Advanced Business Rules through Operational Decision Manager
integration enables business users to use a single interface for product
creation, rules authoring, and rules association. Advanced Business
Rules helps drive product personalization, advanced bundling and configuration,
complex offers, and more.
The key modeling construct in Product Master for
managing information is an item. A catalog contains a set of items, typically modeling a business
level entity, such as a product. Additionally, catalogs can associate with one of more hierarchies.
Each hierarchy is an N-level deep tree that models a classification system. A category represents a
node in a hierarchy. An item can be mapped to one or more categories in the same hierarchy, and
multiple categories in all the hierarchies that its catalog is associated with.
Key concepts
The following key concepts must be understood for you to use
Advanced Business Rules through Operational Decision Manager integration. Advanced Business Rules
through Operational Decision Manager integration supports specifications of different types of
decisions for which a product in Product Master might
associate with rules in Operational Decision Manager.
- Decision types
-
Each decision type represents a particular business level question that might be asked at the
time of rule execution. For example,
- Eligibility decision type
- This decision type asks the question: "Can this product be offered to this customer".
- Pricing decision type
- This decision type asks the question: "How much discount can be offered to this customer for
this product".
- Decisions
- A decision is a set of rules in Operational Decision Manager that is associated
with an item or a category in Product Master for a
decision type.
- Rule projects
- Items or categories in Product Master associate with
a rule project in Operational Decision Manager for each decision type.
-
Rule Projects in Operational Decision Manager contain rules, rule templates, and other artifacts
such as rule flows.
Advanced Business Rules requires a rule project to be used for only one decision type. Each rule
project can initially contain a set of rules applicable to a set of items or categories in Product Master for a decision type. This set of rules is
considered “common rules” for all products that use the rule project and are not changeable in the
context of an individual item or category.
Additionally, each rule project contains a set of defined rule templates. The templates can be
used by a content author in Product Master to create a
new rule for the item or category.
All rules in the rule projects that are used by items or categories in Product Master are required to have a custom property to
store the entity identifier for the rule. The name of this custom property must be provided in the
wodm-config.xml configuration file.
The rule package that is identified in the decision type entry in the
WODM Integration
Lookup Table must:
- exist in the rule projects, and
- is used when you create new rules for the decision type.
The rule project can contain a rule flow that uses dynamic queries to select rules that are
applicable to a specific item or category. The specific item or category then uses a custom property
on the rules.
- Rules
- Advanced Business Rules for Product Master allows
working with both action rules and decision table type rules in Operational Decision Manager.
-
Advanced Business Rules support the notion of common rules for all entities (items or categories)
in Product Master. Common rules apply to all entities
that associate to a rule project for a decision type. Common rules must be created through the
Operational Decision Manager tools and be viewed only from the Product Master user interface.
Entity-specific rules can be viewed, created, edited, and deleted through the Product Master user interface. These rules apply only to a
specific item or category.
A rule project can contain only rules for Product Master items or categories from a single catalog or
hierarchy.
New rules are created under the rule package whose name is identified in the lookup table entry
for the decision type. This top-level rule package name exists in the rule project that is being
used. The rules for each product are placed under a different sub package. This sub package is
automatically created if it already does not exist. Placing entity-specific rules in individual sub
packages provides them their own namespace, allowing the rule with same rule name to exist for
different entities.
Note: If you select Greek or Turkish for the Product Master user interface, the header and buttons of the
Operational Decision Manager Edit rule window display information in Greek or Turkish. However, the
rule conditions, tooltips, and number of lines to display are displayed in English because the
Operational Decision Manager server messages are not converted into these languages.
- Branches
- The Advanced Business Rules integration edits the item or category-specific rules on a
development branch in the rule project. The branch created the rule project through the Decision
Center tools.
-
The name of the branch to be used for editing the item or category-specific rules must be
specified in the $TOP/etc/default/wodm/wodm-config.xml configuration file.
When you list rules for the item or category in an Product Master workflow step, Product Master works with the development branch.
When you list rules for the item or category in an Product Master catalog or hierarchy, Product Master displays the rules on the main branch.
The common rules are retrieved from the main branch irrespective of whether the item or category
is in the catalog or the workflow.
- Workflows
- Advanced Business Rules integration allows authoring of rules only in an Product Master workflow.
-
The workflow that is used for enrichment of item or category information can be enhanced to also
include steps for editing and approving rules for the item or category. Extra steps are needed to
enable a workflow to edit rules through the Advanced Business Rules.