Lookup Data Table finds exact matches only

[oralolle (Krizsán Olivér)]

Hey Guys!

I am retrieving values from a data table based on ‘Partner name’ values and experienced that the ‘Lookup Data Table’ activity cannot handle case sensitivity (like VLOOKUP in Excel). This is a problem for me because there are endless case type variations in which I may obtain the ‘Partner name’ value (e.g. I have ‘Dummy Name’ in the dt, but have to try matching with ‘dummy name’).

Is there anything I miss here? In case this is a lack of functionality of the activity what workaround do you suggest?

Thanks,

Oliver

[oralolle (Krizsán Olivér)]

Hey @AlexViz,

thanks for your response, sorry for getting back this late to you. The case is that in my ‘Partner name’ master data (against which I try to match the partner name values) I have all the various forms of a particular partner name ever encountered (e.g. Dummy Name, dummy name, dummyName, Dummy Nm etc.). Thus I have to continuously populate the master data so the match rate wont decrease over time.

Case sensitivity is of key importance in this respect because in lack of it I would have to enter all the possible case variants of a particular partner name into the master data.

Thought about using Excels VLOOKUP function by typing in my input value in one cell and having the fuction retrieve the match to another which I read out.

Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Oliver

[AlexViz]

Personally I would create 2 intermediate variables, make it all lowercase and remove the spaces/special characters (like " ` ", " ’ ", " - "). That should cover ~80% of the names.

However I do see some issues with this approach, like :

What happens if two people share the same name?

Personally, with the sort of issue you are describing, I would probably make an attended robot and not an unattended one; due to the fact that you have multiple unknown modifications to the input (you can probably do some variant where you use string operators like Contains / Has, for the missing letters and whatnot and there’s also the risk of two people having the same name.

However you need to do the exception handling really well

Regards,
Alex.