What inspired this wish list request? Difficulties with workflow builder working when table/column changes take place (table not found, column not found, etc).
What is the improvement you would like to see? I would like to see workflow builder more inherently utilize variables. Both natively on the JMP backend as well as in the GUI for users.
When I run a workflow or share a workflow and something like a tablename changes, JMP is very good about giving the user an opportunity to rectify the difference. However it's often unclear where in the process steps the change needs to be rectified so users, including myself, may opt to just stop the workflow to try a different avenue (wait, what was JMP expect that wasn't there, how do I fix it? etc).
And when I go to see what happens, maybe I see something in error or that should be dynamic. Well, now I need to go through and fix ALL areas wehre something like a column or datatable reference was hard coded. If JMP had merely set it up as a variable from its first inseption, I'd change it one spot and be done.
Additionally, I may know going into a workflow that things like datatable names or columns may be variable. Making it easy to add variables to the workflow to set as defaults or prompt the user becomes deeply valuable.
Why is this idea important? Workflow builder is extremely cool and lets people automate w/o much background knowledge in scripting, and if nothing changes it works great. JMP already does well when it encounters potential differences, and adding better variable handling helps take all that to the next level. Additionally, variable handling as native to the process will offer additional 'training' to those getting used to scripts when scripts are exported as rather than seeing hard coded vallues everywhere, it's clear you are setting variables and using them throughout. The only caveat/change? may be that workflow builder jsl exports might need to create it's own workspace to live within (the last thing we need is a massive 'local' wrapper to guard against variable collisions).