Never accidentally leave a placeholder in a mapping

When you build a mapping, most of the output is grounded in real data: a field from your system, a code your trading partner requires, a value you know is correct. But every now and then a value has to go into the output that nobody is sure about yet. Perhaps the source didn’t carry it, the right code hasn’t been confirmed, or you dropped in a stand-in just to get the mapping working.

Those values look exactly like the correct ones sitting next to them, and that is the problem: a placeholder weight or an unconfirmed identifier is indistinguishable from a legitimate constant once it is in the transformation. It is easy to forget it is there and ship it.

We have added placeholder tracking to make those values impossible to miss.

How it works

When the AI mapping assistant is not sure if the value is correct, it gets marked as a placeholder, along with a short note explaining what it is and what should replace it. This is done using a custom JSONata function, $placeholder, which takes two arguments: the place holder value and the reason for uncertainty/what should be done about it. Example:

$placeholder("SCAC", "no SCAC present in source data - update with actual data")

Marking a value as a placeholder does not change your output in any way: the EDI you generate is identical and validation behaves exactly as before. The only thing that changes is that the value is now visible as something to review.

Those marked values surface in three places:

• A Placeholders panel beneath the mapping editor lists every one of them, each with its note and a link that jumps straight to the right line in the transformation.
• A warning indicator in the editor’s control bar shows the count at a glance and scrolls you to the list.
• A badge on the Mappings list flags any mapping that still has placeholder values, so you can see across all your mappings which ones need attention before you rely on them.