The condition part of a rule specifies under what conditions the actions in the action part of the rule will be carried out. Conditions are represented by whatever appears after If, ending at Then (which signals the beginning of the action part of the rule).

For example, in the following rule, the call is redirected to a member of the Gold team only under the condition that the customer category is Gold:

This is a simple condition that is either true of false; the action is carried out if this condition is true.

Combine Condition Statements

The condition part of a rule can be made up of one or more condition statements. For example:

is a condition with one condition statement, whereas the following condition has two condition statements:

When you have more than one condition statements, you can set whether the actions will be carried out if all or any of its rule statements are valid.

For example, the action will be performed when both of the following conditions are valid:

On the other hand, in the following rule the action is performed when either the customer's category is Gold or the customer has been waiting for longer than five minutes:

Test for Existence

The following entries in your drop-down lists help you construct your condition statements by testing for the occurrence of a given business term:

there are / there is no

Used for writing conditions that test for the occurrence of something. For example, the following condition is met when there are 2 trucks available:

The optional where restriction can also be used. This example shows how to test if the number of Gold customers is equal to 10:

there are at least / there are at most

Used for writing conditions that are satisfied when the number of occurrences of something:

This example shows how to test if the number of Gold customers is lower than or equal to 3:

Another more advanced example first initializes the following variables:

The condition checks if the number of Gold customer is more than or equal to (Gold limit + 1).

there is at least one

Used for writing conditions that are satisfied when at least one occurrence of something exists.

This example illustrates how to test whether or not a Customer exists:

Another more advanced example shows how to test if a senior Gold customer exists:

Negate Condition Statements

You may want to write rules that are more easily expressed in terms of something not being true. For example, the following condition is met except when the customer category is Gold:

The following example illustrates how to test if a customer is not a Gold senior member.

Comparison Operators

Operators let you compare or establish relationships between the different terms found in rule statements.

Different comparison operators are available to compare text, numbers, dates, and lists.

Text Operators

Text operators compare business terms that are of a textual nature:

Arithmetic Operators

Arithmetic operators compare numerical terms:

Date Operators

Date operators compare calendar dates:

Variables

Some business rules are made simpler through the use of variables. Variables let you identify and subsequently reference an occurrence of something by a convenient name.

Variables are useful when constructing rules that deal with relationships between two or more things of the same type. For example, the following condition statement involves two different customers:

Here, we have identified and named two different customers: customer1 and customer2. You can see that by making the notion of a customer something that varies, and having the possibility of identifying them specifically, you can create rules such as: