Journey builder custom activity getting empty fields

Question

When journey activates and execute request triggers, we get empty fields data even though data is present in Data extension ( using {{Event."+ eventDefinitionKey +"."+ column +"}} to get the data from DE)

Actual Msg Content in Custom activity app - "Dear %%FirstName%%, We are delighted to enclose herewith a Proforma invoice for %%ExeMobile%% as requested by you . Please contact me for any further assistance. Regards, %%ExeName%%",

I want to dynamically replace this %%FirstName%% (FirstName is column in DE)

"mobileContent":{ "%%MobileNumber%%":"" }, "template_content":{ "%%FirstName%%":"", "%%ExeMobile%%":"", "%%ExeName%%":"" }

Now here above fields are coming empty as you can see.

Ideally it should be like this as below ( We received this when successfully run ) "mobileContent":{ "%%MobileNumber%%":"919xxxxxxx0" }, "template_content":{ "%%FirstName%%":"Test", "%%ExeEmail%%":"testmail@test.com" }

Journey runs successfully sometime and sometimes it gives empty DE fields and not able to debug why I am getting such error even after all the configuration is correct with Custom activity. This generally happens when we create new version of Journey and sometimes when we copy the journey from existing.

Please help me out as this is critical.

Data is also present in Data extension still getting this error

Answer 1

There's no super simple way of doing this that'll catch your data bindings being invalidated in a Custom Activity due to reversioning, copying or editing the entry source, I'm afraid. You only get to check the EventDefinitionKey matches the saved inArguments in a couple of places - when the UI's loaded and you have access to Postmonger and when the Journey's activated and your Validate route's requested. In the event of copying or editing the journey, neither your UI nor the validate route's requested and your activity's ignorant of the change in the EventDefinitionKey. These are the only two occasions when your Custom Activity gets to check the EventDefintitionKey and compare it to your saved data bindings, however.

My recommendation firstly would be to check your saved data bindings when your Custom Activity's UI's loaded. In your handler for the Postmonger "initActivity" event, check that the EventDefinitionKey for the Interaction matches that of your data bindings in your inArguments, and if they don't, update those data bindings to match the new EventDefintionKey. Secondly, perform some sort of similar validation on your Validate endpoint. Inspect the saved interaction using the GET interactions/v1/interactions REST endpoint. If the data bindings and EventDefinitionKey do not agree, return a 400 error, or similar. There's currently no way to provide a user friendly message back to the user, but at least you'll prevent an invalid configuration being activated.