How to use Trend Arrows to show change in RYG

mary445566

Is there a formula that would highlight the trend of a change in RYG balls ?

For example, if someone changes the status of a project from Green to Red, it would show a down arrow. If someone changes the arrow from Red to Yellow, it would show a Upward arrow.

Thanks for your help!

 

 

Paul Newcome

This would have to be manually tracked. Some of the features required to make this work haven't been rolled out yet.

Shaine Greenwood

Hi,

If you're tracking multiple projects in one sheet or you have a summary row at the top that you're bringing into a report, you can automate this by creating another symbol column and placing a formula in that. There's an up, down, unchanged symbol set: https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/504619-column-types#symbols

You could automate this with a nested IF statement. More on the IF function here: https://help.smartsheet.com/function/if

Paul Newcome

Shaine,

 

I am lost as to how you would automate this. The way I am reading the post is that we are trying to track the changes in one cell. If I change Status1 from Green to Red, we need to display a Down Arrow. This would require accessing the cell history Status1.

 

Am I misreading the post?

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Paul—my solution would require an additional column that actually shows the change directions as opposed to being able to track status and the change direction in the same cell.

Not sure I read the original poster as absolutely needing both to be tracked in one cell, but I could be mistaken.

mary445566

Yes, I am trying to track the changes in one cell 

Paul Newcome

Shaine: I didn't mean needing both to be tracked in one cell. Sorry about that. The way I read (and it appears to have been confirmed) is this...

 

I have my Status column set as RYG. I have a separate column: Tracking. When I change the cell in the Status column from Red to Green, I need the Tracking cell to automatically show an Up arrow. If it goes from Green to Red then a Down arrow. This part would be simple enough in the changing to Green would always result in an Up and changing to Red would always result in a Down.

 

Mary: Please confirm or correct my above statement and whether or not my below statement is even an issue.

 

But what about Yellow? If we are going from Green to Yellow then it would be a down arrow, but if we go from Red to Yellow then it would be an Up arrow.

 

Other than manually updating the Tracking column, I personally cannot figure out how to automate comparing the Status cell's current data to the Status cell's previous data.