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  • Add an "insert" Task type to the Rules engine

This is a bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea, but I think it would be hugely helpful.

 

Have you ever had a rule that you needed to edit, and found that the only way to get the desired outcome is to add a new task to the logic tree? Has that rule ever had a LOT of actions? In the current system, adding tasks inevitably results in a new “end of the line” output. Since Actions are tied to specific output tasks, adding a task means redoing the Actions associated with the old output entirely.

 

What if there were a better way? What if, for instance, we had the ability to create a new type of Task - “insert” - which could be used to insert new field output directly into an existing task? That would be awesome! So long, having to rewrite a bunch of actions, hello early lunch break!

 

I’m aware that there are a TON of fiddly details that would need to get hashed out for this to work properly. You can’t go around just cramming data in to incompatible tasks, how do we know which records get which output values in the inserted data, etc etc. I’m sure smarter people than myself can talk through those limitations and maybe, possibly, find a way to solve for them. There’s also a decent chance that my idea here is fundamentally flawed and I just have to suck it up and rewrite these actions whenever changes come up.

Would be an immense time saver! You might be doing this but @chelbusch had advised me to always add a transformation task as the last task in a data set for this very reason. I know it doesn’t address the use case of bringing an additional data set in, but it can help avoid having to rebuild actions when you just need to generate data with a case statement or another kind of transformation.

+1000%

It would be really cool if the Actions could be linked/unlinked in Rules Engine. I would love to delink any or all already built actions from my dataset so I can add a new task and then relink the actions. Gainsight could check for compatibility when I relink the action t and display any errors if the data isn’t synced properly between the respective tasks and actions. This would be similar to how the new Advanced Program functions. 

 

Should absolutely be able to do this. Dynamic JO seems to offer up this functionality.

Why not Rules Engine (and Data Designer)?

We’ve been running into this issue so much recently. Due to a number of different circumstances (process changes, rule improvements, fix implementations, you name it) we have rules that require updates to be made to them prior to the action step and often times between other existing tasks, merges, and transformations. However, currently if we want to update a rule, we need to delete the existing actions as well as any criteria, tasks, merges, transformations, etc. The only two ways around this at the moment are to either 1). create a new rule from scratch, or 2). clone the existing rule and make your edits there, but you still need to delete everything prior to the new update you wish to make. 

Love @TMaier’s idea of something like an “insert task” that would allow us to make edits wherever necessary in a rule without having to remove any dependency that falls after it. This seems to go hand in hand with what @Wes French mentioned, where if we were to insert a task anywhere in the rule, we could avoid the need to delete anything and essentially save the integrity of what’s already built in the rule. 

This would be a TREMENDOUS time saver for us and I’m certain for all other admins as well. A huge admin quality of life update if this were made possible. 

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