Render Field As [Other Field Type]
Dan Leeman
Go beyond currency and decimal formatting for formula values and render the value as different SmartSuite field types.
Examples:
* Rollup of project completion as a percentage complete field
* Customer tier based on lifetime customer value as a single select
* Customer active/inactive status based on invoicing or account history as a yes/no toggle.
These fields would be read-only as the data would be governed by the output of the formula.
As a partner and constant tinkerer, there are lots of ways to over-engineer the system with combinations of formulas and automations, but this would help keep the interface simple + aesthetically pleasing at the same time.
Check out a video on this feature request! https://youtu.be/yK5JUloxjSk
Nate Montgomery @ SmartSuite
Merged in a post:
Let formulas output Yes/No values
Y
YES Integrations
Allowing formulas to display values like a Yes/No field will make them easier to read and allow them to be used for setting Yes/No fields in automations.
A formula can currently output True and False as a result, which displays as "1" and "0" in the output. Unfortunately this is not clear to a user and cannot be used to set Yes/No fields (because an automation cannot set a Yes/No field to a numeric field)
Amending this behaviour so the formula field acts like a normal Yes/No field when it is outputting logical values will make formulas easier to read and use.
Brian Dollen
Merged in a post:
BOOL() formula
Y
YES Integrations
Convert an output of true or false (which currently display as 1 and 0) into a checked field or unchecked field
R
RL
also, the lookup values as a number cannot be used in formulas even with basic math function
Landyn U
I just wanted to comment to keep the thread alive and reiterate support for this request. I created a wishlist for what SmartSuite should have and am searching past requests before posting my own. This feature is at the top of my list!
L
Lee Ann O'Neal
Adding my two cents here... I need a way to render numbers right-justified, like all accounting presentations I am aware of. Preferably low-code or no-code. The human eye needs 0,000.00 to be right-justified in order to make sense of the data.
Brian Dollen
Lee Ann O'Neal: We've fixed this issue with today's release and have all numeric formula outputs properly right-aligned now. Sorry about that!
Chee Yuen Chan
The rollup of project completion is useful - however, percentage complete field would need to be very flexible: it should have the option to draw such basis either from subitems (based on the status of whether they are completed or no) OR checklists (based on completed/ticked items).
Personally i use checklist much more often than subitems
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite
Dan Leeman Here's Jon Darbyshire's idea which is also a really good approach. In this case, instead of writing a formula and choose its display type, you can choose if you want a manual input of formula-based output for the field itself.
I'm taking a similar approach like what we did for the Button field - you have a little read-only text-area and a button to access the big formula modal when you need to add/edit it.
Again, this could be applied to a variety of fields, such as rating, text, yes/no etc. We would love to hear everyone's opinion on this as well.
C
Christian Bauer
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: I am strictly NO CODE, lol! Is this not going the wrong direction?
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite
Christian Bauer: Hey :) That's a good perspective to look at things, indeed.
I would say that this type of functionalities are for people who do need to enter some code and do more fancy stuff. The rest of the field type functionality remains as it is now - "no code". At the end of the day the formula field itself is not a "no code:
I would love to hear if you have a certain use case related to this feature request so we can brainstorm if it can be achieved without typing a single line of code.
Dan Leeman
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: Yes, looks good to me!
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite
Dan Leeman awesome idea mate, awesome indeed :) Personally I would also love to get more fancy formulas in my grids too - as a designer I can't stand the plain text :)
Most of what you have described is pretty straight forward - no questions or anything. However, I struggle with the fields where we have user pre-defined data - single and multiple selects, status, etc. where the user defines the values and their colors in the field settings.
Or with less words - what colors are we going to set for the single selects that come out of a formula ? Probably the only possible answer here is assign random colors for every value. Nothing bad about it of course, but just wanted to check everyones thoughts on this "issue".
And here are the quick designs that I've prepared to illustrate this feature and get everyones opinion :)
cc Vasken Bakalian Oscar Viniegra Sam Wilson Jon Darbyshire Artem Kunytsia
Vasken Bakalian
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: Looks great!
For the colors, can't we let the user pick the color right below the field type selection?
So if the field type does need a color, let the color option become visible.
Or a simpler approach would be as you suggested, just random colors.
Dan Leeman
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: Great stuff!
I was curious if there would ever be a formula syntax for styling? Like if/else/switch for coloring? Since the system wouldn't know what the possible outputs could be, could leave it up to the user to accommodate for styling. If("condition", "#000000)
Would be nice for number types as well, especially negative numbers red, positive green, etc.
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite
Dan Leeman: Hey Dan, that's interesting. We'll discuss internally what are the possibilities here, thank you very much for the idea !
Lowenna Luke
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: This looks
exactly
what I need, given that I have quite a few formulae around my SS. I'm a design queen so like things looking like they should, e.g. currency results, percentages, etc.This formatting feature would really lift SS from a brilliant tool, to a go-to necessity.
R
RL
Stoyan Daskaloff • Design Lead @ SmartSuite: Please implement this already :)
Jon Darbyshire
Dan Leeman and others, I wanted to acknowledge that I have viewed your video and I have been following the upvotes and comments. You have some very interesting ideas here. Sharing your thoughts in a video is very helpful for me and makes it much easier to share with various people on our team. Thank you....
I am looking at this in two parts:
- Adding the ability select a format type within the Formula field type. This is something that we have been discussing internally for a while and now I just need to make this a priority for our development team - which I will be doing early next week.
- The ability to control other various field display types is very interesting. My first reaction is that we need to consider adding an additional option to the Single / Multiple Select, Status, Yes/No, Percentage Complete, Rating, etc that would also you to enter a formula to control the display elements. This would be very similar to the feature that we offer for the Title field that allows you to have the Record Title auto generated.
Do you like this approach or do you feel that we need to build this directly in the Formula field type?
I am interested in everyones thoughts on this and once we find agreement on the best approach, I will get this on the development schedule.
Vasken Bakalian
Jon Darbyshire: Both approaches can be useful.
But if we could add a formula to other field types (which is very powerful), then why would we need the formula field type.
Dan Leeman to better understand, do you mean just to format or the the formula output to be of another field type?
Also what about "rendering as a linked record" ?
For example, if priority is low, assign to Vasken, if priority is high, assign to Dan (although this can be done with automation)
Petar Ivancevic
Jon Darbyshire: Dan Leeman, Thanks for starting this conversation. I have been utilizing a lot of automations to do things that a formula should be able to handle by itself. I imagine if this was the only approach that performance would become an issue because all the automations have to interrogate a record every time to see if a criteria has been matched. From the outside looking in, formulas seem to be the more efficient approach, especially for complicated nested formulas.
Jon Darbyshire I am excited that you are considering both options. On other platforms I have had the ability to use formulas on a number of different field types and this has been great, but I like the idea of a formula field being rendered as another one of your beautiful field types. I also think as a developer it would be great to know all of your formulas can be found in 1 field type. If you are troubleshooting and need to have a look at all the fields in your app it would be great to be able to filter by fields that are populated by a formula regardless of their look.
I vote for option 1.
Oscar Viniegra
That would be great! A lot of automations could be avoided, for the sake of aesthetics.
I'd be good if this Rendering gave the resulting field the properties of the type of field selected for the rendering (Date, percent, ...)
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