Creating a New Line Program Token to Organize a History Field

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Hello Everyone!

I really need your help on this one.  

Question: Does anyone know how to create a program token that would create a new line if added to inbetween tokens.  

I am looking to format a history field like the example below:

Filled out Form on: 2015-03-10 13:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 3rd form fill out.

Filled out Form on: 2015-02-10 12:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 2nd form fill out.

Filled out Form on: 2015-01-10 11:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 1st form fill out.

Right now it looks all mashed together like this:

Filled out Form on: 2015-03-10 13:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 3rd form fill out.Filled out Form on: 2015-02-10 12:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 2nd form fill out.Filled out Form on: 2015-01-10 11:00:00  Form Comments: This is the comments from the 1st form fill out.

Below is my Flow Action: 




I am looking to figure out some way to use a program token in the default choice of this Change Data Value Flow.  Right now I have a program token in the place where I want it but I can't figure out how to get that to represent two new lines.

 

[Anonymous]

I am having same challenge.

In the Marketo Flow Action logic the Attribute LOV only displays Lead attributes ( lead fields).

If you create a program token you will not find in the Lead attribute list.

Program Tokens are only available in Digital Assets  (EMail or LP) for now.

[Nate_Oosterhous]

Thanks Josh,

I will continue to research.  I haven't found anything yet that works.

[Josh_Hill13]

oh so you want a new line in a field.
 

Do a quick search. there are some threads on this. It is not easy.

[Anonymous]

I've been searching and reading for months for a solution to this. If you have any links to info, please share.

Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

I've got a method that works.  It's delicate and it's probably best if I walk you through it remotely.  DM me if you want.

Example audit trail field:

[SanfordWhiteman]

Finally revealed here: http://blog.teknkl.com/dark-mkto-alleys-line-break-token/

[Dan_Stevens_]

Sanford Whiteman, your solution works great when the values need to be stored like this in a history field.  The issue arises when we use that history field as a token in an email.  For example, here's the value in the lead record:

2017-07-24 13:48:10: Visited 5 or more web pages in 1 day

2017-07-24 12:14:09: Filled Out Contact Us Form as Potential Customer (Overseas Adventure Travel): Contact Us 2.0 (USA) on www.avanade.com/en-us/contact

But when we use {{lead.Interesting Moment History}} in an email alert, it appears as follows (with no line breaks):

Any ideas on how to have this render properly in an email?

[SanfordWhiteman]

${display.br($lead.InterestingMomentHistory)}

in a Velocity token.

Different output contexts, different line break sequences....

[Dan_Stevens_]

That doesn't seem to work.  Here's the exact velocity token - called {{my.IM History}} that I'm using:

${display.br(${lead.avanadeInterestingMomentHistory})}

For your reference, the history field is built as follows:

{{lead.Last Interesting Moment Date}}: {{lead.Last Interesting Moment Desc}}{{my.line-break}}{{lead.Avanade Interesting Moment History}}

where "my.line-break" is using the approach you describe in this post.

[SanfordWhiteman]

What kind of "doesn't work" -- what's the output HTML?

$display.br() is a built-in method to replace true newlines with HTML <br />, so it's perfect for this. (We could write the replacement in VTL but shouldn't need to.)

[Dan_Stevens_]

Here's the token:

Here's how the token is used in the email alert:

And here's how it renders in an email (instead of pulling the history value from the lead record, it's including the actual script):

[SanfordWhiteman]

The field is checked off in the tree on the right-hand-side of Script Editor?

[Dan_Stevens_]

It was when I initially created it (since I checked it; and dragged the field into onto the canvas) - but after checking now, it was not checked.  So repeated the process again (confirmed it's now checked, even after saving, closing and re-editing the script).  Here's the result:

Do you think I need to use two line-break tokens in the history field, instead of one?

Here's the value as it appears in the database:

[SanfordWhiteman]

Nah, only need one. br() changes every single linebreak. What about if you manually hit enter in the field and add another line? That'll help us narrow down.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Nope, same result as above.  Here's the new value in the DB:

2017-07-24 12:58:39: Promoted to MQL after attending an Avanade Event: 2017-06-14 NA USA EV-ML Retail Executive Summit-ERP TracyA

2017-07-24 12:48:44: Attended an Avanade Event: 2017-06-14 NA USA EV-ML Retail Executive Summit-ERP TracyA

2017-07-24 12:43:47: Registered for an Avanade Event: 2017-06-14 NA USA EV-ML Retail Executive Summit-ERP TracyA

[SanfordWhiteman]

Dan, I can't repro this.

Here's text field with newlines:

The Velocity token to change the true newlines to <BR>s:

And the output:

[Dan_Stevens_]

I even tried another technique that you authored here: http://blog.teknkl.com/newlines-to-brs-in-velocity/​

And still no luck.  I also tried using a bare-bones HTML email.  This is driving me crazy.

[SanfordWhiteman]

So bizarre! What would Velocity be doing here if ​not ​altering the output... and not throwing an error?

It's as if your fields don't contain \n.

Can you try another replacement, as a sanity check?

${lead.Lead_Notes.replaceAll(".","<BR>")}

[Dan_Stevens_]

Now we're getting somewhere.  Here's the email - where everything has been replaced with <BR> - the gray area is me highlighting them with my mouse:

And here's the code to prove it:

But I have no periods "." in that field.  What was replaced with all of those <br>'s?  Or did this replace every character (including the 2 line breaks) with a <br>?  There are are 17 characters (include the breaks), and 17 <br>s here.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The dot is regular expression syntax for "any character," so the idea was to see what you saw.

Now try this:

${lead.Lead_Notes.replaceAll("\r","<BR>")}