Adding business rules from IBM Operational Decision Manager to a solution

You can add business rules from IBM® Operational Decision Manager to the steps of the workflow definition for a task, and then modify the business rules without modifying the workflow definition.

Before you begin

Before you can add business rules from IBM Operational Decision Manager to a solution, you must install and configure IBM Operational Decision Manager to use web services to generate a Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) file that describes the interface for invoking the business rule.

Before you add a business rule to a solution, review the rule and verify that the rule was deployed in IBM Operational Decision Manager.

About this task

A business rule captures and implements business policies and practices, such as enforcing a business policy or making a decision that is based on specific data. For example, a business rule can update a particular case property to indicate that a fraud investigation task is required if an automobile insurance claim is filed by the driver of a sports car.

You can use rules software, such as IBM Operational Decision Manager, to separate the business rules from the process, which makes it easier for a business analyst to independently manage the process and the rules for the process, rather than modifying a workflow definition.

Procedure

To add business rules from IBM Operational Decision Manager to a solution:

Open the solution in Case Manager Builder and add case properties, case types, tasks, steps, and roles as necessary. Include properties that can be parameters for the Operational Decision Manager rule in this solution. For example, an automobile insurance claims solution might have case properties that include Vehicle Year (integer), Vehicle Make (string), Policy Number (string), Claimant Age (integer), and Potential Fraud (Boolean).
Deploy and test the solution.
In the Operational Decision Manager Rule Execution Server console, select the ruleset that contains the rules that are related to your solution to verify that the rules are deployed in Operational Decision Manager.
Obtain the URL for the Web Service Definition Language (WSDL) file.
1. In the Rule Execution Server console, click Explorer and click the RuleApp that contains your ruleset.
2. In the RuleApp view, click the ruleset and click Retrieve HTDS Description File.
3. Select the Latest ruleset version and Latest RuleApp version options.
4. Click View to open the file in a web browser.
5. Copy the URL from the address bar of the browser and paste it into a text document so that you can refer to the URL in the next step. For example, the URL might be http://localhost:9082/DecisionService/ws/AutomobileFraudCheckRuleApp/1.0/AutomobileFraudCheck/1.0?WSDL
Define the partner link to the web service. A partner link consists of a name and the WSDL URL for Invoke functions.
1. Open the solution in Process Designer. On the Manage Solutions page in Case Manager Builder, click Open Process Designer from the More Actions option for your solution.
2. Select a case type and a task.
3. Click Workflow Properties > Web Services > Partner Links.
4. Specify a name for the partner link.
5. Select Invoke and paste the WSDL URL into the WSDL URL field.
6. Click the Browse icon (...), which populates the available port types and select the port type from the menu.
Add the following parameters to the workflow definition on the Workflow Properties > Data Fields tab in Process Designer.
ODMDecisionID

String

ODMOutput

String

ODMRulesCount

Integer

The parameters are specific to Operational Decision Manager and therefore are not included in your solution.
Complete this step for business rules that you created in Case Manager Builder and exported to Operational Decision Manager, and any other rules that use a case object to represent the set of case properties in a single object:
Create an XML data field to store the execution results that are returned from the IBM Operational Decision Manager web services. In Process Designer, click Workflow Properties > Web Services > XML Data Fields and add a field with the name ODMOutputXML.
Create a system step to implement the rules:
1. Add a system step to your solution workflow in Process Designer. You might have created a stub step for this purpose in Case Manager Builder.
2. Connect the final workflow step to the new system step.
3. Specify a name for the step.
4. Select the Invoke function from the Available Functions list and move it to the Selected Functions list.
5. In the Selected Functions list, double-click Invoke.
6. Click Messages. Then, select the partner link and the operation. The incoming and outgoing parameters are automatically populated with the Operational Decision Manager rules parameters
7. Define the outgoing and incoming values.
  - For typical business rules that you created in Operational Decision Manager:
    1. In the Outgoing Parameters list, select the matching case property for each parameter from the Expression menu.
    2. In the Incoming Parameters list, select the matching data field for each parameter from the Field Name menu. You created the data fields in a previous step. You can also use a field assignment to assign values.
  - For business rules that you created in Case Manager Builder and exported to Operational Decision Manager, and any other rules that use a case object to represent the set of case properties in a single object:
    1. For the Message Type option, select XML.
    2. In the Outgoing Message field, replace the place holder values in the <caseObject> XML element with expressions that represent the case properties and data fields that are mapped to custom rule parameters. Use the format F_CaseFolder.attribute_name. For example, change the value "<Creator>" + "Creator" +"</Creator>" to "<Creator>" + F_CaseFolder.Creator +"</Creator>". For the CmAcmCaseState property, set the value to <CmAcmCaseState>"+ "Working" +"</CmAcmCaseState>.
      Tip: All parameter values in the <caseObject> XML element must be strings. To avoid validation errors, use Expression builder to change time and date values to timetostring functions and numbertostring functions.
    3. In the Incoming XML Data Field field, specify ODMOutputXML.
    4. Select the Assign function from the Available Functions list and move it to the Selected Functions list.
    5. In the Selected Functions list, double-click Assign to view the assignment parameters that correspond to case properties and data fields that are mapped to custom rule parameters.
    6. For the ODMOutputXML parameter, specify the following expression:
      substitute(ODMOutputXML, "xsi:type=""ns0:caseType""", "")
    7. For each case property or data field whose value is set by the business rule, specify an XPath expression that returns the corresponding value from the ODMOutputXML data field. For example, specify the following XPath expression to the value of a case property:
      xmlstringexpr(ODMOutputXML, "/", "/*[local-name()=""CSR1_CT1_RuleName""]/*[local-name()=""caseObject""]/*[local-name()=""caseObject""]/*[local-name()=""F_CaseFolder.CSR1_StringProperty""]")
Validate, transfer, and check the workflow.
In Case Manager Builder, click Manage Solutions and deploy the solution to the development environment for testing.