To create a Community using Organizer’s Community Builder tool, you must accurately use the operators in Organizer to set up the filters for the List or Segment you are building. In addition, you can select whether to include or exclude Profiles that meet the filter criteria.
Definitions of Organizer Operators
In Organizer, the operators "AND," "OR," and "NOT" are used to specify different conditions, but they must be applied carefully.
- "AND" means all the conditions you list must be true for a profile to be included.
- "OR" means any one of the conditions can be true for a profile to be included.
- "NOT" removes profiles that meet the conditions you want to exclude.
Why You can't mix "AND" and "OR"
Mixing "AND" and "OR" operators in Organizer can create logical conflicts because they operate in different ways. "AND" requires all conditions to be true, while "OR" allows any condition to be true. If you mix these two, Organizer cannot correctly decide whether a profile should be included or excluded because the logic conflicts.
For example, if you say:
- "Location = USA AND Role = Engineer" (All profiles must be both in the USA and an Engineer).
- But also say: "Location = USA OR Role = Engineer" (Profiles can be in the USA or can be an Engineer).
These two statements conflict because it's unclear whether all conditions must be met or just any one.
Using Organizer Operators to Exclude
Keep in mind that “AND IS NOT,” “OR IS NOT,” and “EXCLUDE” function differently from each other, as follows:
- Exclude: Use OR with exclude if a profile should be excluded if it meets any condition; use AND if it should meet all conditions simultaneously.
- Using grouping with IS NOT: Don't use OR for the logic in the group because once a profile meets any condition, it passes (much like using OR with IS); use AND within a group so all profiles meeting anything in the block are excluded.
- IS NOT without grouping: Same guidance as "Using grouping with IS NOT."
For example, let’s say you have four balls of yarn (red, green, yellow, and orange) and you want to build two Lists or Segments that exclude colors in two different ways. Here is how you might go about doing that:
- You want to build a List or Segment that only includes red, green, and yellow, so you use the following logic: Color IS red, OR color IS green, OR color IS yellow.
- You want to build a List or Segment that IS NOT red, green, or yellow (i.e., you only want to include orange), so you use the following logic: Color IS NOT red, AND color IS NOT green, AND color IS NOT yellow.
Using the "is set" and "is not set" Operators
The “is set” and “is not set” operators evaluate whether a given attribute is null or not null. In other words:
- “is set” = not null; there is a value set for the criteria
- “Is not set” = null; there is no value set for the criteria