Placeholders

Define shared values once and reuse them across your automation flows.

What are placeholders?

Placeholders let you store values that you want to use in multiple places, such as your company name, support email address, or a link to your website.

Instead of entering the same information in every flow, you create a placeholder and insert it wherever you need it. When the information changes, you can update it in one place.

Each placeholder has two parts:

Part	Description	Example
Key	The name you use to find and select the placeholder.	support_email
Value	The text the flow uses.	[e-mail]

Placeholders are shared across all flows in your company. Each key must be unique within your company.

Creating a placeholder

1

Open Placeholders

Open Placeholders from the navigation in your Ebbot Automations account, then click Add placeholder.

2

Enter a key and value

Enter a Key with a descriptive name, such as company_name or support_email, so you and your team can easily find it.

Enter the Value you want your flows to use.

3

Save the placeholder

Click Save. The placeholder is now available to select in your flows.

Using placeholders in a flow

You can insert placeholders into rich-text fields in the flow builder.

1

Open the variable picker

Open your flow and select the node you want to edit. Click in the rich-text field where you want to insert the value.

Press Ctrl + Plus (+) on Windows or Linux, or Cmd + Plus (+) on Mac, to open the variable picker.

2

Choose a placeholder

Select the Placeholders tab, then choose a placeholder from the Key dropdown. Its saved value is shown below.

3

Apply the placeholder

Click Apply. The placeholder appears as a label in the editor. When the flow runs, it uses the placeholder’s value.

Example

Insert the support_email placeholder after “You can contact us at”. If its value is [e-mail], the resulting message is:

You can contact us at [e-mail].

Click an inserted placeholder to choose a different one. For supported fields that offer a value-type selector, you can also choose Placeholders to use a placeholder as the entire field value.

Creating a placeholder while editing

If the placeholder you need does not exist yet:

1. Click Create placeholder in the picker.

2. Enter its key and value, then click Create placeholder to save it.

3. The new placeholder is selected for you. In a rich-text field, click Apply to insert it.

Placeholders created this way are also available to other flows in your company.

Using placeholders with templates

Some workflow templates use placeholders for information you need to provide during setup. When you enable a template that uses placeholders, a Placeholders section appears on the setup page.

• Enter a value for each listed placeholder.

• If a placeholder already exists in your company, its current value is filled in for you.

• If multiple selected templates use the same key, you only need to enter its value once.

All listed placeholders must have a value before you can activate the selected templates. The values are saved for your company when you activate them.

Changing an existing placeholder during template setup also changes the shared value used by other flows with that key.

Updating a placeholder

1. Open Placeholders.

2. Click Edit next to the placeholder.

3. Update its Value, then click Save.

The change affects every flow that uses that placeholder. For example, if your support email address changes, you can update support_email rather than editing each flow individually.

The key cannot be changed in the editor. If you need a different key, create a new placeholder and update your flows to use it.

Deleting a placeholder

Open Placeholders, click Delete next to the placeholder, and confirm.

Flows that still reference a deleted placeholder receive an empty value in its place. Before deleting one, remove or replace it in any flows that still need the information.

When to use placeholders

Use	When	Examples
Placeholders	You manage information centrally and reuse it across flows.	Contact details, standard wording, or links.
Path	The value should come from the current flow run.	A customer’s email address from a trigger, or an order number returned by an earlier node.