Hello, Here’s a workflow pic and below what I’m trying to get working in the grayed-out section.  

The pic is the section of a workflow I’m trying to get working with the grayed out section what I’m having a problem with.  As it stands now, I’m purposely forcing an email if Director approves a request disregarding a check on a field called ‘Request Status’.  It’s there I’m having trouble. 

I want that email step simply replaced by that grayed out section.  I only want to send an email if ‘Request Status’ is empty/null/has not been updated/blank.  The customer has for that dropdown selection off the form many ‘Request Status’s they work through and already have a link back to the record to edit status from a first email when ‘Request Status’ has nothing in it, and they don’t want to keep getting emails each time they update status.

What I tried first was to just test if ‘Request Status’ ‘is empty’ but that didn’t work.  I got no email (yes/or no true seemed)  It was as if the condition wasn’t met.  I next tried to test if ‘Request Status’ ‘contains (ignoring case) …. each possible status, if yes I send myself a dummy email saying ‘do not send email’ and if no then ‘Request Status’ did not hit / find anything tested for (the different statuses) and so should be empty so send an email so that team can put in an initial status then not get emails ongoing. 

They would ongoing just use that first email they get to go back to update that record (email has an ‘edit record’ link back to record).