We have a handful of smart campaigns that have a wait step duration: wait 1 min, wait must end Mon-Fri at 4 pm ET. The next step is to send an email. We are doing this, obviously, because we do not want these emails to go out over the weekend.
This past weekend, it seems that the wait step completely ignored the "wait must end Mon-Fri at 4 pm ET" requirement, as the send email step was executed on both Saturday and Sunday, hours before from the specified end time at 4 pm ET, and so I submitted a support case.
Support responded, completely ignoring the fact the wait step did not end Mon-Fri, with this:
Wait steps with durations work by trying to satisfy two conditions. In this case the conditions are 1 minute and by the end of the day at 4:00 PM EDT. Marketo will try to qualify the person for what comes first, the 1 minute or by 4:00 PM EDT. The closer it gets to 4:00 PM EDT, the more Marketo starts to "look" at this part of the condition and less at the 1 minute condition so as not to miss the cut of time of 4:00 PM EDT.
My experience up to this point, which is confirmed by this product doc, is that the wait step ends AT your specified time, not BY your specified time. Has this behavior changed? Is anyone else experiencing this issue with wait steps? I am waiting to hear back from support, but was hoping someone from the community would have some insight.
TL;DR version: Wait step that must end Mon-Fri at 4 pm ET actually ended Saturday and Sunday, nowhere near 4 pm ET, effectively ignoring the time constraints. Support is trying to chalk this up as intended behavior and/or misunderstanding of intended behavior. Looking for community input.
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