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Task 8: Authoring in Rule Solutions for Office

You can edit business rules directly in Decision Center, but you can also use Rule Solutions for Office to edit rules offline with the Microsoft Office tools that you are already familiar with.

This task is optional. To do this task, you must have Rule Solutions for Office installed. For installation instructions, see Installing Rule Solutions for Office.

In this task, you edit a decision table in Decision Center and make changes in Rule Solutions for Office, and then you update the changes in Decision Center.

Time This task should take you about 15 to 30 minutes to complete.

Step 1: Enable direct edit in Rule Solutions for Office

In this step, you set some parameters to enable direct edit in Rule Solutions for Office from the Decision Center Enterprise Console.

To enable the direct edit mode:

  1. After signing out of Decision Center, login again as an administrator user:
    • Username: rtsAdmin
    • Password: rtsAdmin
  2. Make sure that the project in use is miniloan-rules.
  3. Click the Configure tab.
  4. Under Administration, click Installation Settings Wizard.
  5. Click Step 5: Set configuration parameters.
  6. Check that the parameter teamserver.rsoediting.enable is set to true.
    1. Click New to add a new configuration parameter.
    2. In the Name list, select teamserver.rsoediting.enable.
    3. In the Value field, enter true.
    4. Click Apply.

      The teamserver.rsoediting.enable is added to the list of configuration parameters.

    5. Click Apply again to save the changes.

      The following message is displayed Step execution successful.

    6. Sign out of Decision Center.

Step 2: Edit directly from Decision Center

In this step, you open a decision table from Decision Center to edit it using Rule Solutions for Office. This generates a Microsoft Excel .xlsx file that contains the decision table.

To edit directly from Decision Center:

  1. Sign in to Decision Center as a regular user (rtsUser1/rtsUser1), and make sure that miniloan-rules is the project in use.
  2. Click the Explore tab, and navigate to Business Rules > eligibility.
  3. Click the Edit in Rule Solutions for Office (Excel) Edit in Rule Solutions for Office icon next to the repayment and score decision table. The decision table is now locked in Decision Center.
  4. Click OK to open the decision table in Excel. A dialog opens to inform you that a local copy of the document has been saved to the Rule Team Server Drafts folder for the time of the edition. This copy will be deleted after publishing the changes to Decision Center.
  5. Click OK.

Step 3: Modify a decision table in Rule Solutions for Office

You are asked to make your lending criteria less restrictive, so that you reject a loan for someone whose debt-to-income ratio is between 45 and 50 only if the applicant’s credit score is less than 500. To do this, you modify the repayment and score decision table in the Excel file.

To modify a decision table and correct any resulting errors:

  1. If the RuleDoc pane is not visible, on the Decision Table tab, in the View group, click RuleDoc Pane to display it.
  2. Under credit score, click the cell in the max column that contains 600. Replace 600 with 500, and then press Enter.
    Modifying the value in the table

    Notice how some cells have a yellow background. This indicates that there is an error. In the Problem List in the RuleDoc pane, you can see exactly what the error is: Rows have gaps.

    Problem List
  3. To solve this problem, click the cell in the min column under credit score containing 600, and replace 600 with 500, and then press Enter.

    The problem is no longer displayed in the Problem List in the RuleDoc pane.

  4. Save your changes and close the file.
  5. A dialog prompts you to check-in your changes, click Yes.
  6. You are prompted to enter your password to connect to Decision Center, enter rtsUser1 for the password, and then click OK.
  7. Add a comment for this version, for example Changed credit score to 500 for applicants whose debt-to-income ratio is between 45 and 50, and click OK. Your changes are ckecked in, and the local copy of your file will be deleted.
  8. Click OK.

Step 4: Check the changes in Decision Center

In this step, you return to Decision Center to verify that the changes that you made in your Excel file have been taken into account in Decision Center.

To check the changes in Decision Center:

  1. Make sure that you are still signed in to Decision Center as a regular user (rtsUser1/rtsUser1).
  2. Click the Explore tab to refresh.
  3. Navigate to Business Rules > eligibility, click the Preview icon next to the repayment and score decision table. The decision table in Decision Center is now up to date with the modifications you made in Rule Solutions for Office, and a new version of the decision table was created.
  4. Sign out of Decision Center.

You have completed the getting started tutorial to discover business rules in Decision Center. To find out more information on the tasks that you have performed, see Summary.

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