General

This group holds the instructions that do not belong to any document format. They work on the variables the workflow carries from one instruction to the next, so they can be used in a workflow of any kind.

Prerequisite: none. These instructions do not need a document to be open.

• Variables: a variable is a value stored under a name by an earlier instruction (usually in its Save key box). Any text box in the program reads one by writing @name.
• Nothing is written to disk. These instructions only put values into variables; what ends up in a file is decided by the document instructions that use them.

• Set current date
• Set text variable

Set current date

Saves the day the workflow runs under a name, as text.

When to use it: whenever something has to carry the date it was made on — the date under the title of a report, a file name that sorts by day, a line saying when the figures were taken. The date fields the document formats offer (Insert date field, or the DATE field of a header or footer) put a field into the file, and a field repaints itself every time the file is opened: a report made in April would say August when it is read in August. This instruction writes the date as plain text, so it stays the day it was written.

Parameter	Meaning	Default	Required
Date format	iso (2026-08-26), european (26/08/2026), american (08/26/2026), numeric (20260826) or long (26 August 2026)	iso	No
Language	english or spanish, for the month name. Only long uses it	english	No
Save key	Name the date is saved under	(empty)	Yes

Important behavior: with no Save key nothing is saved. The date is the one of the computer running the workflow, read at the moment the instruction runs, so every instruction after it sees the same day. The result is text: it goes wherever a text goes —a paragraph, a cell, a slide, a file name— but the calculations cannot read it back as a date.

Two of the formats earn their place. numeric is the only one that can be compared in an If: a comparison of order needs both sides to be numbers, and 20260826 sorts the way the calendar does while 26/08/2026 does not. long is the only one with a month name, and the only one Language changes — 26 August 2026 in English, 26 de agosto de 2026 in Spanish; the other four are digits and read the same in any language.

---

Set text variable

Builds a piece of text out of other values and saves it under a name.

When to use it: whenever a value has to go inside a sentence rather than be the whole of it. Writing @name in a text box replaces the entire box, so it cannot produce 78% out of the number 78, or Total: 5 projects out of the count. This instruction can: write the sentence with {name} where each value goes, save it, and then use @ on the result.

Parameter	Meaning	Default	Required
Text	The text to build. Each {name} is replaced by the variable called name	(empty)	No
Save key	Saves the finished text under this name	(empty)	No

Important behavior: a {name} for a variable nobody has written is left exactly as it is, so you can see it in the result instead of finding a silent gap — and that is also what keeps a text with braces of its own intact. To write a literal {name}, double the braces: {{name}}. If Save key is empty the instruction does nothing. The result is always text, so a number placed in it can be joined to other words freely.

Example. With avance = 78 and entrega = 2026-09-15:

Text	Result
{avance}%	78%
Total: {avance} of 100	Total: 78 of 100
projects.{i}.name	projects.3.name (with i = 3)
{line.price} €	45.5 € (with line holding a whole record)
{{avance}}	{avance}

---