Sureshot offers a variety of utility connectors that allow users to split, pause, evaluate and merge data to give you endless flexibility in creating workflows that accomplish your business needs.
Decision
The Decision connector allows you to evaluate data and split it into different paths based on what is found in the data. You can look for empty values or perform various types of evaluations on data such as contains, not equal, greater than, less than, and many others.
Build any number of evaluations that you'd like to perform. An "Else" path will be automatically created that will catch any records that do not meet any of your defined criteria. Evaluation of the data will be done in the order that you create them on the connector. In the example below, our data includes a field called "number". If the value for "number" is "1", we want it to go down one path, and if it's "2", we want it to go down another path. All remaining values can go down the Else path.
Bring the Decision connector onto your workflow. Double click to open the configuration.
To begin adding your paths, click New Item. Provide a value for Name to describe what you are looking for in this evaluation. There are several ways to write your expression and tools to make the job easier. If you are savvy with writing expressions, you can also hand-write your expression.
Click the Ctrl+space bar to see the options that are available to you. At the top of the list, you will see record data fields that are available to evaluate. After that, a list of operations will display. In this example, there is only one record field available, which is a field called "number".
Once you select the value that you want to evaluate, the expression automatically begins to be built.
Now you can add the specific evaluation that you want to perform. In this example we are looking for any values of "1".
To look for another value, click New Item and repeat the same step, except making your evaluation look for "2". Once saved, you will see your paths for "1", "2" and an Else path.
Now that your data is split the way you want, the individual paths can be handled as desired.
Wait
The Wait connector does just that... wait a specified period of time before releasing the records. Wait configuration can accept values in Days, Hours, Minutes and Seconds. After the specified period of time has passed, the records will move to the next step.
Timer
The timer connector will generate a record on the specified at the specified time at the specified intervals. Timers are used at the beginning of workflows to begin a workflow.
Select the Frequency at which you want to generate a record - seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks or months. Then set the Intervals. For example, if you want something run every 2 days, the Frequency is Days and the Interval is 2. Set the Offset value is the number of hours after midnight that you want it to run. The final option is to Run Immediately. This will enable the connector to generate a record as soon as the deployment is started and will then generate a record at each frequency/interval defined in the other fields.
Schedule
Unlike the Timer, the Schedule is used in the middle of workflows to hold records until a specified time. For example, if you want to ensure that records don't move to a certain step on weekends or after a certain time of day, you can hold the records in the Schedule step until the specified day / time.
First, pick your Frequency - one time, daily, weekly or monthly. Each option has different configurations that can be set up.
Once: pick the date and time that you want it to run (along with time zone)
Daily: pick the time and time zone that you want the records to be released daily
Weekly: pick the day(s) of week and time of day that you want records to be released.
Monthly: choose between options of running the x day of each month, the first day of the month or last day of the month along with the time of day you want the records to be released.
Drip
The Drip connector allows you to manage how many records are processed at a time. Drip can be used to ensure you are not sending all outbound SMS messages at the same time (resulting in an influx of inbound messages/calls to respond to) or to help manage rate limits on 3rd party APIs.
You can define how many records should be released (Max Release Count) and the Frequency at which records should be released (days, hours, minutes, seconds). Note that if the Max Release Count is met before the Release Frequency time period has passed, the records will be released. The logic is Max Count or Frequency - whichever comes first.
In addition, there is the option to enable a Send Window. Here, users can configure times and days of week that records should be processed / released. If a record tries to release, but it is outside of the Send Window, it will hold the records until the send window is open again.
Stream Merge
Stream Merge allows you to take data from 2 paths and combine it into one. An example is if the workflow is getting data such as First Name, Last Name, Email, Company, etc. from multiple systems (i.e. Eloqua and Salesforce) and you want to merge these values into single fields. Because the Stream Merge can accept input from multiple sources, it is also used when the the workflow requires any type of looping such as a paging loop.
Data combination example:
Paging Loop example
Stream Merge configuration
Stream Merge has the ability to read all data that is mapped to it in your workflow. Simply connect any previous nodes to your Stream Merge and click the Generate Config button. All unique keys from previous connector outputs will be generated in the config and data for those keys will be automatically mapped.
From here, the user can hover to see what keys/values were mapped and can make any updates as needed.
When all mapping is complete, move to the Output tab of the configuration window and click Generate to automatically build the output of the Stream Merge connector so the data is easily accessible in the next steps of the workflow.