What is the best way of managing variable values within a workflow for different robots and environments?

Managing variable values within a workflow for different robots and environments is crucial for ensuring adaptability and efficiency in an RPA solution. Utilizing Assets defined in Orchestrator is the most effective approach for a variety of reasons.

Assets in Orchestrator are designed to hold configurable values used by robots at runtime. By using Assets, you can centralize the management of these values, making it easy to update them without needing to modify the workflow or the deployment. This means that if a variable needs to change due to a different environment (like moving from development to production), the update can be made in Orchestrator instantly, allowing all robots that use those Assets to pick up the new values without redeployment.

Additionally, Assets support various types of data such as strings, integers, and credentials, thereby providing flexibility in how you manage configuration settings. They also allow for secure storage of sensitive information such as login credentials, which can enhance the overall security of your workflows.

In contrast, while Json config files or Excel config files might provide some level of organization, they do not offer the same ease of management across multiple environments or robots since these files would generally require manual updates and redeployments. Plain text files would similarly lack the structured approach and security features provided by Assets