Coda planning with intervals
Dealing with irregular intervals in our planning
In my blog on how to get a notification on a due date, I used a column representing the Day() value as interval. Although this works for small and regular day related issues, it does not handle well more demanding use case.
In this blog I replace the column only storing day values — you see below — with a lookup.
The dynamic lookup approach you find below is also more ‘Coda correct’, the choice is row based and not column dependent.
The Next Date
One way to get the next date, is the way shown below. We work with date properties and add the frequency to the property we are dealing with. It is good to follow, but a bit long.
You can write the above code shorter by making use of an inherent assumption in the Coda Formula Language: you can add days directly to a date. This results in the logic below.
The Lookup
Although for many readers it might look evident that when you can reproduce one of the above formulas, you master the most important part of this puzzle. That is mistaken. The set up of the tables that support the above logic is in my eyes way more important:
You define the units to use in the interval and the frequency. Here is it all about the concept. It is rather easy, certainly when you get it presented, but the dynamics you generate with it, are mind blowing. The moment you select for example ‘repeats every week’, you get the date a week after today without great effort. And you do not need a pack, which I also consider as an important plus.
In case you have a worker working every 3th week on Monday while every other day working Tuesday — Friday, you can plan that with this approach. I’ll write about this in an other blog.
I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have questions feel free to reach out. Though this article is for free, my work (including advice) won’t be, but there is always room for a chat to see what can be done. Besides you find my (for free) contributions to the Coda Community and on Twitter.
My name is Christiaan and I support SMB with calculations (budgets and planning) and I prefer using Coda to get the job done.
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