Advantages of Pega RULES Process Commander

Unlike some BPM products that focus primarily on workflow or integration capabilities, Process Commander leverages the PegaRULES engine to enable organizations to manage complex business processes -- including those with a large number of exceptions, or those where tasks, sub-tasks, or decisions have to be delegated to many individuals across (and beyond) the enterprise. In addition, since changes to business processes can be made by modifying or adding business rules (either via a Microsoft-Visio-based editor or browser- based HTML forms), Process Commander makes it possible for business analysts and power users to customize a business process.
For example, business analysts can diagram a business process using Microsoft Visio. Visio serves as the graphical front end to Process Commander's rulebase, and dynamically communicates with the rulebase to select, validate and save processes. By placing Process Commander SmartShapes on a Visio worksheet, business analysts can link activities together to create an automated process. Visio then presents the visual form of the flow and, based on the SmartShape that is utilized, the PegaRULES Engine automatically presents the correct rule form. As a result, Visio diagrams utilized in Process Commander are "live" diagrams -- empowering business managers to evolve and define how processing applications work in real-time as they modify these diagrams on-the-fly. Versioning capabilities also enable business users to adjust to changing business requirements and quickly implement required processes.
The Process Commander server runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Solaris and AIX, and utilizes leading applications servers including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and Apache Tomcat. Process and business rules reside in a common rulebase, which may run on Oracle, Microsoft SQL and IBM DB2 relational databases. This combination of a distributed server architecture and centralized rulebase running in heterogeneous environments provides a range of scalability and deployment options.
Additional features of Process Commander include:Browser Interface: Used for all development and application functions.Support of Complex Processes: Includes a wide variety of assignment, worklist, process and reporting functions to improve work efficiency.Service Level Agreements: Enable users to manage actions and prioritize work.
In addition to these capabilities, Process Commander supports Directed Web Access, which enables customers or users outside of an organization's firewall to contribute to a process. For example, a customer could be directed to a one-time secure Web URL where they could fill out a request for service or similar form. All rules and processes within the system can also be exposed as Web services, enabling other applications to access or invoke them as appropriate.

Pega RULES: An Enterprise Rules System

Extensible, Object-Oriented RulebasePegaRULES uses an object-oriented model for its rulebase, and powerful inheritance and hierarchical algorithms to apply the right business rule at the right time. This hierarchical rule structure delivers flexibility, personalization capabilities, rapid application configuration, modification, and deployment.For example, general quality rules, compliance rules, and services rules can be defined as valid for the corporation, while specialized versions of these rules can be made available for specific organization units and/or applications.Common Enterprise Rulebase, Distributed Rule ExecutionThe PegaRULES enterprise rules engine runs as a series of loosely coupled “nodes” that bring the execution of rules in close proximity to the requesting user or system. Distributed nodes provide the option to share a common rulebase and behave as a single system, enabling the ability to provide “local” performance over distributed physical machines.The Right Rule at the Right TimeAt runtime, the PegaRULES enterprise rules engine dynamically selects the right business rule depending on the business purpose, product, organization, RuleSet and version, date, time, customer-associated circumstance and security. Once selected, the rule is converted to Java and executed at Java speed.Rules can be defined to apply during specific system dates and/or during an application-defined effective date. For example, this capability provides insurance companies with the ability to process claims in accordance with the rules that were in effect when the policy was issued.Forward and Backward Chaining Offers Application FlexibilityPegaRULES provides rich application capabilities by allowing both forward chaining (procedural logic) and backward chaining (goal-based logic). By utilizing dependency networks, PegaRULES determines known and unknown dependent facts.For example, when evaluating an expression or constraint, if a required fact is not available, PegaRULES invokes goal-seeking logic to compute that fact — from other known values.PegaRULES retrieves or computes the missing value, either by interacting with other enterprise systems or by asking a user to supply the value. Once that fact is known, it is automatically used to continue the evaluation of expressions or constraints until the final value is determined.Intuitive Rule Forms Ease BusinessUser Change PegaRULES provides intuitive rule forms to build, manage and configure all rules — reducing the need for programmers to write and maintain code.1. Over 70 different Fit-for-Purpose HTML rules forms are provided, allowing for easy rule creation2. IT can allow specific rules and/or sections of rules to be managed by business users, increasing business agility and reducing IT costs3. Users can view the history of changes made to each rule, meeting compliance needs4. Once a rule is changed and checked back in to the system, a review and approval process can be initiatedDozens of Fit-for-Purpose Rule TypesWhere other products require developers to utilize Java or a proprietary rule language to build complex rules, PegaRULES provides a family of rule types to help organizations get started quickly and maximize productivity.1. Declarative Rules: A set of rules that, utilizing dependency networks, compute values or enforce constraints as other properties change, ensuring that data remains consistent2. Decision Tree Rules: A family of rules that conduct fact-based inferencing (forward chaining) to execute “if-then” types of logic3. Process Rules: As part of PegaRULES Process Commander, Pegasystems’ Business Process Management (BPM) product, these rules manage the receiving, assignment, routing, and tracking of workBuild Rules Applications GraphicallyComplex applications can be efficiently built using diagrams to design the rule-flow logic. PegaRULES integrates Microsoft Visio as a graphical front-end to its rulebase, enabling users to connect and link a variety of built-in rules to create a complete rules-based application.Intelligent Agents Automate Key ActivitiesPegaRULES includes agents to identify and act on events. This capability offers an extremely powerful mechanism to create business alarms that take appropriate action when business metrics step out of line.

Different Enterprise Rules Used in Pega RULES

Unlike other BPM products, PegaRULES Process Commander manages complex work using both practice rules (rules that automate work) and process rules (rules that route and assign work), in addition to system rules. With over 70 built-in specialized rules, Process Commander provides these three major categories of business rules to achieve multi-step parallel processing, automated decision making, and rich human and system interaction.• Practice Rules — Represent business guidelines or policies that define and drive a business. For example, “When shipping products to New York, apply New York state taxes,” or “When a purchase order for a personal computer exceeds $2,000, it must be approved by Finance,” or “When a preferred customer registers a product complaint, always offer that customer a rebate on future purchases.” Practice rules are created by both business and IT staff, but are managed primarily by business staff.• Process Rules — Define the procedural steps or flow regarding how humans and systems complete work. For example, when shipping costs exceed $2000, an organization might employ the following processes: (1) a tracking number is electronically assigned, (2) a cost center manager receives an electronic assignment to approve or reject the shipment cost, and (3) once approved or rejected, an automated correspondence is sent to the requester to relay the decision. If the request is approved, the sender can then track the shipment through the delivery portion of the flow via the tracking number. Process rules are managed by business analysts or operation managers.• System Rules — Dictate how data is presented, stored and transported from one system to another. For example, “Allow only dollar amounts in this field,” or “Convert nine-digit zip codes into five-digit zip codes,” or “Fetch a Web Service from the supplier’s intranet.” System rules are created and managed by system architects.Through these rules categories, PegaRULES Process Commander provides robust work management capabilities for solving complex business issues such as supply chain management, expert systems, self-service models, transaction-centric processing, and real-time order fulfillment. These capabilities enable organizations to build “smart BPM” applications that generate increased return on investment.Practice Rules: Five commonly-used types of practice rules in PegaRULES Process Commander are described below.1) Decision Tree Rule – A practice rule that conducts fact-based inferencing (forward chaining). Through a single rule form, Process Commander provides the ability to create a complex decision flow of unrelated data and returns the appropriate response based on given facts. The use of forms to create "if-then" types of logic significantly reduces errors and management challenges generally associated with lines of nested if-then code.2) Dimensional Decision Rule – A practice rule that returns an answer or variable based on a single or multiple set of “when” conditions. At run time, a when condition evaluates a simple comparison of related values of properties. Process Commander safeguards an enterprisefrom failing to act on critical business operations when particular circumstances arise.3) Declarative Expression Rule – A practice rule used when the value of a numeric field needs to be computed during application run time. Expression rules ensure that the value of a property is updated automatically when any of its dependent properties change – eliminating the need for business users to track changes and perform recalculations.4) Declarative Constraint Rule – A practice rule used to define conditions or limits on designated data entry fields. For example, if the maximum value of an entry field is $20 and the user inserts $30, Process Commander will alert the user with an automated error message that a constraint has been violated. Constraint rules ensure that values meet predefined criteria, and eliminate the need for the application to track changes to data and reapply editing criteria.5) Activity Rule – A practice rule that returns a command or a calculated figure based on given variables. Process Commander compares and contrasts multiple variables, and initiates an appropriate action based on the results. Unlike other BPM products, Process Commanderdoes not require users to program lines of code to create custom automated responses or actions.Process Rules: Four commonly-used types of process rules in PegaRULES Process Commander are described below.1) Flow Rule – A process rule that manages, monitors and automates work as it is assigned throughout a flow. Microsoft Visio serves as the graphical front end to Process Commander’s Rulebase, and dynamically communicates with the PegaRULES Enterprise Rules Engine where all rules are saved and executed at run time. By placing either out-of-the-box or customized Microsoft SmartShapes on a Visio worksheet, business managers can easily link activities together to create, view and update both the workflow diagram and its underlying processing logic.2) Assignment Rule – Process Commander includes numerous built-in rules associated with managing the assignment of work – both within and outside the enterprise. These rules enable the assignment of work to individuals, to pooled workbaskets, and to occasional users. Other assignment-related rules enable goals and deadlines to be set for assignments, as well as automating correspondence.3) Work Delegation Rule – A process rule that engages and enables Process Commander to access entities outside the system (i.e., non-registered users such as suppliers, customers and partners). This rule enables Process Commander to send work assignments to users who require only infrequent access to the application. Process Commander sends an embedded assignment through an e-mail message that contains a URL link to a work object within a flow. The link is a one-time secure “key” to access the system. This capability extends the ability to perform work in Process Commander to all constituents throughout the extended enterprise, without the need of client-side software.4) Service Level Agreement (SLA) Rule – A process rule that monitors and ensures that work is completed in a timely manner. Each service level defines one or two time intervals, known as goals and deadlines, to indicate the expected or targeted turnaround time for the assignment (or time-to-resolve for the work object). When a service level time is reached before an assignment is completed, automatic processing occurs (such as escalation). Unlike other systems, ProcessCommander not only highlights and reports on delinquent work, but triggers escalation rules to ensure that work is completed as promised.System Rules: Three commonly-used types of system rules in PegaRULES Process Commander are described below.1) Integration Rule – A system rule that streamlines interfacing between two or more systems. Process Commander provides pre-configured rules for CORBA, COM, MQ, SOAP and MicrosoftDot NET, as well as enterprise databases – eliminating the need to acquire third-party integration software.2) Declarative Indexing – A system rule that defines and stores relationship data between objects in the PegaRULES database. For example, where multiple rule instances exist with a data field entitled “Zip Code,” changing the title of the field to “Postal Code” would require a programmer to find all rules that correlate to this title in order to make the change. With Declarative Indexing, a report can be generated to display all related rule instances – dramatically3) Transformation Rule – A system rule that automates data mapping and parsing between disparate systems. These rules promote reuse of data across the enterprise, enabling organizations to leverage and maximize the existing IT infrastructure.

Pega RULES Vs Insurance

In a Leading Insurance Provider there was no automation for the following business processes to generate the insurance policy for a customer.1) Questionnaire Process: They did manually to get the questions and answers from the customer for his/her policy.2) Premium Calculation Process: It had done manually by using the spreadsheets. In that spreadsheet they put the business logic and generate the premium. It was a time consuming process for each premium calculation.3) Quote /Bind/ Book Process: Once the Premium got calculated then they were generating the Quote, Bind and Book documents manually. If any mistake in either of them then it was very painful for them to track it.A part from these it has the following common problems.1) Underwriting Rules: As insurance depends on underwriting and the underwriters, there are certain rules which have to be followed while issuing the policy. The common problem for it is if any changes occur in those rules then it would be complex to resolve it.2) Rating Rules: Rating is a method to use for generation of quick proposal, qualified proposal, and full proposals (New Business) which includes capture of the all relevant information to issue a valid proposal. It varies from country to country. For each country it is very complex for them to form the rating rules.Pega RULES best for Insurance solution:· Pega solution is aimed at bridging the gap between business goals and information systems. Pega process-based integration technology helps organizations model and automate business process workflows and integrate them with applications, systems and partners. This leads to reduction in manual steps, improvements in core processes and gain in competitive advantage.· Pega technology includes both process automation as well as data integration in one product in insurance. Pega designed its product to enable Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to enterprise IT, to minimize coding for ease of use and to offer high degree of reusability. With this insurance has benefited in their new business and the renewals business also.· Enhancing insurance business revenue by dynamically configuring the components and features and pricing the products actually purchased at or near the point of sale. Pega offers centralizing the control but widely distributing the catalog of products offered for sale.· Pega uses the Product Configuration Solution Framework in insurance first time. It offers best-practice rule forms and administrative tools for maintaining product configurations in the context of business rule and business process management applications. It is used to the products Professional Indemnity (PI) and Casualty industry and it supports all personal and commercials lines of business. It includes both process automation as well as data integration in one product. Pega offers the capability to automatically build PDF file formats in documents generation, and graphically map information from any system, application.· Pega Product Configuration frame work provides purpose-based rule forms for configuring product groups, products and product components that help you organize and manage the rules associated with products. It provides you with activities, flows and flow-actions that help you access product rules managed with the Product Configuration framework from within your application.· In insurance the validations and the calculations are very complex there was no such system to take all effectively and easily. As Pega came up with rules-base concept, it uses declarative rules and the activities rules in simplifying the validations and the big calculations easily.· Pega provides the Rule resolution algorithm in identifying the right business rules in right places. With this feature insurance business get benefited to identify the product based and business rules as well.· Pega has provides a good security in insurance. By using the access roles, privileges, access groups to make secure at all levels.· Pega has provided insurance business in getting the weekly, monthly and yearly reports for their business growth. It provides an agent concept in generating the excel format reports and is very easy to updatable by business based on the situation.Pega also offers following Insurance- focused solutions:BPM for Insurance (BPMI) solution – Workflow automation and data integration for improving business processes.Agency-Carrier Alliance (ACA) solution – Automated upload & download of policy information in real-time.Insurance Systems Integration (ISI) solution – Seamless integration and data flows between policy management systems, rating packages, claims applications, accounting and other sub-systems

PRPC Access Control: OperatorIDs, Access Groups, and Roles

The OperatorID (an instance of Data-Admin-Operator-ID) is the starting place। Here you may assign a single Access Group (an instance of Data-Admin-Operator-AccessGroup) to provide the access control profile for the user.

The Access Group has 3 distinct mechanisms for conveying access rights:

1. RuleSet or Application – grants access to individual RuleSets and/or RuleSets contained in an Application
2. Work Pools – grants access to Work tasks contained within a specific Class Group
3. Roles – define rights to both instances and rules at a class level

The Role itself is just a predefined tag (Rule-Access-Role-Name). Alone, it does not convey or deny access. The Role to Object records ((Rule-Access-Role-Obj) contain linkages between a Role and a specific class. To make managing these linkages simpler, PRPC 5.x has a Security Wizard than can be accessed by selecting Tools->Security->Role Names and double-clicking a particular role to manage.

The wizard allows you to identify any number of class to associate with the Role. The security system is, by default, exclusive. PRPC will not grant access unless explicitly provided. The Role to Obj linkages allow you to specify:

• Open, Modify, Delete, and Browse on Instances of a class and
• Open, Modify, Delete, and Execute on Rules contained by a class.

The numeric values assigned are 0-5 and correspond to the "Production Level" setting from the System record.

The production level values can be:
To convey access, the number shown in the Role to Obj linkage must be greater than or equal to (>=) the current system's Production Level. Incidentally, the Production Level can be found on the clipboard at pxProcess.pxAdminSystem.pyProductionLevel.