Are only FKs from the first table joined automatically?

We like and use the feature that metabase will do automatic joins (at least in the direction from FK to PK)

It helps users because:

  1. they don't have to do a join to summarize or filter by a field from the primary table
  2. Instead of display FK IDs we can display the Entity Names from the primary table

I'm running into a problem that this behavior only seems to work for the very first table from which I start a question.

If I join that table with any other table, there are no automatic joins (no display value re-writing and no summarize by primary table fields) without further joins.

Example from Screenshot:

  • Automatic joins work fine for "School Details" (where the 4 user id columns show the name instead of the user id.
  • the School Details > Support Staff Acitvities > User ID doesn't work and shows the id directly

however the setting for the field is correct, if I swap the order of the tables, than only the User Id from Support Staff Acitvities will show the name and the other 4 user ids from school details would show the id, not the name,

Is there any way around that?

1 Like

I would suggest you create a model with all the joins and then tell your users to use that model