Sort by collapsed fields

[Bryan_Murley]

Is there a way to sort the records randomly (not alphabetically)? Say I have a table of students and I want them to be randomly ordered for a presentation or something?

[Joachim_Brindea]

You can never achieve true randomness natively with a formula but here is what I use:

MOD(
  (FIND("0", RECORD_ID()) * 11.5 + FIND("1", RECORD_ID()) * 23.21 + 
   FIND("2", RECORD_ID()) * 37.12 + FIND("3", RECORD_ID()) * 49.49 + 
   FIND("4", RECORD_ID()) * 59.89 + FIND("5", RECORD_ID()) * 67.52 + 
   FIND("6", RECORD_ID()) * 73.96 + FIND("7", RECORD_ID()) * 89 + 
   FIND("8", RECORD_ID()) * 97.54 + FIND("9", RECORD_ID()) * 101.14 +
   VALUE(DATETIME_FORMAT(CREATED_TIME(), 'MMDDHHmmssSSS')) * 13.89 +
   VALUE(DATETIME_FORMAT(LAST_MODIFIED_TIME(), 'MMDDHHmmssSSS')) * 17.25),
  1000000
) + 1

The output is a random number (only a dozen duplicates amongst a list of 10k records in my testings).

I then sort by that column and voilà.

[jeffi]

This is a clever solution.  Thanks for sharing.  Unfortunately, my use case requires the field to be randomized upon each page load, rather than one time and then it becomes static.

[Cabhorn]

Random sort needed! Feature request