How to populate a column based on the selections made on a different column

[suquetpaul]

I'm building a base to help track my company's product lineup and I've built an Interface for each one of us 3 founders have our own To-Do interface, populated from a To-Do table. 

This To-Do table gathers information from other tables such as customer's name, product selection and other items. I want a column "Extended Task" to populate with a short checklist automatically, based on a selection of a "Task Group" field (which I've made a Single Select drop-down field in an effort to keep the names consistent). 

I thought of using an IF formula, where IF "Task Group" is "Quality Check", then the "Extended Task" field would get populated with "Verify Unit Powers On. Verify IR Remote Works. Visual Examination. Inputs Tested.  Doors Open Smoothly. Lights Operational." in checklist form. But not only can I not figure out how to do this complicated IFTTT formula, but I am also not sure if this is the best way to go about it.

Here's an example:

In this example, I've copy and pasted the cheklist on "Extended task" manually for the first two "task group name", is there a way to have that "Extended task" field self-pupulate based on the "task group name" selection? 

Hope this makes sense.

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Yeap what you've got makes sense.  Try this formula:

SWITCH(
  {Task Group},
  "Quality Check", "[ ] Verify Unit Powers On\n[ ] Verify IR Remote Works\n[ ] Visual Examination\n[ ] Inputs Tested\n[ ] Doors Open Smoothly\n[ ] Lights Operational.",
  "Task 2", "[ ] Test\n[ ] Other"
  
)

Then have an automation paste the value from the formula field into a long text field with rich text formatting turned on:

Link to base

---
If each extended task might have its own data to be stored, you could also try using record templates and those via an automation with conditionals too: https://support.airtable.com/docs/using-record-templates-in-airtable

[suquetpaul]

I was starting to experiment with the Switch function, but would not have gotten as far as I have without your guidance. Thank you. 
I've gotten stuck with the automation though. I haven't yet used any automation on airtable yet and I'm a bit confused as to some of the terms;
I tried following as closely as I could to your instructions, but I keep failing to move forward.

I've set a low bar as to when the automation runs. Pretty much if the "Extended Task Formula" field is not empty, (which in turn at this point means there was an eligible "Task Group Name" selected from the dropdown (since not all task groups will extend into a full to-do list to populate the Formula/Fx fields), and chose the To-Do table for the automation to run in.

It seems like I just haven't set the correct parameters for the automation. Like I don't understand what it means by "Record ID"

I managed to go back and select a record to use as a test, so that worked (in testing), but I can't seem to find out how to set it up so that the field "Extended Task" gets automatically filled using the output of the previously generated formula results in the "Extended Task Fx" field. 

[suquetpaul]

I think I did it!

It seems like it needs to go at it proactively and not retroactively so I need to go in and make the Formula field update so that the automation sees that the field is not empty. No big deal. 

I'll update if I stumble upon some hiccup here. 

Thank you very much again. No way would I'd been able to figure it out on my own.

[suquetpaul]

Seems like that worked. Now, if there was a way of having a progress bar associated with how many of the subtasks (Extended Tasks) have been checked...

[suquetpaul]

Found a youtube video someone shared on the forum and managed to do just that! 

[suquetpaul]

Quick question, as I'm making my formulas more and more complicated; 

[ ] is translated in a rich text formatted long text field into empty check boxes. I presume [x] is interpreted as a checked check box. How does one get the bullet? And how could one get either of these pushed in (i.e. as in when one presses the TAB key)? 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

"- " is bullets for me!

re: And how could one get either of these pushed in (i.e. as in when one presses the TAB key)? 
Hmm, could you tell me more about this?  Not sure I'm following, sorry!

[suquetpaul]

Thank you very much Adam, I'll give that a go. 

I mean something like this:

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Ah, I see!  Could you try adding some spaces to the front?

- First
    - Second
        - Third
[ ] First
    [ ] Second
        [ ] Third

 The above results in this for me: