Policy Guide › Data Lookup › Command Variables › <Uservar> › Mandatory Keyword - Data Lookup Commands

Mandatory Keyword - Data Lookup Commands

The mandatory keyword ensures that email triggers always activate when required, or equally important, do not activate unnecessarily.

Normally, <uservar> specifies an Outlook Address Book property or a CA DataMinder user attribute, the presence or absence of which determines whether the lookup command returns a True value. But if no value has been set for the attribute or property  (for example, the CA DataMinder account for a new recruit has not been updated to show their Team), or the specified address book property does not exist (for example, the lookup command specifies 'Titel' instead of 'Title'), CA DataMinder ignores this omission and evaluates the remaining True-False tests within the data lookup command. In the worst case, this could mean that a trigger fails to activate, allowing an email to be sent to a proscribed recipient.

For example, you have configured a lookup command to block emails sent between the Research and Investment Banking (IB) teams. But a new member of the IB team has not been added to the IB mail group (that is, their MemberOf address book property is not up to date). Consequently, when a researcher sends an email to this new IB member, the lookup command fails to identify him or her as a proscribed recipient, so the control trigger does not activate and the email is not blocked.

To eliminate these risks, you can qualify <uservar> with the mandatory keyword. The example below specifies that the lookup command must detect a value for the 'Team' attribute, otherwise the entire command will fail to run:

WHERE mandatory Team IS "Equity Debt"

Using the mandatory keyword ensures that if no value has been set for the specified attribute or property, or if the address book property does not exist, the data lookup command always returns an error, so invoking the Data Lookup Failure Mode setting.

Note: For userattr commands, if the specified attribute does not exist (for example, the lookup command specifies 'Teem' instead of 'Team'), the data lookup command always returns an error, regardless of whether mandatory is used or not, so invoking the Data Lookup Failure Mode setting.