Placeholders and formatting

Placeholders let your automations speak in specifics — this article is for anyone writing messages, titles or webhook content inside an automation.

#Overview

• Placeholders pull live details from the event into your text, so instead of a generic message you get something like "example.com expires on Jan 15 (7 days left)".
• You write them as {{name}}. Click Insert value anywhere you can type a message to see every placeholder available for the trigger you picked, along with an example of what it will contain.
• Sensitive fields — passwords, tokens, secrets — are never offered and never resolve, so they can't leak into a message by accident.

#Browse the available placeholders

1. Open the step where you want to add a placeholder (a message, a title, or a field like Payload (JSON, optional)).
2. Click Insert value.
3. Look through the groups to find what you need:

• Trigger data — details the event itself carries. For a Domain expiring trigger, that's things like the domain, the TLD, the registrar, and days left.
• Subject (labeled with the object's type, like Server, Certificate, or Monitor) — every field of the thing the event is about, even ones not included in the trigger data.
• Workspace — your organisation's name and slug.
• User — the rule owner's name and email.
• Date & time — the current date and time, or just today's date.
• Earlier values — anything an earlier Set a value step in the same rule saved.

4. Select a placeholder to insert it where your cursor is.

#Format a placeholder value

1. After the placeholder name, add a filter using a pipe, for example {{expires_at|date}}.
2. Chain more filters if needed — each one changes how the value is displayed:
   • date or date:Y-m-d — show a date in a chosen format
   • upper or lower — change the case of text
   • default:— — show a fallback when the value is empty
   • number — format a number
   • truncate:80 — shorten long text
   • json — show the raw list or object
3. Save your changes.

NoteTyping a filter that doesn't exist won't break anything — unknown filters are simply ignored.

#Use placeholders in JSON fields

1. Open a JSON field, such as Payload (JSON, optional) or Inputs (JSON, optional).
2. For text values, put the placeholder inside quotes, for example "title": "{{title}}".
3. For numbers or lists, leave out the quotes, for example "number": {{number}}.
4. Save your changes.

InfraNest automatically escapes each value, so a quote mark or a line break inside something like an issue title or comment can't break the JSON or change what else it says. If the JSON has a genuine mistake, the step fails and tells you, rather than sending something unexpected.

#Use placeholders in conditions

1. Open Add condition (or Only if) on the step you want to gate.
2. Use the same placeholder names to build a condition — for example, checking that a certificate's tags contains "production", that the rule owner's email is a certain address, or that today's date matches what you expect.
3. Choose an Operator such as contains, equals, or is set.
4. Save your changes.

TipYou don't have to fill in a message at all — leave it blank and InfraNest writes a sensible default for you. Add placeholders only when you want to phrase it yourself.