Rules Section

If you’re looking at your list and thinking something like “I want to highlight this row when the task is overdue”, then you’re already half way to making a rule. Rules allow you to do exactly that; change the way the list looks based on the items’ values.

If you’ve got this section of the manual, chances are you’ve either already set up a Progress Bar or Countdown, or you’ve selected a column to base your Highlighting on. So you’ll see the below buttons appear at the bottom of the page:

First time through, it’s best to click ‘Auto-create’ and have a look at what rules Highlighter thinks you’ll want. You should see something like this:

Ignore the buttons on the left for a moment, and read across one of the rules in the example. The first rule means: “If Priority is equal to '(1) High', show a red flag with a tooltip of '(1) High'”, which is pretty much what's displayed.

You’ll get different options depending upon the type of the column you’ve chosen to base the rules on. In the example above the rules are based on a Choice column, so you get a choice of the possible values. Other value choosers include a date picker for Date columns, and a username checker for User lookups.

To change the icon or color to be displayed, just click it and an Icon or Color picker will pop up to select a new one from.

Returning to the buttons on the left; the plus and minus buttons copy and delete the rule, respectively. Copied rules are added to the bottom of the rule list.

The up and down arrows change the order in which the rules are processed. This is known as Rule Precedence. If your eyes have started to glaze over, then it’s time to put what you know so far into action; set up some rules, see the results, and mess around with the settings to get a feel for what Highlighter can do.

If you’ve already had a play with the settings (or you’re recklessly charging on) and you’re ready to use Highlighter to its full potential, continue to Advanced Rules. This covers what happens when you click the “Add custom” button at the beginning, or check the “Advanced rules” box later on.