Overview

Rules and Policies

In APM, you can use rules and family policies to determine how records in the APM database will behave when you work with those records in APM.

Rules consist of code that is written in Visual Basic.Net (VB.Net), a programming language that is compatible with the language in which APM is written. If you have sufficient knowledge of writing VB.Net code, you can write rule code to be executed when certain changes occur in the APM database. You can write family-level or field-level rules.

As an alternative to family-level rules, you can use family policies to configure certain actions to occur when a record changes in the APM database. Family policies are created in a user interface where knowledge of Visual Basic.Net (VB.Net) is not required.

Within the Rules and Policies section of Family Management, you must specify whether you want to use rules, family policies, or neither for a particular family.

Note: For a single family, you can write family-level rules or family policies, not both. You can, however, use the Baseline Rule node in a family policy to execute any existing APM baseline rules that correspond to the policy’s family and trigger. You can also use field-level rules and family policies for the same family.

Family Policy Workflow

This workflow provides the basic, high-level steps for using Family Policies. The steps and links in this workflow do not necessarily reference every possible procedure.

  1. Create a new family policy.

  2. Build a policy model, which includes nodes and connections that represent the inputs, logic, and resulting actions for the policy.

    Note: Interaction with the model design canvas, such as adding and moving nodes, is not available on touch-screen devices.
  3. Run the validation process to confirm that the policy logic is working correctly.