Task 1: Evaluating and assigning changes

In this task, you explore the business rules in the Miniloan Service decision service, and assign work to another user.

About this task

The company wants the following changes to be made to its loan approval policies:
  • Set the minimum length of a loan to six months.
  • Increase the required credit score for loan approval on low debt-to-income ratios from 200 to 300.

Step 1: Accessing the decision service

In this step, you log in as Paul and look at the Miniloan Service decision service.

Procedure

  1. Start the sample server (see Starting the sample server).
  2. Open the Business console (see Opening Decision Center on the sample server).
  3. Log in by entering Paul as the user name and password.
  4. Click the Library tab, and then click the Miniloan Service decision service.
    You see the Releases and Branches tabs.
  5. Open the Branches tab, and then click the main branch.
    A decision service can contain many projects. For simplicity, all the rules of Miniloan Service are contained in its top-level project, which has the same name as the decision service.
    Note: Normally, the best practice is to copy the main branch and work in the copy to avoid modifying the original branch.
  6. Click the X in the Types button in the Decision Artifacts tab to see the artifacts.
    The artifacts include an operation, resources, a ruleflow, and business rules.

Step 2: Following changes to rules

In this step, you select the rules for which you want to track changes.

Procedure

  1. Click the eligibility folder to view its contents.
  2. Click the check box beside Name to select all the rules in the folder, and then click the gold star in the toolbar to follow all the rules in the folder.
    A gold star is displayed next to each rule. Changes to these rules are now displayed on the Home page.

Step 3: Opening the business rules

In this step, you look at the business rules in the decision service.

Before you begin

Business rules come in two formats:

  • Action rules: An action rule is a natural-language business rule. Each action rule has conditions and actions. The conditions determine whether the rule applies. If the rule applies, the actions determine what occurs.
  • Decision tables: A decision table provides a way to view and manage sets of similar rules. A decision table contains condition columns and action columns.

Procedure

  1. In the eligibility folder, click minimum credit score to display the action rule.
    It rejects a loan application if the credit score is below 200:
    if
    the credit score of 'the borrower' is less than 200
then
    add "Credit score below 200" to the messages of 'the loan' ;
    reject 'the loan' ;
  2. Click the Back arrow button just above the displayed rule to return to the eligibility business rules.
  3. Click repayment and score to display the decision table.

    The table compares the applicant's debt and credit score, and either approves the loan or rejects it and outputs a rejection message. The first two columns in the table define the conditions, and the third and fourth columns define the actions.

Step 4: Taking a snapshot

In this step, you take a snapshot for later comparison. A snapshot captures the state of a branch at a specific moment in time. You cannot edit the contents of a snapshot, but you can use a snapshot to restore a branch to a previous state.

Procedure

  1. Click the Take Snapshot camera button.
  2. Name your snapshot Initial State, and click Create.
    You can now find the snapshot in the Snapshots tab.