The Context Assistant is a little pop-up window that helps you enter and edit expressions of the Rule Language. The Context Assistant window comes up when you press F3 while typing text of a rule or tag expression. The Rule Editor with the Context Assistant open is shown on the picture below:

The main window of the Context Assistant contains prompts relevant to the text of the rule expression currently being typed – note on the picture above the current text of the rule expression is “Cu” so the Context Assistant window contains prompts of the existing pre-defined operations and processes starting with “Cu”. The yellow window to the right of the Context Assistant’s prompts window contains the explanation of the prompt selected in the prompts window – the currently selected prompt is the Customer object, and so the explanation window contains the description of this object.

The Context Assistant may be very useful if you want to type in the names of business objects, attributes, processes etc without having to leave the rule editor and open the corresponding node in the Elements Tree or the corresponding element editor. The Context Assistant is also a very good help if you are not very familiar with the Rule Language as it automatically suggests the right Rule Language construct when you type in your rule expression. It also has a list of all expressions and pre-defined actions used in the Rule Language as well as the list of all functions (all accompanied by the appropriate explanation).

To use the Context Assistant press F3 while you are typing your Rule Language expression. The Context Assistant will display a list of prompts relevant to your current text. Press the Arrow Down button on the keypad to move to the prompted items in the Context Assistant window. As you are moving between the items the explanation window will show the explanation of the currently selected item (if there is any). To select the item press Enter – the text of the item will appear in the text of your Rule Language expression. You can also click on a prompt item with a mouse to select it and see its explanation or double click on the item to get it to appear in the text of the expression.

If you press F4 instead of F3 the Context Assistant displayed will have a list of all functions that can be used in rules.