So this is strange…
In Airtable’s formula field reference, several of the examples refer to fields that don’t exist anywhere within the example itself.
For example, check out this example that was given for the WORKDAY_DIFF function:
WORKDAY_DIFF({Assignment date}, {Due Date}, '2017-09-04, 2017-10-09, 2017-11-10')
=> 8
Okay, that’s great that the formula results in 8, but we can’t truly understand the formula if we don’t know what the values are for “Assignment Date” & “Due Date”. Interestingly, we also can’t tell whether the dates are in YYYY-MM-DD format or YYYY-DD-MM format.
Yes, we can type up this formula in our own database and play with it ourselves, but if we’re just reading through the formula field reference, it leaves more questions than it answers. For example, my immediate question about this formula is whether this formula includes the start date & the end date as part of its “count”.
Same problem with this function:
IS_SAME({Date 1}, {Date 2}, 'hour')
=> 0
Huh? Why does this result in 0? What are Date 1 and Date 2?
And this function:
WEEKNUM({Date})
=> 46
Why does this result in 46? What was the original date?
And this function:
WORKDAY({Launch date}, 100, '2017-09-04, 2017-10-09, 2017-11-10')
=> 6/20/2017
Why does this result in 6/20/2017? What was the Launch Date?
But there are many more examples — just like these — in the formula field reference. We can’t truly understand the functions properly from the formula field reference unless we understand which inputs you’re putting into the functions.
Yes, I get it that we can just play around with these functions ourselves in our own tables and figure this all out on our own, but it would be really nice to have a fully fleshed-out reference guide that we can fully comprehend.
