Hey everyone! I need to build a custom client onboarding form that can populate multiple Airtable tables at once. Here’s what I’m trying to do:
Send personalized forms to new clients after they sign contracts
Collect their responses through the form
Automatically distribute the data across different tables in our Airtable base
The standard Airtable forms won’t work since they only support single table submissions, but our intake process requires data to go into multiple tables simultaneously. Has anyone tackled something similar? Looking for suggestions on tools, integrations, or workarounds that could handle this multi-table data flow.
Any creative solutions would be greatly appreciated!
Had the same problem six months ago when setting up our onboarding. Typeform + Zapier combo worked great for me. Key is naming your form fields to match your Airtable tables exactly. I created multiple zaps from one form submission - each one filters specific fields and sends them to the right table. Contact info goes to Clients, project stuff goes to Projects, etc. You’ll need a unique ID (email or client ID) to link records between tables. Watch out for linked records though - add delays between zaps so the parent record gets created before the child tries to connect. Took me two hours to build but saved tons of manual data entry.
webhooks r a great option! set up a webhook endpoint to grab the form data, then use Airtable’s API to push stuff to the right tables. I did this with Google Forms + Apps Script - when the form submits, it triggers a script that sends the data to Airtable. some coding required, but u get total control over data flow.
Been running client onboarding at scale for years - skip the complex stuff first.
I use a simple Google Form that dumps everything into one sheet, then run a script that parses and distributes the data:
Form collects all data in one place
Script runs every 15 minutes checking for new submissions
Parses each row and sends chunks to different Airtable tables via API
Uses email as the linking field across tables
You can test everything in the sheet before it hits Airtable. I’ve caught tons of data issues this way that would’ve broken the automation.
Wrote the script in 30 minutes using ChatGPT for the API calls. Way more reliable than chaining multiple services together. When something breaks, you fix one thing instead of debugging a whole workflow.
Start simple, add fancy features once the basic flow works.
We solved this with JotForm + Make (used to be Integromat). Built conditional logic in Make that routes different form sections to specific Airtable tables based on field mapping. The key was using Make’s delay function and creating a master record first, then using that ID to populate the related tables. JotForm’s way better than most tools for conditional fields - you can show/hide sections based on client type. Once it’s set up, it runs itself. Client fills one form, data automatically spreads across all the tables. Costs about $30/month for both services but saves us hours of data entry every week.