SharePoint conditional column formatting with JSON: Beginner, intermediate, and advanced background colors example

I borrowed from Microsoft’s documentation on conditional column formatting recently to modify a modern experience list in SharePoint 2019. This also works for SharePoint Online/O365, but will not work in classic experiences (or pre-2019 server versions). I modified Microsoft’s example on conditional background colors for a numeric range and created a similar conditional column formatting result for text values.

In this example, I have a list for upcoming training opportunities. There’s a column named “Level” which is a choice field of either Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. The JSON code at the bottom of this post changes the column’s background color value to green, yellow, or red respectively based on the level selection. Here’s a demonstration of the result:

You could modify this code to suit your own column’s values/options, then paste it into the Column Formatting section of that column’s settings (List settings > Select column from Columns section). Do not change @currentField in the JSON code – that’s just a reference to whichever column you add it to and doesn’t need to be your column’s name.

{  
  "elmType": "div",  
  "txtContent": "@currentField",  
  "style": {  
    "color": "#fff",  
    "padding-left": "14px",  
    "background-color": {  
      "operator": "?",  
      "operands": [  
        {  
          "operator": "==",  
          "operands": [  
            "@currentField",  
            "Beginner"  
          ]  
        },  
        "#2ECC71",  
        {  
          "operator": "?",  
          "operands": [  
            {  
              "operator": "==",  
              "operands": [  
                "@currentField",  
                "Advanced"  
              ]  
            },  
            "#E74C3C",  
            {  
              "operator": "?",  
              "operands": [  
                {  
                  "operator": "==",  
                  "operands": [  
                    "@currentField",  
                    "Intermediate"  
                  ]  
                },  
                "#F1C40F",""
              ]  
            }  
          ]  
        }  
      ]  
    }  
  }  
}