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.

Updated on April 15, 2021

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