Individual record field background color - Interactive table

This suggestion is based on our current production plan in google sheets.
As seen below, different versions of the product has different background color in the plan.
This production plan is starting its journey over to Tulip these days and it would be great to be able to maintain the visual information we have in the current plan.

The production plan is live, so completed products will move out of the visual as production moves on.

The suggestion is to be able to set a background color individually for each field in a table record for the Interactive table widget. The color should be based on e.g. a variable or a record value.

Current solution to achieve something simular will be to add color field in the production plan table.

image

Hey @oviland,

I have heard similar requests before. I can create a feature request for this, but it would be great if you could help me better understand your usecase:

  1. It looks like you shade both the first and second column, would you be looking to mirror this behavior in tables? or would a limit of 1 color per record be acceptable? Would you want the entire record to be highlighted with that color?

  2. Would you want this functionality displayed in tables, or just in app? We generally treat tables just as a storage location for data, and we assume users will be interacting with tables from apps, so there is a lot more flexiblity within apps around formatting table data.

  3. If you are just looking to visualize this within an app, is there a reason you can’t just filter the table within your apps to only the orders that correspond with that user? So add a color field to the data you are importing, then in the interactive table, add a filter.

Thanks for the feedback!
Pete

Thank you for your response.

  1. Optimally an individual color for each field. In our case we need two colored fields, but we can manage by just one. The color should only highlight one field, not the entire record.

  2. No, no need for color in the underlying table, only in the Interactive table widget in the app.

  3. The colored field in the production plan is the main product to be assembled. The right part of the plan shows the different sub assembly. The different main products have different variations of the sub assembly. Every sub assembly line will deliver a sub assembly to every main product. So, the plan is set to be a plan for all sub assembly lines in which order to assemble a specific variant of each sub assembly.

When switching over to Tulip we will tailor a station to each sub assembly line, but still, the sequence of all the orders is needed.

In addition we will keep a similar view as the google sheet for a total overview of the assembly.

Hey @oviland ,

Thanks for the additional context! I found a feature request from mid 2021 in the backlog that would enable this table functionality, along with a lot more (conditional formatting on table fields).

We always look to add features that are reusable and very flexible, but that can be tricky at times. We would love to allow users to color any field based on another table field (or a conditional), but this gets a little unwieldy when you have 100+ table fields, each tied to another table field. Not an insurmountable challenge, but one that takes a lot of thought to insure it is executed in a way that isn’t unwieldy.

I added this thread to that feature request, and I am working with our product owners to understand where this might land in our priorities for the next few quarters. I will update this thread as that ticket is updated.

Thanks for the great feedback! Keep it coming!
Pete

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It is great to see this brought up again.

Yes, this would be a very welcome feature, even if only coloring one field in the app table widget is available.

A use case that one of our sites was looking into was coloring a table with tasks according to those tasks being on-time, delayed or overdue. This would give a very quick look at the general status of all tasks.

The site implemented it by “looping” between two steps to “scan” each entry and color a lightbulb circle widget next to each item. When the list of tasks grew too long, the looping stalled execution.

I do hope this gets added to the priorities.