Passing values between activities

An essential part of any automation is moving data from one step in the workflow to another. Variables save the output of one activity and enable you to then use that data as input in other activities later in a project. To make it easier to work with variables, Studio Web automatically generates a variable for every activity output. You can also manually create variables from the Data Manager or from the See more menu of activity fields. Please note that automatically generated variables for activities placed inside a scope activity are only available inside that scope activity.

Each activity output generates a variable of a specific data type that can contain various properties of the output data. When you then use it in another activity, you select the variable for the property depending on the data you need and the type supported by that activity.

To use a variable in an activity, select See more > Use Variable next to an input field or click a field labeled Click to use a variable. You can also add variables inside other editors and builders like the text builder and the rich text composer. The variable selection window displays all the variables and arguments in the project.

• Variables that are automatically generated by Studio Web for activity outputs are displayed under the activity where they were generated.
• You can navigate to the variable property you want to use, or use the search bar to find it. For some variables, the most common properties appear at the top of the list, and you can view all available properties by clicking Show more.
• Because variable properties and activity fields can have different data types, not all variables can be used in all fields.
• An icon next to each variable indicates the type, for example Tt for text, 123 for number, 1.2 for number with decimal.

For example, when you build an automation that is triggered by an Email received event in Gmail, the output of the trigger activity (the retrieved email) is automatically saved as a variable which stores the retrieved email as well as all of the individual properties of the email, such as the sender, subject, body, attachments, etc.

If you add a Forward Email activity to automatically forward the retrieved email, you select the Email variable to indicate the email to forward.

If you add a Write Cell activity to write the email address of the sender in a spreadsheet, you select the From address property variable to indicate what to write in the spreadsheet.