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Defining a set of circumstance definitions

You can specialize a rule based on different circumstances. The different circumstance definition options appear when rule types have the Allow selection of rules based on property values? (circumstance qualified) or Allow rules that are only valid for a certain period of time? (date availability) selected on the Class form. To define a circumstance, perform the following steps:

On the rule form, click Save as > Specialize by circumstance.
Enter a name for the specialized rule.
Select one of the following types of circumstance:Template or Property and Date.

Template

Click Template option to circumstance your rule by more than one property value (also referred to as multivariate circumstancing). This option requires that you have at least one template rule created before you use it for circumstancing. You need to provide a template and a definition against which the template is evaluated.

Property and Date

Click Property and Date to circumstance a rule by a property, date, or a combination of both.

To circumstance by a property, enter the name of a property (for example, .pyStateName) in the Property list, and its expected value within quotation marks (for example, “MA”) in the Value box.
To circumstance by a date, enter a Date type property, start date, end date, or a combination of all of the options. The following table lists the possible date combinations and the business-logic requirements they meet. If you do not specify a date property, the specified time period is always evaluated against the current system date.

Business requirement	Specify date property	Specify start date	Specify end date
Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs within a date range	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs after a certain date	Yes	Yes	No
Rule to be effective only within a date range	No	Yes	Yes
Rule to be effective only after a certain date	No	Yes	No

Rule resolution

The rule is active during the specified time interval. At all other times, the base rule is active.

During rule resolution, if two or more date-circumstanced versions are candidates at the current time and date, the application selects the candidates with the nearest end date. Of these, if multiple remaining candidate rules have the same end date, the application picks the candidate with the most recent start date.

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