Task 1: Exploring a decision service in the governance framework

In this task, you sign in as Bea and explore a decision service in preparation for changes to the current release.

About this task

In the Loan Validation Service decision service, work is currently going on the Spring release. Changes are being made for loan insurance and scoring. The changes for insurance are complete, and Bea must finish implementing the scoring changes and loan checks. Finishing these changes initiates a series of manual and automatic actions that help you understand the governance framework.

To work on rules in a decision service, you must understand how the changes affect the behavior of the decision service. Before Bea does any editing, she goes through the Business console, introducing you to the following concepts:
  • Decision service: Decision services use multiple projects to separate different concerns and responsibilities, so you can choose the project that contains the rules relevant to the changes that you make. Decision services allow for complex decisions that involve several rule projects to be grouped as one entity.
  • Branch: In this tutorial, you work on governed branches, called releases and change activities. Releases and change activities allow changes to be planned and tested as part of the governance lifecycle. You need to select the appropriate activity to undertake your changes according to your governance role.
  • Decision operation: A decision operation identifies a unique business decision. Decision operations define how the rules you are changing are used in specific rulesets for deployment. You see this in a later task.

Step 1: Starting the Business console

In this step, you log in to the Business console, where you do the tasks in this tutorial.

Procedure

  1. Make sure that the sample server is started, as described in Opening Decision Center on the sample server.
  2. Open the Business console in a web browser by using the Business console URL, for example, http://localhost:9090/decisioncenter.
  3. Log in by using Bea as the user name and password.

Step 2: Exploring the decision service

In this step, you explore the decision service.

About this task

Bea knows that she is working on a decision service that is named Loan Validation Service. Think of a decision service as a container for rules, which are organized in one or more rule projects. The following diagram shows the project hierarchy of this decision service:

Diagram shows the project hierarchy.

Because rules evolve over time, Decision Center offers a branching feature to manage these changes. When you create a branch, you copy all the rules in the parent branch. These rules can then evolve separately until they are ready to be merged back into the parent branch.

Procedure

  1. Click Library to see the available decision services.
  2. Click Loan Validation Service.
    You see that this decision service contains two releases: Initial Release and Spring Release. A release is a branch of the rule projects contained in the decision service, but with special characteristics that you discover later in this tutorial.
    Image shows the choice of releases for the decision service.

    All decision services contain a completed Initial Release from which subsequent releases can be started. In this case, the Spring release is In Progress, and is based on the Initial Release. By the end of this tutorial, you complete the Spring release and create the Summer release.

    Tip: The Branches tab is available if you want to work on a decision service outside the decision governance framework. This is not the recommended approach, nor is it the subject of this tutorial. However, it does allow you to understand the underlying branch structure.

Step 3: Exploring the Spring release

In this step, you explore the Spring release.

About this task

An important characteristic of a release is that it cannot be edited directly. Editing is done through change activities, which are themselves branches of the release. A release can contain multiple change activities, which are all merged back into the release when they are completed. In this tutorial, there are two change activities, one whose goal is to change loan insurance rules for the release, and the other whose goal is to change the loan scoring and checking rules for the release. The appropriate participants work on each change activity.

Procedure

  1. Click Spring Release.
    The release has many tabs. You see all these tabs as you work through the tutorial.
  2. Click the Snapshots tab.
    Snapshots capture the state of a branch at a given moment in time. Snapshots can be consulted, compared, and even restored, but not edited. When a release is created, Decision Center creates the Initial Snapshot corresponding to the state of the rules at that moment. Here, Decision Center also created a snapshot just before the completed change activity was merged into the release.
  3. Click the Decision Artifacts tab.
    Here you can see the different rule projects that are contained in the Spring release of the decision service. You can consult the rules of these projects but cannot edit them directly from the release branch. In this tutorial, the top-level project does not contain any rules, only some decision operations and a ruleflow. The other projects can contain folders with rules.
  4. Click the Activities tab.
    The Spring release has two change activities "Change activity icon" and a validation activity "Validation activity icon". One of the change activities is already completed. A validation activity occurs when all the change activities are completed. You see the validation activity in Task 3.

Step 4: Exploring the governance principles

In this step, you explore the governance principles.

About this task

The built-in governance feature in the Business console imposes a workflow that is based on the status of a release or activity, and on the governance role of the participant. For a release, this workflow is represented as follows:
Diagram shows the workflow of a release.

Procedure

  1. Look at the Release panel in the Business console.
    Notice that the owner and the approver of this release is Paul, so Bea's role in the release is only to work on change activities.
  2. Observe that the status of the release is In Progress.
    While there are open activities for the release, the approver cannot approve the release, and the owner cannot complete the release. This workflow becomes clearer as you work through the next tasks.

What to do next

In the next task, Bea works on the Adjust Scoring change activity.