How to Create Policies and Rules

You can create rules with conditions that are logical groupings of logical operators (AND, OR, and NOT) applied to predicates (built-in or user-defined functions or operators) that take arguments (built-in or user-defined fact references). You can also right-click Conditions or logical operators and select a logical operator or built-in predicate from the context menu.

You can define actions (built-in or user-defined functions) to be executed if the rule condition evaluates to true.

Note

If you include more than one predicate in a rule, all predicates must appear as arguments to a logical operator. (The top level can be a single .NET member, db column, or XML field/attribute that is of boolean type.)

To create a policy

  1. In the Policy Explorer pane, right-click Policies, and then click Add New Policy.

    A new folder, Policy1, is created under Policies. By default, version 1 of a new policy is created for you.

  2. Click Policy1.

  3. In the Name property pane, type a name.

To add a rule to a policy version

  • In the Policy Explorer pane, expand [your policy], right-click Version 1.0 (not saved), and then select Add New Rule.

To add a logical operator to a rule condition

  • In the Rule Definition window, right-click Conditions, and then click one of Add Logical AND, Add Logical OR, or Add Logical NOT.

To add a built-in predicate to a rule condition or logical operator

  1. In the Facts Explorer window, click the Vocabularies tab, and then click the Predicates folder.

  2. Expand a published version of a predicate vocabulary, and click the predicate you want.

  3. Drag the predicate onto the logical operator, or onto Conditions if your rule will contain only one predicate.

    Note

    You can also add a predicate directly from a data source, provided that the data element acts as a predicate (evaluates to true or false).

To add a built-in action to a rule

  1. In the Facts Explorer window, click the Vocabularies tab, and then click the Functions folder.

  2. Expand a published version of the function vocabulary, and click the function you want.

  3. Drag the function onto Actions. You can also right-click Actions, and select a built-in action from the context menu.

To add an argument to a condition or action

  1. In the Facts Explorer window, click the Vocabularies tab, and then click a vocabulary folder.

  2. Expand a published version of the vocabulary, and click the term you want. The term must be of a type expected by the predicate or function.

  3. Drag the term onto a predicate argument in a condition or a function argument in an action.

    Note

    You can also add an argument directly from a data source or in the case of XML you can specify the field type in the properties when selecting a field; this must of course be compatible with the data itself , provided that the data element is of a type expected by the predicate or action. To add an argument directly from a data source, click the appropriate tab in the Facts Explorer window, navigate to the item you want, and drag it onto a predicate argument or function argument.

    Note

    You can add a constant value to an argument directly by clicking the argument and entering the constant value you want.