Automatically display all rows from a lookup

[David_Boucard_Planel]

Hello everyone, I am having an issue when I want to pull a list of data from a table into another one.
I am a group product manager and I want to be able to plan the workload of the PM in my team.
Here is a quick explanation of my goal :

• I have a table which is a master list of all project and features our team is working on (call it table 1).
• I want to create another table (call it table 2), which I would like to automatically display all projects name and then do some ressource allocation.

For that I created a column in table 2 which is a lookup into table1. The problem is that the lookup does not automatically displays all rows from table 1. I have to manually select, for each row, which project I want to reference. This is a real pain in the butt

HAs anyone encountered this issue, or can anyone from the coda team help me ?

Thanks

[Saul_Garcia]

Hello @David_Boucard_Planel! Welcome to the community!
It seems to me that you don’t have a formula in the lookup column of the table 2. It is not enough to create a lookup column, you have to put a formula to get the rows you want. In this case I would use the filter formula.
To do that first you start selecting the table you want to filter, in this case is table 1 so the formula would start with
[Table 1].filter()

Now, what would you like to show? All the tasks in which the project matches the current row?
[Table 1].filter([Project column]=thisRow())

Take a look at the doc I made showing a filter formula. It is placed in the Tasks column inside the Projects Table.

In this example you can see in the project table that I have all the tasks that are assigned to that project. This column is calculated with the above formula. What you have to take into consideration to make that formula work is that in the Tasks table I have a lookup column to the projects table, so every time you add a task you define which project it belongs to, and automatically it is displayed in the projects table.

I hope this helps for you to get a sense on how to use the filter formula, I can’t really give you the exact formula you need because I don’t really know which columns you have or what type they are. If you were looking for that you should post a dummy doc with what you have and what you expect.

[Pch]

Hi @David_Boucard_Planel and Welcome to the Community !

Well, it’s not an issue per se, that’s just how LookUp fields work .

I have honestly no idea how to explain this as I really don’t have the technical language for this but by creating a lookup in your Table 2, you’re just give the ability to your Table 2 to get info from your Table 1.
It’s just a link between those 2 tables, nothing more.

To do what you want to do, you just need to go a little bit further and find a way to Filter() in your Table 2 the info you’re getting from your Table 1.

But I think @Saul_Garcia, explained it better than I could .

Another option (but seeing you tagged your post with “cross-doc”, I’m not sure this could work) could be to add a Button column to your Table 1 which, when pushed, could add the desired row to your Table 2.

In my example, [Projects (Lookup)] in Table 2 is still a Lookup field, so when adding a row, you wont loose the connection between the tables and still be able to get what you need from your Table 1 to your Table 2.

I also added a button on the canvas which will just push the needed buttons in Table 1 (so you hide the buttons in Table 1 and it will also tells you how many projects still need to be added to Table 2)

[David_Boucard_Planel]

Hello @Saul_Garcia and @Pch thank you so much for your answers that are getting me closer to the solution. As requested I created a dummy doc that will help you understand what I am looking for.

Your proposed solutions get me closer but do not excatly help me solve the issue.

My goal is to pull from the reference table the whole list of Project Names (and Product Manager or any other from this table) and automatically display it in the ressource planning table.

In the ressource table every PM will then add some workload on each column called “Workload X” The Workload X columns will not be used in the reference table.

Can you help me refine the formula that I should have in the Column 1 of “Table for ressource planning”? I guess I could reuse it for any column I want to pull from the MAster List.

Thanks a lot guys You rock

[David_Boucard_Planel]

I got some help from coda CS that pointed me towards using a combination of Nth and Rowid

Here is what I thought about creating into column1 of Ressource Planning

Nth([referencetable].[Project Name],RowId(thisRow))

[Pch]

Hi @David_Boucard_Planel !

I’m glad to know you got some help from the support and maybe you’ve found a solution in the meantime .

If it’s not the case and you still need some help, I need to let you know that we can’t see your dummy doc (and Thank you so much for sharing one with us ).

When sharing/embedding a doc, in the “Sharing Settings”, in “Anyone with a link”, you just need to select, in the corresponding dropdown menu “can view” instead of “no access” .

If you found a solution, don’t hesitate to share it too ! This might interests others .

[David_Boucard_Planel]

Hey ! You are right I forgot to add the “can view” option ! I did not find a solution that matches my needsc completely so I am open to more suggestions

[Pch]

Hi there @David_Boucard_Planel !

I’m deeply sorry for this very late reply .

Your problem here was still bothering me , so I tried a few things and came up with 3 possibilities .

The possibility 2 in the doc below explores the Nth() suggestion .

I’m not sure my ideas will work for you though, but this is all I could think of for now .

I hope this helps