Skip to main content
All CollectionsAutomate
How to Use Flow Parameters
How to Use Flow Parameters

Create parameters at flow level to reference in your recipes

Thea avatar
Written by Thea
Updated over 2 years ago

Parameterization can be used in cases where you might need to make minor tweaks to your recipe when executing a job. You can create variables in the recipe to be overridden with different values.

At flow level, you can create parameters to reference in your recipes.

Creating Flow Parameters

a) From within the Transformer view

In the Transformer, click on the Parameters icon on the top right corner.

b) From Flow View

In the flow view, click on the More(...) menu and select Parameters

The Manage Parameters dialog opens.

Creating Parameters

  1. In the Manage Parameters dialog that opens, click on Add Parameter

2. Enter a name and a default value for your parameter

  • Parameter names can contain alpha-numeric and spaces.

  • Parameter names are case sensitive and cannot be edited once created

  • Parameter values are evaluated as String type

  • (optional) Specify a user-friendly Description value.

  • For Type, select the type of parameter.

Variable Type Parameter

Variable type parameters are single values that can be one of the following formats:

String

Here is my String value

Dataprep by Trifacta patterns

`{letter}+`

Regular expression

/[a-zA-z]+/

Selector type parameter

Selector type parameters are lists of one or more permitted values.

Parameter Value

Under Choices, enter a value.

The first value that you add is the default value.

3. Click Save.

The parameter is now available to be referenced in your recipe.

Utilizing Parameters within recipe

You can reference a parameter within your recipe in the following ways -

a) By entering a dollar sign ($) followed by the parameter name

$paramRegion

b)By entering a dollar sign and enclosing in curly brackets, ie. ${Parameter Name} if the parameter name contains a space, the curly brackets are required.

Example - Using a Static Parameter within recipe

  1. Create a parameter using a specified value. Here we define Parameter-Static as "Lancaster"

2. In the recipe, add a new step. Here, we are using the ${Parameter-Static} parameter to filter our data to only keep rows where the user name is equal to value of the parameter.

Example - Using a Pattern based parameter within the recipe

  1. Create a parameter where the value is defined using a Trifacta Pattern. Here Parameter-Pattern is `{digit}{4}` (a 4 digit pattern).

Note- To learn more about Trifacta Patterns, read this detailed article

2. In the recipe, add a step. Here we extracting values from Address_Street_Number that match the specified pattern of 4 sequential digits.

For more examples on how to use parameters in your recipe, check out this article.

More Info

To learn about creating Flow Parameters, read this detailed documentation guide.

Did this answer your question?