A Decision Node is used in Campaign Automations to determine which path a participant will go down based on specified criteria.
NOTE: If a participant meets the criteria for both paths they will not continue the flow until both paths have completed. Example: Path A goes to a wait timer of 5 minutes before proceeding to point C, Path B goes to a wait timer of 2 days before reaching point C Result: The participant will not reach point C until 2 days has passed because this is when they will finish both paths.
Goals
- Learn how to add a Decision Node to a Campaign Automation
- Learn how Decision Node paths are determined
- See an example use case of a Decision Node
Add a Decision Node to a Campaign Automation
The Decision Node will automatically appear once you connect a trigger to two or more actions or series following the trigger. The Decision Node can appear when two or more actions or series follow a positive path or a negative path.
How Do Decision Nodes Work?
Decision Nodes allow you to have a greater degree of specificity in determining what kind of follow-up actions you want to use in a Campaign Automation. Whereas a Negative Path lets you see if a person performed an action or not and follow up accordingly, the Decision Node lets you check specific details about the action they performed or about the participant themselves. For example, a negative path lets you see if somebody submitted a form, and a Decision Node lets you see which responses they gave in their form submission.
Clicking on a Decision Node will open up its properties window where you can set the criteria and clauses that need to be met for a Participant to continue down each path beyond the Decision Node.
Decision Nodes use logic based off of Advanced Finds to set criteria for which path a participant will go down. You will select the entity you want to reference, an attribute from that entity, a logical operator, and the value of that attribute that you are looking for.
Each path can have one or more criteria that the Participant must meet to progress along that Path.
In the Screenshot above, if a Contact has an email address and lives in New York City, they will proceed down the first path and receive email 1. If the contact has an email address and lives in London, they will proceed down the second path and receive email 2.
Supported and Unsupported fields
The following are a list of the supported and unsupported fields and field types for the Decision Node logic:
- Unsupported Contact Fields: "Account", "Auto-created", "Contact", "Is Private", "Price List", "Parent Contact", "Owning Team", "Owning User"
- Unsupported field types: "State", "MultiCheckBox"
- Supported field types: "Text", "Integer", "Money", "CheckBox", "List", "DateTime", "TextArea" "Single Line of Text", "Multiple Lines of Text", "Whole Number", "Floating Point Number", "Currency", "Checkbox", "Option set", "Two Options", "Image", "Date and Time", "Lookup" (to custom entity)
Note: The "Date and Time" and "Two Options" field types will not be able to check if the field contains data, so you may need to use a different field type if you need this functionality.
Note: Decimal fields must have precision value 1-10 to work with Decision Nodes. Ensure that any custom Decimal fields that you plan to use with a Decision Node have precision value 1-10.
Non-Exclusive Paths in Decision Nodes
In a situation where a participant meets the criteria for multiple paths branching off of a decision node, they will be sent down each of those paths in the Campaign Automation simultaneously. For Example, This would not happen if you were using a decision node to check for some sort of mutually exclusive outcome, like whether or not a participant registered for an event, but if you are looking at non-mutually exclusive criteria, like how many subscription lists a participant opted into, the participant can be sent down every path they qualify for and effectively be in two or more places at once.
The following screenshot is an example of how this would be represented in a participant's Campaign Automation Timeline. Here, the participant submitted a subscription page in which they opted into Events and Newsletter lists, but opted out of a Recipes list.
Using Decision Nodes with Contacts/Accounts Simultaneously
If a participant of one entity type (Contact/Account) reaches a Decision Node that has a path with a condition clause that checks for a different type of entity, then the participant will automatically advance along that path. This is because each clause can only be applied to its specified entity type.
For example, if a Contact Participant encounters a Decision Node that has one path with only an Account condition and one path with only a Contact condition, the Contact will go down the Contact path if the meet the specified criteria, but they will also always go through the path that only has a Account condition because the entity type will not match and there is no condition to limit which Contacts should go through that path. The same thing will occur for an Account participant when it encounters a path with only Contact conditions.
If you want to run multiple entity types through the same Campaign Automation while having Decision Nodes be applied to all of those entity types, then you need to have the Decision Nodes contain a condition for each entity type that will be used on that path to avoid the above behavior.
For example, in the Decision Node below, a Contact participant with a filled-in Email field will be prevented from progressing along the Send Email 1 path but would be able to proceed along the Send Email 2 path due to the Account condition not being applicable to it.
Use Case Example: Using a Decision Node in a Subscription Management Campaign Automation
In this particular example, we have used our Campaign Automation to handle opt-ins for Subscription Management:
When you enter the Decision Node, you'll see all of the series the Decision Node is connected to. Here is where you will specify the criteria the participant will need to meet in order to enter the series. The criteria available will vary depending upon the trigger type from which the Decision Node is branching off.
To add criteria to a series, click on the series name. The series section will expand with the clause options.
Click + Add Clause and a blank row will appear where you can click inside a blank field to begin building the clause.
Here you can choose the entity you would like to relate the clause to: Submitted Subscription (if the Decision Node appears after a Subscription Submission trigger), Submitted Form (if the Decision Node appears after a Form Submission trigger), Submitted Survey (if the Decision Node appears after a Survey Submission trigger) Event Participation (if the Decision Node appears after an Attended Event trigger or a Registered for Event trigger), Email Interaction, or Contact. This example uses Submitted Form, but the mechanics will be comparable for the other options as well.
Next, choose the field on the entity that is determining the path to the series.
Then choose what the value should be on that field on the entity in order to determine if the participant should follow this series. In general, we recommend not being too exclusive; if participants cannot meet the criteria to go down any of the series or following actions, then this can affect the results of your Campaign Automation. Also remember: participants can go down multiple paths at the same time if they fit the criteria for several different paths.
Use the Group OR and Group AND options to further specify these clauses. These behave similarly to the Group OR and Group AND functionality when using the Advanced Find tool in MS Dynamics CRM. Check the clauses you would like to group together and click either Group OR or Group AND to group them together.
You may choose to include field values on Contact and Account records when setting up clauses. This can include the ability to select from custom fields if you like.
To add a clause for the series, click +Add Clause. Another blank clause will appear. Click on the first field and select which attribute you want to check for. The options available will depend on the trigger preceding the series.
Once you are done specifying the clauses for each series, click Save & Close. You will return to the Campaign Automation canvas. Click Save in the Campaign Automation screen to make sure all changes have been saved.
FAQs
Can I use the Status Reason field from a Contact record?
Yes. The Status Reason field is available to be used in a decision node.
Can I use custom lookup fields in a decision node?
Yes. You can use custom lookup fields from Contact or Account records in decision nodes.