Being an avid user of Notion, I have a dashboard to track my various projects. I set up my projects by quarterly sprints and I found that I was lacking a quick way to assess my project status. Enter the “progress bar”.
You can also apply the progress bar visualization to any goal or habit tracker. Here’s an example.
Steps To Add A Progress Bar In Notion
In this example, we’ll create some progress bars for a habit tracker.
Set Up Database Properties
Add two properties in the database – “Current” and “Target”. You can rename these, but keep in mind you’ll need to edit the formula as necessary.
Next, add a formula property. We’ll name this “Progress”
In the formula section, add this formula – round(prop(“Current”) / prop(“Target”) * 100) / 100. This determines the percentage complete based on the “Current” and “Target” figures. The round function ensures the decimal is showing nicely instead of showing 10 decimal places.
Notion’s In-Built Progress Bar
Notion also has an in-built progress bar – you can add it like this:
You could stop here and work with this progress bar.
I’m personally not a huge fan, so keep reading if you’d like to add a custom progress bar to your page.
Progress Bar Formula
Add an additional formula property and name this “Progress Bar”.
Add this formula – (prop(“Progress”) >= 1) ? “✅” : format(slice(“▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓”, 0, floor(prop(“Progress”) * 10)) + format(slice(“░░░░░░░░░░”, 0, ceil(10 – prop(“Progress”) * 10)) + ” ” + format(round(prop(“Progress”) * 100)) + (empty(prop(“Current”)) ? “0%” : “%”)))
If progress is greater or equal to 100%, then it shows up as a ✅, otherwise, it fills in the progress bar as needed.
You can complete this exercise with 3 columns, but the “Progress Bar” formula will be longer and harder to read. Personally, I like to break things down a bit more, it’s easier to understand and you can always hide the extra formula property.
If you’d like to learn how to add the progress bar to other database views, check out the video guide below.
How To Design Your Own Progress Bar
You don’t need to stick with the bar style in the example above. In these two sections of the formula:
- format(slice(“▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓”
- format(slice(“░░░░░░░░░░”
Replace the ░ and ▓ with whatever you’d like. Some examples:
- □□□□□□□□□□ / ■■■■■■■■■■
- ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ / ★★★★★★★★★★
- ○○○○○○○○○○ / ●●●●●●●●●●
You can find more great examples here.
Video Guide
You can also find the example page here.
Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful!
If you need some additional help with Notion, check out the Notion Foundation series.