean not a real snapshot field but your home grown snapshot field.
You say that you you are using API Run Import so maybe that means you have a formula button to kick off the process. Maybe the next step built into that button could trigger the pipeline to copy the lookup field into a scalar data entry field
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Mark Shnier (Your Quickbase Coach)
mark.shnier@gmail.com
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Hi Mark,
You have the data flow correct.
Over the years, we started with manual data entry of the Child records, and the snapshots worked just fine, once I figured out the chicken& egg issue with the summary and look up fields.
Then we were required to use a 3rd party to gather the data, and used excel to verify and create the CSV uploads. We had some issues when the same client (parent) had multiple visit records (children), so we split the upload so the first upload had all unique client IDs(parents). The CSV upload had no access to the parent & child tables to determine ahead of time which records might be "new".
My current project to streamline the whole process within Quickbase, allowed me to have access to parent & child tables, so I know ahead of the import, which records should be new. I set up the Table to table import and Pipeline to run it with that in mind.
Unfortunately, this last iteration is not reliable.
I'll probably throw an "override New" value on the child table, populate that from source worktable, and take the snapshot from a formula field that looks at both the parent look up field or the override field for the final value. It isn't worth my time to create a pipeline to try to populate another field.
The child table does get the occasional, valid, manual entry record, so I need to keep that part working the same way.
thanks for the feedback.
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Andrea Best
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