Why Aren't Null Values Considered When Filtering 'Excludes' in a Multi-Picklist field?

Thanks everyone, converted to an Idea to vote.

@PavanCh on your radar.

Repeatedly steals a day from me every time it comes up. Please do something to tame the null menace!

I’ve not had problems with this myself but I have with boolean fields and it’s completely counter-intuitive

“Does not equal” filters should always return everything that isn’t equal to the value(s) you are explicitly trying to exclude — including nulls

This should be implemented in an intuitive, logical and consistent way across the whole platform

I would love to be able to +1 a post more than once! 
I had to stick a note on my screen that says ADD OR NULL in caps and highlighted. I fell for the null trap more times that I can count

@Bhawya could you pl let us know about the latest?

Hi All,

I understand how limiting this can be. I also believe that we have solved this problem in Reporting part of Gainsight. Posting what we have in Reporting to confirm if this is more elegant way to solve the problem:

We have plans to enhance the filtering capability across Gainsight, for this functionality, I want to ascertain if the above works. 

@rakesh - would that require two filters or does the Industry dropdown allow for selecting values and checking the null checkbox? So Industry has A and B and the Include null values can be checked as well?

Looks like it allows for selecting values either as in/not in, as well as checking the box to include nulls should you so desire. At least in reports.

Perhaps, the most annoying part of this is the inconsistency with which GS handles multi-select fields when you query Salesforce objects. In the filter options for a multi-select field on a SF object, you can have field ‘in’, ‘not in’, ‘is null’, ‘is not null’. The same multi-select field on a GS object allows only and ‘include’, ‘exclude’ filter. 

The 2nd most annoying part is the inconsistency with which GS treats the same field across the different features.

For the same field in company:

In DD, I can have the field ‘in’ and ‘not in’.

In Rules, I can have the field ‘include’, exclude’.

In reports, I can have the field ‘in’, ‘not in’, ‘is null’, ‘is not null’. You still need 2 filters to exclude something and to include nulls. At least this is close to how SF querying is handled. 

In a case statement in a rule, the ‘exclude’ filter will capture the null values. 

@rakesh - any plans to fix this across the platform?

@jivanova FWIW the Horizon Rules should at least close the gap between DD and current rules in that regard, as rules and DD will be mostly the same in terms of design, meaning your options will be the same for filters.