DEV Community: Ben Ari Kutai

You can’t chart a Notion rollup. You can’t roll up a rollup either.

Ben Ari Kutai — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:58:22 +0000

Originally published on Medium.

You related the tables. You added the rollup. Then you opened Chart view and the property you needed was missing from the axis list.

That is not a broken workspace. Notion documents both of the walls you just hit.

The two limits, in Notion’s words

You cannot roll up a rollup.

Help → Relations & rollups, FAQ:

Can I rollup a rollup?

Unfortunately not, as this could create unintended loops. We recommend sticking to rolling up other properties 😊

So: Tasks hold Hours. Projects roll up Hours. Clients cannot roll up that Project total. The second rollup is not an option.

Charts will not plot a rollup.

Help → Chart view, under bar and line customization:

Your X and Y axes won’t be able to show rollups, buttons, unique IDs, files and media, or formulas resulting in a list of outputs.

Donut, same family of blocked properties:

Your donut chart won’t be able to show rollups, buttons, unique IDs, files and media, and certain formulas.

The number you spent an afternoon building is the number the chart will not take.

What still works on a rollup (just not a chart)

A rollup is still the right tool for one hop, on a table.

Relate Customers to Items. Add a Rollup. Pick the relation, pick a property on the related pages, pick a calculation.

Sum, Average, Median, Min, Max, Range only exist if that related property is a Number. Date rollups get Earliest, Latest, Date range. Counts and empty/not-empty work more broadly. Rollups sort only when the output is numeric.

You can also total the whole column. Click the rollup property header → Calculate → More options → Sum. That is a table/board footer. It is not a nested rollup. It is not a chart.

If you needed a second hop, stop. Do not add another rollup pointing at the first one. Notion says that is on purpose.

Replace the rollup with a formula on the relation

Notion’s documented way to reach related data without a rollup is a formula.

Help → Formulas 2.0:

You can now pinpoint the exact information you need in a related database, without having to first create a rollup to reference that property.

A relation returns a list of pages. You walk that list with map, filter, and length. Notion’s own Projects → Tasks example:

prop("Tasks").map(current.prop("Status")).filter(current == "Done").length()

Percent complete, still their example, using let:

let(percentComplete, round(prop("Tasks").map(current.prop("Status")).filter(current == "Done").length()/ prop("Tasks").map(current.prop("Status")).length() * 100), ifs(percentComplete == 100, "✅ All tasks complete", percentComplete > 0, "⚠️ In progress (" + percentComplete + ")%","❌ Not started"))

If the related property is already a Number — hours, price, quantity — map it, then sum the list. sum is in the formula syntax help. map is how you pull a property off each related page:

sum(prop("Tasks").map(current.prop("Hours")))

That is one hop. Same shape as their Status example. You get a number without creating a rollup you cannot chart and cannot roll up again.

Put the formula on the database that has a direct relation to the table that holds the Number. Projects relate to Tasks, Hours lives on Tasks, formula lives on Projects. If Clients only relate to Projects, a Client formula can read properties on Projects. It cannot roll up the Project rollup. Notion never documents a nested rollup, and this article is not going to pretend they did.

Keep the output a number, or a short status string. Do not return a list. Chart axes refuse “formulas resulting in a list of outputs.”

Formulas that chain other formulas and rollups have a hard cap: 15 layers. Help → Common formula errors: every formula that references another formula or rollup adds a layer, even across databases. When you hit it, merge properties instead of stacking them.

Then chart the formula, not the rollup

Open the database that now has the number (the formula, or a plain Number you already store there).
/chart, or + next to the view tabs → Chart.
Pick vertical bar, horizontal bar, line, donut, or number.
Link that database.
On bar and line charts, set X and Y. For Y you can use Count, or the formula that returns a number. Do not pick the rollup.

X and Y config is bar and line only. Notion says formulas based on relations and rollups, and other complex formulas, “may cause charts to take a little bit longer to load.” Slow is allowed. Rollup-as-axis is not.

Donuts are pickier. They block rollups and “certain formulas.” If the donut will not take your formula, use a bar.

You still cannot edit rows from Chart view. Caps: 200 groups, 50 subgroups. Large databases update slowly. Sub-items only show if you flatten them in database settings (More settings → Sub-items / Sub-tasks → Show as Flattened list).

If the number already lives as a Number, roll that

Notion’s advice after the nested-rollup no is: stick to rolling up other properties.

Hours on Tasks as a Number → Projects rollup Sum of Hours. That is legal. Leave it in the table if a table is enough.

Clients still cannot roll up that Project rollup. If you need a Client chart, either relate Clients to the table that holds Hours and write the formula there, or chart Projects.

Do not invent a second rollup. Do not wait for the rollup to appear on the axis list.

Plan walls (only what Help states)

Charts:

Free: one chart. Delete it if you want a different one. A template with five charts still shows one.
Any paid plan: unlimited charts.

Help says “paid plan,” not “Business only.” Plus counts.

Dashboard view is a different product. Business and Enterprise. You do not need it to add a Chart view. You need it if you want Notion’s Dashboard view grid. This piece is about the rollup and the chart, not that grid.

What I would actually do

One hop, Number on the child table, I need the total on the parent table: rollup. Leave it in the table. Do not chart it.

One hop, I need a chart: skip the rollup. Formula on the parent that maps the related Number and sums it. Chart that formula.

Two hops: Notion will not roll up the middle rollup. Chart the database that sits one relation away from the Number, or store the Number on the row you actually chart.

I built a tool called Monoboard. Three steps: connect Notion, describe the dashboard, paste the share link as an Embed. It sits on the Notion databases you already have and embeds a live dashboard back into Notion.

https://monoboard.app/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=rollup-charts

Where does your number live today — on the child row, or only as a rollup you still cannot plot?

Three ways to get a Notion dashboard in 2026

Ben Ari Kutai — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:59:41 +0000

I already had the databases. Campaigns in one. Replies in another. I sat down to make a page the team would actually open.

A few hours later I still didn’t have one.

That’s the usual path. Notion now has three ways out of it. Two of them are Notion. I’m going to walk those honestly, including the plan walls and the bits Notion says will not work. Then I’ll mention the thing I built, once.

1. Dashboard view (Business and Enterprise)

This is the new one. Notion shipped it on 10 March 2026 and called it a new database view, a control panel. Slash command is /dash. In the view picker it is just Dashboard.

It is not the same thing as a chart. It is not a page of linked views. It is a view on a database.

You need Business or Enterprise. Help and the March 2026 release notes say that in those words. Plus does not get it. Free does not get it. Business is $20 per member per month on Notion’s pricing page.

How you set it up

Open a database. + Add a new view. Pick Dashboard. Name it. You land in Edit mode.

From a page you can type /dash and choose Dashboard view.

In Edit mode you add widgets. Each widget is a database view: a table, a board, a chart, a calendar, a timeline. They can come from one database or from several. You get a global filter if the widgets share a property.

Switch to View mode when you’re done so people don’t drag the layout apart.

What it’s good at

Notion says this is much easier to create and maintain than “a workaround like a page of linked views.” That’s their sentence, not mine.

View and Edit are split, so a teammate is less likely to wreck the board by accident. Widgets can sit on more than one database. The layout is a real grid: up to four widgets per row.

If you’re already paying for Business, and the numbers you care about live in views Notion can already show, this is the native answer.

Where it breaks

Twelve widgets. Four per row. That’s the cap.

There is no freeform page inside the view. If you want a heading, a note, an image, Notion tells you to go back to inline views on a normal page.

It follows the same permissions as the underlying database. It is not a way to hand someone the dashboard and hide the tables.

Help warns it can get slow. Don’t drop in huge unfiltered tables. Don’t stack several dashboard views on one page.

Filters you click in View mode stay on your screen unless you have edit access and hit “Save for everybody.”

If you change the view a widget points at, that change can show up everywhere else that view is used.

I would use this if the workspace is already on Business and I want one stable board the team opens every Monday. I would not upgrade a Plus team to $20 a seat just for this unless I’d already tried the second path.

2. A page you build, chart by chart

This is the path most Plus people are actually on. Notion does not give it a product name. In the Dashboard view article they call it a dashboard-style page of inline views in columns. In the March 26 recap they call a page of linked views a workaround. In the charts guide they say: type /chart more than once and you can make a dashboard.

You do not need Business for this.

Charts: one on Free, unlimited on any paid plan. Plus is $10 per member per month. Relations, rollups, formulas, linked views, columns, synced blocks — those sit on the database. Help does not put a Business lock on them. (Page-level database permissions, the “only see your rows” trick, is Business.)

How you set it up

Make a page. Put a heading on it. Drag blocks into columns if you want things side by side. Columns do not stay columns on a phone. They stack.

Type /linked and add a linked view of a database you already have. Filter that instance. Edits write back to the original. The filters on this copy do not rewrite the original’s views.

Type /chart. Pick vertical bar, horizontal bar, line, donut, or number. Link a database. Do it again for the next number.

If the answer lives across two tables, you relate them, then you add a rollup, then you hope the chart will take it.

What it’s good at

You can do this on Plus. You can mix a paragraph, a callout, two charts, and a filtered table on one page. Charts update when the data changes. Notion’s own guide calls these living records.

You can publish the page and embed the published page on a site. The site updates when the Notion page updates. There is no password on a published Notion site. They say that themselves.

On Business you can put a linked view on a page and use page-level access so someone only sees their assigned rows. That is the only documented way Notion lets someone see some rows without the whole database.

Where it breaks

There is no View/Edit lock. Anyone with edit access can drag the page into a mess. On Monday it looks like a dashboard. On Thursday it looks like a draft.

A linked view does not grant the source database. If you share the page and they can’t see the chart, they don’t have access to the original. Help is explicit about this.

You cannot put a rollup on a chart axis. Also banned as axes: buttons, unique IDs, files and media, and formulas that spit out a list. You cannot edit a row from Chart view. A chart will only show 200 groups and 50 subgroups.

You cannot roll up a rollup.

Free sees one chart. If a template shipped with five, you still see one.

Official performance help tells you not to pile lots of inline databases, “like dashboards,” onto a busy page. The workaround they suggest is one linked database with multiple views so only one is open at a time.

I would use this if I’m on Plus, I have one or two charts, and I’m willing to maintain the page. I would not use this if the number I need is a rollup across two tables and I need it on a chart. Notion will not plot that.

Which one I’d actually use

Already on Business, numbers already in simple views: Dashboard view. Pay the $20 once you’re using the rest of Business, not as a dashboard tax.

On Plus, one database, a count or a status split: build the page. /chart a couple of times. Don’t upgrade yet.

Two related databases, a number that only exists after a rollup, a page the team should open without getting the tables, or a Plus workspace that will not buy Business for a board: the native paths run out. That’s the hole I kept hitting.

The third path I ended up with

I still wanted a dashboard on the wiki. I didn’t want to buy Business for it, and I didn’t want another afternoon of views that go stale.

So I built a small tool called Monoboard. You connect the Notion workspace you already have. You point it at the databases. You get a live board back, and you paste it into a Notion page. Passcode on the embed if you don’t want it open. First dashboard is free. You don’t need Notion Business.

https://monoboard.app.

Which of the two Notion paths have you already tried, and where did it stop?