A deal desk dashboard showed the running total of opportunities per account. Total amount per account was a rollup column. Users opened the dashboard, saw a total, made a decision. Then someone added a new opportunity and checked the same account. The account's total did not change.
Fifteen minutes later, refresh - still not changed. An hour later - changed. The rollup column was working exactly as documented, and the team had mistaken it for a real-time aggregate.
Here is the difference between calculated and rollup columns, and the pattern we now use when the dashboard needs to be current.
The two column types
Calculated column: computes its value every time the row is read. If the column adds two other columns, every time anything loads the row (form view, API call, view row), Dataverse computes the sum. Results are always current because they are re-derived on demand.
