Templates

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What is a Template?

Logic Document Templates allow you to let FlexRule Designer create logic files from a pre-built one. This ability enables you to create and set up a set of logic (i.e., Decision table, flow, etc.) for your team, and once they want to create new logic, they will use these as a new document rather than the empty vanilla ones.

To add a new Template,

Document Types --> Templates

This enables you to apply a set of practices and configurations on your project, pre-build them into a template and let the team select new logic documents from template sections.

Save As

To save any document as a template, open the document and then go to,

Document -> Save As a Document Template 

And below Window appears:

• Name: The title or name of the template
• Description: A simple description of the template that helps to understand the purpose of it
• Group: Defines categories to organize the templates. Use \ to define nested nodes.
• Source: The current document that is opened as the source of the template. Or another document can be chosen as well.

Configuration

Register a Template

Locate and create an XML file called Templates.xml in the following location

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Pliant Framework\FlexRule Designer

Here is a sample of the XML file:

<Templates>
  <File
	name="DT with some extra info"
	icon="D:\Graphics\all2\48x48\plain\tables.png"
	category="MyCompany\MyProject\DTs"
	description="a sample description for your template"
	path="Templates\PotentialTheftRating.xml"
	handler="DecisionTable"/>
</Templates>

You can add multiple File sections inside the Templates section.

File Section

Each file section can include the following information:

• name: the name of the template in the right panel
• icon: image path of the template in the right panel; it can be relative to templates.xml or an absolute path
• category: location of the template in the left tree panel
• description: a hint of what the template is about will be shown in the description section
• path: address to the path of the template: this can be relative to templates.xml or an absolute path
• handlers: type of the logic document, which can be any of the followings:
  • DecisionTable
  • Flow
  • Workflow
  • DRD
  • LogicTree
  • ValidationTree
  • Procedure
  • ProcedureModule
  • DeploymentProfile
  • NaturalLanguage

Here is the mapping of a file in the new document window:

1. Name of the template
2. Category to organize the tree structure
3. Description of the template

New Template

To register a template, you need to have a logic document that you want to use as a template. To do that:

1. Create logic using FlexRule Designer just as a usual logic file
2. Register the file using the File section

And FlexRule Designer will automatically load the template every time the new document window appears.