Rules

Rules are used to create more complex playbooks that can be done using the Playbook designer graphic tool.

Rules define a set of activities that are triggered when conditions are met. An activity is an operation that the rule executes when the appropriate conditions are satisfied. The activity can be as simple as adding a task to the incident or setting incident values, or more sophisticated such as launching scripts, workflows and sending data to external programs.

Each condition is statement that includes a field, an equation and a value. The condition is met when the statement evaluates to true. Conditions can be combined using Boolean “AND/OR” logic.

There are two types of rules:
  • Automatic. An automatic rule executes without user involvement when its conditions are satisfied.
  • Menu Item. A menu item rule displays in the Orchestration & Automation application as an action in the designated object’s Actions drop-down list and executes only when a user invokes it.
There are three types of activities:
  • Ordered. Ordered activities include setting incident field values, adding tasks into the task list, running internal scripts to implement business logic, and placing items on message destinations to be acted upon by apps. You use Ordered Activities to identify the tasks to be done, when the tasks are fairly straightforward.
  • Workflow. Workflow activities launch business process workflows, graphically designed, that you can use to implement more sophisticated playbooks.
  • Message Destination. Message destinations allow you to post transaction data for use by external scripts and programs.

You can add conditions, order those conditions, add activities, provide the rule’s results to an external program, and more.

When using rules, the term “playbook” is not shown in the user interface.