This is one of those questions that seems so stupid that I feel like after searching for 5 minutes I must have just overlooked the answer - or that it’s so obvious that it doesn’t exist that no one was boneheaded enough to ask before, so here goes:
Basically, I want to get the name of the current column that I’m writing a formula in for a Slack message, and it seems like something like Concatenate(thisrow.thiscolumn) would work, but of course there’s no thiscolumn formula, so I tried seeing if I could find it in an array of a column or something and I can’t figure out how to grab it.
I don’t need the ID, just the text name of the column.
[insert 5,000 word neckbeard rant starting with “ACTUALLY”]
As a follow-up, since I’m on mobile eating dinner and it’s hard to search, is there a way to fetch the title of a button? If so, I could kludge it that way.
Well, you can’t fetch button name, but you can set it through a formula (i.e. the button name can be set on lookup conditions), so you can in fact externalise it.
If you have the chance to share your use-case to better understand it, maybe there could be some meaningful efficient workaround.
I have a button that updates a hidden date row and sends a Slack message, and the button could be called anything. The button is in a column with a title that I wanted to grab.
Basically, you click the “Confirm” button in the “Shipped” column and I was hoping to automagically echo the column name in the Slack postmessage event. Then, I thought, well I could call the button “Shipped” and grab that, then echo it if it’s fetchable.
That’s the basic scenario.
Presently I am bondo-and-bailing-wiring it with hardcoded terms. Like you say, not a big effort, but I was more curious for just general understanding of things coda can do and for future use.
Hi Kevin,
I understand what you mean, but - again - I think this workaround won’t work either.
However, I have a feeling that this might be put in a different perspective.
I’m just trying to interpolate a lot from what you said, so I could be totally wrong
Considering that your action seems to be a status in a workflow, I share this basic example I did, slightly modified for your context.
Have a look:
If it makes sense, this way you could decouple the name issue and effectively add an action (in the button formula) that posts your slack message with the status (and other relevant references).
Otherwise, sharing your example (or a simplified one, if there are sensitive data) could help me or someone else to dig deeper into it.
Let me know If I’m totally off-road or if this triggers something useful.
Cheers!
@Federico_Stefanato aha, interesting. Okay, that’s a very nice little implementation. I’m digging at it now figuring out what you did there, but I’ve already learned a few new things.
Thank you very much for that, I genuinely appreciate it!
I would love to have a thisColumn as well, specifically to get the name of the column, so maybe thisColumnName would be better. My use case is that I want to create a grid that looks up data from a related table by using both data in the first column of the row and data in the column name (in my case a time in the row and a date in the name). I want to be able to use the same formula across multiple columns, but the result should change depending on the name of the column. This way if someone changes the name of the column, the actual calculations in the column would also change.
Basically, it feels odd that formulas are “blind” as to their context, the column that they are a part of.
