Using Placeholders in Flows

A placeholder is a small piece of live data you drop into a field in a Flow step, like {{user.email}}. When the step runs, Product Fruits swaps it for that user's actual value and leaves the rest of your text exactly as you typed it. So one Flow can send a personalized Slack message, email, or Jira issue to everyone who passes through it, instead of the same fixed text for all.

Inserting a Placeholder

In free-text fields such as a subject, message body, or mapped value, type {{ and a picker opens. It's grouped by where the data comes from and filters as you keep typing.

In identifier fields, some fields need a single value rather than a sentence, for example when you're looking up or matching a record. These show a source dropdown instead of the picker. Choose User property, Enrollment variable, Fixed value, or Step output (where the field allows it), and the placeholder is written for you.

In Fixed value, you get a plain text box with no picker. Anything you type there is still resolved, so you can type a placeholder by hand and it works.

What You Can Insert

Group	Written as	Example
Built-in user fields	`{{user.<field>}}`	`{{user.email}}` , `{{user.firstname}}` , `{{user.role}}` , `{{user.signupat}}`
Your own user properties	`{{user.props.<name>}}`	`{{user.props.plan}}` , or anything you send us. Nest with dots, like `{{user.props.billing.tier}}`
Flow variables	`{{flow.vars.<name>}}`	`{{flow.vars.feedback}}` , set earlier in the Flow by a card question, an AI step, or an Update Props step
Output of an earlier step	`{{steps.…}}`	Whatever an earlier step produced. Always insert these from the picker, which shows each step by name
Trigger data (Flows started by an event)	`{{trigger.payload.<field>}}`	`{{trigger.payload.comment}}` , the feedback text that started the Flow

The picker only offers steps that come earlier in the same Flow, so a step can never read its own output.

Where Placeholders Work

Placeholders work in the value fields of a Flow step: subject, message, description, mapped field values, and any identifier you match a record on.

They resolve the moment the step runs, using the user's data as it is right then, not as it looked when you published the Flow.

A few fields name something instead of filling it in, and those don't resolve placeholders. If a step has a field like this, its article will point it out.

Fallbacks and Formatting

You can add two optional extras after the name, each separated by |:

{{name|format|fallback}}

The format tells Product Fruits how to insert the value, and the fallback is the text to use when there's no value at all.

For example, {{user.props.plan|raw|Free}} inserts the user's plan, or the word "Free" if they don't have one. {{user.props.plan||Free}} does the same thing with the format slot left empty.

Format	Use it when
`raw`	The default. The value goes in as it is.
`url`	The placeholder sits inside a link and the value could contain spaces or `&`
`json`	The placeholder sits inside a JSON body. Text gets its quotes, and a missing value becomes `null`
`html`	The placeholder sits inside HTML, such as an email body, so `<`and `&`can't break the markup.

A few things to keep in mind:

The picker inserts the plain form only. To add a format or fallback, type the whole placeholder yourself.
Don't put spaces around the fallback text. Spaces are kept, so they'll show up in the result.
A fallback only kicks in when the value is missing entirely. If a property exists but is blank, it counts as present and renders as nothing.

When a Placeholder Can't Be Resolved

If there's no value to fill in, the placeholder simply disappears. The {{…}} text is removed rather than sent on as-is.

This happens silently for a misspelled name, a property that user has never had, or a variable no earlier step set. For example, Bug from {{user.props.company}} goes out as "Bug from" for anyone without a company property.

Tip: Give a fallback to every placeholder that isn't guaranteed to have a value. And never build a required identifier, like a match value, from a property that might be missing.

Example

Say a feedback-triggered Flow creates a support ticket with:

Subject: Feedback from {{user.props.company|raw|an unknown account}} ({{user.email}})
Description: {{trigger.payload.comment}}

For a user with a company property, the subject arrives as:

Feedback from Acme (jane@acme.com)

For a user without one, the fallback keeps the sentence intact instead of trailing off:

Feedback from an unknown account (jane@acme.com)