Status column vs. Dropdown column - best for charts & reporting

Can someone enlighten me on best uses for status columns vs. dropdowns? I am finding that status is not always appropriate; however, the charts seem to only want to include status columns. Any clarification would be welcome.

Which charts don’t accept drop-down columns?

My criteria are as follows:

  • Do you need to select more than one option per item?
  • Do you need more than 40 options?

If the answer is no to both of those, a status column is usually the best choice. Rather than charts, the key value with status columns is their usability in automations.

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Hi, Francis,

Thank you so much for this response. This clarifies a lot for me! I truly appreciate it. Now if I can just figure out how the progress bar works in conjuction with the status columns, I’ll really be doing well. Is there anything you can offer regarding that? I want to measure progress, but some status columns are not used for progress and I don’t want them included. Hope that makes sense. I can ask this as a separate question/post if needed.

Thanks again.

Hi @MaryV
You can customize which statuses contribute to the progress bar by going to the progress bar settings in the progress column and selecting or unselecting which status columns you want to see contributing to the progress column. You can also edit what weight each status contributes to the progress column or distribute the weight equally between all of the selected status columns
image

Let me know if you have any questions!

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Wow! I didn’t find that when I poked around. Thank you SO MUCH, Kayla. This is a game-changer. Really appreciate it.

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When I did that, I got this - which seems to be an error? So it needs at least 2 status columns? I am sort of confused by that - I just want the progress of the one column (so far - might add more later):

Hi @MaryV ,

It looks like you may be getting an error because the “Link Status” Column is not checked. You can either check this box to solve the issue, or if you only want “Page/Link Status” you will need to change that allocation to 100%.

Thanks, Kayla, it turns out I had done that and got an error; but after I clicked out of it then back in, somehow it allowed me to allocate 100%. Thank you! This has been very helpful. I appreciate it. :blush:

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