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NickVa7
Level 9
May 25, 2020
Solved

Child object rollup

  • May 25, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 642 views

Hi WF Community,

Does anyone know if it's possible to create a custom calculated field on a parent object (Project) that would rollup (sum) the values of a custom field from a child object (Task)?

Example:

We have a custom field called 'Total Invoice Amount' on the Task object. I wanted to create a custom calculated field on the project object that would display the sum value for any Total Invoice Amount values on a projects tasks.

I tried creating a new custom calculated field on the Project object like this: Task.{Total Invoice Amount}, but it doesn't like that and won't let me save it.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Nick

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    Best answer by Doug_Den_Hoed_AtAppStore

    Hi Nick,

    You're running into the origin of the Workfront-pertaining phrase "you can go down, but you can't go up".

    Natively, the closest you can get to what you're trying to do would be to iterate all tasks from the project and show only those that have a Total Invoice Amount, but iterations can only display information, not aggregate (e.g. sum, in your case).

    Given that, you could create a project level custom parameter (e.g. "Sum of All Total Invoice Amounts", with a currency datatype), then on a dashboard, show a project report at the top that exposes that parameter, a task report grouped by project that shows the total by project, and (as often as needed) manually type the latter into the former. With that data at the Project level, you can then continue on with the other cool things you have in mind for it.

    With that process then working, once the novelty of the the manual data entry component wears off (or you make a wrong decision based on stale data; whichever comes first), I invite you to consider our UberCalc solution, which is is a Swiss army knife of functions you can use to enhance Workfront, such as generating job numbers, aggregating data, designing custom tabs with specialized workflows, and much more.

    Regards,

    Doug

    2 replies

    Doug_Den_Hoed_AtAppStore
    Community Advisor
    Doug_Den_Hoed_AtAppStoreCommunity AdvisorAccepted solution
    Community Advisor
    May 25, 2020

    Hi Nick,

    You're running into the origin of the Workfront-pertaining phrase "you can go down, but you can't go up".

    Natively, the closest you can get to what you're trying to do would be to iterate all tasks from the project and show only those that have a Total Invoice Amount, but iterations can only display information, not aggregate (e.g. sum, in your case).

    Given that, you could create a project level custom parameter (e.g. "Sum of All Total Invoice Amounts", with a currency datatype), then on a dashboard, show a project report at the top that exposes that parameter, a task report grouped by project that shows the total by project, and (as often as needed) manually type the latter into the former. With that data at the Project level, you can then continue on with the other cool things you have in mind for it.

    With that process then working, once the novelty of the the manual data entry component wears off (or you make a wrong decision based on stale data; whichever comes first), I invite you to consider our UberCalc solution, which is is a Swiss army knife of functions you can use to enhance Workfront, such as generating job numbers, aggregating data, designing custom tabs with specialized workflows, and much more.

    Regards,

    Doug

    N
    NickVa7Author
    Level 9
    May 26, 2020

    Good to know about that UberCalc solution! I seem to forget about he AtApp Store. My request was mainly for summary information on a dashboard; however, the ol' ticker wasn't operating at full capacity yesterday, and I didn't think to go down to the child and do a grouping/chart. This will suffice for now.

    Thanks for the help.

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