Creating good Short Descriptions

Every rule form contains a Short Description field, also known as its label.

Take a few seconds to choose the text you enter in this field as you save each rule. Your choice can enhance your personal productivity, the productivity of your development team, and affect the usability of your application.

Short Description text is used in three ways:

• As user prompt text
• As documentation
• Supporting rule searches and Explorer displays

While most Short Description text is less than 30 characters long, enter more than 30 characters when necessary. (The limit is 64 characters.)

The Short Description field corresponds to the @baseclass.pyLabel property.

Short Description text as user prompts

In important special cases, Short Description text is visible to application users. Choose text meaningful to such users:

• Flow action rules — Short Description text appears as selection text in selection lists on work object forms, or as button labels. See More about flow actions.
• Certain class rules — The Short Description text of certain Work- classes (those that correspond to class groups) appear as work pool names. The current application name controls the scope of many portal functions. See work pool name, work pool, and More about Classes.
• Certain flow rules that create work objects — For flow rules with the Creates a new work object? check box selected, the Short Description text appears in as a selection in the New selection box in the Process Work layout. See More about Flow rules and WorkManager and WorkUser portal basics — Using the Process Work workspace.
• For Single Value property rules, the Short Description text appears in certain Report Wizard lists.

If a standard flow action, flow, or class rule meets your application needs except for its Short Description text, you can override only the Short Description with the Localized Label field in a field value rule.

Changes you make to the Short Description text of a checked-out rule may become visible only after you check in the rule.

Short Description text as documentation

For Short Descriptions on other rule types, enter a sentence or phrase that describes how you expect the rule to be used. You need not enter your name, the RuleSet, any key part, or the date, as these facts are present (and searchable) elsewhere in the rule.

The value you enter appears on reports, lists, and SmartPrompt ToolTips. Choose a value that helps you or others select a rule of interest from a possibly long list.

Supporting rule searches and Explorer displays

Choose Short Description text that support searches. Longer, specific words (such as Mortgage) are more useful when searching than common short words. To search for a rule based on its Short Description:

1. Select Edit > Advanced Search to open the Advanced Search tool.
2. Locate the Find Rule Content area on the right.
3. Select the category and rule type from the selector link. The initial value is Activity.
4. Enter .pyLabel in the Property field.
5. Type at least a few characters of the Short Description in the Search For field.
6. Optionally, select a RuleSet.
7. Click  Search   . The system searches through all rules of the selected type (and RuleSets) and creates a list of those that match.
8. Click a plus sign on the display to list individual rules.
9. Click a row of the display to open a rule.

For class rules, if you set the Explorer preference Display Type as Label, the Short Description of each class appears in the Explorer tree displays. To do this, select Edit > Preferences and the select the View item. Change the Display Type to Label and click  Save  . This mode is most useful for custom work types — the concrete Work- classes in your application.

Lookup Cache supports SmartPrompt ToolTip display

Short Description text appears as a ToolTip on SmartPrompt displays, when the developer holds a pointer on a row of the selection list. (SmartPrompt displays are primarily accessed by developers, not by application users.)

In some cases, after you update the Short Description of a rule, an internal cache that supports SmartPrompt may become stale; the ToolTip display presents the prior value. To remedy this, delete the on-disk cache using the System Management application:

1. Select Tools > System Management application to start the System Management application. Authentication may be required.
2. On the System Management application window, select a node.
3. Select the Advanced > ETier Static Content Management menu item.
4. Click  Delete LookupList Cache ..

	lookup list, private RuleSet
	Choosing rule and data instance names

Developer portal basics