Workfront

JillAc · 6/8/22

I have a request field that is one that I believe came with WF that I didn't build. It is a calculation "Requested by Who?" and has a formula that works on all my request object forms except one. When I add the field to this wonky form the calculation part isn't populated, so I put the formula in "additional settings", the same way it is on the other request forms, and I get an error. What am I doing wrong?

Formula: IF(ISBLANK({Requested By Who?}),Entered By.Name,{Requested By Who?})

Error: Requested By Who? field is used in a multi-form configuration, if you would like to change this formula you will need to remove this field and replace it with a new one containing the desired calculation.

skyehansen · 6/8/22

I recommend you read this help article.

https://one.workfront.com/s/document-item?bundleId=the-new-workfront-experience&topicId=Content%2FAd...

Aside from this, I can add that the additional settings area is pretty finicky, especially when you have multiple forms attached to an object and all of them are using this calculated field. Like, just having an additional space at the beginning or end of the calculation can cause it to be "not identical"

JillAc · 6/8/22

I started to read that and my brain completely shut down. I’m going to have to set aside an entire day to understand this.

skyehansen · 6/8/22

I feel you! Let's just say the summary of the page is that Workfront thinks that one of your formulas is not like the others. It might be off by as little as a space. But it's off. Sometimes the only way to get around that is to delete the calculated field off all the custom forms, save and close all the forms, and then put the field back in one at a time -- copying and pasting the same way to each. The help article gives you shortcuts to determining where the conflicts might be so that you can avoid doing them all, but that's entirely up to you.

Frankly, if you are going to go this route, the only thing I would do is change the "requested by who?" field name to remove the question mark (and update your formula to match). Special characters are horrible to deal with in field names -- you can leave it in the label so that your users don't complain, but this will save you some heartache in the future. But this suggestion is only if you end up removing the calculated fields from all the forms.

JillAc · 6/9/22

So I just did all this, twice on each form because the first time I got stuck with one of the forms not accepting the formula. And now Request by Who has no data at all from any of the forms. I can’t tell if it lost the data when I removed the field, or it’s now just not working across the board.

skyehansen · 6/9/22

huh, that's interesting. Did you remember to "recalculate the expression" when you were adding in the field again? (Every time you add a field on an existing form that is on already existing objects, it will come in blank unless you force a recalculation)

JillAc · 6/10/22

Hi I don’t see a way to recalculate the expression???? I am copy/pasting the expression into “additional settings” and then saving. I looked at the Help website and don’t see any screenshots that show what it means to recalculate,