I’m trying to design a tasks table that allows tasks to specify what tasks are blocking them, and then calculates a priority score based on this. So, ideally:
- Each task has a “Link to” type field that links to all tasks currently blocking it.
- Each task has a formula field that evaluates to zero if there is anything in the “Blocked by” field, and otherwise evaluates to a base number (say, 10) plus the sum of the priorities of all tasks it is currently blocking. (This is a minimal example. I plan on taking more things into account, such as time estimate, task staleness, etc. But if I can get it to do at least this, adding more factors shouldn’t be a problem.)
I’m running into two problems:
- I don’t know how to look up the entries in the same table that are linking to the current entry.
- Airtable seems to block apparent circular references in formulas, even when those references don’t actually reference the current entry. (I wish it would just allow them and display an error in any offending cells, à la Excel. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.)
Anyway. Is there a way I can get around these two problems to build a table with this functionality?
