Within the toolbox, it is now possible to use the evaluation of a Business Rule to guide your workflow. This acts similarly to using the Conditional If workflow toolbox item.

• For information on the Conditional If workflow toolbox item, see the article Using If in a Workflow.

The key difference between evaluating the If toolbox item, which takes input from the Workflow Context, is that Business Rules can evaluate at the Global, Work Item, Document, Participant or ODS Entity level and return a result into the Workflow.

Example of a Business Rule - Workflow Toolbox

In this example, we will create a Business Rule that evaluates the jurisdiction of the Matter. In this Business Rule, we examine if the jurisdiction (a custom aspect on Matters of this environment) is set to England & Wales. This evaluates to true or false.

• For more information on Business Rules, see this article: Business Rules.

We then save this rule to use within a Workflow. When configuring your workflow, choose the Toolbox Item Evaluate business rule and drag it into your canvas.

We then need to configure the following:

• Context Type: The toolbox item can take the context you want to evaluate against and only show you applicable business rules: Global, work item, document, participant, or ODS entity.
• Identifier: If you chose something other than Global for the Context type, you must ensure you have configured an input parameter on your workflow to provide either a work item identifier, a participant identifier, or an ODS Entity identifier. The workflow will use this to identify what to evaluate the rule against.
• Business Rule: The Business Rule you want to evaluate in the Workflow.

Then, you can branch your workflow based on the output of the evaluation of the business rule. In the example below, we checked the jurisdiction of a given work item, and if it is evaluated as true, the workflow takes the top branch, or if false, it takes the lower branch.

Review

This article showed the difference between using the Conditional If workflow toolbox item and the Business Rule - Workflow Toolbox item.