Background:
- In Bionic Rules, whenever you have a date filter, one of the options under ‘select date’ has been “Rule Date”. This is the date that the rule runs.
- In Horizon Rules, you do not have this option.
Here is the problem:
The “Run Date” is not always the same as the day the rule runs. When you manually run a rule, either as a test or a live run, you can select the run date, meaning that Run Date =! Today. More on that later.
Why Does That Matter?:
Great question, here are some examples:
Scenario 1: Instead of “Run Date” you filter your date field to say “Date = Today”.
Scenario 2: You add a transformation step after every fetch to add “Run Date” formula field so in the next transformation step and beyond you can use “Run Date” in your filters.
As mentioned in the problem statement, you want to test run date sensitive data, or perhaps rerun a rule that failed, without having to adjust a bazillion date filters. This is the case for both scenarios:
Scenario 1: If all of my date filters say Date = Today (6/9/23), and I select a Rule Run Date of 6/4/23, I will not get any results from 6/4/23.
Adjusting all of my date filters, manually running, then adjusting them back is not an acceptable workaround.
Scenario 2: To game the system you add a transformation step to add “Run Date” in your filters because you got tired of scenario 1. But then you remember this has a number of compromises that come with it as well:
- At the task level, you’re fetching all the data every time leading to longer processing times.
- This adds at least two steps per fetch (possibly less if you get fancy and are able to consolidate some transformations).
- Why? Data Fetch>Transformation Step>Transformation Step to actually use the filter. Given #1 here, adding two transformations on top is a big bummer.
- Formula field limitations. Each Task is limited to a combined 10 Formula Fields and/or Case Fields. If you have a lot of transforming going on, this may require additional steps.
As is hopefully clear, scenario 2 also isn’t that great, and creates additional overhead and potentially longer processing times.
Like the title says, please bring back the “Rule Date” filtering option.
cc
