About Policies

The following image shows an example of a policy model.

A policy model is made up of nodes and connections that define the policy logic. Specifically, the nodes in a model represent:

• The items that you want to monitor (e.g., equipment temperature).
• The conditions that should trigger actions to be taken (e.g., temperature rises above 200 degrees).
• The actions that should be taken (e.g., send an email message).

A policy model does not function like a typical logic diagram. For example, a node does not automatically evaluate the values from the immediately preceding node. Rather, for each node, you can specify an input value that is associated with any predecessor node, even if the nodes are not directly connected. Before you create a policy model, make sure that you understand the basic principles for working with a policy model.

Policy instances identify the records to which logic in the policy model will be applied. In other words, you will use policy instances to identify the specific records whose values you want to monitor.

Each policy instance references one record for each input node in the policy model. For example, if a policy model contains two input nodes, one that represents the Equipment family and one that represents the Work History family, each policy instance that is associated with the policy will reference two records. The following image illustrates this example. In this image, boxes represent individual records and dotted lines represent associations between records.

Each policy can be associated with an unlimited number of policy instances, so you can use one policy to apply the same logic to multiple records.