Global Bot Variable to be set in another topic?

[AdamHunt]

I have a global variable called postcode that I have set in one topic.

In another topic I wish to ask for a postcode, I was hoping to reuse the global variable again so that regardless of topic when I set a users postcode then we will have the postcode set for the duration of their session with the bot.

Is this possible?

[renatoromao · Accepted solution]

Hi @AdamHunt ,

Today, you just can reuse the global variable but you can't update that.

A bot variable's name must be unique across all topics. In the case of a conflict, you'll need to rename the variable before saving your change.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/authoring-variables-bot#set-bot-variables

[AdamHunt]

Thanks for confirming that for me, from a user experience its quite unhelpful as we end up asking the same question in different topics potentially.

[Egbert]

Better to think of them as global, immutable, constants. The content or value is not variable.

I agree, it's a miss - leads to all sorts of logic gymnastics and duplication of topics to work around it.