Incorporating colorful emoji into conditional (IF) statements in a formula field is a great way to automatically flag records meeting certain conditions. (If you have a Mac, you can bring up an emoji picker by typing CtrlSpace. Alternatively, you can copy and paste your favorite emoji from Emojipedia.)
Here's an example of how to set up a conditional emoji formula. Suppose you wanted to have a Status field which would automatically mark overdue tasks in a way that makes them obvious. You have a Due Date column with dates, and a checkbox column called Completed.
There are three possible outcomes you would want to mark:
- If the Completed box is checked, the Status field will say ✅Done✅
- If the Completed box isn't checked, and the Due Date is before today, the Status field will say ⏰OVERDUE⏰
- If the Completed box isn't checked, and the Due Date is today or after today, the Status field will say 🏃In-progress🏃
Translating this into a formula, we would get:
IF({Completed} = 1, "✅Done✅",IF(IS_BEFORE({Due date}, TODAY()), "⏰OVERDUE⏰","🏃In-progress🏃"))
To make the overdue records stand out more, you could also make the ✅Done✅ and 🏃In-progress🏃 records blank by using double quotation marks with nothing inside:
IF(Completed = 1, "",IF(IS_BEFORE({Due date}, TODAY()), "⏰OVERDUE⏰",""))
Now, go forth and write some IF formulas! 👍💥🔥💣
For a more robust way to automatically color-code your records based on conditions, please see this article on record coloring, which is a premium feature for our customers on Pro plans.