Rules

Rules operate on the set of technical product orders that TIBCO Fulfillment Provisioning produces in the decomposition step. The rules allow Fulfillment Provisioning to:

  • Validate technical product orders.

  • Add technical product orders.

  • Exclude technical product orders.

  • Substitute technical product orders.

  • Define the sequence of technical product orders.

  • Check the availability of technical product orders.

  • Check compatibility between technical product orders (invalidation rule).

  • Remove redundant technical product orders (inclusion rule).

You define rules and assign them to each technical product order that uses the rule.

Note: These rules are for processing the technical product orders that Fulfillment Provisioning produces in the decomposition step. They are not for processing the incoming technical product orders.
Note: If the no valid association per rule type flag is set to is an error then an error occurs if none of the defined association are used. For example, a technical product order has five rules associated to it, three are type Prepend and none are valid at runtime when Fulfillment Provisioning applies the Prepend rule for a given POD, then Fulfillment Provisioning raises an error, even if the two other rules were valid.

The availability rule defines a valid time range; all other rules are defined by specifying technical product orders that define the rule. Depending on the type of rule, a technical product order group specified in a rule determines:

  • The validity of a technical product order that uses the rule through the presence or absence of the group.

  • The technical product orders to exclude or substitute.

  • The desired processing sequence.

The following table lists the different types of rules together with their description.

Rule

Description

Availability

Validates a technical product order that uses the rule if the provisioning date falls within the time range defined in the rule. An Availability rule also allows you to specify whether to raise an exception or remove the technical product order if it proves to be invalid.

Validation

Validates a technical product order that uses the rule if ONE of the technical product order groups defined in the rule is part of the service order.

This rule allows the definition of multiple technical product order groups.

Invalidation

Validates a technical product order that uses the rule if NONE of the technical product order groups defined in the rule are part of the service order.

This rule allows the definition of multiple technical product order groups.

Inclusion

Removes from the service order a technical product order group defined for the rule if the technical product order that uses the rule and every technical product order in the group are part of the service order.

This rule allows the definition of multiple technical product order groups.

Mutual Exclusion

Removes from the service order a technical product order group defined for the rule AND the technical product order that uses the rule if the technical product order and every technical product order in the group are part of the service order.

This rule allows the definition of multiple technical product order groups.

Substitution

Replaces the technical product order that uses this rule with the technical product order group defined in the rule. Optionally adds technical product orders from the groups that are not already present in the service order. If technical product order is missing, user can let TIBCO Fulfillment Provisioning:

  • raise an error

  • add the missing technical product order

  • ignore the missing technical product order

This rule allows the definition of only one technical product order group. The order within the group is significant for sequencing.

Prepend

Sequences the technical product order group defined in the rule before a technical product order that uses this rule. Optionally adds technical product orders from the group that are not already present in the service order.

This rule allows the definition of only one technical product order group. The order within the group is significant for sequencing. If technical product order is missing, you can allow Fulfillment Provisioning:

  • raise an error

  • add the missing technical product order

  • ignore the missing technical product order

Append

Sequences the technical product order group defined in the rule after a technical product order that uses this rule. Optionally adds technical product orders from the group that are not already present in the service order.

This rule allows the definition of only one technical product order group. The order within the group is significant for sequencing. If technical product order is missing, user can let TIBCO Fulfillment Provisioning:

  • raise an error

  • add the missing technical product order

  • ignore the missing technical product order

Incompatibility

When technical product orders contain technical products that are incompatible with each other, TIBCO Fulfillment Provisioning rejects the service order. This rule type is only applied in the delta analyzing process.

By default, TIBCO Fulfillment Provisioning applies the different rule types in the following order:

  1. Availability

  2. Substitution

  3. Validation

  4. Invalidation

  5. Inclusion

  6. Mutual Exclusion

  7. Prepend

  8. Append

The order in which these rules are applied can be customized on a per-domain basis (see Customizing rule order).

Availability rules are also applied each time a new technical product order is added to a service order through Substitution, Prepend, or Append rules.