Limitations of Multivalue Fields in CRM Analytics

Limitations of Multivalue Fields

This article documents the known limitations of multivalue fields in CRM Analytics and provides recommendations for working around these limitations where possible. CRM Analytics does not fully support multivalue fields across all operations. Where possible, it is recommended to restructure data to avoid relying on multivalue fields for operations that require joins, groupings, or compute transformations. More information is available here.

• Supported in Filters - Multivalue fields work in filters
  • When defining a filter on a multivalue field in the UI, searching within the values for filter criteria may return unexpected results. This does not impact the functionality of the filter.
• Supported in Security Predicate - Multivalue fields work in Security Predicates
  • Multivalue fields have a limit of 32000 characters. When used in security predicate and unable to find a value, it's likely due to the char limit and the value is truncated. To verify, use the array_join() function in a recipe transform node to convert the Multivalue field to a string and check if the value is truncated. 
• Not fully supported in UI and code - Faceting, Interactions (Bindings), and SAQL queries involving multivalue fields will likely fail or produce unexpected results
• Not supported in XMD - The "isMultiValue" parameter will fail to validate if included in XMD 2.0
• Not fully supported in ValuesTable - A valuesTable will show one value in the array, rather than the full list of values
• Not fully supported in Record Action Display Fields - The record action disambiguation screen will show one value rather than the full list of values if a multivalue fields is included in the Display Fields, as the records to disambiguate are displayed in table format.
• Cannot be used as Augment or Join keys - The left or right key of an Augment (in a dataflow) or a Join (in a recipe) can’t be a multivalue field
• Negative impact to Augment performance - Including multivalue fields in the "right_select" parameter of an augment may cause the augment processing time to increase
• Negative impact to sfdcRegister performance - Registering a dataset that includes one or more "operation": "LookupMultiValue" augments will result in a significant increase to processing time
• Not supported in computeExpression and computeRelative - Multivalue fields are not supported in computeExpression and computeRelative nodes in a dataflow. When ingesting a datasource with a multivalue field and a compute node is added down the stream, the multivalue field may lose it's multivalue attribute and converted to a Text field instead.
• Not fully supported in Grouping - Multivalue fields do work when used as a grouping in a Lens or Query but may cause negative impact to query performance
  • Do not use multiple multivalue fields in nested groupings; this will result in a Cartesian product that has a high likelihood of causing query timeout.
• Negative impact to List widget performance - Including a multivalue field in the query for a List widget may cause a negative impact to query performance
• Not fully supported in Data Prep - Multivalue fields may not display or be available in Data Prep recipes 
  • Join Nodes cannot use multivalue fields as keys.
  • Transform Nodes (with the exception of formulas) do not support multivalue fields.
  • Append Nodes do not support multivalue fields.
• Dates will lose date part associations - Attempting to create a multivalue field out of a Date will disassociate the individual date components and result in meaningless data.
  • A dataflow warning will result if this is attempted.
• Not supported with sharing inheritance - If an object's Id is used in a multivalue field, then Sharing Inheritance will not work for the object.
• Not supported in Einstein Discovery

Recommendations 

• Augments - Restructuring the grain direction to avoid multiple matches is optimal
• Multiselect Picklists
  • Multiselect Picklist field values are ingested as a single, delimited string. This may cause values to be truncated or missing if the Precision of the field isn't high enough. Ensure that the Precision is set high enough in the sfdcDigest metadata to allow the full set of included values to be ingested.
  • If you wish to see all the field values in a table (rather than a single value from the array), the field will need to be digested as a single value field: Set the "isMultiValue" parameter to false and remove the "multiValueSeparator" parameter from the sfdcDigest JSON or Dataflow Editor. This will ingest the field contents as a single string, rather than separate values. This will prevent the field from being effective in groupings, though a "contains" filter will allow for proper filtering.
• ​External Data - Set the "isMultiValue" parameter in the external metadata to false 
  • This will ingest the field contents as a single string. Using "contains" filters will allow for proper filtering. If grouping is needed, duplicating the field as a multivalue (for grouping) and a single value (for other functions) field may be optimal.
• General - We do not recommend relying on multivalue fields for necessary data operations