Lightning Conductor calculated column examples

Calculated columns can be created in the Lightning Conductor by selecting Add calculated column at the top of the Columns tab:

Calculated columns created in this way exist only within this Lightning Conductor instance; they are not created in any SharePoint list like the built-in SharePoint calculated columns are. After clicking on Add calculated column, a dialog will pop up:

Column name: Name the column anything you like.

Column type: Choose the appropriate data type for this column: String (text), DateTime, Integer, Double (with a decimal point), Boolean (true/false, yes/no).

Expression: You write your expression within the large expression box. Where your expression refers to some other field, select from the available fields in the dropdown box and click Insert field to insert a placeholder into your expression at that point. The placeholder will be the internal name of the field, with square brackets - for example [Title]. See further below for syntax and examples of Expressions.

In version 5.1.0.0 we added 3 predefined calculated column examples based on common customer requirements. In version 6.2.0.0, we added Item Attachments to the set of predefined calculated columns. Click on the little star to the right of the Expression box to choose one of those: 

 

Sort/Filter using: This dropdown allows you to select one of the available fields to sort or filter by, if you want the Lightning Conductor to sort or filter by something other than this calculated column. A scenario for this might be: You create a Lightning Conductor calculated column to concatenate First name and Last name into a column called Full name, but when a user clicks on the header to sort the column, you want it to sort by the existing Last name field.

Generally speaking, the Lightning Conductor uses JavaScript syntax in its calculated columns. A good reference is W3 Schools. 

Conditions can be written using the syntax described here: 

Condition ? ThenClause : ElseClause

An example might be if you have columns with different internal SharePoint names, and you wish to "merge" them into one column in your Lightning Conductor view. (Note: this is also one of the predefined expressions available in the Lightning Conductor, but it gives a good example of the syntax.) The expression below means: if there is a value in the DisplayName field, then show that, otherwise show the value in the FullName field.

[DisplayName] ? [DisplayName] : [FullName]

Another common use case is to display some generic default text if the value of a column is empty in a given item. The expression below means: if there is a value in YourField, then display it, otherwise display some default text.

[YourField] ? [YourField] : "Some text"

"<a href='YourLink'>DisplayText</a>"

If you wish to include some dynamic data from the current Lightning Conductor item, you can add placeholders within the link portion. For example, to construct a link to a page that uses the item's account number as a Query String parameter (assuming the internal name of your account field is AccountID): 

"<a href='YourPage?Account="+[AccountID]+"'>YourDisplayText</a>"

Note that after [AccountID]+ there is one double quotation mark (to begin the next section of the construction) and one single quotation mark (for the end of the URL).

Remember to enable the Allow HTML setting for this calculated column.

"<a target='_blank' data-interception='off' href='"+[FileRef]+"?web=1' >"+[FileLeafRef]+"</a>"