A parameter is a special placeholder field that allows you to reference a data input. Parameters are incredibly helpful when creating one-to-many communications where you want to create a template that works for a frequent scenario (like an email for reporting a bug), but still incorporate some personalization (someone’s name, for instance).
There are two important things to know when using parameters:
- How to create parameters
- How to insert parameters.
How to create parameters
We offer four different out-of-the-box parameter fields (assignee name, assigner name, workflow link, assignment link), but you can also create parameters using a form step. Any field you include in a form step will create a parameter available for use on any step where parameters are supported (see list below).
Let’s look at an example: our Report a Bug to Qatalog workflow.
The scenario is we want to create a workflow for reporting a bug to the Qatalog team. To do this, we need to ensure our workflow does the following things:
- Allows the Qatalog user to detail the bug they observed.
- This feedback is delivered to the Qatalog team.
- This feedback is delivered in a way that’s easy to read and action.
To do this, I’m going to create a form step that includes questions about the bug that our engineering team would like to know:
And then I’ll create an email step (or a Slack message, Trello card, Asana task, or JIRA incident!) to email our engineering team that leverages the form step’s answers by inserting their corresponding parameters:
The end result is an incredibly straightforward process for anyone to report their bug, and a clean, uniform email that includes all of the information our engineering team needs to investigate the bug:
How to insert parameters
Once you’ve created your parameters, you can insert them by clicking on the lightning bolt icon in a parameter-supporting field.
Gif of where and how to insert a parameter in a text step.
You’ll see the parameter lightning bolt in the bottom right of steps that support it. For your reference, the following step types support parameters:
- Text
- Approval
- Slack
- Asana
- Trello
- JIRA
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