Rule execution order determines how rules in a rule collection are evaluated and their actions executed. Rule collections attached to business objects are unordered. When a business object is modified Aware IM evaluates all rules in its rule collection to find actions to be executed. It then executes one of the found actions. Since the action can make further changes to the object, Aware IM re-evaluates all rules in the collection that depend on the latest changes to see which actions still need to be executed. The cycle is continued until no more changes are detected.

Rule collections for processes are usually ordered, although the configurator can specify otherwise. With ordered rule collections the rules are evaluated once only, and their actions executed if the conditions are satisfied, exactly in the order the rules appear in the collection.