Template Variables Stopped Working

Nick Mauck

I have created several templates across multiple spaces that contain variables in list form.  Some are one word, some are a line of text, some have color circled emojis for criticality, etc.  They all just stopped working, the created from template button opens the template but all the variable fields no longer have drop-down menus.  It's just the name of the template like so (name).  Working with my organizations internal Confluence help desk, they are telling me the following, which makes zero sense to me.

 

"After more testing and talking with Atlassian, it looks like having a space in the title of the variable is most likely the issue.  It can cause issues with the system code for the variable, which is most likely why you then can't just copy the content to another template and instead would have to start fresh.  So, if you create a new template and add variables with o one variables, it should work."

 

So I guess my question is do variables have to be one word, no spaces, etc?  Are there any constraints on the text/spaces/characters for variables?

Craig Nodwell_7eve9b

Hi @Nick Mauck welcome to the community.  I cannot find any documentation that says there can't be spaces in a variable name however .... It is pretty common practice in programming to not include a space in a variable name so maybe it's just a miss on the docs.  I would stay with the common practice of never placing a space in a variable name and avoid any potential problems downstream when you go to use that variable.  I'd stay away from special chars as well and use plain text maybe even adopt all lower case ... that part is up to you but I would also suggest to follow some sort of internal set standard.