Thanks Erin, good (well, not, but you know...) to hear that I'm not the only one with this issue.
In our scenario we're trying to automate everything, so unfortunately using the in-built RE functions isn't an option for us.
I had thought that as a last resort we could use an ImportOmatic export profile to automate exporting the current set of attributes (including the Date) for all constituents, then use this to feed in to our process that creates the import file then including the Date. Although it's technically possible and I'm sure would work, it's a fair bit of effort (& clunkiness) to work around behaviour that's seemingly in conflict with the IOM documentation.
I've also logged a support ticket for this one, I'll made sure I feed back what I learn from that but thought others like you might also have faced this challenge.
Thanks Nic, are you able to advise any timeframe for the patch this fix will be contained in? This will help inform our options for moving ahead.
That's awesome news, thanks Nic! We'll stay posted!
David Sampson
Hi,
Thought I'd try posting in the forum on this one to see if anyone else has any insights...
I have a constituent attribute called "Alumni Network" that is able to be added multiple times to a constituent record (ie, it's non-unique): so I could have multiple instances for this attribute category for a single constituent record, eg:
Category Description Date
Alumni Network A 1/1/2016
Alumni Network B 1/2/2016
I'd like to remove all instances of this attribute category from a constituent record, but leave any instances of other attribute categories alone.
In an earlier version of ImportOmatic (v2.x) I could previously achieve this by having a file that specified the Category, Description, and the special "Remove" field with a value of "Remove".
However, in the latest version of ImportOmatic (v3.x) it looks as though I also must include the Date as well - even though I don't care about matching on Date, I just want all instances of the attribute category removed... I really don't want to have to include the Date, because I won't actually have access to its current value in RE (the data being imported is coming from another system, plus the Date could have been updated by an admin in RE in the meantime anyway). The ImportOmatic documentation seems to indicate that all I need for a match is Category & Description, but it's still including Date behind the scenes even though I'm not specifying it in the file & there's no option to include / exclude Date in the matching criteria in the import profile...
Has anyone encountered anything similar in a 3.x version of ImportOmatic?
Thanks so much for any assistance,
Dave