1. Orchestrator Guide
  2. Creating a Rule

Creating a Rule

Create a rule to define conditions for an orchestration.

To create a rule:

  1. On the Orchestrator Studio Home page, click the Rules icon.

  2. On the Rules side panel, click the New drop-down list and select Standard.

  3. Create and name the rule as described in Creating a Component.

  4. On the Rules design page, enter a name for the rule in the Rule field. Do not include special characters in the name.

  5. In the Match Type drop-down list, select one of the following values:

    • Match All: Select this option if all the conditions in the rule must be met.

    • Match Any: Select this option if any of the conditions in the rule can be met.

  6. In the first row in the grid, complete the following columns to add a condition:

    • Rule Type: Click the drop-down list and select String, Numeric, Boolean, or Date depending on the format of the input.

      (Tools Release 9.2.9) When you select Date as a rule type, the system displays the Set Special Value icon in the Value 2 field. Click this icon to set the date by using the special date format. For example, Today plus 5 months.

    • Value 1: Enter a variable for the input name.

    • Operator: In the drop-down list, select from the list of operands which include: >, <, >=, <=, =, !=, starts with, ends with, contains, is between, is in list. The "is in list" operator must be a string of values delimited by the pipe character ( | ). Example values: v1|v2|v3.

      (Tools Release 9.2.9) You can enter multiple variables as evaluation criteria for the "is in list" and "is between" comparisons. These operators enable you to pass in a value as a variable and detect if that value is in the list of allowed values or if that value is between other values. When you select "is in list" or "is between" from the Operator drop-down list, the system displays the List icon in the Value 2 field. Click the List icon and enter the values or variables as required in the List window.

      For the "is in list" operator, the List window displays an Add icon. You can click the Add icon to add more values to the list and click the X icon to remove the values from the list.

      When the Literal option is disabled, the Use Array Variable option is displayed in the List window. Enable the Use Array Variable option and specify an array and column name to pass a variable number of values at runtime using the array.

    • Literal: Slide the toggle to the right to indicate a literal value.

      For example, if you want to enter the numeric values for the “is between” operator, enable the Literal option and enter 1 and 100. If you want to enter the variables, disable the Literal option, and enter minimum and maximum to create two variables to pass with those names.

    • Value 2: If you have enabled the Literal toggle, manually enter a value.

      Starting with Tools Release 9.2.6.3, from the Value 2 field drop-down list, you can select:

      • <Null> if the Literal option is enabled and the value in the Operator field is = or !=.
      • <Blank> if the Literal option is enabled and the Rule Type is selected as String.

        A string is considered blank if it is an empty string ("") or if it contains only one or many spaces.

    • Literal Value Type: This is available only for the Date type rules. When you select the Rule Type as Date and enable the Literal option, you can click the arrow icon in the Literal Value Type field to select the required date type from the drop-down list.

  7. Add additional conditions to the rule as needed. If you add a condition by mistake, you can delete it by clicking the Remove button at the end of the row with the condition.

  8. Click the Save button.

A new rule is saved for the first time as a "Personal" UDO. Thereafter, you can use the UDO links described in the User Defined Object (UDO) Features in the Orchestrator Studio section to move the rule to the appropriate status.

After adding a rule and a service request to an orchestration, in the Orchestration design page, you must define the action for the rule to invoke the service request. See Defining the Actions Between a Rule and Dependent Components for more information.