Using Mandatory Rules to Enforce Business Rules
You can use rules for mandatory user-defined fields to enforce your company’s business rules. For example, you may create a user-defined field that is used only when a user enters invalid data in other fields.
This example shows how to create a user-defined field to enforce the following rule: The contract expiry date must be later than the last service date.
- Create a table user-defined field with a name that describes why the rule fails.
For example: "Contract expired before last service date"
- Write a mandatory rule for the field that’s equivalent to the opposite of the business rule.
For example: [Contract Expiry Date] < [Last Service Date].
This rule validates when the business rule fails.
- Add no items to the table user-defined field.
When someone saves an entry that breaks the rule, the user is prompted to provide a value for the field.
However, the table field has no items, so the user cannot supply a value, and therefore cannot save the entry.
If you want to let the user save the entry, you can provide reasons for breaking the rule as items in the table field. For example: add the following table items "Complimentary service", "Negotiating contract", "New contract pending".
