Field value based on another field's value

[rolandhesz]

I'm looking for a simple way to set the value of a metadata field based on the value of another field.

For example, I have a field called status with the possible values of 'pending', 'planning', 'design', 'in progress', 'testing', 'done' and I also have a status-code field with the values 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, -1 where the values 0 - 5 are mapped to the status values (i.e. pending -> 0, planning -> 1, etc.) and -1 is used if the value of status is invalid for some reason.

What would be the easiest way to set this up? I was looking at "Accept a formula", but that option is not really well documented, and "Accept a lookup query" seems a bit heavy handed for this.