Rule Policies
A collection of logically grouped rules, for example, by region or country.
You create rule policies to invoke specific actions automatically as soon as predefined conditions are met.
Policy Variants
Rule policies contain rules, which are organized in folders under one or more policy variants. A policy variant is a version of a rule policy. The rules in a policy variant can be evaluated separately and at different times.
Example
You need different policy variants to create time-dependent versions of a rule policy. One collection of rules could apply from November to December and contain a greeting referring to the holiday season. A second collection of rules could be triggered after the holiday period in December, containing many of the same actions as the first collection, but with a different greeting.
A rule policy can have many policy variants, but only one can be active at a time. A policy variant is active when the current date and time coincides with the policy start and end dates and times. When a rule policy is invoked, the system selects the variant that is currently active.
When you create a rule policy, the system creates a default policy variant. As long as there is only one variant for a rule policy, you cannot change the date and time. When there is more than one variant for a rule policy, you can change the start date and time, but not the end date and time. The end date is calculated by the system to ensure uninterrupted rule evaluation.
While policy variants can contain both draft and released rules, only released rules are used in rule evaluation.
To prevent your rule policy from becoming cumbersome, you can split rules into several policies and use the Invoke Policy
function. This makes it possible to call one rule policy from another.
Rule Policy Relationships
You can view a graphical representation of relationships between rule policies that call other rule policies. The flowchart-style display provides the following:
Zoom slider for the canvas
Option to toggle the grid on or off in the canvas
Option to toggle the
Details
window on or off in the canvasThis window provides information on the rule policy that is currently selected.
Option to toggle the
Navigation
window on or off in the canvasThis window provides a visual overview of the policy relationships, which can be useful for more complicated scenarios.
Canvas area to display the rule policies
To use this function, you must activate the business function Rule Modeler Usability (CRM_RMD
).