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Expressions and Variables Introduction

Kayalla Barreto Updated by Kayalla Barreto

Expressions and variables intro

By now you may know that building a flow is connecting a collection of actions altogether and it intends to gather some result. That's what variables are for, store flow's step values and persist data. For example, the Wait for response below will generate a flow variable named name as the contact reply to it. Additionally, the variable will be used to save the data into Name contact's field.

Variables and Expressions starts with the @ symbol. Expressions are modeled within specific syntaxes and typing @ will load a list of 10 possibilities. You can advance to more complex expressions by typing @( - called Functions.

After selecting the Expression, it's possible to explore its advanced features too. Select one and hitting Enter or Tab will load a list of all available functions for each expression type. On the example below you can see that @contact has a lot more options than just showing the contact's name:

When using flow's expressions it's also possible to specify the metadata you're aiming. See the following example:

@results.gender.category returns the category that the contacts answer was located;

@results.gender.value returns the complete response answer from a contact;

@results.gender.input returns the time when the contact message was received by the channel.

Each expression represents the value when contact is active on the flow. If you type an incorrect expression, the message will show itself.

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Variables Glossary

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