How to fill in your agency variables

Suppose your team call link appears in eleven journey tasks and two emails. If the link changes, you'd have to go hunt down all those spots and update them. Not anymore! Variables mean you change it in one place and it gets updated across your agency communication.

Your journey, emails and pages use fill-in-the-blank variables instead of static values. Set each variable once, and your text appears everywhere that variable is used.

1. Faster setup. The journey arrives already written. You're filling in blanks, not writing content.
2. One edit per change. New Zoom account, new scheduling link, new vendor, new promo code: change the variable, and everywhere it's displayed gets updated.
3. Your values survive Journey updates. We can improve the wording of a shared task without touching your call link.

Where they live

Agency Settings, then the Variables tab.

Start with what's missing

Click Review these in the banner at the top, or flip Only what needs review to hide everything else. Both cut the list down to the ones that matter today.

Two kinds need you:

• Showing nothing. The code appears somewhere your agents already read and you haven't set a value, so they render a blank space. Fix these first.
• Using the standard text. A default is showing, which works for most agencies. Check it if your agency needs to override with something different.

Each category across the top carries a count, so you can clear one area at a time.

Reading a variable

1. The name and the code, like {{airtable_all_biz}}. The code is what gets written into journey content. You don't have to remember these, you can search by the friendly name.
2. A description of what it's for.
3. Appears in. The sentence your agents will read, with the variable sitting in it, and a count of how many places use it. Read this before you type anything. A variable called "Business submission link" could mean different things depending on the sentence around it.
4. Your value. What your agents see. If it's empty, the card alerts you.

Fill them in

Click into Your value and type what your agency uses. Most are a link or a short line of text.

Start with the "showing nothing" group. Those are live gaps in content your agents are reading today.

Leave a variable blank if your agency genuinely doesn't use it. The page only flags codes that appear somewhere.

Check the sentence, not the name. The commonest mistake is pasting the right kind of link into the wrong variable. Check the "Appears in" snippet to see how and where each variable is used.

Add your own

Click Add custom variable when you're writing your own journey content and need a value the shared catalog has no code for. Custom variables group together so you can find them again.

What counts as done

The checklist step completes when nothing would render blank.

Use I'm done if your agency never uses whole sections of the catalog, so codes that'll never appear can't hold the step open.

Need help?

• Knowledge base: Browse the Drivetrain help articles
• Live chat: Click the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of any page

Updated on: 14/10/2026