Relations and formulas

Databases get powerful when they stop being islands. Relations connect records across databases; formulas compute new values out of the fields you already have.

Relations

A relation field links records in one database to records in another — tasks to a project, deals to a company, invoices to a client.

• Add a field with type Relation and pick the database it points to.
• On each record, the field holds one or more linked records, picked from a search.
• The link is two-way: the related database gets a mirror field showing the connection from its side.

Once related, a project’s page can show its tasks, and each task knows its project — the structure mirrors how the work actually connects.

Formulas

A formula field computes its value from other fields on the same record — it’s read-only and always up to date.

• Arithmetic and text: price * quantity, joining a first and last name
• Dates: days until a deadline, age of a record
• Conditions: label a task “Overdue” when the due date has passed
• Across relations: pull in or aggregate values from linked records — a project’s task count, the total of its invoices

Together

The pattern that carries most teams: one database per real-world thing (projects, tasks, people, clients), relations to express how they connect, and a few formulas for the numbers you keep re-computing by hand. Views over that — covered in Views and filters — do the rest.