Hi Sam,

You have to:

-Define VAR_X as input of the node. Something like this:

http://dcalca.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/input1.png

You give it a name to use inside the workItem.

-You can get the variable from work item parameters.

public void executeWorkItem(WorkItem workItem, WorkItemManager manager) {

                    workItem.getParameter("VAR_X")

...

}

- Define VAR_X as output of the node.

It is similar to the input

- Put this variable in the result map

Map<String, Object> results = new HashMap<String, Object>();

                                                  results.put("VAR_X", var)

You can see that you are not directly accessing to the global variables.. you have inputs and outputs of each task..

Demian