You can set pre and post assignments for variables when you want to assign a value to a variable immediately before or after an activity or event runs.
You can set pre and post assignments for components in a service, such as a Coach or a Server Script component.
For example, if you want to send an email message to end users as soon as an activity is active and can be completed, you can attach a timer event to the activity and use a post assignment to place the task ID into a variable so that it can be passed to the follow-on activity that sends the email message. The task ID is needed so that the email message sent to end users includes information about the task to complete. You can achieve this by using a post-assignment.