Formula Fields

introduction formula fields are a new type of that allow mathematical and logical operations on top of your existing field data, bringing more robust customization to your reporting needs after a formula field is created, it is available for all filtering and grouping in reporting across ashby the standard mathematical operations for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are supported in addition to specialized functions such as if statements and date difference or addition functions looking for information on setting up calculated fields? check out calculated fields docid\ wjbhw3mnd 381wu1n8f x for more on offer formula fields, check out offer formula fields docid\ m2ccyt8el19tq0pwpygvf general formula fields are only available on the enterprise plan foundations legacy plus plus enterprise ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅ offer formula fields are available on the plus and enterprise plans example use cases formula fields unlock a variety of potential use cases, but as motivation to think about applications, some conceptual examples are given below calculate bonus as a percentage of salary (multiplication) calculate total compensation of base salary and bonuses (addition of fields) calculate hourly rate from annual salary (division) check if an offer salary is within the opening's comp range (logical comparison) show time to fill in days (date difference) first interview to offer decided duration (date difference) hired before target date or started before target date (logical comparison of dates) field to flag new hire hitting 90 day mark (date offset) how to create a formula field creating a formula field follows the calculated field creation flow click on admin in the top navigation bar, then data management, then calculated fields https //app ashbyhq com/admin/organizational settings/calculated fields click + new to create a new calculated field when creating a new calculated field, add in the object type, a title and select the formula calculated field type from the type dropdown click create you will then be taken to the formula field editor in the above example, we have a formula field that creates a new field returning a true/false value depending on whether the job consideration was hired prior to the associated opening’s target hire date the formula editor has a few noteworthy components the title and description of the new formula field the editor space wherein formulas, functions, and field references are combined insert field button click to add a new field or press $ as a hotkey insert function button click to add a specialized function cancel/save buttons save or cancel any changes after the field is saved, it can be used in filters and groupings if you have errors in your fields, you will not be able to save them you can hover over areas of the formula highlighted in red to see the issue an example use case for formula fields in this example, we'll create a formula field that track time to fill from the opening's opened at date right up to the new hire's start date firstly, we'll create our formula type calculated field via the steps above docid\ foanoxyxfjwdmosc uztf when in the formula field editor, the datediff function is used to calculate the difference between two date fields the opening's \[opened at] date field and the offer's \[start date] fields have been specified finally, as part of the datediff functionality, the interval needs to be specified for this calculated formula fields, we've specified the interval to be in days when building reports, this field should then appear as an option for filtering or grouping reports it can also be used to display the calculated results as part of a custom list report formula field syntax reference this initial early access release of formula fields has a limited set of functionality, but more functions and operators will be added throughout the development phase of this feature referencing fields click the insert field button below the editor or type $ to choose a field and insert a field reference this substitutes the value of the chosen field into the expression at that position field references appear in {braces} in the expression editor booleans the boolean values are true and false numbers numbers may be integers or decimal numbers positive and negative values are supported 123 4 5 6 ranges a range is written range(start, end) range(1, 5) both of a range’s endpoints must be literal constant numeric values; more complex constructions like range(field, 1 + 2) are not accepted strings string values are single or double quoted “hello world” ‘i am text’ if you need to use a single or double quote in a string, you can either wrap the string with the other type of quote, or you can prefix it with \\\\ 'jane "example" doe' "jane \example\ doe" "john o'example" 'john o\\'example' to include a literal backslash in a string, use a double backslash "example\\\\\\\string" arithmetic numeric values may be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided with +, , , / respectively 1+1 2 3 parentheses may be used for grouping ({score a} + {score b})/ 2 comparisons some operators have multiple accepted spellings, to maximize the chance of someone guessing correctly (for example, = and == ) either form is accepted; they will be normalized to the first (“canonical”) form as part of autoformatting values can be compared for equality with =and for inequality with != or <> {interviewer} = {referrer} {feedback submitted by} != {hiring manager} numeric values can additionally be compared with >, <, <=, and >= {number of job considerations} >= 3 {overall recommendation} < {average overall recommendation} comparisons may be chained together 1 <= {score} < 5 (equivalent to 1 <= {score} and {score} < 5 ) some fields contain numeric ranges use the inrange operator to check whether a value is within a range {salary expectation} inrange {compensation range} {score} inrange range(2, 8) conjunctions boolean variables can be combined with and (&, &&), or (|, ||), and not not {extended offer?} {candidate's location} != {job's location} and not {willing to relocate} available functions the initial set of supported functions is as follows for formula fields operation description function date difference take the difference between two date fields and returns a number the interval may be "days" , "weeks" , "months" , "quarters" , or "years" datediff(from date field 1, to date field 2, interval "days") date addition calculates an offset from a date returns a date dateadd(date date field 1, amount x, interval "days") ceiling rounds a number up to a given precision (number of decimal places) ceiling (value the value to round precision the precision to round to ) floor rounds a number down to a given precision (number of decimal places) floor (value the value to round precision the precision to round to ) minimum value returns the lowest of a set of numbers or the lower bound of a range min() maximum value returns the highest of a set of numbers or the upper bound of a range max() mean value (average) returns the mean of a set of numbers or the midpoint of a range mean() round rounds a number to a given precision (number of decimal places) round (value the value to round precision the precision to round to ) to number attempts to convert a value to a number returns null if it is not possible tonumber ( value the value to convert ) if statements returns one of two values depending on a condition if the condition is met, one value is shown if the condition is not met, the other value is shown if ( condition the condition to use if true the value to return if condition is true if false the value to return if condition is false ) coalesce returns the first value from its arguments that is not null allows you to set other values to fall back on if the first value is null coalesce ( value the first value arguments additional values to use if the first value is null ) option creates an ad hoc option as if from a multiple choice field option ( label the name of the option must be constant ) in range check if value is within a range, e g {salary} within {compensation range} inrange range creation constructs a numeric range from two constant numbers range( min the start of the range max the end of the range ) concatenate combines multiple strings into one concatenate ( arguments the strings to concatenate together ) contains returns true if a string contains a substring contains ( string the string to search within substring the string that may be found within that string ) ends with returns true if a string ends with a substring endswith ( string the string to look at the end of substring the string that may be at the end of the other string ) starts with returns true if a string starts with a substring startswith ( string the string to look at the start of substring the string that may be at the start of the other string ) to string returns a text representation of a value tostring ( value the value to convert to text ) function calls are written functionname(arg1, arg2, ) or functionname(name1 value1, name2 value2, ) function names are case insensitive and ignore underscores datediff , datediff , and date diff are all the same function (and will be autoformatted to datediff ) all functions come with inline syntax definitions and guidelines in app for example, here is the guidance on how to use the date difference operator operator precedence operations are evaluated in the following order, with operations in the same group evaluated in the order they appear in the expression (parenthesized groups) function calls() x a b, a / b a + b, a b a inrange b a = b , a ≠ b , a is b , a isnot b , a < b , a > b , a ≤ b , a ≥ b not x a and b , a or b copying fields to build a formula outside of ashby you can copy fields within the formula field editor and paste them into a spreadsheet or other script to generate your formula prior to pasting it back into the editor when copying and pasting your field, it will appear in a different format to how it shows in ashby this ensures that when you paste your formula back into the editor, that the correct field is selected so, for example, if you’re copying the {employment type} field, it would show as follows when you paste it $(valueselect,job employment type) when pasting your formula back into the formula field editor, it be auto detected and show as a linked ashby field the formula field editor showing a correctly linked ashby field if you were instead to paste in {employment type} without copying the field from ashby, the field wouldn’t show as a linked ashby field it would be treated as plain text the formula field editor showing an incorrectly linked ashby field