Issue while grouping cards from a "Select list" column allowing multiple selections

Hello :wave:

I’d like to do something but I can’t figure it out. Here’s my situation:

I created a “cards” view from a table and grouped these cards by “Issue Type” (the name of a column in my table that is shaped like a “Select list” - allowing multiple selections) - grouped at the top. I would therefore like the cards for which I have chosen two different “issue types” to be in the columns of these two respective “Issue types”. However, it doesn’t work. Let’s say I have Issue #1 and Issue #2. If I select them both, my card is alone in an additional column named "Issue #1, Issue #2).

I hope my explanation is clear enough. If you have any ideas on how to fix my problem, I’m all ears! Thanks in advance!

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Hi @Elena_Lietard,

And welcome to the Coda Community!

For the card layout view, the columns are going to be exact matches. If cards live in two columns, it gets more difficult to drag cards and have values change…do both cards jump, or would one sometimes disappear? There are some questions that aren’t easily answered and for a visual canvas to work on, matching columns deliberately is more straightforward. That’s not to say there’s a right way, it’s the way that we’ve found more people anticipate this working.

So having a multi-select value that you also sort on for card view is going to product the results you’re seeing and there isn’t a workaround that I know of to force it to work the other way.

this is a shortcoming - not being able to group by the single value. kind of defeats a major benefit of having multi-select.

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Has anyone found a workaround for this problem?

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One option Coda might explore could be to add a simple dropdown or checkbox to the existing Group interface when the group by column is based on a formula, something like:

  • Treat multiple values as one group / separate multiple values into separate groups

Having the above option only for columns based on a formula would sidestep the issue of how to handle changing values (since they can’t be changed directly) and give the option to makers to have this functionality via a formula calculated value if they want it.

A few examples of use cases where this would be helpful:

  • assign items to team members and give them each their own individual column or swimlane
  • assign projects to partners (multiple), have a single board view to track projects across partners with a column for each partner that shows all their projects
  • a board or table view to show events (including multi-day), grouped by day (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri)
  • etc… there are lots more!
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Yeah, this is making so many of my board use cases completely impossible.

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Yes! I understand the problem of breaking functionality of dragging things between columns, but I’m more often looking to use cards as dashboards rather than organizing tools. If there’s a way around this, I’d love to know it.

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@BenLee Why doesn’t coda just copy Notion on this feature? They’ve created a very intuitive and intelligent workflow for this (which supports drag and drop) that matches what everyone in this thread is asking for. A setting toggle between modes could be a way to support those looking for the current Coda way (which unfortunately really isn’t functional for most use cases that involve interacting with data with multiple attributes).

Our tables do quite a bit, so its not as easy as just plugging in a feature. There are quite a few other instances to consider. Should a row be represented multiple times so that it can be seen in multiple columns? If a card “Color pack one” includes Red, Green, and Blue as options, how should that display if my columns are “Red”, “Green”, and “Blue”?

That said, we do regularly research and look into features like this, it’s just not a project yet.

As we consider these projects, it helps tremendously to see examples and use-cases. So if you have an example setup that shows how to display something like the example I mentioned, we’d love to see what you would expect to see and why it helps.