Launching the New Landbot Variables Manager

The Landbot team is dedicated to making our builder as user-friendly and powerful as possible. 

This time, the product team tackled one of the most critical aspects of every chatbot design—their data collecting ability—the variables.

What are Variables?

For those not quite familiar with variables yet, they are a way to store user responses to every question your bot asks. Their answer (value) is saved in a variable. Think of it as a “folder” you can give a name to and store “things” inside it. In this case, the “things” are the values you asked for, whether it’s a name, date, email address, or full blow feedback. 

The builder has several pre-set system variables, but you can also create new ones based on your specific needs. Each time you create a new one, you must assign it one of the four variable formats: Date, Number, String (Text), and Array.

All in all, variables make chatbot-driven data collection a breeze. 

The Problem with Variables 

If variables are so great, what’s the problem then?

Until now, you could only create variables within and for a specific bot that didn’t allow for a comprehensive overview across the entire platform. 

In other words, customers were not able to filter a large amount of data and use Landbot in a similar way to a CRM. There was no way to search and analyze large data sets as quickly as possible without exporting them outside the Landbot App. 

The Solution?

We realized we were in need of an indexing data structure that would allow customers to retrieve records from a database file quickly. Hence, we set our sight on creating a system that enables you to filter, collect, and display data under 1000 ms.

First step? Making all variables created global variables by default (not exclusive to one bot).

The final result? Our Variables Manager.

What is Variables Manager & How does it Work?

The Variables Manager enables users to create, manage, and index variables for faster search and filtering across the platform. 

Thanks to it, it’s possible to access all your variables in one place, even those created inside the chatbot builder.

How to Access & Use the Variables Manager?

To access the variables manager:

• Go to the metrics section
• Click on the ‘Variables Manager’ option

Once there, you can filter through all existing variables using the search/filter option or create entirely new variables using the ‘Create a Variable’ option by picking the variable name and format (as you would do when creating a variable inside the builder).

Then there’s the SWITCH button. You can use it to index or un-index a variable based on which one you need to filter the data in the user metrics section.

Simply put, this space gives you access to all variables created within your Landbot account. Currently, the index variable limit is 100, but you can index and un-index variables at any given time to balance it out. 

To Wrap Things Up

Variables Manager has been created to make data and metrics management easier across the whole platform. 

Thanks to it, you can quickly and easily highlight important user information, plus benefit from an organized dashboard to manage variables across all your different chatbots.