Sorting by Date - Suggested Improvement

[Bill_Heinzelman]

In our Kanban board, we have a To Do column and I’m sorting records by Due Date 1 -> 9. The problem is, some records have pre-assigned due dates and others don’t (they’re added later). And records which don’t have a Due Date are actually sorted above the records that do have a Due Date, which is the opposite of what I would expect when using this sortation. Any record that doesn’t have a due date should be at the bottom of the list and not at the top. We want to see tasks that need to be completed immediately and they’re buried by the tasks/records that don’t have any dates right now.

[Bill_French]

Hi Bill, and welcome to the community!

Bill_Heinzelman:

We want to see tasks that need to be completed immediately and they’re buried by the tasks/records that don’t have any dates right now.

One idea - add a filter to your Kanban board that hides such items.

[Bill_Heinzelman]

Hi Bill, thanks for the response. We could do that, but without going into the whole process, we still want to see the records. So we ideally don’t want to hide them, just have them sorted below records with actual dates. I’m assuming records without dates are assigned a value of “0” so that’s why sortation is working this way.

[Bill_French]

Bill_Heinzelman:

I’m assuming records without dates are assigned a value of “0” so that’s why sortation is working this way.

I think it’s something like that, but more likely to be computing’s date of origin (Epoch).

I understand the need for comprehensive viewing. Here’s another approach:

• Create a new formula field that tests the date;
• Those which are empty it computes the last day of the current year;
• Those that are not empty it uses whatever the date is.
• Change the Kanban view to sort based on the formula field instead of the actual date field.

[Bill_Heinzelman]

Thanks Bill! This is very helpful, greatly appreciated.

[Kai_Soremekun]

Hi Bill ~
I was looking for something to answer this exact issue.
Is it possible to post an example of how that formula would look?
Thanks so much

[kuovonne]

Bill.French:

Change the Kanban view to sort based on the formula field instead of the actual date field.

Kanban views group by a single-select or single-collaborator field, not a formula field. You can group records in a grid view based on a formula result, but you don’t get the same experience.

[LW-SavvyIndie]

Agreed this is poor UX.
Here’s a screenshot of the problem in action:

There’s a bigger principle here AirTable should adotp: Empty fields should always sink to the bottom on Sort

[Dustin_Hodge]

I got around this by adding a formula column called Has Due Date (which I then hid) that is 1 if it does and 0 if it doesn’t. (Test if {Due Date} = BLANK()) I sort by that computed column first and THEN sort by the Due Date field. It’s a bit of a hack that really shouldn’t be necessary, but it works.