A progress bar for your tasks list and Printing

Today, let’s see how to show the progress of your tasks in SharePoint:

We’ll rely on this method: using calculated columns to write HTML. Easy, and entirely done through the SharePoint UI.
The [% Complete] is a default column in tasks lists. We just need to add - in a calculated column - the formulas for this specific use case. Here they are:
- Progress Bar:
=”<DIV style=’background-color:blue; width:”&([% Complete]*100)&”%;’> </DIV>”
- Progress Bar 2:
=”<DIV style=’background-color:red;’><DIV style=’background-color:LimeGreen; width:”&([% Complete]*100)&”%;’> </DIV></DIV>”
Note: the   character is mandatory to make this work in Firefox.
If you are looking for other colours, here is a very good reference:
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp


Printable progress bars

You may have noticed that when you print lists including my examples of progress bars, the colours are not rendered. This is actually the expected behaviour: when printing Web pages, background colours are usually ignored by the browser.
So what can you do if you want to print your progress bars?
A first possibility is to modify your browser settings to print backgrounds. In Internet Explorer for example, follow this path:
Tools | Internet Options | Advanced | Printing.
A second option is to modify the formula and use colors instead of background colors, or use images. Here is an example of workaround for the above screenshot, where I used border colors (instead of background colors in the original post):
view plaincopy to clipboardprint?

="<DIV style='position:relative;'><DIV style='font-size:0px; border-top: 14px solid "&CHOOSE(INT([%]*10) +1,"red","red","OrangeRed","OrangeRed","DarkOrange","Orange","Gold","yellow","GreenYellow","LawnGreen","Lime")&"; width:"&([%]*100)&"%;'> </DIV><DIV style='position:absolute; top:0px;'>"&TEXT([%],"0%")&"</DIV></DIV>" 

="<DIV style='position:relative;'><DIV style='font-size:0px; border-top: 14px solid "&CHOOSE(INT([%]*10) +1,"red","red","OrangeRed","OrangeRed","DarkOrange","Orange","Gold","yellow","GreenYellow","LawnGreen","Lime")&"; width:"&([%]*100)&"%;'> </DIV><DIV style='position:absolute; top:0px;'>"&TEXT([%],"0%")&"</DIV></DIV>"
As usual, feel free to share your own solutions!
This behaviour was first reported to me by Peter Allen

SharePoint Calculated Columns :: Complex String Field Calculations

This formula uses some xfields generated with the Workflow engine. Beware of Content approval and workflow as the new xfields will continue to set approval back to Pending.

="Room: "&xRoom&" at "&TEXT([Start Time],"h:mmam/pm")&" for "&TEXT(Length,"#0.00")&"hrs ["&TRIM([Whats Happening])&"] "&IF([Number of Students]>0,"Capacity: "&[Number of Students]&"People. This is a ","")&IF(xRecur="True","Repeating Booking-"," ONEOFF Booking")&" and is "&MID(xApproval,4,10)
=IF(xRoom="@COMMON",[Whats Happening],UPPER(MID(xRoom,1,5))&" | "&LOWER(MID(xWho,11,15))&" | "&UPPER([Booking Status])&" | "&TEXT([Start Time],"h:mmam/pm")&" | "&TEXT(Length,"#0.00")&" hrs | "&TRIM([Whats Happening])&" | "&IF([Number of Students]>0,[Number of Students]&" Pple.","")&IF(xRecur="True","| REPEATS"," | ONEOFF"))