At the project level, Oracle Policy Modeling automatically links all attributes with the same text together and treats them as one attribute. This means you can write your rules in any document, or in a number of documents, in any order within those documents, and Oracle Policy Modeling will link them all together for you, provided the same attribute text (including capitalization) is used.
So, once a variable attribute has been declared in a properties file, it can be used in any rule in any rules document (Word or Excel). Similarly, once you have written a rule using a boolean attribute, that boolean attribute can be used in any rule. A condition of one rule will be automatically linked to the conclusion of another rule if the attribute text is exactly the same.
Once an attribute is linked with another they are logically collapsed within the Oracle Policy Modeling model and displayed as a single item in the Data Model and Build Model views.
To ensure you are using an existing attribute in a rule (not inadvertently creating a new one with very similar text):