Build a Decision service when you want a decision or condition in a business rule to determine which process implementation is invoked. For example, when a certain condition evaluates to true, Process Designer implements the associated activity or action.
IBM® Process Designer supports business rule authoring tasks as performed by business analysts and business users who are rule designers rather than programmers. Business rule designers can express business logic using rule syntax that resembles natural human language. This rule syntax is called Business Action Language (BAL), which is a declarative language that relates business concepts to business data and actions.
Business rules are an expression of business policy in a form that is understandable to business users and that can be run by a rule engine. Business rules formalize a business policy into a series of “if-then” statements. In Process Designer, business rules are included in a business process definition (BPD) by adding a Decision service to the process. Add a Decision service to a Process Application when the actions that should take place in your process depend upon one or more conditions. For example, if an employee holds the position of Director and submits a meal expense for more than $250, then you can create a rule and set a variable in the rule, such as approvalRequired, to route the process sequence flow into a specific approval activity.
The following topics describe how to author, implement and manage business rules in Process Designer.