Progress bar columns are a great way to visually represent the status of a task, project, or initiative. Users can easily update the progress by dragging the progress bar, or you can use formulas to automatically calculate and update the progress for each row.
Within this article, you’ll find...
Add a progress bar column
To add a progress bar column to your table, follow the steps below:
Click on the plus (+) icon in the upper right corner of the table to add a new column
When prompted to choose the column type, search for and select Progress
Now you can manually adjust the progress for each row by clicking and dragging. Alternatively, you can use formulas to generate the progress bar value automatically (see the Calculate progress bar values section below). You can also customize the column by setting min and max values, changing the colors, and more. Check out the following sections to learn more.
Customize your progress bar column
To start customizing your progress bar column, open the column settings by right-clicking on the column header, then selecting Edit column.
Here you’ll see the following customization options:
Display as: In addition to progress bars, there are few different column types that can be used to display progress - such as sliders, percent, and scale. You can use this section of the settings to explore these other display options. But note that only the Progress option is the true progress bar. The other options work slightly differently and may have different customization options.
Color: Choose between several different solid color options, or even choose one of the multi-color options for a more dynamic progress bar. With these multi-color options, the color of the bar will automatically change based on how far along it is.
Minimum and Maximum: Set minimum or maximum values for the progress bar. Default is minimum of 0 and maximum of 100.
Increment: If you want an increment other than 1, you can enter that here. Then the progress bar can only be adjusted in multiples of that increment.
Show number: By default, the value of the progress bar will be displayed as a value to the right of the bar. Toggle this setting off if you wish to hide this number.
Value for new rows: You can use this field to specify a default progress bar value that all newly added rows should start with. For instance, maybe you want each new row to start with the progress bar at 50 or 100, rather than 0. Learn more about default values here. Note these values can still be manually changed for each row. If you instead wish to automatically calculate values for your progress bar that cannot be manually changed, check out the next section.
Calculate progress bar values
By default, progress bars can be manually dragged to quickly change the value. But if you want to save yourself the time and hassle of manually adjusting each row, you can have the values automatically calculated and filled.
🎥 For instance, let’s say you have a table of Projects. Each project in the table has a number of constituent tasks, living in the Tasks table. These two tables are connected via relations and linked relations.
Next, you add a progress bar column to the Projects table, and you want the value for each project to be automatically set based on how many of the constituent tasks are completed. So if 1 out of the 4 tasks is complete, then the progress bar for the project should be 25. And if 2 out of the 4 tasks are complete, then the progress bar should be 50 (halfway there). Whenever another task is marked as complete, the project progress bar will automatically update accordingly.
You can set this up by adding the following formula to the progress bar column in the Projects table:
💡 To learn more about Coda formulas, check out this article.
To set calculated progress bar values, simply follow these steps:
Right-click on the header of the progress bar column
Select Edit column
Click into the Fill values tab
Select the Calculations & formulas option
Now you can either use the formula builder to easily build your formula, or you can write your own formula by clicking the cursive f symbol to open the formula editor.
Once done, hit Enter or just click out of the formula editor.
FAQs
Can I add a progress bar to the canvas of my doc instead of within a table?
Can I add a progress bar to the canvas of my doc instead of within a table?
Yes, in addition to progress bar columns, Coda also offers progress bar canvas controls. These individual progress bars can be added directly to the canvas of your doc and have many of the same customization options as the column type. Check out this article to learn more about canvas controls.
Can I add color formatting for the entire row based on my progress bar value (or colors)?
Can I add color formatting for the entire row based on my progress bar value (or colors)?
Not only can you set dynamic colors for your progress bar column (via the column settings), but you can also apply dynamic colors to the entire row or any other columns in the row using conditional formatting. If you want the color formatting of the row to be based off the value of the progress bar, just create a conditional formatting rule that relies on the progress bar column. Then apply that rule to whichever columns you choose.
Learn more about conditional formatting here.