This transformation pulls out a portion of a text attribute.
Examples of Use Cases
- If one system stores data in a detailed format (e.g. Webinar: Data Quality_20260504.2) and the other system only needs the Webinar name (Data Quality), a substring extraction allows you to strip unnecessary characters, ensuring the target system receives clean, actionable data.
- Systems often have different character limits for fields (e.g. a Job Title field might allow 100 characters in System A but only 50 in System B). Use substring to decrease the character limit to meet the target systems requirements.
- Choose Task Template: begin by selecting the Substring task template.
- Select Attribute: select the attribute that you'd like to extract a portion from.
- Operation: Two options for the operation section
- Left: Specify number of character from the first of the string (indicates that text will be retained starting from the left side of text string. i.e. if the street is 123 Main Street, it will start with "1")
- Right: Specify number of character from the end of the string (indicates that text will be retained starting from the right side of the text string. i.e. if the street is 123 Main Street, it will start with "t" from the end of street)
- Number of characters: Set the number of characters to retain. (i.e. 12345 Main Street with Left as the operation and 5 as the number of characters will retain "12345")
Remember to click Save to save the transformation to your project.