Polish a rulebase for deployment

There are several ways in which you can polish your rulebase for deployment. Here are some ideas and suggestions with links to the relevant topics.

What do you want to do?

Personalize an interview

Configure the screens

Add default values and validate user input

Improve decision reports

Customize Oracle Web Determinations

Personalize an interview

Using name substitution

Name substitution personalizes the interview for a more user-friendly experience. You can collect a person's name at the start of an interview, and then the name will be automatically substituted in later questions, in decision reports and on the summary screen. For more information see:

Using gender pronoun substitution

Gender pronoun substitution can be used in combination with name substitution (or in isolation) to provide more natural language text. For example, "the student avoided handing in the student's assignment" becomes (in combination with name substitution) "Matthew avoided handing in his assignment". For more information see:

Substituting names in headings and labels on screens

Variable values such as the person's name and/or age can be substituted into screen names and labels. For example, you could have a screen name appear as "School Details – Bart, aged 10 years". For more information see:

Using second person sentence generation

Sentences and questions can be generated in second person rather than in third person in order to personalize the interview. For example, instead of "Does the applicant have health insurance?" the question is asked as "Do you have health insurance?". For more information see:

Configure the screens

Using screen labels

Labels can be added to question screens and the summary screen to provide context. They can also be used as additional headings. Labels can include static text, as well as HTML. For more information see:

Hiding and displaying summary screen elements

Using visibility attributes, you can control whether screen elements are displayed or hidden at various stages of the interview based on logic. For example, you might want to display a goal to investigate at the start of the interview, but then hide it at the end. For more information see:

Add default values and validate user input

Defaulting values on Oracle Web Determinations screens

You can set default values for any attribute on a question screen. Defaults can be a specific value, or can be dynamically determined based on data collected on previous screens. Providing defaults reduces the amount of typing/clicking required to complete an interview. For more information see:

Validating user input on Oracle Web Determinations screens

You can validate the input that a user enters to warn or prevent them from entering values which do not meet certain criteria when running the rulebase. Specific errors and warnings can be triggered by conditional logic in rules. For example, you could display the message "Please check the dates of birth as you have indicated that your date of birth is after your child's date of birth" if the applicant’s date of birth > the child’s date of birth. Defining maximum and minimum values, or using regular expressions, for an attribute are other ways to fire generic error messages when the input value falls outside the specified range or does not meet a specified format (eg an email address). For more information see:

Improve decision reports

Automatically generating structural elements

Decision reports can be improved by ensuring that structural elements in legislation (eg section, paragraph, article, etc.) and policy (eg chapter, guideline, etc.) are included. Oracle Policy Modeling can automatically generate these structural attributes. The default form is "section x is satisfied", but this can be configured. For more information see:

Using grouping connectors and intermediate attributes

Adding intermediate attributes to your rules can make decision reports more meaningful. For example, adding "the person satisfies the income test" as an intermediate attribute in between "the person is eligible for the benefit" and "the person's income < 3000" in the following rule results in a more useful decision report.

the person is eligible for the benefit if

the person satisfies the income test

the person's income < 3000

For more information see:

Trimming the decision report

Decision reports automatically generated based on logic can be extremely verbose in terms of language and the structure of the rules. You can 'trim' decision reports using the silent and invisible parameters making them much easier to follow ("silent" hides all the logic nested below the attribute, "invisible" hides the attribute only and can be applied locally or globally). For more information see:

Customize Oracle Web Determinations

Defining a data review screen

The Data Review screen in Oracle Web Determinations displays the questions asked during the interview and the answers provided. Question screens on the Data Review screen are listed in the order defined in the Screen Order in the screens file. If no Screen Order is defined in the screens file, the screens will appear in a random order in the default Data Review screen in Web Determinations, which is not very user-friendly. It is therefore recommended that you either define a Screen Order or, if necessary, a different Data Review screen. For more information see:

Showing the progress stages

Stages can be displayed at the top of interview screens (with the current stage/screen shown in bold) to show the user their progress through the interview. Progress stages are turned on by default if a Screen Order has been defined. For more information see:

Configuring the Oracle Web Determinations labels

Standard out-of-the-box Web Determinations label text, such as Yes, No, Submit, Load etc, can be modified in the messages.<locale>.properties file for the project. For more information see:

Changing the Oracle Web Determinations banner

The Oracle Web Determinations banner, which by default is the Oracle logo and the text "Web Determinations", can be replaced with any other image and/or text (eg your application's logo and name). For more information see:

Providing commentary/help text

Commentary (context-sensitive help text) can be provided to help users understand the questions that they are being asked and the screens they are being presented. For more information see: