This is my last step, which links together all the previous steps. But I keep getting a full result of 18k records. It doenst seems to be doing the 'does not match' part. What am i missing?
Hi Anna,
Per Apsona's own documentation, mixing "matches" and "does not match" linkages to different previous steps within the same "all" grouping is officially supported — their docs give this exact pattern as a valid example ("select those contacts that match the Contact ID values of step 3, but do not match the Contact ID values of step 1"). So the structure itself isn't wrong on its face.
Since you're getting essentially the full dataset back, the most likely explanations are:
1. The "Exclude given Cash gift" step itself isn't returning what you expect. A "does not match" linkage only excludes records that actually show up in that step's own result set. If that step's filter criteria (on the Opportunity object) is too narrow, returns 0 rows, or isn't filtering the way you think, the negation has nothing to exclude against — meaning it will pass everything through, which would exactly explain seeing your full 18k. Run "Exclude given Cash gift" as a standalone step first and confirm its row count/content looks right on its own before trusting the negation against it.
2. Null values on Opportunity.Primary Contact. If a meaningful number of Opportunity records in that step have a blank Primary Contact, those nulls typically don't behave intuitively in a match/does-not-match join — they often don't count as a "match" either way, which can cause a "does not match" filter to effectively let everything through rather than excluding records that have no related Opportunity at all. Worth checking how many rows in that step actually have Primary Contact populated.
3. Isolate one linkage at a time. Temporarily delete the "Active DD" and "Grab from TEMP campaign" linkages and run with only the "Exclude given Cash gift — does not match" linkage active. If the count still doesn't drop at all, that confirms the negation itself isn't being applied as expected, rather than an interaction between the three conditions.
Since this is specific to how Apsona's engine resolves negated linkages (not a native Salesforce reporting behavior I can verify beyond their docs), if isolating the linkage above shows it's genuinely not filtering even on its own, that's worth taking directly to Apsona support via the "Help for this section" link on that page — this is exactly the kind of linkage-resolution edge case their support team would need to look at on the backend, since the doc confirms the feature should work but doesn't cover every interaction case.