We have a unique use case where it is going to be necessary to overrite the auto generated job numbers we have in our app.
We use autonumber to create our number - and thats great.
However, as we are transferring from an outside system and we have old ongoing jobs, we need to bring those old jobs into our system without it renumbering them.
And - with a few fields and a bit of trickery, I've been able to do that.
See here :
Now, this works, but it also skips job numbers when this happens.
So in this case, 639 & 640 (and others) are just lost forever - and that isn't great for our other internal systems.
How can we get them back?
I'm coming from other databases, where it would be simple to just count the number of non-blank entries in the Override Auto Number column, and minus this from the autonumber column. Boom. However, I cannot figure out how to do this.
I thought maybe I make an extra summary app, and add each new project to that app in a single row via automation.
Essentially a 1 record app with has a link to all entries in the projects app. Then it looks up the override autonumber column, and we CAN get unique entries / count them that way.
However, I cannot get an automation to add records to a lookup - it just overrides what is there with a new record, even if it is set to allow multiple lookups.
I'm out of ideas. I'm sure there's a clever way, but I'm just not used to many of the restrictions placed on data records that seems to be in smartsuite. Don't get me wrong - I can see the rationale behind it at times (it greatly simplifies a bunch of programming) BUT its restricting manipulation of data as far as I can tell.
(I CAN see a way to do it with zapier, but I really don't want to go that route if I can help it)
Love to hear some other approaches.
Thanks!