Add a Progress Bar to a Tasks List

A SharePoint Workflows tutorial by Peter Kalmström

SharePoint Designer iconA workflow can give a graphical representation of information that is frequently changed. You can for example let a flow update a progress bar in a Tasks list each time the "% Complete" value is changed.

In the demo below, Peter Kalmström, CEO and Systems Designer of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, shows how to create such a workflow for progress bar additions and updates. You can of course build other graphics in a similar way, for example for conditional formatting.

Progress bars in Tasks listPeter uses a list that build on the Tasks template, but he changes the content type into a type that has a "Progress" site column.

If you want to create the workflow for just one list, you can keep the default content type and just add a list column for the progress bar instead. It must be a multiple lines of text column with Enhanced rich text enabled.

The "Progress" column should of course be visible in the default view, but it can very well be hidden from the form.

Hide the "Progress" column from the form

Users don't need the Progress column when they fill out the item forms, so it is suitable to hide it there.
  1. Allow management of content types under List settings Advanced settings.
  2. Open the content type you use for the list.
  3. Open the column you want to hide and select the option 'Hidden'.

The progress bar HTML code

The HTML code used for the progress bars in the image above is:
<table style="width: 100px; border: 0px">
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0px; width: 100px; background-color: green"></td>
<td style="padding: 0px; min-height: 16px; background-color: red"></td>
</tr>
</table>

NOTE:100 is marked bold above, because in the flow it will be replaced by dynamic content that calculates the required width.

Steps to create a workflow that adds and updates progress bars

Peter creates a SharePoint 2013 list workflow, but you can also select to create a 2010 workflow or a reusable workflow for the progress bar.
  1. Create a SharePoint 2013 list workflow that starts when an item is created or changed. Go to the end of the workflow.
  2. Create a Local Variable called Percent. The Type should be Number.
  3. Add the action Do Calculation to give the variable a value: the % Completed field multiplied by 100. The output should be the Percent variable that you created in step 2.
  4. Add an Update List Item action for the Progress column. Open the String Builder and paste the HTML code. Replace100 with a lookup for the Percent variable.
  5. Check, publish and test the workflow.




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