In this tutorial, we will create a portal to show a list of events in a gallery view which users can choose from to sign up for an event.
Use Cases
This tutorial could also apply to the following scenarios.
Employees assign tasks to themselves.
Contractors claiming listed jobs.
Attendees sign up for events, workshops, shows, activities, etc.
Students register for classes.
Patients booking available appointments.
Customers adding products to their accounts.
Airtable Setup
To start, we need to have two tables in our base:
Event - The table that contains the list of events that users can sign up for.
User - The table where the list of users that can log in to the portal is saved
These two tables must be connected using a linked records field.
Client Portal Setup
In the portal, use the User table as the user table and add the Event table as a portal table.
Disable creating records in the Event table by clicking on the table and selecting the Create & Expand Records section. Only the admin should be able to add a record in the event table.
The child form for the event table would have the linked record field that points to the User table, as well as any other fields you may wish to present.
Linking Users to Records
To automatically add users to events, you need to go to the User field in the Event table child form. There, select the Advanced section and enable both add-only mode and auto-fill the field with the logged-in user record.
Set participants limit (optional)
Additionally, you can add a limit on the number of participants. You can do this by going to the Event table child form, selecting the Disable Form section on the left, and then enabling Enable saving records if conditions are met. There, you can add a condition for the number of participants, which could be a formula field in your event table that counts the number of linked records in the Users field.
Setting up the views
We need to create two views:
1) To show the list of events that the user has already signed up for. This view can use default settings.
2) To show the list of all events: set this view to show all records.
Test
When we open the portal, there are no records yet in the first view. This is expected, since the user has not linked themselves to anything.
Going to the second view, it shows all the events.
Clicking on an event will show more details. The submit button will serve as a sign me up feature.
Allow users to cancel their registration (optional)
Learn more about how to enable unlinking in this article.