Part 2 of my new 'DOES NOT WORK' series: when using triggers as Alternate Exits in customer journeys it doesn't work, at least not reliably.
The docs state:
Exit when an event occurs: Customers who perform this trigger will immediately exit the journey no matter where they are in the journey. This provides an easy way to remove customers who perform the trigger from the journey, ensuring that customers don't receive irrelevant messages from your customer journey.
Test 1:
I setup a custom trigger and used this is as my exit criteria
Journey = Send email 1 > Activate custom trigger > send email 2
Result: Test contacts got both email 1 and email 2
Test 2:
I setup a custom trigger and used this is as my exit criteria
Journey = Send email 1 > Activate custom trigger > Wait 2 minutes > send email 2
Result: Test contacts only got email 1
Test 3 (actually exactly the same as above but different result)
I setup a custom trigger and used this is as my exit criteria
Journey = Send email 1 > Activate custom trigger > Wait 2 minutes > send email 2
Result: 1 test contact got both email 1 & 2. 3 Test Contacts only got email 1.
So the docs statement of 'Customers who perform this trigger will immediately exit the journey' is wrong, it seems these journeys use parallel processing in that a step doesn't need to be completed before the contact can move onto the next step. Which makes this difficult to use, I'd rather not have to add a wait step and hope it's long enough for the trigger to be processed.
Any insights here appreciated.
Thanks
Jon