It appears that Lookup fields are excluded from use in charts as well as in column storting or grouping in views. The exception seems to be a numberic formula (e.g. a formula returning a decimal or currency can be used in charts). Is there anyway around this? For example, I would like to sort or group a view by an alert (currently the formula returns a string that shows a shared image) or produce a chart by that same alert. If I convert the alert to a number I might be able to sort or group, but the chart will have no meaning. Ideas?
For technical reasons it is not possible to sort or group on formula fields. To work around the problem you may create a data field and populate if from trigger using formula. In this case you should be able to sort and group on data field.
How do I "populate a data field from a trigger using a formula?" It does not let me reference a formula field. (I tried using an integer formula and it works for charts but not for sorting/grouping in a view.)
Try this:
1. Create a field "My Field"
2. Create a trigger of type "Update Field Value" and select "My Field" to update.
Okay. That works great for getting the values back. When I try doing it with the shared images, however, I get the literal text of the image rather than the stoplight image to display.
Well, may be you can try this:
1. Create a field which holds status info (I'd recommend to use workflow status for that - that would open many other possibilities)
2. Create a template field which will render a picture depending on status field
3. Sort/Group records by status field
Ron, you take a look at the Formulas guide to see examples of how to render images using Formula fields and Templates. This is doable.
Matt