Setting up a recurrence to null out a field every 6 hours

[Patrick_Vesely]

Hi, 

Our analytics team is asking us to null out a field every 6 hours.  We are trying to think of all our options and wondering what the best approach is.  

has anyone done something like this before?  best solution?

[marypaine]

My first thought is that you'd have to schedule multiple recurring batch campaigns (4) since the highest frequency that you can have a single one run is daily. So you could space them out whatever way makes sense for your analytics team, but it could look something like:

• Batch 1: 8am
• Batch 2: 2pm
• Batch 3: 8pm
• Batch 4: 2am

[Patrick_Vesely]

thank you. the batch idea was discussed but we would run into too many issues.  We are going with a trigger smart campaign and waiting 6 hours after new value has been added to the field

[Loressa_Copelan]

I was thinking the same thing, using batch. I was also thinking about wait steps, but not sure how that would work with clearing out data.

[SanfordWhiteman]

6 hours after the last change to the field?

Or every 6 hours regardless of when/whether it’s changed? This you can do with 4 scheduled batch campaigns per day.

Though either way it sounds like some disastrous decisions preceded this IMO.

[Patrick_Vesely]

I do not disagree.   The first thought was to run an update at 12am, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. 

But we have set this up as a trigger smart campaign with a 6 hour wait setp....after new values have been added to the field.  

[SanfordWhiteman]

It’s gonna depend on how often the field is updated and how much of the database is affected.

A specific concern is what happens if the field is changed at, for example, hour 1, hour 3, and hour 5 — that means three different NULLing runs even though the final result at hour 6 is the same.

Why do they need you to NULL it out exactly?