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One deeply set feature in LongJump is the ability to find out what the value of a previous field was. It’s immensely helpful, however, when you’re building data policies to be notified of changes to records, but only specific changes. To accomplish this, you’d use the PRIORVALUE() boolean function in LongJump’s formula expression engine.

To demonstrate, I’ll actually use a real world example: ours.

When users sign up for a free trial on LongJump, a record is added in the backend, and we store the information about them as if they were a paying customer account. That record also has a TRUE/FALSE field called trial_account. Our payment system automatically flips that switch from TRUE to FALSE, once that customer converts (signs up for a paid account).

Because I’m a nosy marketing person, I wanted to know the exact moment that happens. It’s informative, but it also gives me a psychological lift of “Hey, we have a new paying customer!”

Now, I could have written a simple policy that said anytime that record is updated and the trial_account field is FALSE, send me an email. In fact, I tried that. But then anytime that record would be updated for any reason, that email would go out, and I was deluged with unusable notifications.

That’s where the PRIORVALUE function comes in. Here’s what it looks like. (Click on the screenshot if you want the full size view)

This is an action-based policy that runs whenever the record is updated and it compares the PRIORVALUE of trial_account to the current value using the formula-based criteria. The key is to build the expression to check for both the prior and current value.

(PRIORVALUE(trial_account) = TRUE) && (trial_account = FALSE)

When that change happens on a record, the policy executes a simple email notification action to me that includes the name of the company that converted and the number of users. I could also send this to multiple team members.

Of course, this basic logic could be used for a host of process situations and results. Let’s say you have an employee candidate that goes from prospective to hired. Or let’s say as part of this policy, I also want to update another field in the record. Or I want to start following that record in Relay. Or, through the beauty of LongJump’s data policies, you could string up multiple actions to take place. You can do a lot of process automation, simply by recognizing your historical values. PRIORVALUE can even be the basis for a view or report.

Have other examples of how you might use PRIORVALUE()? Submit a comment below as I’m sure we’d love to know about them.

For more information on Data Policies, go here. And for more on our Formula Expressions, go here.

Technorati Tags: change management, change notification, change tracking, formula