How to Select a Specific Record for Automation Testing

[Sam_Parker]

Is there a way to choose which record gets referenced while setting up and testing an automation?

I am setting up some email automations and I want to avoid emailing an actual customer during the testing and trial process. I have a sample customer and a record using the sample customer’s information created; but the record that is referenced for use in the actions section is an earlier record referencing a real customer.

The record I want to use for all setup and testing purposes:

The record that is being automatically referenced for all setup and testing purposes:

I’m sure I could find a workaround by creating a blank new table or moving previous records around in some way, but it would be far easier to just select my sample customer’s record in my live table.

[Mike_Mauer · Accepted solution]

You can just create edit your view filters or condition filter to say “Name contains ‘Sample Customer’” and it will select that only.

Or create a checkbox that is called “Sample Data” and just set your filter or condition to “Sample Data = TRUE”.

Hope that works!

[Sam_Parker]

Thank you, Mike! This was an easy fix for setup & testing purposes.

After I set up and tested my automation with the sample customer first name condition in place as a safeguard, I was able to simply delete this safeguard condition. No additional testing was required to turn on my automation after deleting the safeguard condition, so in this example I ran no risk of emailing a real customer at any point.

This seems to be the best way to initially force a specific reference record.