move over, Microsoft Excel: In Monday work management, you can perform calculations and manipulate data through the platform’s Formula Column feature. The formula functions of monday.com Work OS make it easy to solve math formulas by extracting data from columns or as standalone calculations. With these capabilities, you can get formula solutions faster and without more than one application, making it easy to get the most out of your data within one system.
TO SEE: monday.com Work OS review (TechRepublic)
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use formulas in Monday Work Manager, which was rated by TechRepublic as the best project management software for teams of all technical levels.
What you need to use formulas in Monday work manager
To add or use formula columns, you must have an active monday.com Work OS account through a Pro or Enterprise subscription.
Remark: If you’re on a Pro plan and downgrade your account in the future, you won’t lose the formula columns you’ve created.
Add Formulas in Monday Work Manager
To start adding formulas, you need to add the formula column to your board by selecting the + icon at the top right of your board chart (Figure A).
Image A
In the drop-down menu that appears, click Formula (Figure B).
Figure B
After you add your formula column, a formula builder will open on your page (Figure C). You can always access the formula builder by clicking in the column.
Figure C
Now that you are in the formula builder, you can start creating your formula. On the board, you will see a list of columns that you can use in your formulas, as well as a list of functions Monday work management provides (Figure D). You can use any of these functions to build your formula, or you can just use traditional math symbols such as + to add, – to subtract, or * to multiply.
Figure D
If you want to apply functions, monday.com makes it easy to understand the purpose of each function. Hover your mouse over a function to see a description of the function and an example of its application (Digits E).
Digits E
To create a formula, start by selecting a cell in the formula column where you can start typing your formula. You can then use columns from your board and functions as you create your formula.
For example, if you want to see whether your organization’s expenses are above or below budget, you can apply the following formula:
IF({Budgeted}>{Actual Spending},"Over budget","Under budget")
Another benefit of using Monday work management is that the software uses syntax highlighting to help you construct the formulas with ease; you can see this if specific segments of your formula within the area are colored.
For example, if a segment in the formula you created is red, it indicates there is an error in that part of your formula. Keep an eye on this as it can help you realize and fix errors in your formula.
Tips and tricks for using formulas in Monday work management
As with any software system that uses formulas, you must follow specific rules to ensure correct use of formulas and make accurate calculations.
To reference a column and include its value in your function, add that column’s name exactly as it appears on your boards within these braces {} in your formula (Figure F). In addition, formulas can contain parentheses () to change the order of operations.
Figure F
Remember that values are case sensitive and when writing your formula you must capitalize words correctly as they appear in your column.
If you choose to add commas to your formula columns, be careful as they can represent slightly different depending on the function. For example, the comma would represent a multiplication symbol in a multiplication function.
Always open and close statements with a symbol ( before the statement to open it and a ) symbol after the statement to close it.
In formulas, text must be enclosed in quotes for the software to distinguish. Your quotes and comma formatting can also affect the effectiveness of your formula, and copying and pasting formulas from an external text editor can cause the formula builder to read them as illegal.
Finally, always add a 0 before the decimal point when multiplying; otherwise the formula returns an error.
The formula column allows you to generate formulas based on compatible and incompatible columns.
Compatible Columns: Check, Country, Creation Log, Date, Dependency, Dropdown, Email, Formula, Hour, Item ID, Last Updated, Connect Signs (Previously Link to Item), Long Text, Numbers, Person, Phone, Rating, Status, Text , Timeline , Time Tracking, Voting, World Clock, sub-item names and number of sub-items.
Incompatible Columns: Autonumber, Color Picker, Files, Link, Location, Mirror, Progress Tracking, Tags and Week.
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