Flow Designer IF logic for null value or empty string

Rick Mann
Tera Expert

‎10-19-2021 12:29 PM

How do I check for an empty value in Flow Designer IF logic? I have a pretty simple situation where I need to check a field on the Assignment group of the Incident record that triggered my flow. If the field has a value then perform Action A.  If the field does not have a value then perform Action B.

I can get the logic to work if I use "Contains" and check for some string that should be in the field, but it seems like there should be an easy way to check if there if the field is blank or not. Maybe something simple I'm missing...

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Frustrating... I could have written this logic in Workflow within a couple of minutes.

Thanks for any help.

Rick

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Bimschleger
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

‎10-19-2021 12:44 PM

Hi Rick,

The simplest route is to is use Transform Functions. Specifically, "Is Null?" or "Is blank?" seem like they would work for you. Each is available beginning in the Quebec release.

In your scenario, let's say that you want to perform different actions if the "first name" (record.first_name) field on a record is empty:

 

  1. Lookup record
  2. If {{1.record.first_name}}.isBlank IS true:
    1. Then: Log (if the first name is blank)
  3. Else:
    1. Log (if the record.first_name is not blank)

asifnoor
Kilo Patron

‎10-19-2021 12:46 PM

Hi,

Look for isBlank within your field and then compare it with TRUE

 
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Rick Mann
Tera Expert

‎10-19-2021 06:03 PM

Thanks for advice and this makes perfect sense, but I'm perplexed. Do I have my IF statement setup correctly?  I'm using the "Is Blank" utility which should return "false" if the field has a string value. It seems that the statement will return false regardless if the group field has a value or not.

 

find_real_file.png

 

find_real_file.png

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Bimschleger
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee
In response to Rick Mann

‎10-20-2021 08:01 AM

Rick,

Yup, you've correctly configured the transform function. I suggest adding a log step before the If to help to validate that the transform is evaluating the data pill correctly.

 

Some common issues I've seen with this transform function:

  • String values that contain only whitespace characters (e.g. "  ") are not considered blank. 
  • Objects are almost never blank. For example, if an object has 2 fields, and neither of the fields has a value, the object is not technically blank.
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