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Often I find myself needing to find a way to communicate several things to a user for a record. Things like:
- You forgot to create child records that are required for correct operation
- Something needs to be assigned to something
- You still have X number of things to do
- We need a signature
- The order hasn't been paid, it's missing something else, and another thing
Whenever I have a list of things I need to communicate to users, I find myself creating something like what you see above. The list is dynamic, meaning there may be 15 items in the list and it will expand/contract based on how many items are in the list
Here's the formula used
substitute(
list(
if(IsBlank([Related InstPhase_Sections]),
" --> Missing Sections",
"nope"),
if(IsBlank([Installation_Phase_Required_Images]),
" --> Missing Required Items",
"nope"),
if(and(
IsBlank([Related InstPhase_Sections]),
IsNotBlank([Installation_Phase_Required_Images])
),
" --> Need to assign required items to a section",
"nope"),
)
- list("nope")
, " , ",
"
")
- The column type is a LongText - this way you get multi-line functionality
- It starts with a SUBSTITUTE(), but if you set that aside for a moment you'll notice the next bit is a LIST() - that's the meat-and-potatoes of it all.
- The central idea here is we're literally creating a list of things to display to the user
- The key in getting things to "go away" when we want them to is to include a "fallback" option...
- then remove that option from the list. (^_^)
- We then take that list and substitute out the separator used, and replace it with a line-break
- this puts each item on it's own line
- When you need to add something else into the list, meaning you've got another reminder you need to show people, you just add in another option branch
Formula Breakdown
- Lines 1-2: basic openers
- Line 3: starts an option branch for (if there's NO sections)
- Line 4: the display entry for when there's no sections
- Line 5: the fallback option
- Line 6: spacer
- Lines 7-9: option branch for (if there's NO required images)
- Lines 10-16: option branch for (if there ARE required images, but NO sections)
- Line 17: closing of the list started on line 2
- Line 18: removes the fallback option from the list
- At this point, the list would contain a bunch of fallback options if any of the option branches defaulted to the fallback
- So the list would look something like this:
nope , nope , -->blah blah , etc... - So by removing all the fallbacks, we're left with a list of only the options we need to display
- Line 19: this line holds all the instructions for the SUBSTITUTE() started in line 1
- The first comma separates out the first part of the SUBSTITUTE() formula (the list)
- The first set of double-quotes holds the default separator used by SUBSTITUTE() - "space comma space" - and is what the SUBSTITUTE() formula is looking for
- Lines 20-21: The set of double-quotes holds a line break
- This is then switched out for every instance of the comma separator - which has the effect of putting each item on it's own line
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's many different ways you can format your list, the bullet point you use could be an actual bullet point font-image, but I figured I would share this quick method for generating a list of reminders - since I use it ALL the time!
@SkrOYC wrote:I like Show columns instead of normal ones for "messages" to the user, but I don't know if we can apply a format rule to Show columns. If we do, I'd prefer that route, although I wouldn't be able to reference to this "status" column if I need it somewhere
Formatting rules on Show columns = true (^_^)
But yeah, then you can't reference back to the notice column for things.
I like to use the presence of anything inside that notice column as an easy way to tell if something should be in a certain status: IsNotBlank([Warning/Notice_Column])
