Do we have any documentation on creating branches and more importantly on merging branches?

Integrator.io
1

Do we have any documentation on creating branches and, more importantly, on merging branches?

  • The scenario is as follows:
    • I am retrieving sales orders from one system.
    • In the flow, I am branching based on whether the customer is available in NetSuite.
      • Then I create or update the customer.
    • Then, in the next step, I am on to create sales orders.
      • Can I merge the flows after creating or updating customers?

I am adding an image from the flow below.

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2

Why not just merge back after the lookups? All of those flow steps seem duplicated, but maybe there is some difference.

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3

Correct and you are on point. I am still struggling to understand how the flow would understand merging records. Which is why I am running them separately

Like when you merge, using which field/value will it merge? or it’s just data flow to send them in one flow.

4

A branch merge doesn't merge data back together; it just merges how pages of data continue processing downstream.

For example, if you have two records from your source that are on one page of data and then you branch off where one record goes down one branch and the other down the other branch, you now have two pages of data, each with one record. After the merge, you still have two pages of data (not back to one like you originally had), but both pages then proceed to the next step.

We do eventually want to bring a true merge of data like you're thinking as another option because then you could process lookups in parallel and then merge results from the various lookups together.

5

Thank you Tyler.

Is there any documentation you can share about this? The answer you gave was what I tried to find in help docs.

6

It seems we should add a section in the docs specifically for how merge behaves. For now, here are the docs we have:

7

We updated the docs here: https://docs.celigo.com/hc/en-us/articles/8431287283995-Manage-branching-in-your-flow#edit-branchings-2

8

@Ovina_Peiris flow got me thinking of something I had been meaning to ask about. Has Celigo considered doing any level of color coding from branches? It can get a little a tough to disseminate where lines are heading when they overlap (example included below) so it would be nice to see that visually without extra clicks.

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9

If you hover over the line it then highlights/becomes bold?

10

I see that now @tylerlamparter (hadn’t even noticed that before). I wonder if it would be possible to add some color to the line to make it a little more pronounced? Just a thought!