A linked record field referring it's own table with a strange behaviour

Your Setup:

  • SeaTable Cloud

Describe the Problem/Error/Question:

I created an ACCOUNT table to control sales accounts for my business.

As I work with large companies, it is quite common that some of them have some sort of group structure. And by a sales perspective, they, by any reason, must be treated separately.

Example:

SAP SE - Is a company based in Germany

SAP AMERICAS INC. - Is a company based in the US and is a subsidiary of SAP SE

To stablish the relationship between these accounts, I created a field called Group as a Link to Other Records field type (as I have done with other stuff in the same table).

BUT for this specific case, beyond creating the field itself, system automatically created a new field called ACCOUNTS (which, by the way, is the name of the table).

Here the screenshot:

The thing is that this behaviour only happens when creating a field that links to another record in the same table.

And if I try to delete the new and undesirable ACCOUNTS field, the GROUP field is also deleted.

For reference, this is the strcuture of the ACCOUNTS table (you can find both there, in bold):

Table: accounts (ID: nzif)
→ Account Name (text)
→ Industry (single-select)
→ Core Sector (single-select)
→ Size (single-select)
→ Status (single-select)
→ Territory 26 (single-select)
→ sales plays (link → Tga4)
→ Account Group (text)
→ Group (link → nzif)
→ accounts (link → nzif)
→ Country (link → 3QFB)
→ Web (text)
→ Core Model (single-select)
→ Ecomm? (single-select)
→ TTB (single-select)
→ Tech Centre? (single-select)
→ Co Type (single-select)
→ Buy Power (single-select)
→ Notes (text)
→ Creator (creator)
→ Created time (ctime)
→ Last modifier (last-modifier)
→ Last modified time (mtime)
→ territory (link → hlsL)

Is this supposed to be the right beaviour?

(note: as a workaround, I just hidden the ACCOUNTS field)

Hi @pfcjr, and welcome to the SeaTable forum!

Having two distinct columns is actually the right behaviour as you can read in the documentation page Add a link within a table:

SeaTable automatically adds a second column for the subordinate entries

and

The two link columns are inextricably linked. If you delete one of the two columns, the other also disappears immediately. However, if you only want to see one of the two columns in your table, you can hide the other one.

(as you see, you’re workaround is actually the recommended way!)

It’s the same than creating a link column with another table: in this second table, you’ll see that a link column (named as the first table) will actually be created. When you create a link in the same table, this second column is also created (still with the source table’s name, except that it’s actually the same table here!). This allows you to access the information in both ways: the information about the parent(s) from the child(ren) and information about the child(ren) from the parent(s).
Hope this makes things clearer!

Bests,
Benjamin

Brilliant, Benjamin! Now I got it!

I read the docs but I didn’t realised this behaviour in this specific case.

Best

PF

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