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Output selector: Earliest Value

The Earliest Value output selector evaluates a date stamp on each record to select a value to use for another attribute.

Use

Use the Earliest Value output selector where records have date stamps, and the best value for an attribute is likely to come from the record with the earliest stamp.

For example, in some cases, data is carefully checked and cleaned on migration to a new system, but duplicate entries are created with errors. In this case, the earlier records may be better. The date stamp column must be selected as an input to the output selector, in addition to the attribute for which you wish to determine a merged value.

Inputs

For the actual output value, any input attributes of any type from any input data sets may be configured.

A Date attribute must be configured in order to establish which record should be considered the 'Earliest'.

Options

Example

In this example, the Earliest Value output selector is used to select the Earliest Value for a Company Name field, based on the date stamps of the records.

Example configuration

Use first non-empty value if tied? = No

Example output

The following table illustrates some example output using the Earliest Value selector: