Before jumping into the best practices it is good to recap what Promoted Variables are and how they are used in Frends.

Frends enables users to promote variables so they can be selected and then viewed in the Process Instance List View. You can simply tick the 'Promote result as' button in Tasks' under advanced settings to create a Promoted Variable. After the setting is enabled you can name the Promoted variable.

After this you are able to select that variable in the Process Instance List View and add it as a column. This enables surveillance of said variable without having to go into the Instance View altogether.

When creating Promoted Variables, it is recommended to use a naming convention which indicates why the variable is useful as a Promoted Variable. For example, when a list of objects is needed the Promoted Variable should be descriptive of what these objects are.

Promoted Variables are a great way to secure an audit trail when Process logging is set to the minimum value. When setting the Process log settings to the minimum value, the user can decide to still log the Promoted Variables. This will make the Promoted Variables visible in the Process Instance List View even though other steps of the Process are not logged.

Promoted Variables can be used to help debug and monitor Processes. The use of Promoted Variables enables users to inspect Process executions without having to open the Instance View. When enabled, the Promoted Variables are visible in the Process Instance List View. This way it is possible to inspect for example when the Process has successfully made it to a specific point of the Process.

Promoted Variables can also be used to separate individual Process Instances from each other without having to open the Instance View. For example if a Process is used to process an order, by promoting that order's id, it's easy to locate that particular Instance by filtering the Process Instance List View with that order id.

It is recommended to use Promoted Variables only with small amounts of data like numbers or short strings. For example, when using the Process to transfer data, the amount of data transferred would be a great figure to promote as a Promoted Variable. Large amounts of data conflicts with the use of Promoted Variables and the Control Panel will not show the whole content of said variable.

It is also recommended not to use too many Promoted Variables so that their benefits are not lost because of an unnecessary amount of Promoted Variables. The main feature of the Promoted Variable is to make it easier to inspect them in the Process Instance List View and using too many Promoted Variables in that View would be counterintuitive.

The next article is Introduction to the Best Practices on Version Conventions in Frends
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