Hey Codans!
I have a sheet which we use to check the reports from service engineers. Engineer sets up a row, and the sheet has columns for the cross-checking engineer and office to confirm they checked the report and when. So, 1 row per report, 1 column per check / date / person.
We want to add a set of checks to this process. Normally, I’d just add columns to the existing table take a view of that table and hide most of the other sutff I don’t want in this view e voila! But this checklist is 22 items long and each check description is like 5-10 words. You can’t have that as a column header, my sheet will be a mile wide.
Coda’s got a LOT more options than it once had and I’m not at all sure which way is the right one (sub-tables, views, forms etc.).
Ideally, I’d like to click a row in the original table and get a popup with all the checks which need to be done for that report - maybe a canvas column but with a template so i don’t have to copy and paste the checklist in each time?
Anyway, thanks for any help.
Hi Nathan
As you mentioned, many ways to do things in Coda, your choice above is my personal preference. But you then still have a few choices to make:
- You mentioned “checklist”, is it a Coda column with checks, or a list of questions with an additional column for answers?
- Do you want the table to be unique to each row, or a table where you can have another view of the table across the rows of your “service engineer report check sheet”.
Rambling Pete
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Hey Pete,
Thanks for the quick response.
Right now it’s neither it’s just a list with check boxes in a spreadsheet. What would be perfect I think is a two-column table (one with the check description and another with a checkbox for each check). That way the long descriptions are done in rows and it looks good.
It needs to be the same list for every Visit Report (so every row in the main table). But crucially, when I check say, report NB1000 I get a new checklist; when I check report NB1001 I get the same checklist, just blank. If that makes sense.
I created a new table as above, added that table to a canvas in my existing main table and reformatted the …form(? layout?) of that inside the canvas. That seems to work but it spawns a copy of the Checklist table for each new row. I don’t think there’s a better way is there?
Could you share a copy of the doc?
Hi Nathan,
Yes - table names have to be unique, so Coda is going to differentiate them by prefixing it with Copy x. You can hide them on the canvas by hiding the table header on the source table:
But they will still be created, and show up in your list of tables. Example in Suggestion using Table.
Alternatively, you can create a template row using a grid, and duplicate that row for each visit. (Or create a button to do that.) Example in Suggestion using Grid.
Third, you could create a template table, and use that to fill the canvas with a connected table. That means you will need to filter the table in each row, and you can do that using Parent().
Unfortunately I am out of time now… 
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Amazing - thanks much for this @Piet_Strydom! If I could give it more likes I would. I’m going to take some time to digest and play about with options.
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Quick question re: grids and the doc size limit. Adding just 1 or two rows with a grid in seems to MASSIVELY eat docs size e.g. current doc size with 200+ rows in the table is ~26%. Adding a single row with a 22 line grid in takes that to 57% and adding another row with a grid in takes it to 98%! Is there an error there?
That is interesting, I do not use grids much.
I suggest you make a new separate post on that
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