Send report email only if attachment is generated, else send 'nothing to report' email

Hi,

Please see screen shot. In the red highlighted filter tool I want to send emails if there are attachments created that satisfy the 'true' path of the filter; the "something to report out" path.

The 'false' path of the filter is to send a "nothing to report" email. But there could be records there, but they're not the records we're interested in. So I could end up sending both types of emails. << This is what I want to prevent.

How would I check the true path of the filter for no records so that I can send the correct type of email?

Let me know if I need to further clarity.

Thank you,

Chris

Filter-sendEmailsORNot.png

Data Investigation

Accepted answers

ThizViz

You can if you use an "Append Fields" tool to add the record count in a new column.

All comments

ThizViz

Someone else may have a better answer, but in situations like this I've found it helpful to use a secondary filter or a join on a text table.

If there are records which are legitimately returning as false, either make a filter to exclude the records that are "not the records we're looking for", or create a text table with the list of "not the records we're looking for" and attach the email message only to the left output of the join.

This is a method I often use in testing. If I create a join and expect that nothing will come out of the left or right sides - well, what happens if I've missed something? When I find a situation like that, like oh yeah, there should be no records EXCEPT these, for whatever reason - that's when I create a secondary step to filter out those stragglers.

Archaeopteryx

Hi ThizViz,

Thanks for the reply. To add more context,

The filter looks at a past Start Date. I count 16 months from that Start Date into the future. If that future date is within + or - 6 days of the current day, then we create attachments of those records and send it out in an email.

Eventually, all the records will satisfy that filter. So there is no 'hard data' to filter out before the query begins.

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