Rank is a property that every entity in the workspace has. Its value is a relative number indicating a global ordering.
Here’s a superficial explanation of how it works:
Imagine I have two projects, four tasks, and a single select (workflow) field with three options.
They might have rank values as follows
| Item | Rank value |
|---|---|
| Project A | 100 |
| Task 4 | 200 |
| Open | 300 |
| Task 1 | 400 |
| Task 3 | 500 |
| Done | 600 |
| Project B | 700 |
| In progress | 800 |
| Task 2 | 900 |
In other words, if you were to show Tasks on a board, they would be sorted as Task 4, Task 1, Task 3, Task 2.
If you show Projects, they would be ordered Project A, Project B.
The options for the select field are Open, Done, In progress.
Imagine you add a new Task and drag it in between Task1 and Task 3. The new rank values will look like this:
| Item | Rank value |
|---|---|
| Project A | 100 |
| Task 4 | 200 |
| Open | 300 |
| Task 1 | 400 |
| Task 5 | 450 |
| Task 3 | 500 |
| Done | 600 |
| Project B | 700 |
| In progress | 800 |
| Task 2 | 900 |
that is to say, the new item is given a rank value halfway between the other two.
As you add new items (of any type) and as you drag items around, you will be assigning new rank values each time.
So imagine you now add a 6th task between Task 1 and Task 5 (it gets the number 425) and then you add one between Task 1 and Task 6, and so on.
Eventually as you add/change a lot of stuff, there would become no more space to fit new items in between existing ones.
Before this happens, Fibery does a ‘clean up’ in the background which involves updating all entities’ rank values, thereby creating extra space between them (without changing the overall order). This is how the rank value of an entity can change without you doing anything.
Rank is not an editable field, it can’t be used in formulas/automations, and most users don’t even know it exists, so there’s not much point in showing it on the GUI.
The absolute value of rank is not really meaningful/useful.
Rather, the relative value is what matters, and it is commonly used just as the sorting field in a report view.
It absolutely is. That was what my screen shot above was showing.
If you choose the data field called State you will get the state name.
If you do want to filter out specific states, you can filter on the State field, e.g.
COUNTIF([Id],[State] == 'Activated')