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Within most database views, you can group items by a specified property. For example, you might group a Tasks database by Status.
This segments the view into sub-views, or “groups”—one for each unique value of the grouping property, such as “Assigned,” “In Progress” and “Complete.” Each group is tucked into a toggle and filtered for the value it represents.
Benefits of Grouping
Database grouping affords an assortment of benefits. Here are a few:
- Enhance the view’s aesthetics.
- Segmentation makes the information more digestible and comprehensible.
- Summarize the properties of each group’s items to reveal useful insights.
- Drag items between groups to update the value of their grouping property.
In this lesson, we’ll explore how to configure groups, then look at a few practical examples with varying database formats.
Configure Groups
You can apply grouping to views in any format except Calendar.
Within the view’s ••• menu, you’ll find the Group option, where you can specify any grouping property except a Rollup.
Depending on the property type of your grouping property, Notion may display additional options.
- For
Numberproperties, you can specify a range from which to include items, as well as increments for your groups. - For
Formulasthat return astring, you can display just the first letter or the full value. - With a
Dateproperty, you can automatically group by days, months, years, etc.
After specifying your grouping property, you can return to the Group menu to:
- show and hide groups;
- reorder groups;
- hide the default group for unpopulated items;
- adjust coloring; or
- sort groups automatically, depending on the property type.
Additionally, each group contains its own ••• menu, where you can hide it or adjust other settings, depending on the property type.
In terms of visible properties, you can typically hide the grouping property, as the grouping toggle clearly indicates its value. For example, if you group tasks by status, you have no need to display the Status property. The exception is when you group by numeric or date ranges.
Summarize Groups
Alongside each group’s ••• menu is a value that summarizes its items. Initially, that value simply counts the items, but you can click the number to choose an alternative calculation, then a property on which to perform that calculation.
This view of Tasks displays the minimum days remaining among the tasks in each group:
It’s configured by clicking the summary number, then choosing Min and selecting our Days Remaining property.
Each database format offers its own options for summarizing entries. Those functionalities apply individual groups within those formats.
Because our view of Tasks uses the Table format, we can choose a summary option at the bottom of each property. This example calculates the average priority for each group:
For this configuration, we clicked the value below Priority, selected Average, then the Priority property.
Sub-Groups in Boards
Because the Board format intrinsically groups items into columns, the optional toggle groups are “sub-groups,” which you can access from the board’s ••• menu. This allows you to segment a database’s items at two levels. The below example groups people by their experience level, then sub-groups them by their employer.
Additional Examples
People Gallery, by Organization
The example above groups people by Experience Level, the segments, or “sub-groups,” by Organization. The following example displays the same people as a Gallery and retains the organizational segmentation.
Versatile Expenses
Expenses invariably prove useful for demonstrating database concepts. Below, you can see the same expenses grouped by category, merchant, month and price range.
Expenses by Category
Expenses by Merchant
Expenses by Date Range
When choosing to group by a Date property, you also specify a time frame for the groups. The “Monthly” view above groups the Date property by Month.
Expenses by Price Range
The groups within “Price Ranges” are also automatic. When grouping by a Number property, you specify a range from which to create groups, then the increments.
Our example sorts the price ranges in descending order and hides empty groups.
If you hit any roadblocks as you experiment with database grouping,
I’m all ears @WilliamNutt.