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Denise_Greenb12
Denise_Greenb12
Level 6
September 24, 2018
Question

Be Careful with "Is before" and "In past before" date field operators - they include records where the date field is empty

  • September 24, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 7304 views

Hey Everyone - Be careful using "Is before" and "in past before" date field operators. Marketo Support has just informed me that it is expected behavior for the date field operators "is before" and "in past before" to qualify records where the date field is empty!

In other words - suppose the person puka@targetrightmarketing.com was never synced to SFDC. This Smart List does not come up empty. You have to add an additional filter for SFDC Created Date is not empty.

The same thing applies to this example:

Since puka@targetrightmarketing.com has an empty SFDC Created Date, you'd expect the smart list to turn up empty - but it doesn't. It contains puka@targetrightmarketing.com.

Obviously this isn't my real use case. I'm just using the above as a simplified way to describe the situation. I discovered this behavior when a couple of segments I created having to do with end dates for certain products contained unreasonably large numbers of people. I will be creating an idea around this and will add a link to it to this thread when I do.

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    2 replies

    Grégoire_Miche2
    Grégoire_Miche2
    Level 10
    September 24, 2018

    Yes, always combine with an [is not empty] filter.

    greg

    Denise_Greenb12
    Denise_Greenb12Author
    Level 6
    September 24, 2018

    Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad design because it's illogical? I mean - if you say to a roomful of people - "raise your hand if you bought a car before December 30th, 2000" - would you expect people who had never purchased cars to raise their hands? There must be people who are using these date operators incorrectly without realizing it.

      Grégoire_Miche2
      Grégoire_Miche2
      Level 10
      September 24, 2018

      Hi Denise,

      I think you are right here! In fact I have been knowing a teaching this as is for a quite some time now, without questioning the design....

      Enter the idea, i’ll add it to the Just do it post.

      Greg

      Grant_Booth
      Grant_Booth
      Level 9
      September 25, 2018

      My advice would be to never use the Before logic. Just use the Between logic with a very low boundary. I agree about adding a warning in the UI though!

      Denise_Greenb12
      Denise_Greenb12Author
      Level 6
      September 25, 2018

      Hi Grant -

      That's a good suggestion (between with a very low boundary). It wouldn't have worked for me in this instance though because I needed "in past before 1 hour."

      Please vote for the warning in the UI idea here:

      Thank you,

      Denise

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