String Operations

Performs a variety of text manipulation operations on an input string and returns the result.

Purpose

Use String Operations whenever a workflow needs to transform, inspect, or extract part of a text value. Common use cases include normalising casing before a comparison, extracting a file extension from a path, replacing placeholder tokens in a template, splitting a delimited string into an array, or trimming whitespace from user-supplied data.

Inputs

Field	Type	Required	Description
Input String	Text	Yes	The text value to operate on.
Operation	Dropdown	Yes	The operation to perform. See the Operations table below.
StartIndex	Text	No	Zero-based character position at which to begin extraction. Visible when Operation is Substring.
Length	Text	No	Number of characters to extract. Visible when Operation is Substring.
Value	Text	No	The substring to search for, test, or locate. Visible when Operation is Contains, StartsWith, EndsWith, IndexOf, or LastIndexOf.
OldValue	Text	No	The substring to find and replace. Visible when Operation is Replace.
NewValue	Text	No	The replacement text. Visible when Operation is Replace.
Separator	Text	No	Delimiter used to split the string or to join path segments. Visible when Operation is Split or GetPathToDepth.
Depth	Text	No	Number of path segments to keep from the start of the string. Visible when Operation is GetPathToDepth.
Pattern	Text	No	Regular expression pattern to match. Visible when Operation is RegexReplace or RegexMatch.
Group	Text	No	Capture group index to return (0 = full match, 1 = first group, etc.). Defaults to 1. Visible when Operation is RegexMatch.
Replacement	Text	No	Text to substitute for each regex match. Visible when Operation is RegexReplace.

Visibility Rules

StartIndex and Length are visible when Operation is Substring. Value is visible when Operation is Contains, StartsWith, EndsWith, IndexOf, or LastIndexOf. OldValue and NewValue are visible when Operation is Replace. Separator is visible when Operation is Split or GetPathToDepth. Depth is visible when Operation is GetPathToDepth. Pattern is visible when Operation is RegexReplace or RegexMatch. Group is visible when Operation is RegexMatch. Replacement is visible when Operation is RegexReplace.

Operations

Operation	Description
Substring	Extracts a portion of the string starting at StartIndex, optionally limited to Length characters.
Contains	Returns true if the string contains the specified Value.
StartsWith	Returns true if the string begins with the specified Value.
EndsWith	Returns true if the string ends with the specified Value.
IndexOf	Returns the zero-based index of the first occurrence of Value, or -1 if not found.
LastIndexOf	Returns the zero-based index of the last occurrence of Value, or -1 if not found.
ToUpper	Converts all characters to uppercase.
ToLower	Converts all characters to lowercase.
Trim	Removes leading and trailing whitespace.
TrimStart	Removes leading whitespace only.
TrimEnd	Removes trailing whitespace only.
Replace	Replaces every occurrence of OldValue with NewValue.
Split	Splits the string at each occurrence of Separator and returns an array of substrings.
Length	Returns the number of characters in the string.
RegexReplace	Replaces every substring matching Pattern with Replacement.
RegexMatch	Returns the value of a capture group from the first regex match.
GetPathToDepth	Splits the string by Separator and returns only the first Depth segments rejoined.
ResolveTemplate	Iteratively resolves {{}} placeholder tokens embedded in the input string. See ResolveTemplate below.

Outputs

Name	Description
Result	The outcome of the operation. The type varies by operation: a string for most transformations, a boolean for Contains / StartsWith / EndsWith, an integer for IndexOf / LastIndexOf / Length, and a list of strings for Split.

Examples

Extract a file extension

Field	Value
Input String	report_final.pdf
Operation	LastIndexOf then Substring

Alternatively use GetPathToDepth with a dot separator to isolate path components.

Split a comma-separated list

Field	Value
Input String	alice,bob,carol
Operation	Split
Separator	,
Result	["alice", "bob", "carol"]

ResolveTemplate

The ResolveTemplate operation solves a specific problem: when a variable's value is itself a template string containing {{}} placeholder tokens, those tokens are not automatically resolved. Normal placeholder resolution does a single pass — if the result still contains {{}} tokens, they are left as literal text.

ResolveTemplate takes the input string and iteratively resolves any remaining placeholder tokens against the current workflow data, repeating until no tokens remain or nothing changes (up to 10 passes). This makes it possible to programmatically build placeholder expressions and then resolve them to their final values.

When to use it

Use ResolveTemplate when you need to:

• Build a dynamic placeholder expression at runtime and then resolve it
• Accumulate placeholder tokens across loop iterations and resolve them all at once
• Compose variable references where one variable's value contains references to other variables

Example — Resolve dynamically built column references

Scenario: You have an Excel data source with columns like Email, Project Name, and Access Level. You also have a list of column names that you want to extract values for. Instead of hard-coding each column, you build the placeholder expressions dynamically.

Step 1 — Build the template string

Use a Loop over your list of column names (e.g. ["Email", "Project Name", "Access Level"]), and inside the loop use a Set Variables node to accumulate placeholder expressions:

Field	Value
Accumulator	{{SetVariables.Accumulator}}{{ExcelData.LoopItem.{{ColumnLoop.LoopItem}}}}

After the loop completes, Accumulator contains a string like:

{{ExcelData.LoopItem.Email}}{{ExcelData.LoopItem.Project Name}}{{ExcelData.LoopItem.Access Level}}

This is a raw template — the {{}} tokens are literal text, not yet resolved.

Step 2 — Resolve the template

Add a String Operations node with:

Field	Value
Input String	{{SetVariables.Accumulator}}
Operation	ResolveTemplate

The first pass resolves {{SetVariables.Accumulator}} to the template string. ResolveTemplate then performs additional passes to resolve each {{ExcelData.LoopItem.*}} token against the current row's data, producing the final output:

John.Smith@example.com | Sample Project | 18/06/2026 12:00:00 AM

Example — Concatenate values with a separator

If you need a delimiter between values, include it in the accumulator expression:

Field	Value
Accumulator	{{SetVariables.Accumulator}}, {{ExcelData.LoopItem.{{ColumnLoop.LoopItem}}}}

Then use a Trim or Substring operation after ResolveTemplate to remove the leading separator from the first value.

TIP

ResolveTemplate only resolves placeholder tokens that exist in the current workflow data. Any tokens that cannot be resolved are replaced with an empty string — the same behaviour as standard placeholder resolution.