Choose order of empty values when sorting on Date field

Hi,

When we create a board view which is sorted on a Date field, if some cards have no date value filled in, then they are always displayed before cards which contain date values.

This is problematic because when we want to display a classic “to do” list with cards sorted on “ascending” dates (to see on top what to do next), then all the cards without dates are coming first.

It would be great if we could choose if cards containing an empty field are displayed before of after.
Maybe with 4 choices instead of 2 :

  • ascending then empty
  • descending then empty
  • empty then ascending
  • empty the descending

Xavier

2 Likes

You could probably achieve this with a workaround using a formula field, e.g.
SortDate = if(IsEmpty(Date),Date(1,1,1900),Date)
or
SortDate = if(IsEmpty(Date),Date(1,1,2100),Date)
Then you can sort your board (ascending or descending) on the formula field instead of the original date field.
You can still have the cards showing the Date field though :slight_smile:

(I’m assuming none of your entities have dates before 1st Jan 1900 or after 1st Jan 2100!)

Thank you for your help. That would work indeed, but then we would not see easily anymore which cards actually have a date set or not (and we need to see that), except by using colors but we already use it for something else…
Anyway that trick may be handy for some other boards so I keep it in mind !

+1 from me. I found this annoying too, but didn’t think to make a feature request from it. :smiley:

As always Chris impressed by your capabilities with formulas, but this is just too much work and shouldn’t be necessary if a good solution was in place.

Second @Oshyan with a +1 of simply some work by the team to resolve this natively within Fibery.

Thanks!

We’ve fixed that, should be released in the next build. Empty values will be visible if sorting is applied

1 Like

This bug is fixed, empty values remain visible when sorting is applied

Hi, thanks for the bug fix, however in this thread we would like to achieve a more fine-grained sorting, for instance being able to sort by “ascending then empty values”.

Right now if we put an “ascending” filter on a date filed, and there are some cards with a date value, and some othercards without (“backlog” cards) : the cards without date value are always listed first, whereas we would like to have them displayed at the end, while still having an ascending order for the cards at the beginning that have a date value.

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Well, our UI sorting logic was like that - if asc then null at the beginning. If desc, then null at the end.

It is pretty complicated to find a solution, that will work for everyone. Thanks for the feedback anyway, it is noted and we will discuss that. I Will let you know if there will be any update.

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+1 for this! Maybe just add to the sorting options (ascending and descending) “ascending then empty dates, empty dates then ascending, descending then empty date, empty dates then descending” ? :grin:

Yeah this is a basic thing that we need our non technical users to be able to do easily in their personal views without having to write formulas