Automating with rules

Open Workflows and build a rule as three parts: *when* something happens, *if* certain things are true, *do* something. A rule with no conditions runs on everything its trigger covers.

What can start a rule

• An incoming fax arrives
• An outgoing fax is delivered
• An outgoing fax fails
• A document is added
• A secure exchange is opened by a recipient
• A task passes its due date

A secure exchange rule runs on the first open only. Somebody who opens a link four times has not done four things, and a rule that creates a task would otherwise create four.

An overdue task fires its rule once, not every time the system checks. Without that, a rule that notified you would notify you every fifteen minutes until the task was closed.

What a rule can check

The receiving number, the sending number, the sender or recipient name, the subject, the filename, the document category or source, the page count, a failure code, the hour of day and the day of week.

Not every check applies to every trigger. A document has no fax number, and an exchange rule can only match on its subject line and the time — it cannot match on who the recipient is, deliberately: a recipient is often a patient, and their address does not belong in a rule or in the log of what matched.

What a rule can do

Route to a queue, assign to a person, apply a tag, set the document category, create a task, notify a role or named people, or set a priority.

Checking that a rule works

Every rule you have is listed with what it did. A rule that matched nothing looks the same as a rule that is not running at all — until you can see that it was *consulted*. The run history shows both: how many times the rule was evaluated, and how many times it matched.

If a rule shows no evaluations at all, nothing is happening that its trigger covers. If it shows evaluations and no matches, the conditions are narrower than you meant.

Order

Rules on the same trigger run in priority order, lowest number first. There is no branching — a rule is one set of conditions and a flat list of actions, so anything that needs an "otherwise" is two rules.

A failed action is recorded on the run and the rule is not retried. Re-running an action that half-succeeded would be worse than telling you it failed.