We are pleased to release the ability to record variables for both questions and answers. Variables are a way to record meta data as a user goes through your decision tree.
While variables can be accessed in templates using something like:
{{#variables}}
<div>{{name}}</div>
<div>{{value}}</div>
{{/variables}}
they really shine when integrating your ponds with third-party applications.
Before getting into how to use them, let’s take a real-life example.
An application called Harmony Legal integrates with Hoppa.io. Users of Harmony Legal can create decision trees (ponds) on Hoppa.io and have their clients run through their ponds and collect valuable information for setting up their cases.
Let’s suppose a criminal lawyer subscribes to Harmony Legal. They provide free consultations, provided that a potential client runs through their Hoppa.io decision tree. In the decision tree, the lawyer has a question, Have you ever been convicted of a felony? The user selects yes, Harmony Legal makes a note of it on the client’s file, and two months later in a conversation, the handling lawyer is first finding out about this felony and it got lost in the long list of notes. What should have happened is the client’s answer been brought front and center to the lawyer’s attention.
Harmony Legal has tons of features, one of which is the ability to make use of Hoppa’s variables. On this above question, the law firm can make a variables with the name flag_warning with a value of Convicted of Felony. Now, when Harmony Legal sees this answer from Hoppa, it will make a special note of it and bring it to the lawyer’s attention.
This is just one example of how variables can help you. Maybe you are integrating with a design application, and you use Hoppa to collect information about the user’s requirements. Let’s say the application allows you set the color with a variable called color. In your decision tree, you can ask the user questions about colors. Then create variables with the name color to match your design application and an appropriate value that is passed over.
Creating variables is pretty easy.
In the lily on the toolbar 
the variable editor is found by clicking the 
button.
This will bring up the variable editor.
To create a variable, type in a name and a value. A hint is to make your names consistent across your system. In order to do this, you should setup some guidelines for your users. One idea might be to make everything lowercase with no spaces, only underscores. flag_error instead of Flag Error. This will help with typos. What you decide is completely up to you and the third-party application that is using the variables.
In our example we are creating a variable called flag_error with a value of Is a frog, not human. 
Next click on the CREATE NEW button. 
You’ll notice that it create new row and allows you to add another variable.
You can create as many variables as you want. You just cannot have two variables with the same name on the same lily.
You’ll also notice that back on the lily toolbar, the variables button is now blue. A blue variable button let’s you know that a lily has variables defined on it.
To edit variables, open the editor back up and click on the pencil on the right side next to the variable you want to edit. When finished editing, click save.
Now when we create a request for the resource we will see our variables:
That’s it for variables!
Let us know if you have any questions or comments.