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ben
ben
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 18, 2018
Solved

Using Programs with Conditional Wait based on Participant Criteria that might be null

  • July 18, 2018
  • 7 replies
  • 118 views
I am trying to setup a Conditional Wait on a Program in Journey Orchestrator and I keep hitting this issue. The Conditional Wait I am trying to do is based off of a Participant Field called "Instance Name". This is a free text field, but in reality, it can only be 20 characters long without any spaces/special characters. My goal is to have the condition be "Instance Name = NULL" be the success item. I.e. if the name is still null, then they continue in the flow.

However, I am not able to save this as a blank value, and there is no null checkbox. I assume this is due to the field I am using being text.

I'd really like to get around this so we can consolidate what is currently 4 powerlist/template/outreach combos and a CTA rule into one Email Chain Program in Journey Orchestrator. It would be WAY cleaner.

Any ideas?
    Best answer by tim_schukar
    Hey Ben - 

    I ran into a similar problem with another client.  You are correct that the null checkbox is not currently a feature.  To get around this, I would recommend defaulting that text field to (literal string) "NULL" and/or using process builder/rules engine to backfill.  Then you can use the "NULL" as a check in your JO.  Let me know if that would work?

    Thanks!

    Tim

    7 replies

    tim_schukar
    tim_schukarAnswer
    Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    July 18, 2018
    Hey Ben - 

    I ran into a similar problem with another client.  You are correct that the null checkbox is not currently a feature.  To get around this, I would recommend defaulting that text field to (literal string) "NULL" and/or using process builder/rules engine to backfill.  Then you can use the "NULL" as a check in your JO.  Let me know if that would work?

    Thanks!

    Tim
    ben
    benAuthor
    Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
    July 19, 2018
    Thanks for the idea Tim. Unfortunately, that will not work for us in this situation. That field is tied to our AWS servers and the input is used to actually generate the customer's server. Once something is populated, it's locked. So putting a placeholder in of that nature won't be feasible.
    -Ben
    karl_rumelhart
    karl_rumelhart
    Expert ⭐️
    July 19, 2018
    Sorry for the trouble, Ben.  Here is another thought.  In your Bionic Query could you add another field in a Transform task using the string formula Length().  Including that as a participant field would let you check wither the value is Zero or not. 
      ben
      benAuthor
      Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
      July 19, 2018
      I’ll give that a shot!
      -Ben
      ben
      benAuthor
      Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
      July 19, 2018
      I'll need to do some final testing, but that seems to have worked! Thank you Karl!
      -Ben
        abhishek_sivaraman
        abhishek_sivaraman
        Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
        July 19, 2018
        Hi All,

        Thanks for bringing out this gap. We will address it soon.

        Thanks
        Abhishek S
        cmultanen
        cmultanen
        Helper ⭐️
        March 15, 2019
        Any update on if this will be addressed in a future release? Just ran into this issue while trying to set up a program that looks for the presence/absence of a date value.

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