Rule Properties

The following properties can be specified in the Selection Properties window:

This is the mandatory name of the rule. Any identifier is allowed.

This is the description of the rule. Providing a description is highly recommended. Any description if defined is included into the generated documentation for the business space version – see Generating Documentation. To provide the description of the rule, click on the Description button next to the rule’s name. The Configuration Tool will display the Description dialog – enter the description and press OK.

Ticking this checkbox will enable or disable a rule. When the rule is disabled it does not participate in the evaluation of rules by the Rule Engine.

The rule priorities are described in details in the Rule Priorities section. By default Aware IM will assign a priority to the rule based on the rule actions. Actions that modify attributes will have the highest priority whereas actions that call pre-defined operations (such as FIND, SEND etc) will have lower priority while actions that initialise documents from templates will have the lowest priority. You can set rule priority explicitly and override automatic detection of priorities.

The rules supporting the semantics of a “while” statement are explained in detail in the While Semantics section. If you tick the “while loop” checkbox, the conditions of the rule will be checked repeatedly – immediately after the execution of the rule’s actions.

Initialization rules are explained in detail in the Initialization Rules section. Basically when the user creates an instance of a business object the appropriate form of the business object is displayed. The form is initialized with values calculated after evaluation of certain rules attached to the business object. Only initialization rules are evaluated. You can get Aware IM to automatically determine which rules are considered to be initializtion rules by selecting the “Automatic” option (default) or you can explicitly indicate whether the rule should be evaluated during form initialization or not.

Note that these options are only available for rules attached to a business object.

Sometimes it may be necessary to dynamically re-calculate attribute values on forms while the user is making changes. For example, you may have a calculation rule that calculates value of an attribute based on values of other attributes and you want the user to see the results of re-calculation immediately after he makes a change that affects the calculation. In this case it is necessary to mark the rule that performs the calculation as “dynamic”, so that Aware IM executes this rule dynamically while the form is being changed.

If you mark the rule as “dynamic” it will be executed both when form is recalculated and on the server. Sometimes it may be necessary to execute rule only when form is recalculated and do not execute it on the server. The typical scenario when this may be necessary is when you want to initialize some attribute with a value after the user makes a selection in a drop down. But at the same time you want the user to be able to override the initial value if necessary. The rule that initializes the value based on some other attribute has to be dynamic and for the user to be able to override the initial value you need to make sure that the rule doesn’t run on the server

This checkbox controls whether the rule will be recognized as a cross-reference rule. See Cross-reference Rules for details and the example of a scenario when turning off cross-reference rules might be useful.

Rule Filter Dialog

To invoke the Rule Filter dialog where you can specify which rules will be shown click on the icon in the toolbar at the top of the table.The following options can be specified:

Select this option if you want to view only rules that have the specified text in their names. You must also provide the text to filter by, whether you want the search for the names to be case sensitive and whether you want to match rules with the names exactly equal to the specified text or containing the specified text.

Select this option if you want to view only rules that have the specified text anywhere in their textual expression. You must also provide the text to filter by, whether you want the search for this text to be case sensitive and whether you want to match rules with textual expressions exactly equal to the specified text or containing the specified text.

Select this option if you want to view rules generated by the Configuration Tool automatically. When you define attributes of business objects and notifications (see Adding/Editing Attributes) the Configuration Tool may generate certain rules behind the scenes. Rules are automatically generated when:

• An attribute has an initial value.
• An attribute has choices.
• The “Value must be provided” option for an attribute is turned on.
• An attribute is “calculated”.
• An attribute has upper or lower limits.

Select this option if you want the table of rules to have a special column that shows rule priorities

Select this option if you want the table of rules to have a special column that shows whether the rule is “dynamic” – see the “Dynamic” property above.