Progressive Capture Branch Node - If answer is NULL

[samwoo]

Hello,

i'm trying to use a branch to detect whether or not an answer is empty. The Custom Expression below doesn't progress properly if you press "Next" when leaving the question blank:

The only way to get it working is if you click in the field, insert a space then delete it... when you press next it detects it to be empty and progresses to the next set of forms. Otherwise just pressing next without adding the space in the first place will send it through the "No Match" direction which is not what we want.

Could we have the following conditions added to the Custom Expressions (which ignores any input from the user in the third field)

• Question Answer IS NULL
• Question Answer IS NOT NULL

Thanks,

Samuel

[Martyn Houghton]

Samuel

What results do you get if you put in two single quotes, ''? Does that let it branch based on the string being empty?

Cheers

Martyn

[samwoo]

Hi Martyn,

thanks for getting in touch. When I use the '' it still take it down the "No Match" route of the branch.

I'm testing this in the Self Service Portal so not sure if this is the reason why its not working. I did the "space" workaround and it did work, but not feasible as customers wouldn't know of this.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steve Giller]

Does this use SQL structure? If so, what happens if you use != '%' as the test?

[samwoo]

Hi Dead,

Sadly that doesn't work  Thanks for the suggestion though.

I believe its called Flowcode, so it doesnt use the same SQL structure that we are used to.

Thanks,

Samuel

[Steve Giller]

Shame - I partly asked as I'm not migrated yet, so it was both something to try just in case, and something to be aware of when we do upgrade.

[Gerry]

Under the hood this will be an ECMA expression...  However, I expect that we are quoting any static value that is entered in, so putting the value undefined in the field probably results in an expression som_var == "undefined"

Now I am not sure this will work but try entering the following value into the field  &[undefined] and that might work, although just a guess, its something to try.

 

Gerry

[NeilWJ]

The progressive capture is a javascript front end engine. It does not use any flowcode scripts or serverside mechanism (that is the BPM).

So when you are testing to see if value exists you have to use javascript reserved word undefined. You can do this by just typing in undefined in the box. To test for empty value, where the value (variable) exists but it is just blank, just leave the value box empty.

The front end progressive capture engine might set all values to empty when not set by the user, so you might just need to test for empty values instead of undefined.

Cheers

[NeilWJ]

So to make testing this easier i have just added a "Is Set" and a "Is Not Set" operator. When selected the value field will be disabled as you are just testing the presence of the variable and if it has a value. So expect to see this option soon once its gone through beta, until then use the above.

Cheers

[samwoo]

Hi Neil / Gerry,

This is awesome! I will try out the current workaround. Now we could do different things with forms, where questions are answered / are not answered would take it down a different route. Or within the BPM - where an external ref is not set then create a human task to remind us to set it for example.

Many thanks, i'll keep an eye out for this update , 

Samuel

 

[TrevorKillick]

Hi Samuel

The functionality mentioned by Neil has been pushed to live.

Kind Regards

Trevor Killick