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InterAction® Windows Client Answer Center

Managing Rule Sets

  • Updated

You can manage rule sets from InterAction Administrator. When you manage a rule set, you are changing the rules that decide what happens to changes that users are making in the Web Client. Because these changes can have a large impact, you should fully plan any new rule sets or changes to existing ones before actually making the changes. Making changes without first analyzing how it will affect the system may result in either of the following:

  • If you make the rules too strict, data stewards may be inundated with too many tickets and may have issues trying to identify and resolve important changes.
  • If you make the rules too lax, many incorrect data changes for contact information may be automatically applied.

For more information about defining rule sets, see the following topics:

  • Rule Set Fields
  • External System Rule Sets
  • Managing Data Change Management Rule Sets for Users
  • Create a Rule Set
  • Edit a Rule Set
  • Delete a Rule Set

Contact types and marketing lists are different from the other two types of rule sets in that you must specify more information for a contact type and marketing list. Because of this, you can only create contact types and marketing lists from the InterAction Windows Client. In addition, most modifications to a contact type or marketing list should be performed in the Windows Client as opposed to InterAction Administrator because you have access to more of these fields. For more information, see Managing Contact Types and Marketing Lists.

Rule Set Fields

Each rule set includes several fields to define the information required to manage contacts. When you create or edit a rule set, you must define all of the fields identified in the following table.

Rule Set Fields

Field Description
Type

Each rule set has a type that indicates to what it applies. A rule set can have one of the following types:

• Contact Type - the rule set is used to manage contact type and marketing list contacts.

• External System - the rule set is used to manage contacts that are brought in from an external system through Application Collaboration. For more information, see External System Rule Sets.

• User - the rule set is used to manage contacts that are edited by a specific user. For more information, see Managing Data Change Management Rule Sets for Users.
Value

Specifies the following depending on which type was selected:

• The name of the contact type or marketing list

• The name of the data source brought in from the external system

• The name of the user
Rule Collection

Determines how the information managed by this rule set is handled. You can choose from any of the rule collections defined in InterAction. If necessary, you can modify the provided rule collections or create your own rule collections.

For more information on rule collections, see Why Are Rule Collections Used Instead of Just Defining the rules for Contact Information for Each Rule Set? or Overview of Rule Collections.
Owner Specifies the Data Change Management user or group responsible for maintaining this contact data. Before a user or group can be defined as the owner of a rule set, the user or group must be defined as a Data Change Management user or group.
Manage User Requests

This setting indicates whether or not user requests can be sent to the data steward responsible for this rule set. If the data steward responsible for this rule set does not actively monitor his or her Inbox, this should be set to No. If it is set to No, then the owner of the next rule set that governs the contact will be assigned the ticket. If no other rule set governs the contact, then the ticket is assigned to the owner of the default rule set.

Typically, user requests should be handled quickly. If a rule set is only monitored once a week or even less frequently, user requests will not be handled on a timely basis.
Status

Indicates whether the rule set is active or inactive. If a rule set is inactive, it does not process changes made by users. You may choose to inactivate a rule set instead of deleting it so you can easily activate it if it is needed again.

You cannot inactivate rule sets for contact types and marketing lists.

Why Are Rule Collections Used Instead of Just Defining the rules for Contact Information for Each Rule Set?

Using rule collections to manage the details of each kind of contact information change that can be made makes the process of creating new rule sets, contact types, and marketing lists much easier. If you analyze the contacts you maintain in InterAction, you will realize that they break down into a few simple categories:

  • Contacts that are brought into InterAction through Application Collaboration on a regular basis. When users make changes to contact information for these contacts in InterAction, it is not a good idea because the changes will just be overwritten the next time Application Collaboration brings in information. Instead, you want to know about the changes users are making so you can update the external system that is the source for this information.
  • Very important contacts to which you do not want users making changes without an explicit review and approval of the changes made. An example of this type of contact may be your top clients.
  • Important contacts to which you do not mind users making changes, but you want to at least be made aware of these changes and given the chance to revert the information back to the previous value without too much effort. An example of this type of contact may be your organization alumni or prospects.
  • Contacts that are not as critical to your business, so you do not mind users making some changes. However, you want to be able to review suspect changes users make to the contact such as entering a phone number with only four digits. An example of this type of contact may be professional organizations.
  • Contacts with no categorization that are not critical to your business, so you do not want to waste time doing any type of management on the contacts.

Because most contacts fit into these basic groups, you will often apply the exact same rules to multiple contact types, marketing lists, and rule sets. Instead of having to redefine these same rules for every contact type, marketing list, or rule set you create, you can just define a rule collection once and then use it over again. In most cases, the rule collections provided out of the box with InterAction should meet your needs. These include the following:

  • Externally Owned
  • Highly Managed
  • Managed
  • Partially Managed
  • Unmanaged

For more information on rule collections, see Overview of Rule Collections.

External System Rule Sets

When contact information is maintained and stored in an external system and then brought into InterAction on an on-going basis, you should not make changes to the information in InterAction. This is because any changes you make are overwritten the next time Application Collaboration runs and re-adds the data to the contact.

When users make changes to contact information brought in from an external system, the information should be changed in that system, not in InterAction. For example, assume you use Application Collaboration to integrate with your Human Resources system and bring in employee contact information on a regular basis. Ed Roberts, an employee and InterAction user updates his home address in InterAction. Because his home address is brought in through Application Collaboration, the change should not be made in InterAction, but in the HR system. In this case, you would want to send a ticket to the manager of the HR system to update Ed’s home address there. When Application Collaboration runs again, the address will be corrected on Ed’s contact in InterAction.

Using an External System rule set, you can monitor any edits users make to information added to InterAction from an external system and notify the data steward for that system of the updates that need to be made.

Managing Data Change Management Rule Sets for Users

You can configure three types of rule sets: contact type, external system, and user. Contact type and external system rule sets apply to all users in the Web Client. Even the InterAction Administrator User Account is subject to the Data Change Management rules configured in these rule sets when working in the Web Client.

Data Change Management rule sets for users can be used to control specific users and limit the number of changes a user can make to contacts information without having a data steward review his or her changes. For example, when a new user joins the organization, until he or she begins to understand the purpose of InterAction, you may want to have a data steward review that user’s changes.

A user rule set can only be used to further restrict a user’s ability to change contact information. It cannot be used to make a user into a “super user” to circumvent any other Data Change Management rules.

Create a Rule Set

  1. Log on to InterAction Administrator.
  2. On the main window entity list, double-click Data Change Management Configuration.

  3. Choose Rule Sets.

  4. On the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box, choose New.

  5. For the Type, select External System or User. You cannot create a contact type or marketing list rule set from InterAction Administrator. You must create a contact type or marketing list in InterAction Windows Client to create an associated rule set. For more information, see Managing Contact Types and Marketing Lists.
  6. For Value, do one of the following:
    • If you are creating an External System rule set, select the Data Source for which you want the rule set to apply.
    • If you are creating a User rule set, enter the User for which you want the rule set to apply. To find a user, choose the lookup button .

  7. Select the rule collection you wish to use.

    If you are creating an External System rule set, the Externally Owned rule collection should meet most of your needs for data coming from an external system.

  8. To modify the rule collection, choose Details. For instructions on editing rule collections, see Managing Rule Collections.

  9. To assign an Owner, select the Data Change Management user or group who is responsible for managing the rule set

    The user or group you select is also responsible for the Data Change Management tickets created for the rule set.

  10. For Manage User Requests, select Yes or No.

    For more information on the Owner and Manage User Requests fields, see the descriptions of these fields in Rule Set Fields.

  11. Choose OK.
  12. When finished, choose Close on the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box.

Edit a Rule Set

  1. Log on to InterAction Administrator.
  2. On the main window entity list, double-click Data Change Management Configuration.

  3. Choose Rule Sets.

  4. On the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box, select the rule set you wish to edit and choose Edit.

  5. Edit the fields and choose OK.

    For more details, see Rule Collection Fields.

    For information about editing rule collections, see Managing Rule Collections. If you edit a rule collection, be mindful of how your changes may affect other rule sets that use the rule collection.

  6. When finished, choose Close on the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box.

Delete a Rule Set

Deleting an External System rule set will leave the information brought in through Application Collaboration unmanaged. If a user edits the contact data, the change will be made without notifying a data steward.

  1. Log on to InterAction Administrator.
  2. On the main window entity list, double-click Data Change Management Configuration.

  3. Choose Rule Sets.

  4. On the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box, select the rule set you wish to delete and choose Delete.
  5. On the confirmation dialog box, choose Yes.
  6. When finished, choose Close on the Data Change Management Rule Sets dialog box.