In a flow, collection variable contains what it is supposed to but skips decision outcome, how would you handle it?

Question

"Open" Outcome conditions Does Require Record Changed to meet criteria: true {!contactsStageText} ([Open]) Contains Open Skipped this outcome because its conditions weren't met:

EDIT: contactsStageText was text previously, later changed to Picklist collection variable to match to the record type to update. Now all the collection variable and variables going to the decision element are picklist variable. I am using contains in decision element to see if the collection picklist variable contains "Opt-out" first and others later.

I think this debug of flow says it all, but I am not sure why would it happen as I am using contains to see if the collection variable contain Open or not but, debug shows even though there was open in collection variable this decision path was skipped. What am I doing wrong here? Overall flow looks like this.

Answer 1

tl;dr

Do one of the following:

• Use a Text Collection and not a Picklist Collection for your accountstagecollection. Continue to ADD your contactstage value as you are doing, then later in your Decision element you will be comparing the same data types.
• Create some single Picklist type variables - one for each possible picklist value. Assign the appropriate value to them (e.g., picklistVariable_Optout EQUALS Opt-out), then use those as the Value in each of your Decision element Outcome comparisons (e.g., accountstagecollection CONTAINS picklistVariable_Optout).

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This intrigued me greatly, so I set up a test Flow (which I would be happy to share...somehow) to attempt to cover as many options that I could think of.

• A Text field and a Picklist field were added to the Account object.
• Picklist values were Open, Opt-out and Demo Booked.
• On an individual Account record, I added the same value in the Text field as I chose for the Picklist field. (E.g., for Record 1 both new fields had the value of "Open", for Record 2 they both were "Opt-out")
• In the Flow, all of the Account records were retrieved, looped through, and the values of these two fields added to Flow Variables as follows:

Value from this field	Into this type Flow variable	Variable name
Text	Text Collection	textFromTextCollection
	Picklist Collection	picklistFromTextCollection
	Text Single	textSingle
Picklist	Text Collection	textFromPicklistCollection
	Picklist Collection	picklistFromPicklistCollection
	Picklist Single	picklistSingle

The single variables were a curiosity - as I ADDed to them in each loop, thus creating one long, continuous string.

• Next, successive Decision elements were placed to parse the various Collections and compare them in different ways

  1. textFromTextCollection CONTAINS text

     

  2. picklistFromTextCollection CONTAINS text

     

  3. textFromPicklistCollection CONTAINS text

     

  4. picklistFromPicklistCollection CONTAINS text

     

  Numbers 1 and 3 - where the Collection variable was Text type - worked by following the correct Outcome.

  Numbers 2 and 4 - where the Collection variable was Picklist type - did NOT work and they followed the "Default" Outcome.

  5. textSingle CONTAINS text

     

  6. picklistSingle CONTAINS text

     

  Curiously, both of these worked by following the correct Outcome path.

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Finally (probably should have started here) I looked in Salesforce Help > Docs > Automate Your Business Processes > Flow Operators in Decision and Pause Elements:

Collection

Check whether a Collection resource's value contains or matches another value or resource.

Operator	True if...	Supported Data Types
Contains	An item in the collection that's selected for Resource contains the exact same value as Value	Resource of the same data type.

Picklist

Check whether a Picklist resource's value matches or contains another value or resource.

NOTE: These operators treat the resource’s value as a text value.

Operator	True if...	Supported Data Types
Contains	The value for Resource contains what's entered or selected for Value	- Picklist is included in a long list of data types
	For example, if the value of {!varPicklist} is yellow-green, the condition {!varPicklist} Contains green evaluates to true

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The results of the test Flow match exactly with the documentation:

• When the Collection was of Text type and compared directly to text typed into the Value box, it worked.
• When the Collection was of Picklist type and compared directly to text typed into the Value box, it did NOT work.
• When the Single (non-Collection) variable was of either type and compared directly to text typed into the Value box, it worked.

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So in order to test this further, I created three Picklist single variables to use essentially as constants (you cannot create a Flow Constant of Picklist type). A new first element in the Flow set these variables:

Variable	Value
picklistVariable_Open	Open
picklistVariable_Optout	Opt-out
picklistVariable_DemoBooked	Demo Booked

Screenshot:

Next I added a Decision element to compare one of the Picklist Collection variables to the new Picklist single "constant" variables:

• picklistFromPicklistCollection CONTAINS picklist Single variable

  

...it worked!

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EDIT

I just re-read your chat discussion with @PhilW and discovered something you said that did not register with me the first time I read it:

[A]t the start of decision as well as at the end I have Picklist record types in the middle while making decision I need to convert collection picklist variable to Text data just to decide and later update picklist from that decision. I now find trapped...

So in your specific case I would suggest the second option above - especially since it is Record Types and thus is a restricted Picklist, thus making it easy to create a Flow Picklist variable for each possible value.