# Advanced Flow — Community Q&A (from Ask Me Anything 05-07-2022)

**URL:** <https://community.homey.app/t/advanced-flow-community-q-a-from-ask-me-anything-05-07-2022/65579>\
**Category:** Questions & Help\
**Tags:** advancedflow\
**Created:** [July 5, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/advanced-flow-community-q-a-from-ask-me-anything-05-07-2022/65579 "2022-07-05T19:38:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 229

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**Author:** ![Arie\_J\_Godschalk](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/arie_j_godschalk/32/63027_2.png) [@Arie\_J\_Godschalk](https://community.homey.app/u/Arie_J_Godschalk)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2022, 8:21am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/advanced-flow-community-q-a-from-ask-me-anything-05-07-2022/65579/229 "2022-07-07T08:21:10Z")

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Hey @Emile,

In the AMA of 5-7-'22 at about 1:01:30, you are responding to a question about local variables.  
I also have allready asked that question to you on the other forum-thread, but i will ask it again with a better decription and example.

Because at 1:01:50, **you say that the local tags can be modified**. I think you misspoke here, because as far as i know, tags cannot be changed: using for example the “Read as JSON and set PATH to […]” will create a new (modified) tag.  
And this creates a “problem”.

But maybe i am missing something? In the AMA you talked about modifying the Tag.  
**Is there a way of modifying a Tag within a flow (and thuse: not creating a new modified Tag)?**

So i will now try to explain what people, or at least i, mean bij local variables: **Scoped variables/tags that are mutable/modifiable and bound to the flow-execution.**

Why would you need this?

So i can set scoped variables based on if-then-else statements or assign default values in case there are errors.

Here is an example. In this example, there are three Text-Tags generated.

- The first one will stay the same
- The second and third are changed, buth there is no way to use those Tags in a recombining flowline.  
 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/4/2/42be5fb5fa7d20f7e890530330820e047830a6bc.png)

I have a lott of real use-cases. Like this example, after changing the Tag, i cannot recombine the three lines into one card, because it would not know which Tag to use.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/b/e/beed074bdd84d42b9057ea62c26374d74b859beb.jpeg)

The only way to “modify” and “re-use” a value throughout the flow, is to put it in a variable, recombine the lines and re-read the variable.  
Problem is, this is not scoped: running the flow multiple times paralel (fastly triggered for example) would change the variable during the flow execution for al flow-instances.

Here one more example of the pain to update variables throughout the flow, just to set default parameters, and still: this is not scoped and could give issues when executed paralel to each other.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/uploads/athom/original/3X/0/2/022ab3ba186b229c926edef7b428a4974a12acf4.jpeg)

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