What is /Member of Engagement Program/ actually counting?

[Joe_Schaeffer1]

Hi folks. Not sure if this is a bug or expected behavior, so I'm bringing it to the community and support at the same time.

I'm running into an issue with smart lists based on "Member of Engagement Program" filters.

I currently have 4 active engagement programs in my instance. When I create a smart list based on those specific engagement programs (Member of Engagement Program is: Engagement Program 1, Engagement Program 2 Engagement Program 3, Engagement Program 4), the list returns with about 116k people. When I look at the membership numbers for these programs (on each engagement program's Summary dashboard), the same number (about 116k) works out. Great.

However, when create a smart list using "Member of Engagement Program is ANY," the list returns with over 400k people. No matter of constraints bring that number down anywhere close to the ~116k total mentioned above.

My question: does the Member of Engagement Program filter count people in archived engagement programs? That's the only thing I can think of in this case. If so, is that really expected? Or does engagement program "membership" mean something different than my assumption in the first place?

[Joe_Schaeffer1]

... and the answer back from support, as I feared:

Archiving your engagement programs simply removes them from being located in the tree and being searchable. They still function and membership holds true.

So the "IS ANY" operator is pretty useless if the intent is "IS ANY (NOT ARCHIVED)."

Sorry, that's kind of awful.