Workflow variables are declared within a workflow definition. They contain references to resources or other values. There are single-valued variables (atomic variables) and list-valued variables (aggregation variables) of a given type. Workflow variables are the main connection between the workflow server and the Content Management Server. By assigning resources to workflow variables, these resources may easily be accessed in later tasks of the same workflow instance. Workflow variables provide the context in which a task has to be carried out. If a workflow variable is defined in a task, it can be accessed by another task using the dot syntax name-of-task.name-of-variable.

Each Variable is typed. A variable can only be bound to a value of the corresponding type or subtype. There is a fixed amount of types for workflow variables:

If a variable should be shown or edited in the client GUI, it must be mentioned in a client view (see Section 4.1.4.2, “User Tasks”). Please note, that for aggregation variables there exists only an editor for resource variables. So by default, you can only edit resource aggregation variables in the variable view.