Setting non-nullable fields on Synchronized Data Extensions

Question

I need to do an attribute-to-attribute comparison as part of a Decision Split (Journey Builder). One of the attributes happens to be from a Synchronized Data Extension (Sales Cloud source). Apparently one cannot compare attributes when one of the two is nullable but I am stumped on best way to set a field to non-nullable/required as I see no Edit option like one sees on typical Data Extensions. I've tried including a default value in the Sales Cloud source object but it still comes in as nullable. Any suggestions on how best to do this?

[My thoughts for a plan B include: a.) Set field as required in Sales Cloud object (I believe this will impact existing records) b.) Replicate the Synchronized Data Extension with a SQL Activity (too many moving parts!)]

Answer 1

If you don't want to update the field in Sales Cloud, your only other option as you stated is the write a SQL Query to copy that Synchronized Data Extension.

Before you do that, you do need to check if those values for the field have non-nullable/nullable values. You wouldn't be allowed to check the field as non-nullable if you have nullable values.

Answer 2

As far as I can see, only the PrimaryKey field in sync DE is set to non-nullable.

I recently had the exact same situation as you. We tried changing the field in CRM. When viewing the Synchronized Entity in Contact Builder [>Contact Builder > Data Sources > Synchronised > Synchronized Data Sources > {Your Synchronized Entity}] our field did come through as "Required" to synce (as opposed to "Optional"). However, in the actual Sync DE, the field was NULLABLE.

Our solution was to create a query that would update the initial Journey Audience Entry DE with a boolean field. It was this boolean field that was then used in the Decision Split activity. Make sure the entry source DE is configured in Contact Builder so you can use Contact Data.