Flow Decision Element conditions don't support short-circuit evaluation?

Question

In a Flow I have a Decision Element with condition logic like so:

Opportunity.Date_Field__c     is null      GlobalConstant.TRUE
Opportunity.Date_Field__c   greater than   Custom_Object__c.DateField__c

with "One condition must be true (OR)"

I would expect that this would short-circuit after the first condition but I'm getting this error when my Flow runs:

The flow failed to access the value for Opportunity.Date_Field__c because it hasn't been set or assigned.

Do I need to separate this logic or is this a bug?

---

So I changed my Decision Element to have the first condition be in one outcome, and the second condition in a second outcome and I'm still getting the error.

After checking my logs, the Opportunity is getting assigned, but the Date_Field__c doesn't seem to show up.

{
 AccountId=0011800000QaheKAAR
 CloseDate=2016-05-01 00:00:00
 ContactId=0031800000LZHYjAAP
 CreatedById=005C0000008cyo4IAA
 CreatedDate=2016-08-16 14:05:27
 ForecastCategory=Forecast
 ForecastCategoryName=Commit
 HasOpenActivity=false
 HasOpportunityLineItem=false
 HasOverdueTask=false
 Id=00618000004L1yzAAC
 IsClosed=false
 IsDeleted=false
 IsPrivate=false
 IsWon=false
 LastModifiedById=005C0000008cyo4IAA
 LastModifiedDate=2016-09-30 13:10:11
 LastStageChangeDate=2016-09-30 13:10:11
 Name=Test1 - 2016-07-15
 OwnerId=00580000003Xfe9AAC
 Probability=100
 RecordTypeId=012180000008id2AAA
 StageName=Established
 StageSortOrder=19
 SystemModstamp=2016-09-30 13:10:11
}

Answer 1

This is probably caused by not retrieving the value of the Opportunity.Date_Field__c into the sObject variable. With a headless flow being called by Process Builder you can call the flow and pass in the Opportunity Id as a parameter then call use a fast lookup to retrieve the opportunity fields into an sObject.

When the sObject is created any fields that you will reference in the flow will need to be explicitly selected to be available. So in my image below for a custom property object I am using the Id and other fields that are explicitly retrieved.

If I tried to use any fields from the sObject that had not been included in this list it will produce the error you have found of:

The flow failed to access the value for Opportunity.Date_Field__c because it hasn't been set or assigned.

In the decision element it would need to be assessing the value as sObject.field, e.g. sovOpportuity.Date_Field__c.

Answer 2

Did some digging on this instead of me just guessing and posting wrong answers. :D

https://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewSolution?id=000212174&language=en_US

It seems as though the Opportunity value is null, it cannot get Date_Field__c.

Answer 3

So with Dave Humm's help I was able to get my Flow working by using a Fast Lookup to get the Opportunity and the Fields I required.

While this did work and solved my issue I wasn't fully satisfied as I figured I shouldn't have to do a Lookup when I'm passing in the Opportunity.

I ended up revisiting my Flow and figured out a way to do it without the Fast Lookup. So I'm posting my final solution as the answer.

What I ended up doing was using the "was set" operator in the Decision Element.

Opportunity.Date_Field__c     was set      GlobalConstant.FALSE
Opportunity.Date_Field__c     is null      GlobalConstant.TRUE
Opportunity.Date_Field__c   greater than   Custom_Object__c.DateField__c

with "One condition must be true (OR)"

When this evaluated to TRUE, I would populate my Opportunity.Date_Field__c and all was good.