Why is this piece of the workflow even running?

[craigja]

See the screenshot - the field RiskMeasureType is blank/empty, so doesn't = NET_CS01, so why is the XML Parse tool trying to do something? 

[binuacs]

@craigja What is the error you are getting when you click the XML parse tool?

[craigja]

Says it cant find the XML its looking for

[DataNath]

@craigja unless parts of your workflow are put into containers that are disabled etc. then Alteryx will try to pass data through all tools. The issue you have is of course there is no data to pass through, although the XML Parse tool is expecting there to be, and you therefore receive an error.

If this is a supervised workflow (i.e. not scheduled), you may want to look at using a detour, whereby you can change the course of the workflow if that field isn't present. I've mocked up a very quick example here where I've set up one of the detour streams with an expression that won't work (because the [Employee] field isn't present). However, you'll notice no error because within the detour tool, we tell Alteryx to follow the path of the left detour anchor:

If we then switch this so that the workflow detours to the right, the expected error message will reveal itself as Alteryx now expects to stream data through this and, as mentioned previously, the [Employee] field is missing:

Hope this helps at least a little!