Values Convention

How to use values - braces

Simple values

Surround value names with braces (squirly brackets) to access the current value.

Example: if you have a value called age-in-years (could be a variable, or a user-input value), this expression represents the value represented by the name:

{age-in-years} 

Showing values in Process Interaction

Named values can be presented to the user in Process steps by surrounding the value name is braces.

Example: if you have defined a variable named age-in-years, you can inform the user about this value in an interaction, by including something like the following in the interaction text:

Client is {age-in-years} years old

Using values in calculations

One of the actions available is Update variable action.

To use this action you need to specify an expression to calculate a new value for the variable you are updating.

Example variable update

For example, suppose you have a value called amount and you want to update a variable tax so that its value is 16% of the invoice value, you can give the following expression to an Update Variable action to update tax

{amount} * 16/100

  1. create tax variable - 2. add amount input question - 3. add Variable Update action - 4. show user tax amount

Object instance data type

Values can be “simple” - which means a number, some text, a date, etc.

They can also be “complex” because a whole Object instance can also be a value.

An Object instance, because it has several fields, has several values.

Dot notation : instance-name.fieldname

How do you refer to a specific value within the instance?

EXAMPLE:

Suppose you have the following:

  • you have defined an object type called invoice containing three fields (invoice_date,amount, customer)
  • you have a Process which has an instance of invoice with the value name inv1

You can refer to the value of the customer field of inv1 like this:

{inv1.customer}