Custom Field Automation Issues

[user494721]

Hi all!

I do internal communications through constant contact. I am making automated email that sends on employee anniversaries. Using the default anniversary date field in the body of the email displays the date as: "YYYY-MM-DD," which is less than ideal. So, I figured I'd create a custom text field where I could spell out, "Month DD, YYYY," but whenever I use the custom text field I just get: "[[custom.anniversary_date OR ""]]." in the preview and in the test email. What am I doing wrong here? What's the best way to do a custom date spelled out, "Month DD, YYYY"?

[William_A]

Hello @user494721 ,

This article standards provides available date formats that could be included with emails as inserted contact details. Anniversaries can't do typed out month names, so there wouldn't be a way to include this as a detail in an email. 

[user494721]

So even if I created a custom profile field for anniversaries, I cannot spell out a date as, "Month DD, YYYY"? 

[William_A · Accepted solution]

I think I may have misread your original post. Do you have your employee contacts setup with two different anniversary dates - one that's an actual anniversary field that the automation is based off of, and the other a custom field that will actually be set to display written out?

If so, then you can completely ignore my original response. When you preview your email or send a test, the contact detail displays the personal information you provided for your own account to give you an idea of what your contacts will see. If the information isn't available to pull into your preview, or if you're using custom fields, the fallback text displays instead. As long as you've gone through the insert contact details process, then it will trigger as expected. If you just manually typed out [[custom.anniversary_date OR ""]], then it won't trigger properly since it's not coded.

[user494721]

Right, so I have a custom field for spelled out anniversary dates as a workaround for the date formatting in the default anniversary field. I have set up the custom field in the automations email as outlined in the directions you shared, however I still get, "[[custom.anniversary_date OR ""]]" in preview mode when a recipient who has the data on the profile selected to view. I have even tried inserting other custom fields populated with data from the user I use to test, and I still get the same result.

For reference, I do all my Constant Contact work in Chrome.

[William_A]

If you followed the instructions, then you've done what you need to. IF you want to truly test this, with a contact (such as a fake contact using your email address and today as the date) that has the custom anniversary field, then you'd need to make the automation live and test it by actually triggering the automation.

If you're still unable to get it to work as expected, I'd advise calling in for live auotmation troubleshooting. 

[user494721]

I performed a live test as you suggested and everything worked as it should. Thank you!