Business Rules (Master Data Services)

In Master Data Services, a business rule is a rule that you use to ensure the quality and accuracy of your master data. You can use a business rule to automatically update data, to send email, or to start a business process or workflow.

Create and Publish Business Rules

Business rules are If/Then statements that you create in Master Data Manager. If an attribute value meets a specified condition, then an action is taken. Possible actions include setting a default value or changing a value. These actions can be combined with sending an email notification.

Business rules can be based on specific attribute values (for example, take action if Color=Blue), or when attribute values change (for example, take action if the value of the Color attribute changes). For more information about tracking non-specific changes, see Change Tracking (Master Data Services).

To use business rules you must first create and publish your rules, then apply the published rules to data. You can apply rules to subsets of data or to all data for a version by validating the version. A version cannot be committed until all attributes pass business rule validation.

If a user attempts to add an attribute value that doesn’t pass business rule validation, the value can still be saved. You can review and correct validation issues, which are displayed in Master Data Manager.

When you create a model deployment package, if you want to include business rules you must include data from the version in the package.

If you create a business rule that uses the OR operator, you should create a separate rule for each conditional statement that can be evaluated independently. You can then exclude rules as needed, providing more flexibility and easier troubleshooting.

How Business Rules Are Applied

You can set priority order for rules to run in. However, before priority is taken into account, business rules are applied based on the type of action the rule takes. The order is as follows:

1. Default Value

2. Change Value

3. Validation

4. External Action

Within these groups, actions are applied in priority order, from lowest to highest. So for example, four separate rules might have Default Value actions. The Default Value action that occurs first depends on the priority order specified in the web UI.

Other important notes about applying rules:

• If a business rule is excluded or is not published with a status of Active, the rule is still available but is not included when business rules are applied.

• Business rules apply to the attribute values for all leaf or all consolidated members, not both.

• Business rules can be applied to any version of a model that is Open or Locked.

• Changes made to data when business rules are applied are not logged as transactions.

• A business rule cannot contain more than one start workflow action.

System Settings

There are two settings in Master Data Services Configuration Manager that affect business rules. You can adjust these settings in Master Data Services Configuration Manager or directly in the System Settings table. For more information, see System Settings (Master Data Services).

Related Tasks

Related Content

• Master Data Services Overview

• Versions (Master Data Services)

• Validation (Master Data Services)

• Change Tracking (Master Data Services)