Whats New in Oracle Policy Automation November 2017 #2

As in the previous post in this series, the OPA Hub Website is concentrating on the new features, or “Whats New in Oracle Policy Automation November 2017” to be more precise. This is the second in the series. In this post we will explore two different functionalities that have been improved. Firstly, we have all probably at some point found ourselves creating attributes, and thinking about default values : setting them on the different screens of our Interview and so on. We probably also have then spent time creating Rule Tables to handle what happens when we have to default values based on the certainty of other information.

Default Values in Web Service inbound attributes

These days, managing default values in a Web Service environment just got easier. Consider the following simple example. The insurance premium is inbound in a data Connection. It is copied into an attribute called the baseline annual premium. If the inbound value is uncertain, then the default value (in this case £500) will be used. If the inbound value is different to £500, then that value will be used instead. If the inbound value is unknown, then the value of the baseline annual premium will be unknown.

Set True and False values in one shot

Another feature from the Whats New in Oracle Policy Automation November 2017 collection : in the same vein, you can now use the If function to set values for a true or false result of a condition, like you would for example in Microsoft Excel formulae. Think of it as “If(expression, value if true, value if false)”.

If the baseline annual premium is greater than 500, then the percentage of legal fees will be 100. Otherwise it will be 50. The documentation refers to “condition” but in different places it refers to Boolean attributes or conditions. In any case, it seems to work with both.

Both of these will provide decent shortcuts to existing workflow for developers looking to create cleaner rules. You can find the details in the online documentation here. Catch up with more “Whats New in Oracle Policy Automation November 2017” in the upcoming third post, where we will look at cool new features in the Interview.

PS : Note that my example assumes a Project using the English United Kingdom regional settings.