We have a custom object called 'Invites'. These invites have a Master-Detail relationship to the Contact record. They also contain a lookup field to another custom object called 'Collection', so that a user can look at a collection and see how many invites there are, and also look at a contact and see how many times they have been invited. This works fine and is great if you are manually adding data, as it is easy to select the correct Collection.
We also link to another custom object called Journal, which works in the same way.
However, at the start of each project, users have to bulk upload hundreds of Invite records, and these can be linked to one of many Collections and/or Journals. At the moment, in order to put the correct Collection and Journal against the Invite, users have to enter the two IDs, which of course is no where near as intuitive as just adding the name.
Is there some way I can make this easier for users (without needing to write code)? I would really like for them to be able to add the Collection and the Journal name into their spreadsheet, then when they bulk upload it, have automation link the correct Collection and/Journal record. I think they will find it far easier, as they would only need to find the Contact ID, rather than Contact, Journal and Collection IDs, but I don't know if this is possible.
Can anyone give me any ideas please? Or am I doomed to make users reference IDs only?
Steven Trumble (Strum Consulting) 
Forum Ambassador
You could do this with Flow then.
RT flow on create. Do a get records on collection/journal using the text field name and return the Id to the lookup
