A
rule is available if the value of the
pyRuleAvailable property is set to
Yes or Final (and is not blocked; see
below). Developers determine this value as they create or save
a rule.
A green icon at the upper right of the rule form indicates
the current setting. When presented in reports, the icon is
brown.
Five availability settings
This property may have any of five values:
Yes
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A circle and dot indicates that this rule is
available. Rules with a Yes value are
visible to rule resolution processing and can be
executed.
|
No/Draft Mode
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An empty circle indicates a rule that is not
available. Set the Availability of a
rule to No/Draft Mode to cause the rule to
become invisible to the rule resolution algorithm for all
users (including yourself), and to bypass validation of
non-key fields. The No/Draft Mode setting is
useful in experimentation and troubleshooting to assess
the effect of two rule versions.
|
Blocked
|
A circle within an X indicates that this rule has
Availability set to
Blocked. Set the value of this property to
Blocked if you want rule resolution
processing to halt (with no rule found) when it
encounters this rule. The rule form colors change from
greens to grays.
This is a stronger form of No/Draft,
because it affects all lower-numbered versions of the
rule, and versions (in other RuleSets) that are below
this version in the user's RuleSet list. A blocked
rule does not prevent rule resolution from finding (and
running) higher-numbered versions in the same RuleSet, or
finding rules with the same visible key in a different
RuleSet that is higher on the RuleSet list.
|
Final
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An arrow and barrier in the key area indicates that
this rule has Availability set to
Final. Set this value of this property to
Final if you want this rule to be available
(equivalent to Yes), but want to prevent
others from overriding this rule in any other
RuleSet.
A final rule can be superceded by a higher-numbered
version in the same RuleSet, but not by any version in
any different RuleSet.
|
|
Withdrawn
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This image indicates that the rule has
Availability set to
Withdrawn. A withdrawn rule is never
selected by rule resolution. In addition, a withdrawn
rule masks from rule resolution any other rules which
meet all of these tests:
- The other rule belongs to the same RuleSet
- The other rule belongs to the same major version of
the RuleSet, but a lower minor version or lower patch
version
- The other rule has the same Applies
To class (if relevant and other key parts
match)
- If circumstance-qualified, is qualified with the
same circumstance type and value.
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How availability works with circumstances and
time-qualified rules
A time-qualified rule or a rule containing a non-blank
Circumstance Property has its own
Availability value that may differ from the
Availability value in the base or underlying
rule.
If a rule request meets the conditions of a time-qualified
rule or circumstance rule, the Availability of
that rule applies, not the Availability of the
base rule. For example, if the base rule has
Availability set to Blocked but a
time-qualified rule (with the same key, RuleSet, and version)
has Availability set to Yes, the
time-qualified rule is visible and usable throughout the time
interval between its Start Time and
End Time values.
Class, library, RuleSet Name, and
version rules are always available. You cannot change the
availability of instances of these rule types.
Definitions — A
Available rule
