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1. THEN INCREASE Loan DueDate BY Loan Item Type MaxLoanPeriod Note that we can freely perform arithmetic operations with dates by adding a number of days to the due date Renewal limit validation rule A loan cannot be renewed more times than allowed by the type of the item that has been borrowed This can be captured by the following rule IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 AND Loan RenewalCount gt Loan Item Type MaxRenewals THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot renew loan the maximum number of renewals lt lt Loan Item Type MaxRenewals gt gt is reached Renewal reservation validation rule A loan cannot be renewed if someone has already reserved the borrowed item while it was on loan We express this in the following rule IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan Item CurrentReservation IS DEFINED AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot renew loan there is a reservation for the item Renewal member validation rule An attempt for loan renewal must be rejected if the library has made a decision to suspend the member who has borrowed the item Therefore we check that the member status is still Active IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan Member Status lt gt Active AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot renew loan for non active member Renewal item validation rule Copyright 2002
2. FIND Reservation WHERE Reservation Status Offered AND DAY DIFFERENCE Reservation ItemOfferedOn CURRENT DATE gt 6 Reservation Status Expired The first action finds all reservations in the Offered state that have been offered more than 6 days before the day when the check is being made The second action changes the status of the reservation to Expired Note that Aware IM will automatically change the state of all reservations found by the previous action If no reservations were found Aware IM will do nothing Now that we have defined the process we need to define when this process is going to be called We right click on the Scheduling node in the Elements Tree and select New from the pop up menu The dialog for the new scheduling item appears We select the Daily radio button and specify the time of the day when the system will start the process for example 01 00 Then we select the ExpireReservations as the process that the system will run When we click on the OK button Configuration Tool will show the resulting rule in the rule editor pane We can now click on the Create button to save the changes 3 3 16 2 Processing Overdue Loans Our application should be regularly checking if a loan is overdue and if so charge the appropriate fee and send the reminder e mail to the member This means that we need a scheduling process to do this We also need to store the last time the overdu
3. Same type items validation Rule A member cannot borrow more than a maximum allowed number of loans for items of a particular type This can be checked by the following condition COUNT Loan WHERE Loan IN ThisLoan Member Loans Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 21 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application AND Loan Status Current AND Loan Item Type ThisLoan Item Type gt Loan Item Type MaxBorrowNumber We count the current loans that belong to our member and have the same type as our item and compare with the maximum value defined in the type of our item Note that we use ThisLoan in the condition this is to differentiate our loan from all other loans that are being searched see also the Instance Prefixes section in the Aware IM User Guide The entire rule looks like so IF Loan Status New AND COUNT Loan WHERE Loan IN ThisLoan Member Loans AND Loan Status Current AND Loan Item Type ThisLoan Item Type gt Loan Item Type MaxBorrowNumber THEN REPORT ERROR Member already has lt lt Loan Item Type MaxBorrowNumber gt gt lt lt Loan Item Type Name gt gt s Total items validation Rule A member may not have more than the maximum number of loans The rule looks like so IF Loan Status New AND COUNT Loan WHERE Loan IN ThisLoan Member Loans AND Loan Status Current gt 10 THEN REPORT ERROR Member already has maximum allo
4. IncomingEmail notification representing the incoming e mail and the ReceivedEmail business object to store received e mails It has also added the rules that create and initialize the instance of the ReceivedEmail object when an incoming e mail is received see also the Incoming Email section in the Aware IM User Guide As the ReceivedEmail object represents communication with a member we will add this object to the Communication business object group and add the following attributes to this object e Correspondent reference to the Member object that we received the e mail from e State with choices Read and Unread with the initial value Unread Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 67 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We will also modify business rules automatically created by Aware IM to register incoming e mails to set the value of the Correspondent attribute To do this we expand the IncomingEmail node under the Notification node and double click on the When IncomingEmail is received node We see the automatically created rule in the rule editor We add the action that finds the member by the from address and we modify the CREATE action to initialize the Correspondent attribute with the found member The resulting rule looks like this FIND Member WHERE IncomingEmail FromAddress CONTAINS Member EmailAddress CREATE ReceivedEmai
5. Loan Status Past We configure this process in the same fashion as we configured the Borrowltem process see 3 3 9 Aware IM will also automatically define the operation to invoke the process from the form of the Loan object 3 3 12 Reserve Item operation This operation is very similar to the Borrow Item operation see 3 3 9 The Reserve ltem operation will be invoked from the following screens 1 When a member is being edited and a user sees the form of the member 2 When an item is being viewed edited and a user sees the form of the item 3 When the Item query has been run and a user sees a list with one or more items Just like with the Borrowltem operation we will need to define two processes Reserveltem and Reserveltem2 The Reserveltem process will require the Member object as process input it will run the query to find an item and then will create the Reservation object properly initialized PICK FROM Item CREATE Reservation WITH Reservation Item Item Reservation Member Member The Reserveltem2 process will require the Item object as process input it will run the query to find a member and then will also create the Reservation object PICK FROM Member CREATE Reservation WITH Reservation Item Item Reservation Member Member Aware IM will automatically define operations that will invoke the Reserveltem process from the Member form and the
6. Type which is the reference to the ItemType object We start in the usual manner and define the name of the new attribute Type and we select ItemType as the type of the attribute Note that the objects that we have defined already appear in the list of attribute types thus we Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 14 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application can define a reference attribute by using the defined objects as an attribute type Now we need to define other properties of the reference attribute we tick the Value must be provided checkbox to indicate that an Item cannot live without an associated ItemType and we leave Multiple allowed checkbox un ticked to indicate that the Item object may refer only to one instance of the ItemType object Now we need to specify the type of the relationship between the Item object and the ItemType object we will explain later what the relationship type is for For now we will leave the relationship type as Peer Here we will also define a matching attribute in the ItemType object Once we define such an attribute by selecting the Create radio button and giving it a name the attribute with this name will be automatically created in the ItemType object This will create the relationship between the ItemType object and the Item object the ltemType object would know all Items that belong to it The beauty of this approach is that when we c
7. We can now create a few items and members borrow and reserve items search for members and items and perform all other operations that we have defined Note that all objects that we create during testing will be stored in a separate database which means that if we had any real operation data it would not be affected by the testing data 3 4 Fine tuning the Application Now that we have tested the core of our application and made sure that everything works as expected we can start fine tuning the application by adding some missing functionality improving user interface and paying more attention at how the information is presented to the user To continue working with the business space version after it has been put under test we need to lock it for editing Right click on the business space version node in the Elements Tree and select Lock for editing 3 4 1 Documents We will start our application improvements by adding a couple of documents to the configuration 3 4 1 1 Printable statement With this feature users will be able to invoke the operation that will display a PDF document listing loans reservations fees and payments of a particular member Users will then be able to print out this document Users should be able to invoke this operation while they are viewing editing the form of a particular member Before we can configure such an operation we need to configure a document This document will need to list loans reserva
8. Duplicate loan validation rule It is not allowed to reserve the item which has already been borrowed by the member We can check whether the item has been borrowed using the following condition EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan Member Reservation Member AND Loan Item Reservation Item AND Loan Status Current The entire rule therefore looks like this IF Reservation Status New AND EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan Member Reservation Member AND Loan Item Reservation Item AND Loan Status Current Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 27 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot reserve item that is on loan to the member Waiting reservation rule This is the rule that automatically moves the reservation into the Waiting state once all validations have been performed IF Reservation Status New Then Reservation Status Waiting The logic behind this rule is the same as the logic behind the Current loan rule in the Loan object see 3 2 3 We will need to make sure that the priority of this rule is lower than priorities of other rules 3 2 4 2 Rules of the Waiting state Reservation fee rule When a reservation is registered the member who made the reservation is charged the appropriate fee This means that when the reservation is moved into the Waiting state the Fee object
9. REPORT ERROR Item is available for borrowing No reservation necessary Item release validation rule An item may only be reserved if the item has been withdrawn while it was on loan IF Reservation Status New AND Reservation Item InternalStatus lt gt Released THEN REPORT ERROR Item is not released by the library for borrowing Member status validation rule An item may only be reserved by active members IF Reservation Status New AND Reservation Member Status lt gt Active THEN REPORT ERROR Non active members are not allowed to make reservations Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 26 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Duplicate reservation validation rule A member cannot place multiple reservations for an item We can check whether the member has already reserved the item by the following condition EXISTS Reservation WHERE Reservation Member ThisReservation Member AND Reservation Item ThisReservation Item AND Reservation Status Waiting OR Reservation Status Offered The entire rule therefore looks like this IF Reservation Status New AND EXISTS Reservation WHERE Reservation Member ThisReservation Member AND Reservation Item ThisReservation Item AND Reservation Status Waiting OR Reservation Status Offered THEN REPORT ERROR The item is already reserved by the member
10. Reserveltem2 process from the Item form Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 39 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We will also define the Reserve operation for the Item query to handle scenario 3 above 3 3 13 Cancel Reservation operation To cancel a reservation users would need to navigate to the corresponding reservation and then click on the Cancel button Users can navigate to the reservation either from the form of a member who made the reservation or from the form of the item this is similar to the Renew Loan operation see 3 3 10 To cancel a reservation the system would need to change the status of the reservation to Cancelled and the rest will be taken care by the business rules of the Reservation object see 3 2 4 In order to do this we would need to define the process called CancelReservation that requires the Reservation object as its input and which has the single action defined Reservation Status Cancelled We will also ask the user to confirm cancellation of the Reservation and check that he replied Yes before changing status of the reservation The whole process will look like so DISPLAY QUESTION Do you want to cancel the reservation If Question Reply Yes Then Reservation Status Cancelled 3 3 14 Register Fee operation Just like with Borrow Item 3 3 9 or Reserve Item 3 3 12 operations users will invo
11. business space version and expand its node in the tree you will see all configuration concepts available in Aware IM business objects processes queries etc We are currently interested in business objects Right click on the Business Objects node and select New from the context menu The working area will show the business objects editor Defining ItemType Object Let us start by defining the ItemType object First we need to specify the name of the business object we type in ItemType Then we need to define the attributes of the object When we click on the Add button located next to the Attributes panel we get the dialog for the new attribute We start defining the attribute by specifying its name Name and then selecting the type of the attribute Plain Text This attribute is mandatory and so we tick the Value must be provided checkbox We can also provide some typical values for users to choose from like Book CD Video etc We can specify them as values inside the Choices table We must also tick Other values allowed checkbox to indicate that a user may not only choose from the list of typical values but also type in values of her own We can now click on the OK button the new attribute appears in the list of attributes for the object see also the Adding Editing Attributes section in the Aware IM User Guide In a similar fashion we define ot
12. this attribute Reserved item available Now we will add the initial value for the Message attribute As the text of the initial value is quite large we will click on the Expand button and enter the text in the dialog that appears Dear lt lt Reservation Member FirstName gt gt lt lt Reservation Member LastName gt gt The item lt lt Reservation Item Title gt gt you reserved on lt lt Reservation ReservedOn dd MM yyyy gt gt is now available for you to borrow You have 7 days to borrow the item The reservation expires on lt lt Reservation ReservedOn 7 24 dd MM yyyy gt gt Regards The Library Note that we assume that the Reservation object that we refer to in the tags of this message is available in the context In a similar fashion we define the LoanOverdueEmail notification see the sample application located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation for the text of the message We also define the OutboundEmail notification without any initial values for the Subject and Message attributes this notification will represent a general e mail sent by an operator Add business rules Let us now add business rules that will send the notifications we have defined We will start with the reservation offer e mail Offered reservations are handled by the rules of the Reservation object see 3 2 4 We will add the Reservation offer e mail rule that will
13. 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 24 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application An attempt for loan renewal must be rejected if the library has made a decision to withdraw the borrowed item Therefore we check that the item status is still Released IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan Item InternalStatus lt gt Released AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot renew loan the item is requested back to library 3 2 3 3 Rules of the Past state Finally we need to add rules applicable to a loan in the Past state Return date rule This rule registers the return date of the loan when it has been closed IF Loan Status WAS CHANGED TO Past THEN Loan ReturnDate CURRENT DATE Renewal status validation rule An attempt to renew the loan in the Past state must be rejected IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan Status lt gt Current AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot renew non current Loan These are all the rules of the Loan object We can now enter these rules into Aware IM using either the Standard or Textual forms of the rule editor as described in 3 2 1 3 2 4 Reservation Object We will now define the rules of the Reservation object This object also has a distinct life cycle so let us define the life cycle first A reservation is created in the New state Just like the Loan object a reservation in this state is consid
14. A member should be able to reserve items when she is either looking at the results of the query that found some items or when she is viewing the details of a particular item The operation that reserves items starts the Reserveltem2 process see 3 3 12 This process runs the Member query to identify a member that reserves the item When the application is used by a particular member however we do not need to run this query as the member is already known this is the member using the application So we modify our process to consider this fact The process rules now look like this IF LoggedInSystemUser AccessLevel Member THEN CREATE Reservation WITH Reservation Item Item Reservation Member LoggediInMember ELSE PICK FROM Member CREATE Reservation WITH Reservation Item Item Reservation Member Member As you can see if currently logged in user has Member access level we create the reservation straight away without running the Member query LoggedIn prefix in front of the object name can be used to identify the current user of the application see also the Instance prefixes section in Aware IM User Guide Other operations For all other operations we just need to carefully go through all objects attributes processes queries and documents in the Member access level and specify the appropriate access restrictions For example as far as processes are concerned we need to allow ac
15. Configuration Tool button After the Configuration Tool starts it displays the tree with all elements of the configuration and the working area where you define the properties of the configuration elements see also the Overview of the Configuration Tool section in the Aware IM User Guide Configuration of the application is performed within a business space For our library application the business space is called Library You need to specify this name when you start the Control Panel for the first time or create a new business space by right clicking on the root node of the Elements Tree and selecting Create Inside the business space configuration elements of the system are contained in business space versions When a business space is initially created it contains one business space version which has some pre defined elements Configuration work usually begins with configuring business space specific elements in this version see also the Working with the Business Space Versions section in the Aware IM User Guide If you have run the sample application that comes with Aware IM the Library business space will have been created automatically by Aware IM Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 13 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application So we start our configuration work by creating business objects in the default business space version usually it is version 1 1 in the business space Select this
16. First of all we will make some changes to this default form section We select the Main form section in the Form Sections table and click on the Edit button We change the name of the form section from Main to Personal details and we only leave the following attributes in this form section MemberNumber FirstName LastName Address EmailAddress Gender DateOfBirth Status Then we click on the OK button and return to the Form dialog We now need to add another form section so we click on the Add button in the Form Sections table We enter the name of the new form section Payments and leave the following attributes in the form section Number FirstName LastName Loans and Reservations Note that we can use the same attributes in different form sections In a similar manner we create the form section called Payments with the following attributes MemberNumber FirstName LastName OutstandingCharges Fees and Payments We will add the last section Loan History a little later For now we click on the OK button on the Form dialog and save changes to the Member object We will now add the Loan History section Note that we want to show only current loans in the Current activity section and we want to show all loans in the Loan History section In fact we w
17. If you get this right everything else will be relatively straightforward You need to carefully look at the requirements and identify the main business elements that the system deals with business objects relationships between them and rules according to which these objects behave At this stage it is very important that you do not worry too much about how the system will look to the user and how the user will interact with the system So we start by identifying business objects and relationships between them For Clarity we will temporarily not consider some of the requirements we will come back to them later after we have configured the core of the system The requirements that we will not consider at this stage are the management of communication with library members 2 2 7 and the credit card payments 2 2 6 2 Some of the business objects are quite straightforward if we carefully study the requirements we can identify the following business objects Item Member Loan Reservation Fee Payment Let us take these objects as a starting point and see if there are any relationships between these objects One of the straightforward relationships is the relationship between Member and Loan a member can have multiple loans but a loan is always for some particular member So there is a multiple relationship between Member and Loan and a single relationship between Loan and Member Similarly there is a clear relationship between
18. PayPal operation Must be _xclick in our case We define the new business object called PayPalParameters with the attributes that have exactly the same names as the parameters above All attributes can be of the Plain Text type We specify the following initial values for the attributes Attribute Initial value Business The name of the PayPal account of our library Amount 1 item_code 0010 can be anything we like currency Code USD no shipping 1 Cmd _xclick Once we have defined the PayPalParameters object we need to define the service of the PayPal object Intelligent objects can expose services that we can request from rules We will define such a service for the PayPal object We open the PayPal object for editing and click on the Intelligence tab at the bottom of the editor s pane Then Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 70 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application we click on the Add button located in the Provides services table The Service dialog is displayed We enter the name of the service PayByCreditCard and select the PayPalParameters object as input for this service Then we click on the OK button and then save changes to the PayPal object 3 5 2 2 Changes to the Payment object When a member will be making payment by credit card our application will be creating an instance of the Payment object just like it does when the op
19. a sequence of actions that are executed one after the other The actions we need for the Borrow Item operation are these PICK FROM Item CREATE Loan WITH Loan Item Item Loan Member Member The first action will run the Item query that we have already defined see 3 3 5 Then it will display the results of the query to the user prompting her to pick one item from those displayed The second action will create the Loan object and initialize its reference attributes with the item that the user has picked at the previous step and the member instance which is assumed to be in the context of the process As we Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 36 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application said before everything else will be handled by the business rules of the Loan object that are executed when the loan is created Let us now define the process in the Configuration Tool Right click on the Processes node in the Elements Tree and select New from the pop up menu The process editor appears in the working area of the screen Enter the name of the new process Borrowltem Our process expects that some instance of the Member object is already in the context when the process starts this is the member being viewed edited so we must specify Member as process input We select Member from the list of available objects and click on the right arrow button to move the Member object to the list of
20. and members will not be able to use the system We will define the process that will create the instance of the SystemSettings object and let the user specify the values for this instance and we will configure the application to use this process on startup The new process will have the following actions DISPLAY MESSAGE Library database has not been initialized The system will now ask you to provide the initial data ENTER NEW SystemSettings CREATE PayPal DISPLAY MESSAGE Library system has been successfully initialized The first action will notify the user about the initialization process the second one will let the user enter the values of the SystemSettings object the third action will create the instance of the PayPal object so that members can make credit card payments see 3 5 2 and the last action informs the user about the successful initialization The only problem is that we do not want this process to run if the application has already been initialized Therefore we define the wrapper process that checks the existence of the SystemSettings object IF NOT EXISTS SystemSettings THEN Initialize2 Our first process will be called Initialize2 and the second process will be called Initialize Now we only need to specify that the application should use the Initialize process at start up To do this we open the Administrator visual perspective for editing Aware IM displays the layout of
21. and not allow anyone to change it Therefore we open the Member object for editing and set the initial value of AccessLevel attribute to Member Viewing changing own details We will define access level restrictions that will allow viewing changing member s own details but not details of other members in the Member access level Let us open this access level for editing In the editor pane click on the Business object node in the list on your left The right pane will show the list of all business objects Click on the Restrictions apply as per table below radio button at the top of the pane Click on the cell located at the intersection of Member row and Access column Select the Creator modify only from the drop down list We have thus defined the access level for the Member business object that will make sure that a member will only be able to see change her own details but not details of other members she will also not be able to create instances of the Member object Let us now click on the Access button in the cell at the intersection of the Member row and Attributes column The dialog that defines access to the attributes of the Member object appears Select the Restrictions apply as per table below radio button at the top of the dialog We need a member to be able to view and change the following attributes FirstName LastName Address EmailAd
22. can define the attribute of the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 54 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Shortcut type in the Loan object called for example ItemTitle that will point to the Title attribute of the referred Item object To do this open the Loan object for editing and define the new attribute called ItemTitle Its type should be Shortcut and the shortcut path should be Item Title the attribute will point to the Title attribute through the reference attribute of the Loan object Item Now we can change the presentation of the Loans attribute in the Member object to show Status ItemTitle and DueDate attributes To do this open the Member object for editing and start editing the Loans attribute Click on the Presentation button on the Attribute dialog The Reference Presentation dialog will be displayed Select the above attributes from the list of available attributes and click on the right arrow button to move them to the list of attributes to be displayed We will also sort loans in the reference table by status and due date so we set the corresponding sorting criteria in the Sorting table We will now click on the OK button on the Presentation dialog click on the OK button on the Attribute dialog and save the changes to the Member object Similar changes should be made not only to the Loans attribu
23. found instance users would click on the Edit button next to the member entry to bring up the member form which they can edit and save We have already defined the operation that will find a particular member s We need to add the operation that will bring up the form of the member once the system displays a list of members that match the results of the search To define such an operation we need to edit the Member query Right click on the node representing the Member query in the Elements Tree and select Edit from the pop up menu In the query editor click on the Details button in the Display Results section to display a dialog and then click on the Add button next to the Operations table In the dialog that appears enter the name of the operation Edit select the type of the operation Edit and click on the OK button The new operation appears in the list of operations Once we are here we will also define the Delete operation so that the user will be able to delete the selected member We click on the Add button again define the operation with the name Delete of the Delete Object We click on the OK button to close the dialog and then on the Save button on the query editor to save the Member query 3 3 4 Register new item operation This operation is very similar to the Register new member operation see 3 3 1 In the Administrator visual perspe
24. item is currently on loan a member can make a reservation for the item 2 The reservation fee 2 00 and is charged to the member at the time the reservation is made The fee is not refundable 3 A member cannot reserve an item that is currently on loan to the member 4 Once the reserved item is returned to the library a The member who reserved the item is notified by e mail if the address is available or by ordinary letter otherwise The e mail letter contains the details of the reservation including the title and the reservation expiry date b A reservation remains open until the reserving member borrows the item or 7 days elapses in which case the reservation expires c If a reservation expires the item becomes available for borrowing to the next reserving member who is notified accordingly or to anyone if there are no more reservations Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 6 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 5 6 Fe If there is more than one reservation such reservations are processed in the order they are made A reservation can be cancelled by a members request All reservations regardless of their status are kept for reference purposes 2 2 5 Fees The library can charge its members fees for certain services or in certain events There are several predefined types of services events When a fee is charged the system shall record the fee amount date and the description of what
25. layout of this report includes several sub report elements take a look at the final layout of the document in the sample configuration Note that this report assumes that there is a particular instance of the Member object in the context that s why it refers to the attributes of the Member object inside its tags It is also worth drawing your attention to the queries that identify the source of data for sub report elements If we look for example at the sub report element that prints out Member payment report we will see that the query for the sub report element looks like this FIND Payment WHERE Payment IN Member Payments ORDER BY Payment AppliedOn This query finds all payments of the member object that is assumed to be in the context Note also that the report has no Details section this is because the report itself does not display any lists lists are shown inside the sub reports Now that we have finally defined all our documents we can define the operation that will display the master report The operation will be invoked from the form of the Member object so we open the Member object for editing select the Main form and click on the Add button in the Operations panel of the form dialog We define an operation called Printable version of the Create Document type and select the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 45 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application name o
26. must be created The fact that the reservation has been moved into the Waiting state can be checked by the following condition Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Waiting Note that here we are not checking that the reservation state is equal to Waiting because in this case the fee would be charged every time there was a change to the reservation object and the object was in the Waiting state which can happen if for example some attribute of the Reservation object was changed this would trigger the execution of rules The entire rule looks like so IF Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Waiting THEN CREATE Fee WITH Fee Member Reservation Member Fee Amount 2 00 Fee Description Reservation fee for lt lt Reservation Item Title gt gt Offered reservation rule This is the rule that moves the reservation from the Waiting state into the Offered state provided that the reservation is first on the queue and the item became available We can check that the reservation is first on the queue by comparing it with the CurrentReservation in the reserved item Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 28 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Reservation Reservation Item CurrentReservation We can check that the item has been returned by checking the list of loans of the item and verifying that there are no Current loans any more NOT EXISTS Loan WHERE Lo
27. objects selected as process input We can now define the actions of the process We click on the Textual rules tab located at the bottom of the editor and enter the above actions using the familiar rule editor see 3 2 1 We can now click on the Create button on the editor panel to save changes The new process will appear in the Elements Tree Now we need to define the operation that will start the Borrowltem process from the form of the Member object To do this open the Member object for editing and select the Main form in the Forms table of the object editor The Main form is the form that Aware IM creates automatically when a new object is defined see also the Business Object Forms section in the Aware IM User Guide Click on the Edit button in the Forms table to invoke the Business Object Form dialog Click on the Menu button in the top right corner of the dialog and then select the Form Menu command Then select the Add Operation button In the operation dialog specify the name of the operation New Loan select its type Start Process and select the Borrowltem process from the list of processes Then click OK and save the changes in the Member object At runtime Aware IM will automatically create a button for the user to click on to invoke the process Note that Aware IM will automatically put the instance of the Member object being viewed edited into the context and
28. particular item or member The Borrow item operation will thus be invoked from the following screens 1 When a member is being edited and a user sees the form of the member 2 When an item is being viewed edited and a user sees the form of the item 3 When the Item query has been run and a user sees a list with one or more items Let us look at each of these scenarios 3 3 9 1 Invoking the Borrow Item operation from the Member form In this scenario users needs to click some button starting the Borrow Item operation while they are working with the form of a member The system already knows the member who wants to borrow this is the member being viewed edited but it needs to ask the user to identify the item to be borrowed Once the user identifies the item the system needs to create an instance of the Loan object In fact this is all the system has to do since after the Loan has been created the business rules of the Loan will take over they will validate the loan and move it to the Current state if it is valid So the system needs to perform two steps ask the user to identify an item and create an instance of the Loan object These steps can only be performed by rule actions which means that we have to create a process see also the Processes as Links between the Business Logic and the User Interface and Adding Editing Processes section in the Aware IM User Guide A process usually defines
29. send the ReservationOfferEmail to a member when the state of the reservation changes to Offered IF Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Offered AND Reservation Member EmailAddress IS DEFINED THEN Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 64 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application SEND ReservationOfferEmail TO Reservation Member CREATE OutgoingEmail WITH OutgoingEmail Message ReservationOfferEmail Message OutgoingEmail Correspondent Reservation Member OutgoingEmail Subject ReservationOfferEmail Subject OutgoingEmail State Sent The CREATE action in the rule above creates the OutgoingEmail object so that the e mail is registered in the system Note that the Reservation object that the ReservationOfferEmail expects in the context is in the context since this is the object the rules of which are being executed Now we need to add a business rule to the Loan object that will send the LoanOverdueEmail notification to the member see 3 2 3 IF Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn WAS CHANGED AND Loan Member EmailAddress IS DEFINED THEN SEND LoanOverdueEmail TO Loan Member CREATE OutgoingEmail WITH OutgoingEmail Text LoanOverdueEmail Message OutgoingEmail Correspondent Loan Member OutgoingEmail Subject LoanOverdueEmail Subject OutgoingEmail State Sent 3 5 1 4 Sending letters If a member does not have e mail which means that there is no value for the Emai
30. the fee is for Once the fee is charged it increases the outstanding fees of the member by the fee amount Library management can remove a fee from the member in which case the outstanding fee amount should be decreased by the fee amount 2 2 6 Payments Amember can pay all or part of the outstanding fees A member can pay online to the account of the Library by credit card The system shall record the date and amount of the online payment A member can also pay by other non electronic means such as cheque money order etc It shall be possible to make an electronic record of the non electronic payment in the system registering the amount of payment the date of payment and the description of what the payment is for Once a payment is made the outstanding fees are decreased by the payment amount When a payment is made both online or offline a printed summary of the payment shall be produced for the member showing the following e Member name e Date e Amount e Updated outstanding fees 2 2 7 Communication with members 1 It shall be possible to record and store electronically the details of all forms of relevant communication between the library and its staff with library members In particular E mails to members Letters to members E mails from members Faxes to members Faxes from members Results of phone calls e Results of discussions The results of communication with a member shall be easily acc
31. the main page Click on the General tab and tick the Run initialization process checkbox and select the name of the process Initialize Click on the Save button to save changes to the visual perspective We have now finished the configuration of our library application We can now test the application as described in 3 3 17 and start the operation 3 6 Operating the final system If you want to start the library application server on the same machine that you are performing the configuration on you need to publish the business space version that you have configured To do this right click on the node representing the business space version in the Elements Tree and select Publish in the pop up menu Once Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 74 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application the business space version has been published its state will change to CURRENT which indicates that the application can be used in operation To start operating the system users will need to point their browsers to the following URL http serverName 8080 AwarelM logon htm where serverName is the name of the machine where Aware IM Server or Aware IM Control Panel is running This name can be localhost if you are running it on one machine only or it can be the network name of your server if you are running the system only within your local area network or it can be the DNS name or IP ad
32. the only reference we can define at this stage the attribute with the name Loans of the type Loan This will be the attribute where Multiple allowed is checked since a member may have multiple loans We also create the matching attribute on the Loan object called Member After we create the Member object we go back to the Loan object and change its automatically created Member attribute to turn off the Multiple allowed flag since a loan can refer only to one member Defining Other Objects In a similar fashion we define other objects e Reservation with two references to Member multiple not allowed matching attribute in Member Reservations and Item multiple not allowed matching attribute in Item Reservation e Fee and Payment with a reference to its Member object multiple not allowed matching attributes in Member Fees and Payments respectively For Fee Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 16 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application and Payment objects we will choose to make their relationship with the Member object as a relationship of an owner parent and owned by child rather than peer The peer relationship indicates that the instances of two objects can exist independently of each other whereas the Owner of relationships indicates that the instances of the referred object may not exist without the instance of it
33. types we have already defined the Item object so it is available in the list of attribute types We leave the Multiple allowed checkbox un ticked as the loan refers only to one item We also select the Create radio button and enter Loans as the name of the attribute in the Item object that will be automatically created to match our Item attribute in the Loan object Now we click on the Create button to create the Loan object Note that we did not define the reference to the Member object yet because we have not defined the Member object yet We can now go back to the Item object and see that the Loans attribute has been automatically created in this object to edit the existing object we right click on the object s node in the Elements Tree and select Edit from the pop up menu Let us have a look at this attribute We select it in the attributes panel and click on the Edit button We can see that the attribute was created with Multiple allowed checked this is what we want in this case since the Item object can refer to multiple loans If this wasn t the case we could change the value of Multiple allowed checkbox We can also see that the matching attribute for the Loans attribute is Item the attribute that we have just created in the Loan object Defining Member Object Now we can define the Member object We define all simple attributes as usual and we also define
34. will be charged Therefore we need to define another process called ChargeFee2 that does not require any input and has the following actions PICK FROM Member ChargeFee The first action will display the results of the Member query see 3 3 2 The second action calls the ChargeFee process that we have already defined Note that Aware IM will automatically use the member that the user picks at the previous step as input for the ChargeFee process We can now define the Member folder menu item in the visual perspective and underneath it define the new menu item called Charge fee of the Start process type that starts the ChargeFee2 process 3 3 15 Register Payment operation This operation is very similar to the Register Fee operation see 3 3 14 Users will also invoke this operation both from the system menu and from the form of the Member object We will also need to define two processes the RegisterPayment process and the RegisterPayment2 process The RegisterPayment process requires the Member object as its input and has the following action ENTER NEW Payment WITH Payment Member Member The RegisterPayment2 process does not require any input and has the following actions PICK FROM Item RegisterPayment 3 3 16 Expiring Reservations and Processing Overdue Loans We have now basically defined all the main operations that a user will perform in
35. will use it as process input when the operation is invoked 3 3 9 2 Invoking the Borrow Item operation from the Item form This scenario is quite similar to the previous one In this scenario users need to click a button starting the Borrow Item operation while they are working with the form of an item The system already knows the item that is to be borrowed this is the item being viewed edited but it needs to ask the user to identify the member who borrows the item Once the user identifies the member the system needs to create an instance of the Loan object Just like in the previous scenario we create a process called Borrowltem2 with the Item object as its input and the following actions PICK FROM Member CREATE Loan WITH Loan Item Item Loan Member Member Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 37 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We configure this process in a very similar fashion to the Borrowltem process Then we define an operation that starts the Borrowltem2 process from the form of the Item object in much the same way we did it for the form of the Member object 3 3 9 3 Invoking the Borrow Item operation from query results In this scenario we assume that a user has run the Item query and is looking at the screen that shows one or more items We want the user to be able to click on the Borrow item button located next to the item if the user wants to create a loa
36. Aware IM Version 6 0 Configuration Case Study Library Application aWareim Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION sccccecccctctercsstccssaccceteschasedssaads dete toredevanctacebeteteteinesiatesacasedeieasntesice 4 LIBRARY APPLICATION bi iscecvcacecccvasers cavaacveccveievaceveicvaacvetecs covandveaavendvecevtacvenevets 4 21 e EE 4 2 2 REQUIREMENTS Ce 4 2 2 1 e EE 5 Eeer 5 Zeid sBOMOWING n E 6 224 PROSCIVING EE 6 LID EE 7 E E E Meel 7 2 2 7 Communication with members aseeee0a0aaanannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnrnnnnnnnnnnnnrrnnnnnnn 7 2 2 8 Information access and activity restrictions cccccesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeesseeees 8 2 2 9 internet access to library information cccccccceeeeeeetteeeeeeeeeeteeeeennaeeees 8 CONFIGURATION OF THE LIBRARY APPLICATION eeeeeeeeees 8 3 1 BUSINESS OBJECTS AND HELATIONSHIPS ee eene eneen een ennnnennnn nen 9 3 1 1 Attributes of Ee 11 3 1 2 Configuration of Business OUDiecls 13 39 27 BUSINESS RULES EE 17 32 1 MONT ODOCK E 18 3 2 2 Member Eenheete ele 19 329 WORN ODOC EE 20 Ge Reservation ODjeCt ee 25 3 2 5 TPAVIMON le E 31 E ER Te EE EN 3 3 1 Register new member operation 2 cccccccccssncessssscsseeecesnseeaesssecseess 32 3 3 2 Find member operation ccccccccsssccssecccceeecennnecaassesceeeeeensnseaanseseseees 33 3 3 3 Change member details opera
37. BorrowNumber MaxLoanPeriod and MaxRenewals as the attributes that will be displayed and we sort the results by Name in ascending order We also add Edit and Delete operations to the query Once the query has been defined we add a new item in the visual perspective under the Find item called Item types of the Run Query type that runs the newly defined All item types query Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 35 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 3 9 Borrow item operation For the Borrow Item operation users would need to specify the item that is to be borrowed and the member who borrows the item One possibility is to invoke this operation from the system menu so that when users select this operation the system then asks to identify the member and then the item or the other way around However we prefer not to have this operation in the system menu because most of the time users will already have items or members on their screens as a result of some other operation with the system So the Borrow Item operation will be performed when either some item or some member has been already found by the system in Aware IM terminology an item or a member is said to be in the context For example a user might have run a query that found some items and the user is looking at the screen that lists those items or the user might be working with the form of a
38. Letter Text See document OutgoingLetter LetterDocument Reservation offer letter The initialization of the LetterDocument attribute in the above rule is especially interesting This attribute of the Document type is initialized with the name of the document template Aware IM will automatically replace the contents of the tags used in the template with values of attributes of the OutgoingLetter object and store the resulting document in the LetterDocument attribute see also the Document Generation section in the Aware IM User Guide We also need to add the Reminder letter business rule to the Loan object see 3 2 3 EE Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn WAS CHANGED AND Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 66 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Loan Member EmailAddress IS UNDEFINED THEN CREATE OutgoingLetter WITH OutgoingLetter Subject Item overdue OutgoingLetter Correspondent Loan Member OutgoingLetter Text S document OutgoingLetter LetterDocument Loan overdue letter Finally we need to make sure that when the operator prepares a letter to a member the letter is created according to the format of the Letter to member template When the operator prepares the letter the system will be creating an instance of the OutgoingLetter object The operator will be entering the text of the letter in the
39. Loan and Item a Loan knows which item has been borrowed an Item knows which loan is registered against it if any or which loans have been registered in the past So there is a single relationship between Loan and Item and a multiple relationship between Item and Loan Is there a relationship between Item and Member Yes there is since an item should know which member has borrowed it or which members have borrowed it in the past However the Item object already has the relationship with the Loan object and the Loan object with the Member object so we already have a relationship between the Item and Member objects through the Loan object Therefore the relationship Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 9 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application between Item and Member is indirect In our exercise of identifying relationships we should only focus on direct relationships Looking at other objects we can conclude that there are the following direct relationships e Item object is related to o Loan an Item can have multiple Loans one current and several past o Reservation an Item can have multiple Reservations both current and past e Member object is related to o Loan a Member can have multiple Loans both current and past o Reservation a Member can have multiple Reservations both current and past o Fee these are Fees the Member have been charged both current and past o Payment these
40. TION FOR ONE VIEW Member USING Member details NOEDIT Note that NOEDIT keyword indicates that the values on the form can only be viewed not changed Note also that just like with the Member Edit operation we will display the form immediately if only one member has been found Now we only need to define the menu item invoking the operation in both the Administrator and Member visual perspectives We define the View details menu item under the Member item in the Administrator perspective and the Loans and reservations menu item in the Member perspective 3 5 Implementing other Requirements As the final step in our configuration we will have a look at the requirements that we have left out initially 3 5 1 Managing Communication with Members The first of the remaining requirements is that our application has to manage communication with members It has to automatically send offer e mails or letters to members when the item they have reserved becomes available Also the system has to be able to register all other forms of the communication with members phone calls discussions faxes etc see 2 2 7 We start as usual by defining additional business objects and rules The business objects that we identify are as follows e OutgoingLetter e OutgoingEmail e ContactNote The meaning of the first two objects is obvious The third object aims to capture other forms of communication w
41. Text attribute of the OutgoingLetter object The entered text will be transferred to the template if you look at the template you will see the lt lt OutgoingLetter Text gt gt as the text of the letter We only need to make sure that the LetterDocument attribute of the OutgoingLetter object is set to the name of the template In fact we can do this by setting the initial value of this attribute to the name of the Letter to member template So all we have to do is set the initial value of the LetterDocument attribute to Letter to member template 3 5 1 5 Handling incoming e mails We can get our application to automatically receive and register incoming e mails that arrive to a certain e mail address our library will advise members to send their e mails to this address To do this right click on the node representing the business space version in the Elements Tree and select Incoming Emails from the pop up menu The Incoming e mails dialog will be displayed Select the Process incoming e mails radio button select the User values from SystemSettings object radio button we will look at this object in 3 5 3 1 and click on the OK button The Automatic Elements dialog will be displayed Tick the I want to automatically register all incoming e mails checkbox and click on the OK button If we now look at the Elements Tree we will see that the Configuration Tool automatically added the
42. The new group appears in the Elements Tree Defining Reference to a Group The last step is to define the reference to the Member object in all members of the Communication group and define the matching reference to the Communication group in the Member object We can do this by going to the Member object and adding the Communication attribute Note that existing business object groups appear in the list of available attribute types just as individual business objects So we select the Communication group as the attribute type specify the name of the attribute Communication tick Multiple allowed member can have multiple communications specify the relationship type as Owner of communications cannot exist without the member they belong to and create the matching attribute with the name Correspondent Now we can create the attribute and save the changes to the object by clicking on the Save button on the object editor panel Note that since the Communication attribute in the Member object refers to a group the system automatically creates matching attribute in all members of the group If we open each member of the Communication group now we will see the Correspondent attribute referring to the Member object The only problem is that the system automatically created the attribute as Multiple allowed so we need to un tick this flag 3 5 1 2 Business rules We now need to define business rules
43. ach of them having a particular logical meaning For example a loan can be in Current or Past states For objects with a well defined life cycle most business rules identify which transitions from one state to the other are allowed and what happens with each transition Not all objects need to go through a sequence of states or even have states for this matter In our application we have both types of objects objects with a life cycle Loan Reservation and objects without it Member Item ItemType S Actually we could make the Member object a parent of not only fees and payments but also loans and reservations However with loans and reservations the situation is slightly more complicated because you could say that they are children not only of the Member object but also of the Item object We could create two parents for these objects for simplicity though we will make all these objects independent for now Although such objects as Member and Item have states most of the time these objects are in one state Active for Member and Released for Item so effectively we can say that they do not have a life cycle Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 17 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 2 1 Item Object We have defined two calculated attributes for the Item object Available and CurrentReservation see Calculated Attributes section above so we need to define tw
44. al In the Presentation dialog we select the Generate drop down option rather than the usual Generate table of items Highlighting overdue loans Another improvement that we will make to the presentation of loans on the form of the Member object is highlighting of overdue loans In the table of loans fora member entries representing overdue loans will be displayed in red whereas all other loans will be displayed in the default color To achieve this we will open the Loans attribute of the Member object for editing and as usual click on the Presentation button to display the Presentation dialog On this dialog we will click Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 55 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application on the Item Rules button This button will show the Item Rules dialog that allows us to specify the conditions under which a particular entry will be highlighted An entry representing a loan should be highlighted if the loan is current and its due date is in the past Loan Status Current AND Loan DueDate lt CURRENT DATE We need to enter these conditions into the table displayed by the dialog Each condition is specified in its column The header of each column must indicate the value of the attribute being checked so we will have two columns one for Loan Status and one for Loan DueDate Click on the cell directly underneath the Column 1 header darker gree
45. an IN Reservation Item Loans AND Loan Status Current The entire rule can therefore be written like this IF Reservation Status Waiting AND Reservation Reservation Item CurrentReservation AND NOT EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan IN Reservation Item Loans AND Loan Status Current THEN Reservation Status Offered Note that we do not have to capture the precise moment when the item has been returned in the rule the system will ensure that our rule is triggered when this happens our rule will be executed and the state of the reservation will be changed After this the rule will not be invoked again because the state of the reservation will no longer be Waiting 3 2 4 3 Rules of the Offered state Item offered on rule This rule registers the value of the OfferedOn attribute TE Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Offered Then Reservation ItemOfferedOn CURRENT DATE Here we capture the exact moment when the state of the reservation changes If we just checked for equality the date would be reset to the new current date every time the reservation object in the Offered state changes Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 29 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Converted reservation rule This rule moves the reservation into the Converted state once the member has taken up the offer We check that the member has taken up the loan by t
46. ant to show current loans by default in all forms of the Member object except the Loan History section of the Editing form To specify that current loans should be shown by default in all forms of the Member object we open the Loans attribute of the Member object for editing and click on the Presentation button Aware IM will display the Presentation dialog see also the Adding Editing Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 52 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Attributes section in the Aware IM User Guide On this dialog we tick the Filter check box select the Custom query radio button and click on the Settings button We specify the single condition for the query Loan Status Current Now we will open the Editing form of the Member object and add the new form section Loan History We select the single attribute Loans to be present on this form section We also want to override the default presentation of this attribute that shows only current loans to show all loans of a member In order to do this we select the Loans attribute on the layout of the form section and click on the Edit attribute Layout Edit dialog will be displayed We click on the Presentation button to bring up the Presentation dialog for this attribute of the form section We un tick the Filter items checkbox on this dialog to make sure that all loa
47. applicable to the new objects OutgoingEmail object There are a number of calculated attributes defined for this object so we need to calculate values of these attributes The Sent on rule calculates the value of the SentOn attribute IF OutgoingEmail State WAS CHANGED TO Sent THEN OutgoingEmail SentOn CURRENT TIMESTAMP We also need to calculate the SentToAddress attribute so we define the Destination address rule IF OutgoingEmail State WAS CHANGED TO Sent THEN OutgoingEmail SentToAddress OutgoingEmail Correspondent EmailAddress 1 Note that we could create the relationship between the Communication group and the Member object from any of the members of the Communication group by defining the Correspondent attribute referring to the Member there and creating the matching attribute on the Member object Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 62 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Once e mail has been sent we shouldn t allow anyone to change the SentToAddress so we need to protect this attribute IF OutgoingEmail State Sent THEN PROTECT OutgoingEmail SentToAddress FROM ALL OutgoingLetter object We only have one rule that calculates the SentOn attribute IF OutgoingLetter State WAS CHANGED TO Sent THEN OutgoingLetter SentOn CURRENT TIMESTAMP 3 5 1 3 Sending outgoing e mails According to the requirements t
48. are Payments that the Member has made e Loan object is related to o Member this is the single Member that borrowed an item o Item this is the single Item borrowed e Reservation object is related to o Member this is the single Member who made the Reservation o Item this is the single Item that has been reserved e Fee object is related to o Member this is the single Member who was charged e Payment object is related to o Member this is the single Member who made the payment The above business objects and relationships are relatively obvious Another business object is slightly harder to identify If we look at the requirements in section 2 2 1 we will notice that items can be of different types What is the type of the item It is clearly something that belongs entirely to the item so it could be the attribute of the Item object However if we look at the table in 2 2 1 6 we will notice that there is some extra information associated with the item type i e maximum number of loans loan period and maximum number of renewals Where does this information belong If item type were an attribute of the Item object then this information would have to belong to the Item object as well In this case every instance of the Item object would store the values of maximum number of loans etc This is very impractical since according to the requirement in 2 2 3 2 every now and then the library manager needs to change this information If this info
49. ated LetterDocument document the actual letter References e Correspondent single reference to a Member object to whom the letter was sent ContactNote Object e Subject text e Type text type of the contact Phone Call Discussion Fax etc e Notes text description of the contact e CreatedOn timestamp the date and time the record about a contact was made calculated e ContactTime timestamp the date and time contact with the member took place e Attachment document attachment if any References e Correspondent single reference to a Member object with whom there was a contact 3 5 1 1 Business Object Groups In the previous section we did not focus on the relationship between Member and OutgoingLetter Member and OutgoingEmail Member and ContactNote Should the Member object have a relationship with the OutgoingLetter OutgoingEmail and ContactNote objects Yes it should because a member should know all the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 60 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application communication that took place with her So in principle the Member object could have a relationship with each of the above objects independently However if we look carefully at OutgoingLetter OutgoingEmail and ContactNote objects we will notice that they all have a lot of things in common From the Member object s perspective these are all different types of communication with the Member M
50. ations and credit card payments In the following sections we will show how to design and configure such a system using Aware IM Note that the complete configuration of the library system can be found in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation You can use this configuration as reference when reading this document First we will list the requirements to the Library System so that we know exactly what system we are going to build 2 2 Requirements This section states from the management point of view what the Library System should be able to do Note that the requirements stated here are in no way affected Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 4 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application by the subsequent configuration details and are not adjusted to the features and capabilities of Aware IM 2 2 1 Items 1 Library item or simply item is a book compact disk video tape or any other resource that library members can borrow 2 An item has a title and author s 3 Each item shall have a code a short alphanumeric label uniquely identifying the item in the library 4 It shall be possible to define an additional description of an item if required 5 An item is kept in one of the well known locations usually inside a library but can be outside as well From time to time some or all of items can be moved from one location to another 6 An item can be of the types detailed in the table below Each t
51. aybe OutgoingLetter OutgoingEmail and ContactNote should be represented by a single object called for example Communication where the type of communication is an attribute just like it is in the ContactNote object This is certainly possible However we should notice that even though there are a lot of things that are common to all these objects there are certain things that are specific to a particular object For example an e mail may have CC and BCC attributes not relevant to other objects the state of the received e mail can be Read and Unread whereas the state of the outgoing letter or e mail can be Sent and Unsent and so on In other words all these objects are quite different semantically Aware IM solution to this commonality problem is business object groups see also the Business Object Groups section in the Aware IM User Guide By making business objects members of a business object group we recognize the fact that business objects are sufficiently different so the existence of them as separate objects is justified yet there is a lot of commonality between them this commonality is above all manifested by the existence of attributes of the same name and of the same type So we need to introduce a business object group called Communication and make OutgoingLetter OutgoingEmail and ContactNote objects members of this group Once we introduce the Communication group the Member o
52. bject can be related to this group only rather than to each individual member of this group independently To summarize we have introduced a number of new business objects with a relationship to the Member object and a new business object group Communication with a relationship between the Member object and the Communication group We can now configure the OutgoingLetter OutgoingEmail and ContactNote objects see 3 1 2 Note that at this stage we define only simple attributes of these objects without defining a reference to its Member object The reason is that the matching attribute on the Member object must refer to a group and we do not have the group yet Defining Business Object Group Now it is time to define the Communication business object group We right click on the Business Object Groups node in the Elements Tree and select New in the pop up menu the editor of the business object groups appears in the working area We specify the name of the new group Communication Then we select the OutgoingLetter object from the panel containing available objects and click on the right arrow button to move it to a panel containing the group members Then we do Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 61 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application the same thing with the OutgoingEmail and ContactNote objects Our group is ready now and we click on the Create button on the editor panel
53. blank report or create a report from template We can make our life easier if we let Aware IM create the initial layout for us So we select the Create from template radio button enter the title of the report Payments select the object the instances of which will be iterated Payment and select the attributes that will be displayed Description Amount and AppliedOn When we click on the OK button the Configuration Tool opens the Report Designer showing the automatically created initial layout of our document Report Designer is described in detail in the Working with Report Presentation Designer section of the Aware IM User Guide and we will not be going through it in detail here You can have a look at the final document in the sample configuration of the Library application located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation Once we are happy with the layout of the document we click on the Save and Close button of the Report Designer and then click on the Create button on the documents editor panel The new document appears in the list of documents in the Elements Tree In a similar fashion we can define other documents that will be used as sub reports Member loans to display Loan objects Member fees to display Fee objects and Member reservations to display Reservation objects Now we can define the master report called Member details The
54. cations are not stored in the system they just represent a piece of information that is sent around or exchanged So there is a difference between the OutgoingEmail object which registers all e mails sent to members and e mail notification which represents the information sent to members If we did not want to register e mails we would not need the OutgoingEmail object yet we would still need the email notification We will define the following notifications 1 A notification representing an e mail that is sent when a reservation is offered Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 63 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 2 A notification representing an e mail that is sent to remind a member about overdue loan 3 A notification representing any other e mail that may be sent to a member by an operator at any time Let us define the first notification To do this right click on the Notifications node in the Elements Tree and select Add Outgoing Email Notification from the pop up menu Aware IM will automatically create a new notification with the attributes required for the notification to be an e mail The editor for this notification will appear in the working area of the screen We will change the name of the notification from OutgoingEmail to ReservationOfferEmail and then select the Subject attribute and click on the Edit button We will enter the following text as the initial value for
55. cess Let us think through the scenarios of a member interaction with the system A member should be able to do the following Log into the system using her own credentials View change her own details but not details of other members Search for library items but not change details of these items Reserve an item or cancel reservation Renew her loan Make credit card payment we will look at this one in 3 5 2 All other operations should be disallowed for a member We will look at each of these operations Before we do this we need to configure the access level for members working with the application see also the Access Control section in the Aware IM User Manual Aware IM automatically creates the Administrator access level which allows all operations by default and the Guest access level which disallows all operations by default You can also define your own access levels We will define the Member access level To do this right click on the Access Levels node in the Elements Tree and select New from the pop up menu The editor of the access levels appears in the working area of the screen Enter the name of the access level Member and click on the Create button The new access level appears in the Elements Tree We will edit this access level as we go through the operations of a member Member login Instances of the Member object will be created either by the operator see 3 3 1 or by gu
56. cess to the following processes Reserveltem Reserveltem2 CancelReservation and RenewLoan All other processes should be made unavailable You can check all access restrictions of the Member access level in the sample configuration of the application located in the samples directory of the Aware IM installation Visual perspective for Members We now need to define a menu that will be specific to members only The menu will have only one level and contain the following operations My details Search library Home page The type of the My details operation should be Change login details The operation of this type will automatically show the form of the current user and allow editing the details The type of the Search library operation is Run Query that runs the Item query Home page operation is of the Home page type it shows the starting page of the application Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 49 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Now we need to create a new visual perspective called Member and define the menu as described above for this visual perspective See 3 3 1 To make sure that this visual perspective is used by the system when members log in we tick the Will be used when user logs in checkbox in the editor of visual perspectives click on the Access Levels button and specify the Me
57. ckbox to indicate that the form will not be used by the system when the object is being created We click on the OK button to save the changes to the form and click on the Add button in the Forms table to create a new form In the Form dialog that appears we enter the name of the new form Entry and member registration this form will be also be used when guests register themselves as library members see 3 4 2 2 and we tick the System will automatically use this form for checkbox and then underneath it we also tick the Creation of business object and New user registration checkboxes Then we select Main in the table of form sections and click on the Edit button The Form Section dialog appears In this dialog we can specify which attributes will be shown on the form and in which order We delete unnecessary attributes and only leave the following attributes FirstName LastName Gender DateOfBirth Address EmailAddress LoginName Password We use arrow buttons to arrange the remaining attributes in the above order Then we click on the OK button on the Form Section dialog on the Form dialog and click on the Save button in the object editor to save changes Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 51 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application to the Member object Now the system will automatically use the n
58. ctive we define a new menu item under the New folder called Item The type of this menu item should also be Create Object and we should select the Item object as the object to be created 3 3 5 Find item operation This operation is similar to the Find member operation see 3 3 2 We could define the Item query that would find an item by author title and code In this case however we will give different categories of users different abilities to perform a Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 34 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application search on items Operators will have the ability to search by any attribute of the Item object using the form of the Item object If an operator enters any information in any field on the form the system will perform a search based on the entered information only ignoring any blank fields For more details on how this works see the Searching for Data using Forms section in the Aware IM User Guide To give operators the ability to perform the form based search we will configure a query called Item using form When adding this query we will tick the Using form checkbox on the query editor This will indicate that the query will not have any conditions all conditions will be determined at run time when a user fills in the query form We will also define the Item query that will search items by author title and cod
59. ctly access library resources subject to the restrictions for guests 3 Configuration of the Library Application This section will show you how to configure the library application in Aware IM in a sequence of relatively simple and straightforward steps These steps are described in detail in the Configuration Guidelines section in the Aware IM User Guide However the steps and the order in which they need to be performed are so important that it is worth re iterating them here 1 Identify business elements of your system business objects and their interrelationships 2 Identify business rules according to which these business objects behave Do not worry about the user interface at this stage let Aware IM generate the default user interface 3 Identify scenarios of user interaction with the system Configure main system processes and operations 4 Test the core application 5 Fine tune the application e Add access control e Add documents and reports e Improve system operations e Improve the user interface customize forms and application visual appearance Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 8 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 6 Test the final application We will cover all these steps in detail in the following sections 3 1 Business Objects and Relationships The first and most important step in designing a system is to identify business objects and business rules of the system
60. current reservation that has been offered but not taken up This condition can be written as Item CurrentReservation Status lt gt Offered Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 18 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application The entire rule therefore can be written like this IF Item CurrentReservation Status lt gt Offered THEN IND Reservation WHERE Reservation IN Item Reservations AND Reservation Status Waiting OR Reservation Status Offered ORDER BY Reservation ReservedOn TAKE BEST 1 Ttem CurrentReservation Reservation Hy D Note that when writing these rules we do not need to concern ourselves with the circumstances under which these rules should be executed nor different scenarios that lead to the execution of these rules We focus entirely on the rules of the object and rely on the system to trigger the rules whenever necessary Configuration of Rules Let us now enter these rules into Aware IM To do this right click on the node of the Item business object in the Elements Tree and select Edit Rules from the pop up menu The editor of business rules will appear in the working area Click on the New button to bring up a dialog for a new rule The dialog consists of 3 tabs At this point we are interested in the two tabs the Standard Form tab and the Textual Form tab Both tabs allow entering the text of the rule the Standard Form has a simplified int
61. dress DateOfBirth LoginName and Password so we leave the access level for these attributes as Full access A member should be able to view but not change the following attributes MemberNumber Loans Fees Payments and Reservation so we change the access level for these attributes to Read only Finally a member should not be able even to see the following attributes AccessLevel and Status so we change the access level for these attributes to Not available Note that Aware IM will automatically remove not available attributes from the form of the Member object and it will also grey out read only attributes Library items A member must be able to search the library for items and view some details of the items but she should not be able to change any of the details We can achieve this by setting read only access to the Item object We open the Member access level for editing and change access to the Item object to read only just as we set access to the Member object at the previous step We also want to make some attributes of the Item object unavailable to member namely Loans Reservations InternalStatus and CurrentReservation so we set Not available access to these attributes Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 48 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Reserving items
62. dress of the server in the Internet if you are using the system over the Internet If you have configured your application for other companies to use then you need to prepare a distributable version of Aware IM that includes your configuration In this case you do not need to publish the business space version Instead you need to right click on the node representing the version you want to distribute and select Build executable from the pop up menu note that you will need a special Aware IM edition for developers to be able to use this feature Once you select this feature Aware IM will display a dialog where you will be able to specify the name of the product copyright and other information When you click on the OK button Aware IM will build the executable in the directory you specify You can distribute this executable to your users 15 Note that this URL should be used only if Library is the default business space that is the business space you specified when you installed Aware IM If Library is not the default business space you can use the following URL http serverName 8080 AwarelM logonAdmin html and specify the name of the business space explicitly Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 75 of 75
63. e we will use this query for members only we will cover this later We can also allow operators to use this method as an alternative to a form based search Configuring such a query is very similar to configuring the Member query 3 3 6 Change item details operation Configuring this operation is very similar to the Change member details operation see 3 3 3 we add the Edit operation to the Item query 3 3 7 Register new item type operation This operation is very similar to the Register new member operation see 3 3 1 In the Administrator visual perspective we define a new menu item under the New folder called Item type The type of this menu item should also be Create Object and we should select the ItemType object as the object that will be created 3 3 8 Change item type details operation To change the details of the ItemType object users would need to locate the item type first They can do it either from the form of a particular item or by running a query that finds item types As normally there will be very few item types in the system we will define the All item types query that will find all item types To define such a query we create a new query as described in the Find Item operation see 3 3 5 select ItemType as the object that the query will be looking for but we do not define any conditions We select Name Max
64. e fee was charged so we can check whether we need to charge another fee Therefore we need to do the following 1 Define a new calculated attribute of the Loan object called OverdueFeeChargedOn of the Date type Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 42 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 2 Add Overdue fee rule to the Loan object that will react to the change of the OverdueFeeChargedOn attribute IF Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn WAS CHANGED THEN CREATE Fee WITH Fee Member Loan Member Fee Amount 1 00 Fee Description Loan overdue fee for t tLoan Item Title 3 Define the process ProcessOverdueLoans with the following actions note that we will cover reminder e mails and letters later see 3 5 1 FIND Loan WHERE oan Status Current ND oan DueDate lt CURRENT DATE ND Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn IS UNDEFINED OR DAY DIFFERENCE Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn CURRENT DATE gt 6 L A L A Loan OverdueFeeChargedOn CURRENT DATE 4 Define a new scheduling rule that invokes the ProcessOverdueLoans process on a daily basis at 03 00 3 3 17 Testing the Application At this stage we basically have the core of the application ready There is still a fair amount of work to be done polish up the user interface add reports and documents define access control rules It is highly recommended though that in the process of application configuration these issues be tac
65. e defined our objects see 3 1 Aware IM automatically created a form for each object to display its attributes By default Aware IM puts all defined attributes on a form in a vertical fashion one after the other For many objects this default approach is acceptable For other objects some improvements may be necessary Most examples in this section will be performed with the forms of the Member object Improvements to other objects forms will be similar 3 4 3 1 Creating different forms for entry and editing For Member object we prefer to have different forms for editing and entry of the object Indeed some of the attributes that the object has are only applicable when the existing object is being viewed edited and are not applicable when the object is being created For example lists of loans reservations fees or payments are not applicable when the object is being created so there is no point showing them on the form during creation So we want to have a separate form which will be used when the object is being created and which will only have the applicable attributes To do this we open the Member object for editing and the first thing we do is make some changes to the Main form of the object created automatically We select the form in the Forms table and click on the Edit button In the Form dialog that appears we change the name of the form to Editing and un tick the Creation of business object che
66. e row representing the URL channel and click on the Edit button located in the Settings column in this row The URL Channel Settings dialog is displayed We enter https www paypal com cgi bin webscr as the URL of the service provider this is the URL of the PayPal page handling the payment Then we enter return as the name of the parameter indicating the URL to return to if a service has been successful This is the name of the parameter that PayPal expects among other parameters passed to the PayPal page which contains the URL that PayPal will return to if payment has been successful We do not have to worry about the URL itself this is taken care of automatically by Aware IM Similarly we enter the name of the parameter indicating the URL to return to if service fails cancel_return We click on the OK button and then we click on the Create button on the object editor to create the PayPal object Now we need to define the object that will represent parameters that PayPal expects when its URL is called PayPal expects the following parameters business contains the name of the PayPal account amount purchase quantity Hem name the name of the item being purchases Hem Code internal code of the item being purchased currency_code code of the currency no_shipping if value is 1 shipping information is not included cmd code of the
67. ee also the Visual Perspective section in the Aware IM User Guide The system automatically creates the default visual perspective for administrators called Administrator Let us open this perspective for editing To do this expand the Visual Perspectives node in the Elements Tree right click on the Administrator node and select Edit in the pop up menu The editor of visual perspectives will appear in the working area of the screen Click on the Left entry in the Frames panel on and then select Menu from the Tab Contents drop down to bring up menu properties Now click on the root item of the menu tree in the Menu contents panel and click on the Add item button In the Item properties pane on your right change the name of the menu item to be New and leave the type of the item to be Folder Now click on the node of the newly created item in the Menu contents pane and click on the Add item button Change the name of the new item in the Item properties panel to be Library member Select Create Object from the drop down as menu type Select Member from the list of business objects and click on the right arrow button to move the name to the list of selected names Click on the Save button on the editor panel to save the changes This is literally all we have to do to enable this operation in our application Aware IM will take care of all
68. erator registers payment of a member see 3 3 15 Unlike the registration of payment operation though there will be a potentially long period when a member makes a payment through PayPal pages During this period the Payment object will be in an intermediary state since we don t know yet whether the payment will succeed or fail Therefore we introduce a life cycle for the Payment object we add the Status attribute to this object with possible values New and Applied The Applied state is assigned to the object after payment has been completed We modify the Payment amount validation rule to consider the New state IF Payment Status New AND Payment Amount gt Payment Member OutstandingCharges Then REPORT ERROR Payment amount cannot exceed outstanding charges Once payment has been made we do not want anyone to change its details therefore we enter the Payment protection rule If Payment Status Applied Then PROTECT Payment FROM ALL EXCEPT System We also add the action that sets the Payment state to Applied in the RegisterPayment process see 3 3 15 3 5 2 3 Credit card payment operation In our credit card payment operation we will be creating the instance of Payment object and then use the details of this object to call service of the PayPal object So we need a process to perform these actions We define the new MakePayment process that does not requi
69. ered to be invalid If validation proves to be OK the reservation automatically moves itself into the Waiting state which indicates that the reservation is waiting for its turn in the queue of reservations and or is waiting for the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 25 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application item to become available When the item becomes available and the reservation is first on the queue the reservation moves to the Offered state which indicates that the reservation has been offered to the member and is waiting for the member to take up the offer The member can either cancel the reservation in which case the reservation moves to the Cancelled state or take up the offer by borrowing the reserved item in which case the reservation moves to the Converted state Reservation is waiting for the member to do something for a limited time If the member does nothing within this period of time the reservation moves to the Expired state The Cancelled Converted and Expired states are the final states of the reservation Let us now define the rules 3 2 4 1 Rules of the New state Item availability validation rule An item may only be reserved if it has been borrowed by someone It should not be possible to reserve available items We capture this in the following rule IF Reservation Status New AND Reservation Item Available Yes THEN
70. erface but does not allow entering rules in certain formats whereas the Textual Form allows entering any rules see also the Adding Editing Rules section in the Aware IM User Guide In this example we will use the Textual Form Click on the Textual Form tab and enter the first rule exactly as described above into the text area of the tab enter the name of the rule Item availability and click on the OK button the rule appears in the list on the rules editor panel In a similar fashion enter the second rule with the name Current reservation Click on the Create button on the editor panel to save changes to the rules The rules for the Item object have been entered There are no more rules for this object 3 2 2 Member Object For the Member object we have two calculated attributes that we need to enter the rules for the MemberNumber attribute identifying the unique number of a member in the system and the OutstandingCharges attribute We should keep in mind though that the rules are triggered when the instance of the object is created or modified Our two rules therefore will always be executed whenever this happens If we are concerned about performance we could optimise the rules slightly and for the second rule for example add a condition that will guarantee that the rule is only executed when there is a change in the list of reservations of the item or a reservation belonging to this
71. es section in the Aware IM User Guide In this section we will change the default presentation options of the Gender and Status attributes of the Member object Both attributes have two choices Female and Male for the Gender attribute and Active and Suspended for the Status attribute and other values are not allowed Because we have quite a bit of space on the form we will represent these choices as radio buttons rather than a drop down Open the Member object for editing select the Gender attribute in the Attributes table and click on the Edit button The Attribute dialog will appear Click on the Presentation button and the Presentation dialog will appear Select the Generate radio buttons radio button and click on the OK button Then click on the OK button on the attributes dialog and then click on the Save button on the editor pane to save changes to the objects Similar changes can be applied to the Status attribute Note that presentation options are different for different types of attributes However for all of them you can specify the label that will be shown next to the attribute by default the label will have the same name as the attribute and the description that if given will be displayed to the user as explanation of what the attribute means 3 4 3 5 Presentation of reference attributes We will have a separate look at the
72. es of certain attributes so that a user can identify which instances are shown We can define which attributes will be shown Click on the Details button in the Display results section of the query editor and tick FirstName LastName MemberNumber DateOfBirth and EmailAddress in the list of Displayed attributes Then click OK Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 33 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We will also sort the results by members last name To specify the sorting criteria click on the cell in the Attribute column of the Sort results table and select LastName Now click on the cell in the Order column and select Ascending Our query has been completed we can click on the Create button and the new query will appear in the Elements Tree Now we can define the menu item that will run the query that we have defined We do it in a similar fashion to how we defined the New library member menu item see 3 3 1 In the Administrator visual perspective we define the Find folder item and underneath it we define the Library member item of the Run Query type We select the Member query that we have just defined as the query that will be run 3 3 3 Change member details operation To change details of a particular member users would need to find the member first and then when the system displays the
73. ess URL If the purchase failed PayPal also returns to the URL you specified as failure URL Aware IM makes it possible to easily integrate credit card payment into your application We will show you how to do this in the next sections 3 5 2 1 New business objects First of all we need to configure a business object that will represent the PayPal credit card payment system To do this we define a new business object as usual see 3 1 2 enter its name PayPal and enter one attribute Name Our application will be communicating with the PayPal system therefore we make the object intelligent see 3 5 1 3 When we tick the Intelligent checkbox Aware IM opens 12 In principle PayPal object does not need any attributes However Aware IM requires that at least one attribute is defined for a business object Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 69 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application the Intelligence tab of the object editor We select the intelligence type of the object Software System and Aware IM displays a number of possible channels that it can communicate with a software system through The channel that we will be communicating through is called the URL channel see also the Defining Communication Channels section in the Aware IM User Guide This channel allows communicating with a software system through URL We tick the Active and Default checkboxes in th
74. essible on request Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 7 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 2 2 8 Information access and activity restrictions 1 Library operators are allowed to see all information and perform all actions with the exception of modifying the details of the table in 2 2 1 6 2 Only the library manager can change details of the table in 2 2 1 6 3 Members can change their personal details and view their loan reservation fee and payment history The only operations a member can perform are to reserve an item or to renew a loan subject to the applicable rules A member cannot see any information related to other members 4 A guest of the library any person not registered as library member is allowed to browse and search the library collection of items but is not allowed to perform any other operation or change any of the details 2 2 9 Internet access to library information 1 Members and guests should be able to access library information from outside of the library via the Internet using a standard Internet browser No special software should be required to be downloaded or installed on the user s computer 2 New library users should be able to register themselves as members via the Internet 3 To access the library information members must login and their user name and password should be verified against the registered details 4 Guests should not go through login process and can dire
75. ests when they register themselves with the system see 2 2 9 In any event when these instances are created the operator or guest should specify the user name and password of the new member among other details which means that the Member object should have these attributes defined As a matter of fact we do not need to define these attributes Aware IM will do it automatically provided that we make the Member object part of the SystemUsers group this is the special group that Aware IM automatically creates that contains all objects that can access the system To do this we right click on the SystemUsers node located under the Business Object Groups node and select Edit from the pop up menu In the editor of groups we select Member from the list of available objects and click on the right Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 47 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application arrow button to make this object member of the group We click on the Save button to save the changes to the group If we now look at the Member object we will notice that Aware IM has added a few attributes automatically for example LoginName Password and AccessLevel The last attribute stores the value of the access level that will be assigned to a member once she logs into the system We need to assign an initial value Member to this attribute this is the name of our newly created access level
76. ewly created form when the Member object is being created We can also perform similar changes to the Item object only leaving Author Title Description Code Type Location and Picture attributes on the Entry form 3 4 3 2 Creating multi tabbed form Some objects may have large number of attributes and showing them all on one form may be impractical It may look much better if attributes were split up into several logical groups shown as different tabs While the Member object is not overly large we still prefer to split its attributes into the following logical groups e Attributes that show personal details of the member name address etc e Attributes showing current activity of the member her current loans and reservations e Financial transactions of the member fees and payments e Loan history all loans of the member Each of these groups will be shown in its own tab on the Editing form of the Member object In order to split the form in several tabs we need to define a form section for each tab see also the Form Sections section in the Aware IM User Guide To do this we open the Member object for editing select the Editing form in the Forms table and click on the Edit button The Form dialog appears Aware IM automatically creates a single form section for the form called Main where it puts all the attributes of the object by default
77. f the document Member details Then we save the changes to the Member object Note that Aware IM automatically puts the Member object being viewed edited into the context so it is available for the Member details report which expects it 3 4 1 2 Payment receipt Another improvement that we will introduce is the improvement to the Register Payment operation Once the user finishes registering the payment the system will ask the user if she wants to display the receipt If the user answers yes the system will display the page which lists the details of the member the payment amount description etc The page that will be displayed if the user asks for the receipt will be represented by an HTML document We add the new document to our configuration in much the same way we have defined our reports The difference is that the type of the document is HTML and that we prepare the document template not in the Report Designer but in any HTML editor of our choice We define a new document of the HTML type enter its name Payment receipt and click on the Import button on the documents editor to import the layout of the page that we have prepared in the HTML editor We need to put all the layout files including the HTML file and any images and or styles into a separate directory and specify the name of this directory when we import the layout You can have a look at the layout of the Payment receipt document in the c
78. he application is supposed to automatically send e mails or letters to members when the items they have reserved become available and to remind them that their loan is overdue see 2 2 3 In order for the system to be able to send e mails to members the Member object must become intelligent see also the Intelligent Business Objects and Outgoing Email sections in the Aware IM User Guide Making Member object intelligent To make the Member object intelligent open the Member object for editing and tick the Intelligent checkbox located at the right bottom corner of the object editor pane The Intelligence pane will be displayed First of all select the type of the intelligence Person or Organization When you do this Aware IM will display the Email channel in the list of channels for the object This means that it is possible to communicate with this object through e mails Tick Active and Default checkboxes and click on the Edit button in the Settings column The Email Settings dialog will be displayed Select the Use values from SystemSettings object we will explain this object in 3 5 3 1 Click on the OK button on the dialog and click on the Save button on the object editor to save the changes to the object Defining e mail notifications The next step we need to do is configure a notification representing an e mail Note that unlike most business objects notifi
79. he following condition EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan IN Reservation Item Loans AND Loan Status Current AND Loan Member Reservation Member The action of the rule should not only change the status but also register the BorrowedOn date The entire rule therefore looks like this IF Reservation Status Offered AND EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan IN Reservation Item Loans AND Loan Status Current AND Loan Member Reservation Member THEN Reservation BorrowedOn CURRENT DATE Reservation Status Converted Note that just like with the Offered reservation rule we do not have to check the precise moment when the member actually borrowed the item 3 2 4 4 Rules of the Cancelled state When defining the rules applicable to this state we assume that a reservation is moved into the Cancelled state externally that is not by rules of the object The rules should just react to the external change of the object state Cancellation validation rule 8 Just for illustration purposes we can show what the condition would look like if we wanted to capture this moment Loan WAS ADDED TO Reservation Item Loans AND AddedLoan Status Current AND AddedLoan Member Reservation Member Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 30 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application It is only possible to cancel current reservation so this rule checks that the change t
80. her attributes of the ItemType object MaxBorrowNumber MaxLoanPeriod and MaxRenewals The only difference with the Name attribute is that these attributes are of Number type and do not have choices of typical values Once we have finished adding the attributes we can click on the Create button on the editor to indicate that the business object is ready we will accept the default values for all other properties of the object After you click on the Create button you will see the ItemType object in the Elements Tree Defining Item Object Now we can define the Item object We define the Title Author Code Location Picture Description and InternalStatus attributes in very much the same way as we defined the attributes of the ItemType object The type of the Picture attribute is Picture and we will also define two possible choices for the InternalStatus attribute Released and Withdrawn This time we will leave the Other values allowed checkbox un ticked to indicate that Released and Withdrawn are the only possible values of the attribute When defining the Available attribute we will also tick the Calculated checkbox to indicate that the attribute is calculated by the system The type of this attribute is Yes No Defining a Reference Attribute Now we can define our first reference attribute
81. iguring the application is to go through the scenarios of user interaction with the system and define the operations that users will perform with the system By carefully studying the requirements again we can identify the following operations that a user will need to perform with the system again we are ignoring some of the requirements for now we will return to them later e Register new member Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 31 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Find member by name full or partial and by number full or partial Change member details Register a new item Find an item by title author and or a code full or partial Change item details Register new item type Change item type details Borrow an item Renew loan Return an item Reserve an item Cancel a reservation Register a fee for a member Register a payment 3 3 1 Register new member operation Users will invoke this operation from the system menu The system menu will have the New item for creation of different entities of our system The Library member sub item of the New item will create a new member The operation should create a new instance of the Member business object So we need to define the operation in the system menu and instruct the system to create a new instance of the Member object In the Configuration Tool the system menu is defined in the visual perspective s
82. ith members such as received letters phone calls faxes discussion etc E mails received from members deserve a separate discussion Aware IM is capable of receiving and registering e mails automatically and our application will include this feature see 3 5 1 5 Whether this feature will be enabled though in the final system depends on the administrator of a particular Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 59 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application library If for whatever reason the feature will be disabled then the system will still allow users to register incoming e mails manually through the use of the ContactNote object The attributes of the new business objects are as follows OutgoingEmail Object e Subject text e Message text e CreatedOn timestamp the date and time e mail was created calculated e Status Sent Unsent e SentOn timestamp the date and time the e mail was sent calculated e SentToAddress text the actual address the e mail was sent to e Attachment1 Attachment2 Attachment3 documents will allow up to 3 attachments References e Correspondent single reference to a Member object to whom the e mail was sent OutgoingLetter Object Subject text Text text text of the letter CreatedOn timestamp the date and time letter was created calculated Status Sent Unsent SentOn timestamp the date and time the letter was sent calcul
83. ke the Register Fee operation from the form of a member The member being viewed edited identifies the member who is being charged When the user invokes the operation the system will let the user fill in the details of the fee such as amount and description Essentially the system will need to create the instance of the Fee object In this particular case however we can t just define the menu item of the Create Object type because the system will also need to initialize the Fee object with the reference to the member This can only be done by the rule action so we need to define the Charge Fee process which requires the Member object as its input and contains the following action ENTER NEW Fee WITH Fee Member Member This action will display the form of the Fee object to the user already initialized with the reference to the appropriate member When the user submits the form the system will create the instance of the Fee object Once we have defined this process Aware IM will have automatically created the operation that can be invoked from the form of the Member object Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 40 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Unlike other operations involving a member we prefer this one to be in the system menu as well When this operation is invoked from the system menu there is no member context and so the system needs to ask the user to identify the member that
84. kled later First we need to make sure that the core of the application is working fine before worrying about the more nitty gritty details So the next step is to test the application configured so far we can check how the operations work whether rules are executed as expected etc Before we can start testing the application in operation we need to put the business space version under test see also the Testing Mode section in the Aware IM User Guide To do this right click on the business space version node in the Elements Tree and select Test from the pop up menu At this point Aware IM will build all the required database tables and links between the tables Once the version has been put under test its state will be changed from New to Under Test and it will be displayed in pink We now need to start using the system pretending to be the system s operator First of all we need to start the Internet browser and log into the system We can do this by clicking on the icon in the toolbar of the Configuration Tool Aware IM will start the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 43 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application default browser and display the login screen We need to type in the name of our business space admin as user name password as password and tick the Testing mode checkbox When we click on the Logon button Aware IM will start the application we have configured
85. l WITH ReceivedEmail Correspondent Member ReceivedEmail Subject IncomingEmail Subject ReceivedEmail Message IncomingEmail Message ReceivedEmail SentOn IncomingEmail SentDate ReceivedEmail ToAddress IncomingEmail ToAddress ReceivedEmail FromAddress IncomingEmail FromAddress ReceivedEmail CC IncomingEmail CC ReceivedEmail BCC IncomingEmail BCC ReceivedEmail Attachmentl IncomingEmail Attachmentl1 ReceivedEmail Attachment2 IncomingEmail Attachment2 ReceivedEmail Attachment3 IncomingEmail Attachment3 3 5 1 6 Operations We will add the following operations to our system menu in the Administrator visual perspective that will deal with member communication e Email to member item in the New folder allows creating and sending arbitrary emails to members e Letter to member item in the New folder allows creating and sending arbitrary letters to members e Member contact note item in the New folder creates ContactNote object e Correspondence item in the Find folder searches the system for all e mails letters and contact notes with the specified details e Review unsent letters item in the TODO List folder searches the system for all letters with Unsent status e Print unsent letters item in the TODO List folder prints all letters with Unsent stat
86. l add these attributes to the SystemSettings object Now we need to make changes to the document templates e mail notifications rules and processes so that we use the attributes of the SystemSettings object rather than fixed values Note that it is not necessary to find the instance of the SystemSettings object to put it in the context since there is always only one instance of the SystemSettings object in the system In particular we will change the Total item validation rule of the Loan object see 3 2 3 to use the MaxLoans attribute Jit Loan Status New AND COUNT Loan WHERE Loan IN ThisLoan Member Loans AND Loan Status Current gt SystemSettings MaxLoans THEN REPORT ERROR Member already has maximum allowed number of items We will also change the MakePayment process see 3 5 2 to use the name of the PayPal account we will only change the CREATE action CREATE PayPalParameters WITH PayPalParameters business SystemSettings PayPalAccountName PayPalParameters amount Payment Amount PayPalParameters item_ name Payment Description Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 73 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 5 3 2 Initialization process Now we need to make sure that we let the system administrator initialize the SystemSettings object when the system is started for the first time Note that if the values of the SystemSettings object are not provided operators
87. lAddress attribute the application should automatically prepare a letter that informs the member that the reserved item became available or reminds the member about overdue loan Also when the library sends any other letter to a member for whatever reason we want our system to automatically prepare a standard template of a letter that has library details and logo so that the operator only fills in the text of the letter All outgoing letters must be registered with the system so the system must create the instance of the OutgoingLetter object The actual document containing the electronic copy of the letter will be stored in the LetterDocument attribute of the OutgoingLetter object Defining document templates We start by defining the templates of the letter documents we will be sending We will create the following document templates 1 Reservation offer letter 2 Loan overdue letter 3 Letter to member template Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 65 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application The last one is the general template of a letter to a member All templates will be created as MS Word documents however if a target system does not have MS Word we will also prepare the alternative version of the documents in the plain text format Aware IM will automatically use the alternative versions if MS Word is not available or not supported on the target platform provided that we follow the naming convention
88. list is modified if the list of reservations does not change the rule will not change anything either The condition looks like so IF Item Reservations WAS CHANGED OR Reservation FROM Item Reservations WAS CHANGED Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 19 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Membership number Rule The unique number of a member will be calculated when the member is created and for simplicity will be equal to the number of existing members in the system up to this point which includes the new member In the Rule Language format this can be written as IF Member IS NEW THEN Member MemberNumber MAX Member MemberNumber 1 Outstanding charges Rule The rule that calculates the outstanding charges will calculate the difference between the amount of fees that the member has been charged and the amount of payments that he has made In the Rule Language format this rule looks like so Member OutstandingCharges SUM Fee Amount WHERE Fee IN Member Fees SUM Payment Amount WHERE Payment IN Member Payments Let us now enter these rules into the configuration This time we will use the Standard Form of the rule editor Bring up the rule dialog as described in the previous section 3 2 1 and click on the Standard form tab In the first cell of the green area identifying conditions enter Member IS NEW In the yellow area indicating actions enter Member Numbe
89. ll call RenewalCount We will add this attribute of the Number type to the Loan object initial value of the attribute is 0 3 2 3 1 Rules of the New state Let us now define the rules applicable to the New state of the Loan object Note that a loan is created in this state we set the initial value of the Status attribute to New Item availability validation Rule A loan can be created only for the item that is not on loan already We obviously check the Available flag of the Item object but we also need to consider the situation when the loan is for the reserved item in this case the item is considered to be unavailable but the loan converting the reservation must be allowed The action of the rule must be REPORT ERROR which indicates that whatever operation the system is executing currently must be aborted as one of the objects in the system is invalid We define the following rule with the name Item availability validation IF Loan Status New AND Loan Item Available No AND NOT Loan Item CurrentReservation Member Loan Member AND Loan Item CurrentReservation Status Offered THEN REPORT ERROR The item is not available for borrowing Member status validation Rule A loan can be created only for active members IF Loan Status New AND Loan Member Status lt gt Active THEN REPORT ERROR Non active members are not allowed to borrow items
90. ll members of the Communication group CorrespondentFirstName and CorrespondentLastName see 3 4 3 5 3 5 1 7 User interface To wrap up the implementation of communication management feature we need to make improvements to the user interface to have different forms for entry and editing where necessary allow operations on reference attributes etc see 3 4 3 We can do all these improvements in a similar fashion to what we did with other objects You can check the sample configuration of the library located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation 3 5 2 Payment by credit card Another feature that we have initially left out is online payment by members see 2 2 6 We will have a look at how to configure this feature in this section In our application members will pay through the PayPal credit card payment system In order to pay through PayPal one has to have a PayPal account We will assume that our library has opened such an account Technically any system that wants to accept payments by credit card made through PayPal has to call the URL of the PayPal site and pass a number of parameters such as the name of the account product quantity price product code and URL of the page to return to The rest is then handled by secure PayPal pages where the customer enters her credit card number and finalizes the purchase If the purchase is successful PayPal returns to the URL you specified as succ
91. mber access level in the dialog that comes up To make our application look nicer for members we can create some flashy starting page of the application that will display some information about the library run some advertisements etc We can prepare this page in any HTML editor and import the results into the visual perspective for members To do this click on the Main page frame on your left and then select the Import HTML page radio button click on the Import button and specify the name of the directory where your custom page and all its images and styles are 3 4 2 2 Guest access The operations guests can perform in the library application are these e Search library for items and check item details but not change these details e Register themselves as library members and specify their details and credentials e Log into the library system if they are already registered The task of configuring our system for guests boils down to specifying access restrictions in the Guest access level and preparing a visual perspective for guests Access level for guests Most of business objects attributes processes queries and documents should be unavailable for quests The only exception is the Item query that should be available and the Item and Member business objects Access restrictions to the Item object should be exactly the same as in the access level for members Access restrictions to the Membe
92. n area and enter Loan Status Now click on the cell underneath represented by the lighter green area and enter Current We have defined the first condition Now click on the cell directly underneath the Column 2 header and enter Loan DueDate Click on the cell underneath and enter lt CURRENT_DATE We have defined the second condition Now we need to define the properties of the entry in the table of loans that will be displayed when the above conditions are met Click on the Style button in the first row of the table In the dialog that appears select Use this color radio button for the foreground color and pick the red color Also select the Use this font style radio button and select Bold as font style Click on the OK button on the Style Item Rules Presentation and Attribute dialogs and save changes to the object 3 4 4 Improving operations We will now improve the operations that we have defined for our application see 3 3 3 4 4 1 Invoking operations from reference tables Operations can be invoked not only from the system menu or from the form of a business object or from the screen displaying query results but also from tables of referred instances displayed inside business object forms For example the form of the Member object displays a list of member loans where each loan represents an entry in this table We want to be able to have a button next
93. n for this particular item The system is then expected to ask the user to identify the member that borrows the item and create the corresponding loan We already have the process Borrowltem2 that performs the required action we just need to invoke it from the query results screen In order to do this we open the Item query for editing and define the new operation called Borrow of the Start Process type We select the Borrowltem2 process as the process to be started Then we save the changes to the query Note that Aware IM will automatically put the instance of the Item object on which the user clicked when she invoked the operation into the context and will use it as process input 3 3 10 Renew Loan operation To renew a loan users would need to navigate to the loan that is to be renewed and then click on the Renew button Users can navigate to the loan either from the form of a member that borrowed the item the form of the member will list the loans of the member because the Member object has the Loans reference attribute shown on the form or from the form of the item which also has a list of loans for the item To renew a loan the system would need to increment the RenewalCount attribute of the Loan object and the rest will be taken care by the business rules of the Loan object see 3 2 3 In order to do this we would need to define the process called RenewLoan that requi
94. ns are shown We have finished defining the multi tabbed form now every time the Member object is viewed edited Aware IM will create a form with multiple tabs that a user can switch between 3 4 3 3 Improving form layout As we said earlier by default Aware IM generates forms in a top down fashion one attribute underneath the other one If a form has many attributes this layout may be inconvenient we may want to save vertical space by placing some attributes on the same row We will show how to do this for the Editing form of the Member object We will place the LastName attribute on the same row as the FirstName attribute Open the Member object for editing select the Editing form in the Forms table and click on the Edit button The Form dialog appears Select the Member activity form section in the Form sections table and click on the Edit button The Form Sections dialog appears Click on the Add button to bring up the Insert dialog select the Blank column radio button and click on the OK button You will see the blank column appearing in the Layout table Click on the cell representing the LastName attribute in the left column to select it Now click on it again and without releasing the mouse button drag it to the right column opposite the FirstName attribute You can see now that the LastName attribute is located in the same r
95. o the Cancelled state only happens when the object is either in the Waiting or Offered state Since the change of the object s state has already taken place we need to check the value of the state before the change This can be achieved using the OLD_VALUE function see also the Functions section of the Aware IM User Guide The rule looks like this IF Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Cancelled AND OLD VALUE Reservation Status lt gt Waiting AND OLD VALUE Reservation Status lt gt Offered THEN REPORT ERROR Cannot cancel non waiting reservation These are all the rules of the Reservation object The only state we have not covered is Expired The object is moved to this state externally not by rules of the object We will explain how this happens in 3 3 16 1 We can now enter the rules of the Reservation object into Aware IM 3 2 5 Payment Object We will add a validation rule that checks that payment amount does not exceed outstanding charges of a member Payment amount validation rule IF Payment Amount gt Payment Member OutstandingCharges Then REPORT ERROR Payment amount cannot exceed outstanding charges 3 3 Operations In all previous discussions we have not even mentioned the user interface of our system we focused entirely on business objects relationships and business rules that evolved naturally from the requirements The next step in conf
96. o rules that calculate these attributes Item availability Rule An item is available if it is not on loan if it is not reserved and if it is not withdrawn by the library Otherwise the item is not available The not on loan condition means that there is no loan in the Current state associated with the item Using the Rule Language this condition can be written as NOT EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan IN Item Loans AND Loan Status Current The condition that there is no current reservation associated with the item can be written like so Ttem CurrentReservation IS UNDEFINED The entire rule can therefore be written like so IF NOT EXISTS Loan WHERE Loan IN Item Loans AND oan Status Current H tem CurrentReservation IS UNDEFINED tem InternalStatus Released THEN Item Available Yes ELSE Item Available No Current reservation Rule The rule that calculates the current reservation needs to sort all waiting or offered reservations associated with the item by the reservation date and take the one with the most recent date In the Rule Language this can be written as FIND Reservation WHERE Reservation IN Item Reservations AND Reservation Status Waiting OR Reservation Status Offered ORDER BY Reservation ReservedOn TAKE BEST 1 Item CurrentReservation Reservation We should also consider the fact that we should only do this if we do not already have the
97. om the drop down as the business object that the query will be looking for We will now define conditions of the search Conditions are defined in the Where panel of the editor To define the first condition 1 Click on the cell in the first row of the Attribute Expression column and select Member LastName from the drop down that appears 2 Click on the cell in the first row of the Criterion column and select Contains from the drop down 3 Click on the cell in the first row of the Value Expression column and select Ask at run time from the drop down To define the second condition 1 Click on the cell in the second row of the Attribute Expression column and select Member MemberNumber from the drop down that appears 2 Click on the cell in the second row of the Criterion column and select Contains from the drop down 3 Click on the cell in the second row of the Value Expression column and select Ask at run time from the drop down We have now defined two conditions that check whether the members last name contains the text entered by the user at run time and whether the member s number contains the number entered by the user at run time After the query has been run the system may find one or more instances of the Member object that match the conditions The system will display a table listing the found instances For each instance the system will display valu
98. onfiguration of the Library application located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation Note that the document expects the Payment object to be in the context of any operation that is using the document Now we need to modify our RegisterPayment process see 3 3 15 to 1 Ask the user if she wants the system to display a receipt 2 Display the Payment receipt document if required We do this by adding the following rules to the RegisterPayment process DISPLAY QUESTION Display receipt IF Question Reply Yes THEN DISPLAY DOCUMENT Payment receipt The entire process therefore looks like this ENTER NEW Payment WITH Payment Member Member DISPLAY QUESTION Display receipt IF Question Reply Yes THEN DISPLAY DOCUMENT Payment receipt Note that the first action puts the Payment object that the Payment receipt document expects in the context Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 46 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 4 2 Access Control Now we can address the requirements that our application should be accessed online by members and by guests who need to register themselves with the library system so that they can access it as members see 2 2 9 Naturally members and guests who will be using our application online will have limited access to the application features Therefore we need to define access restrictions in our configuration 3 4 2 1 Member ac
99. onships between your business objects Defining Loan Object Note that when defining the Item object we did not define references to the Loan and Member objects This is because we have not defined these objects yet so they are not present in the list of attribute types We need to define these objects first and then return to the Item object to define the missing references in fact we will be able to bypass this step by creating matching attributes see below Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 15 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Let us define the Loan object We define the DueDate LoanDate ReturnDate RenewalCount and Status attributes first All these attributes except the DueDate should be calculated automatically by the system and are therefore marked as calculated The DueDate attribute will be in most cases calculated by the system however we want to let the operator manually change the calculated value as well So we do not mark the DueDate as calculated attribute We will set the initial value of the LoanDate attribute as CURRENT DATE to make sure that when the Loan object is created the value of the LoanDate attribute is automatically set to the current date Next we will define the reference to the Item object We specify the name for the new attribute Item and select Item from the list of attribute
100. or the Cancel operation invoked from the form of the Reservation object and from the reference table of the Reservations attribute of the Member object we will add the following condition Reservation Status Waiting OR Reservation Status Offered Note that only simple attributes of the object can be checked in the applicability conditions 3 4 4 3 Additional operations We will add a couple of operations to our application to make it more convenient to users Member Edit operation Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 57 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Firstly we will introduce the Member Edit operation This operation will ask the user to provide the details of the Member object she wants to edit and then displays the form of the object for editing The only difference with the Change Member Details operation see 3 3 3 is that if the user provided the details that uniquely identify a particular member the form of the member will be shown immediately with the Change Member Details operation the user will see the screen with the query results even if the query only found one member This can only be achieved by the PICK FROM action of the rule language so we need to define a process called EditMember with the following actions PICK FROM Member NO CONFIRMATION FOR ONE VIEW Member The first action will run the Member query and will immediately proceed to
101. orld business applications using Aware IM The document aims to serve as a studying and reference material for anyone who wants to configure business applications using Aware IM it contains many practical examples configuration and operation patterns and demonstrates the key features of Aware IM The document has a format of a case study it explains how to design and configure a particular business application the software system to operate a public library It covers all aspects of the application creation from requirements to configuration and testing The document should be read in conjunction with the Aware IM documentation in particular the Aware IM User Guide and Aware IM Rule Language Reference The electronic version of the document in PDF format can be found in the docs directory of your Aware IM installation 2 Library Application 2 1 Overview The example that we will look at in this document is the application to manage a public library The system that we are going to configure will keep track of the library resources such as books CD s and videos and allow its members to borrow and reserve the library items It will also manage information about library members keeping track of their activity and payments and registering any communication between members and the library Members will be able to access the library system online to check their outstanding loans reservation and fees make online reserv
102. other issues it will automatically generate and display the form for the user to enter the details of the new member once she selects this operation from the menu Once the user submits the new details it will invoke the rules of the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 32 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Member object that we have defined at the previous step to validate the object and calculate the values of calculated attributes and it will save all the details in the database 3 3 2 Find member operation This operation will allow users to find a particular member The user will select the operation from the system menu and the system will prompt the user to enter the last name and or the number of the member that she wants to find and the system will display the details of this member The user may also enter a partial name and or number of the member s in which case the system will show all members whose names contain the entered partial name and or whose numbers contain the entered partial number For us to configure such an operation we need to define a query that will look for members by name and or number see also the Data Retrieval section in the Aware IM User Guide To do this right click on the Queries node in the Elements Tree and select New from the pop up menu The query editor will appear in the working area Enter the name of the new query Member Select Member fr
103. our application One topic we have not covered yet is how reservations expire and how overdue loans are processed 10 Note that instead of calling the ChargeFee process we could just repeat the same action that the ChargeFee process executes as we did in the previous processes Here however we want to demonstrate the action that calls other processes Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 41 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 3 16 1 Expiring Reservations A reservation for an item should expire if a member who had reserved the item failed to borrow the item within a certain time frame after the item became available see requirements in 2 2 4 The system therefore needs to check offered reservations regularly to see if any of them have expired and if so change their status to Expired see 3 2 4 The feature of the Configuration Tool that allows checking something at regular time intervals is called Scheduling see also the Scheduling section in the Aware IM User Guide Basically you define rules that specify how often checks are being made The check itself has to be defined as a process In our case we need to define a process that will check the offered reservations and change their status if necessary This process will be regularly called by the scheduling rules So we start by defining the ExpireReservations process that does not require any input and has the following actions
104. ow as the FirstName attribute Click on the OK button on the Form Section dialog click OK on the Form dialog and click on the Save button to save changes to the object Now the LastName attribute for the Member activity tab on the editing form of the Member object will be shown in the same row as the FirstName attribute We can make similar changes to the Payments and Personal details form sections of the Member object as well as to forms of various other objects Note also that you can click on the Preview button while working with the layout of a form section to see how the form section will look like in the Operation Mode 3 4 3 4 Presentation of simple attributes When Aware IM generates the default form it uses default representation of attributes which depends on the attribute type and other properties For example for Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 53 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application attributes with choices when other values are not allowed it generates a drop down control for attributes of the Yes No type it generates a checkbox control etc Sometimes it is desirable to use other types of controls for certain attributes for example for attributes with choices we could use radio buttons instead of a drop down control Aware IM allows a certain level of customization in how attributes are displayed see also the Adding Editing Attribut
105. presentation options for reference attributes see also the Presentation Options for References section in the Aware IM User Guide Most of the time instances of the objects referred to through reference attributes are displayed on a form as a table where every instance is represented as a row in this table Every row shows certain attributes of the referred object For example loans on the member form are shown as a table showing for each loan when the loan was made and its due date Aware IM automatically generates such a table and shows the default number of instances of the referred object you can navigate to other instances as well Aware IM picks the attributes of the referred object that it shows in this table at random Most of the time we want to customize the default appearance of the reference table and specify the attributes that will be shown We will start by customizing the appearance of the Loans attribute of the Member object When loans of a member are displayed we want to show the following details for each loan loan status item title and due date We have Status and DueDate attributes in the Loan object but the title of the item that has been borrowed is only available through the referred item Loan Hem Te At this stage Aware IM cannot show such attributes in a reference table it can only show attributes that are defined in the referred object itself Fortunately there is another option we
106. r MAX Member MemberNumber 1 Enter the name of the rule Membership number and click on the OK button As you can see the user interface of the Standard Form allows us not to enter IF and Then It will also spare us from having to enter AND if there are multiple conditions Enter the second rule with the name Outstanding charges using either the Standard Form or the Textual form There are no more rules for the Member object 3 2 3 Loan Object This object will have a lot more rules since it has a distinct life cycle Let us define this life cycle first before defining the rules A loan is created in the New state In this state the loan is considered to be invalid The loan validates itself and if validation is OK the loan moves itself to the Current state Once the borrowed item has been returned the loan is moved to the Past state It stays in the Past state until it is deleted In Aware IM 5 1 this can also be achieved without a rule just by marking the MemberNumber attribute as auto incremented Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 20 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Before we start defining the rules we should also consider renewal of the loan According to the requirements see 2 2 1 there is a limitation on a number of times a loan can be renewed The Loan object therefore needs to maintain this number in a separate attribute which we wi
107. r object should allow access to the following attributes FirstName LastName Address Gender EmailAddress LoginName and Password Access to other attributes should be disallowed Because guests will be allowed to self register as members we should assign Creator full access level to the Member object which guarantees that guests will be able to view change their own details not details of other people Visual perspective for quests The menu for guests will include the following operations e Search library type Run Query runs the Item query e Register type Register User for the object Member The operation of this type will automatically bring up the form of the Member object and allow creating the instance of this object e Login type Login e Home type Home page Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 50 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We can add the visual perspective for guests in the same way we have added visual perspective for members see 3 4 2 1 We should specify that the new visual perspective should be used for the Guest access level import some custom home page and select a particular color style 3 4 3 Improving forms Now we can make some improvements to the user interface of the system We will start with forms of the business objects that the system shows in various parts of the application After we hav
108. rary application e Status text New or Applied References e Member reference to a single member who made a payment calculated In addition we will introduce a few attributes that will display summarized information to the user Item Object e Available this is the flag that indicates whether the item is available In principle this information can be derived from the information about loans associated with the item It is however very convenient to immediately show to the user whether the item is available both in queries on item or in the item form e CurrentReservation this is a reference to the reservation that is the first in the queue of reservations We define this attribute purely for convenience to avoid calculating it every time it is needed it will be needed by a number of rules Member Object e OutstandingCharges this is the number indicating whether the member owes something to the library Again in principle this information can be derived from the information about fees and payments however it is very convenient to show this number to the user 3 1 2 Configuration of Business Objects Now that we have determined the business objects their relationships and attributes we will explain how to enter this information into Aware IM All configuration work in Aware IM is done in the Configuration Tool The Configuration Tool can be started from the Aware IM Control Panel by clicking on the Start
109. re any Input and has the following actions ENTER NEW Payment WITH Payment Member LoggedInMember CREATE PayPalParameters WITH 13 We can also have the Failed state which indicates that the payment has failed 14 We do not need to provide the Member object as process input since the process will only be used by members and therefore we will use the currently logged in member Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 71 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application PayPalParameters amount Payment Amount PayPalParameters item_ name Payment Description REQUEST SERVICE PayByCreditCard OF PayPal USING PayPalParameters Payment Status Applied DISPLAY MESSAGE Your payment has been successfully processed The actions above are quite straightforward The only point we want to mention here is that we do not create the instance of the PayPal object in the process nor do we need to worry about the PayPal object being in the context We will create only one instance of the PayPal object and we will do it when the system is initialized see 3 5 3 not inside the process In fact if we are dealing with an intelligent business object of the Software system type only one instance of this object should exist in the system Consequently it is not necessary to find this instance to put it in the context Aware IM will do it automatically Now we can define the Pay by credit card menu item in the Member
110. reate a particular instance of the Item object in the Operation Mode and link it with a particular instance of the ItemType object the instance of the ltemType object would automatically add the newly created Item to its list of Item objects that belong to this item type This means that when you navigate to the ltemType object you will see all instances of the Item object that belong to this type and you can navigate to any of them It is generally a good idea to be able to see the relationship from instances of both objects it is also handy to be able to navigate to the related objects from both sides of the relationship The matching attribute feature allows us to do precisely that Relationship types and matching attributes are described in detail in the Reference Attributes section of the Aware IM User Manual To create the matching attribute in the ltemType object we select the Create radio button and enter Items which will be the name of the reference attribute in the ltemType object that will refer to the Item object We can now save the Item object by clicking on the Create button on the business object editor Note that when defining reference attributes we did not have to define extra database tables foreign keys and link the tables as most database systems would require you to do Aware IM creates all the required database tables and links between tables automatically allowing you to simply describe relati
111. res the Loan object as its input and which has the single action INCREASE Loan RenewalCount BY 1 In fact we will also add another action to the process that will report to the user the date that the loan has been extended to DISPLAY MESSAGE Loan has been extended until lt lt Loan DueDate gt gt If renewal attempt fails the corresponding validation rules of the Loan object would issue the REPORT ERROR action which would abort the execution of the process and the system would never execute the DISPLAY MESSAGE action Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 38 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application We configure this process in the same fashion as we configured the Borrowltem process see 3 3 9 Aware IM will also automatically define the operation to invoke the process from the form of the Loan object 3 3 11 Return Item operation To return an item a user would need to navigate to the corresponding loan and then click on the Close button A user can navigate to the loan either from the form of a member that borrowed the item or from the form of the item see 3 3 10 To close a loan the system would need to change the status of the loan to Past and the rest will be taken care by the business rules of the Loan object see 3 2 3 In order to do this we would need to define the process called CloseLoan that requires the Loan object as its input and which has the single action
112. rmation were stored in every instance of the Item object the manager would have to change it in every item that exists in the library instead of changing these values in one place This means that the ItemType is an object in its own right and that the maximum number of loans loan period and maximum number of renewals are attributes of this object If a manager wants to change the values of these attributes she should just Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 10 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application find the ItemType objects and change the values there The Item object should therefore be related to the single ItemType object that it belongs to Therefore we add the ItemType object to our list of objects and the following relationships to our list of relationships e Hem object is related to o ltemType this is the single ltemType that it belongs to e ltemType object is related to o Item object these are multiple Items that belong to this ItemType 3 1 1 Attributes of Business Objects Now that we have defined business objects and relationships we can define attributes of each business object There are two types of attributes simple attributes text number date picture etc and those representing relationships or references see also the Reference Attributes section in the Aware IM User Guide Values of some attributes are entered by users whereas values of other attributes are always calculated by the sys
113. s parent so if the instance of the parent is deleted the instances of the child must be deleted as well we will see the examples of the Owner of and Owned by relationship later Fees and payments do not make much sense without the member they belong to as soon as this member is deleted the corresponding fees and payments must be deleted as well Therefore we select the relationship type for the Member attribute of both Fee and Payment object as Owned by We have now created most business objects and their attributes We will be creating a few more objects and attributes as we go along but the core is there already We now need to define business rules 3 2 Business Rules Now that we have created our business objects and their relationships the next step is to define business rules that will govern the operation of the library application When defining business rules we should look at every business object in isolation and identify the rules according to which this object lives It is important that we focus on a particular object and look at the world from this object s point of view only This means that we should not be too concerned with what is going on around this object in the system see also the Business Rules as Carriers of Business Logic and Configuration Guidelines sections in the Aware IM User Guide Many objects follow a certain life cycle they go through a sequence of states e
114. s where the name of the alternative document is the same as the name of the original document followed by the _Alternative postfix see also the Adding Editing Document Templates in the Aware IM User Guide We can prepare the document templates in MS Word and then import them into Aware IM To import the document create the document of the MS Word type see 3 4 1 click on the Import button on the documents editor pane and select the document file You can have a look at the prepared templates in the sample configuration of the library application located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation Note that the Reservation offer letter template assumes that the Reservation object is in the context and uses it inside its tags the Loan overdue letter assumes that the Loan object is in the context and the Letter to member template assumes that the OutgoingLetter object is in the context Business rules Now we need to add business rules to prepare reservation offer letter and reminder letter if a member does not have e mail address We add the Reservation offer letter business rule to the Reservation object see 3 2 4 IF Reservation Status WAS CHANGED TO Offered AND Reservation Member EmailAddress IS UNDEFINED THEN CREATE OutgoingLetter WITH OutgoingLetter Subject Reservation offer letter OutgoingLetter Correspondent Reservation Member Outgoing
115. te but to all other references of the Member object and all references of other objects as well You can check presentation of all references in the sample configuration located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation Displaying references as a drop down One of the references will be displayed a little differently so we will mention it here We are talking about the reference attribute Type in the Item object This attribute refers to the ItemType object Unlike many other reference attributes this attribute is editable This means that the user will be able to change it by selecting a different instance of the ItemType object from the list of all existing item types When a reference attribute is represented as a reference table if you want to add an instance to a table or select a different instance you need to click on a button that brings you to a separate screen that lists all existing instances In this particular case though there are usually a very few instances of the ItemType object in the system so we want to show them all on the form itself for example as a drop down list so the user will be able to select the item type from the drop down without having to go to a separate screen To specify that the Type attribute of the Item object should be represented as a drop down list we open the Item object for editing start editing the Type attribute and click on the Presentation button as usu
116. te the date the loan is or was due e ReturnDate date the date the loan was returned calculated e Status text New Current Past calculated References e Member reference to a single Member object calculated e tem reference to a single Item object calculated Reservation Object e ReservedOn timestamp the date and time when the reservation was made calculated e BorrowedOn timestamp the date and time the reservation was borrowed calculated e ItemOfferedOn timestamp the date and time the reservation was offered calculated e Status text calculated New Waiting if reservation is waiting for item to be returned Offered if reservation has been offered but not taken up Converted if reservation has been taken up Cancelled if reservation has been cancelled by owner Expired if reservation has expired References e tem a reference to a single item that has been reserved calculated e Member a reference to a single member who made the reservation calculated Fee Object e Amount number e Description text e AppliedOn date the date the fee was charged calculated References e Member reference to a single member who was charged calculated Payment Object e Amount number e Description text e AppliedOn date the date the payment was made calculated Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 12 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Lib
117. tem and never entered by users The latter attributes are called calculated attributes By carefully studying the requirements we can identify the following attributes of the objects Item Object Title text Author text Code text Description text Picture image Location text InternalStatus text with possible values Released and Withdrawn Now reference attributes see the relationships of the Item object e Type a reference to the single ltemType object that the Item belongs to e Loans a list of Loan objects for the item calculated e Reservations a list of Reservation objects for the item calculated ItemType Object Name text for example Book CD Video etc MaxBorrowNumber number MaxLoanPeriod number MaxRenewals number Member Object e FirstName text e LastName text e Address text Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 11 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application DateOfBirth date Gender text Male or Female EmailAddress text MemberNumber number unique number associated with a member calculated e Photo picture e Status Active or Suspended References e Loans a list of Loan objects calculated e Reservations a list of Reservation objects calculated e Fees alist of Fee objects calculated e Payments a list of Payment objects calculated Loan Object e DueDate da
118. the next action if one member was found without waiting for the user to confirm the member if the query found more than 1 member the query result screen will be displayed as usual and the user will have to pick a member The second action will show the editing form of the Member object We will define a new item in the system menu of the Administrator visual perspective see 3 3 1 called Edit under the Member menu item View Member Details operation The next operation we will add will show all the main details of a particular member such as her main personal details a list of current loans reservations and outstanding charges Users will not be able to change these details The goal of this operation is to provide a quick way for the user to view but not change all the important details of the member in one place The operation will be available for members as well It will be invoked from the system menu Before we can configure this operation we need to define a special form for the Member object that will only show the main details of a member To do this we open the Member object for editing and click on the Add button in the Forms table We enter the name of the new form Member details and un tick the System will automatically use this form for checkbox because the form will only be used in our new operation it will be explicitly viewed by a process and the system will never use it au
119. tion 222 ccccccccssseeeeeeeeeeeeeteeaaenseeeeeees 34 3 3 4 Register new item operaton 34 3 3 9 Finditem operati M EEN 34 3 3 6 Change item details opneraton 35 3 3 7 Register new item type operation nssssssonsnnnnnnnnnreennnnnnnnnnneennnnn 35 3 3 8 Change item type details operation 2 ccccccccssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenneeeesetees 35 Oo BOMOW NENT ODCIALION EE 36 3 3 10 Renew LOAN operaton n 38 COLE 39 3 3 12 Reserve ltem operation EE 39 3 3 13 Cancel Reservation operation E 40 3 3 14 Register Fee OPCrawiOn s cisctsssentecsenovcetsssnsteciencntesbasendecheventesbesandevenee 40 3 3 15 Register Payment operaton 41 3 3 16 Expiring Reservations and Processing Overdue Loans 41 3 3 17 TOSHAG INC ADDNCAHOD EE 43 3 4 FINE TUNING THE APPLICATION ege Eege 44 Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 2 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 4 1 EE 44 3 42 ACCESS EE 47 3 4 3 IMPrOVING Ee 51 3 4 4 Improving operations EE 56 3 5 IMPLEMENTING OTHER REQUIREMENTS sssssssseeskrttettttrtettttttttttn nter rn rneer rnnt 59 3 5 1 Managing Communication with Members 59 3 5 2 Payment by credit CONC EE 69 3 5 3 System initialization EE 72 3 6 OPERATING CEET Ree ENEE 74 Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 3 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 1 Introduction The purpose of this document is to show how to configure real w
120. tions fees and payments of a member There are different types of documents that Aware IM supports MS Word MS Excel Text etc however the only document type capable of iteration is Report see also the Reports section in the Aware IM User Guide Also report is only capable of displaying lists of one particular object and we need to display lists of several different objects Fortunately report supports a concept of sub reports where there is a single master document containing one or more sub report documents each of them performing its own iteration This means that we need to define several reports one to display loans another to display reservations etc and we also need a master report to combine all these reports in one document We will start by configuring documents that will be used as sub reports within our master document To add a new document to the configuration right click on the Document templates reports node in the Elements Tree and select New from the Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 44 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application pop up menu The editor of documents will be displayed in the working area of the screen Enter the name of the new document Member payments and select the type of the document Report Now click on the Design button to define the layout of the document The system will display a dialog where it will ask you whether to create a
121. tive of whether the button is shown or not It would be better however if we could hide the button as well To achieve this we need to enter the applicability condition for the operation in other words the conditions under which the operation is applicable In the case of the item that is to be borrowed the condition should check whether the item is available Item Available Yes We need to enter this condition to the operations invoked from both the form of the Item object and from the screen showing results of the Item query see 3 3 5 We open the Item object for editing open its Editing form and edit the Borrow operation We enter the above condition into the condition text box Now we open the Item query open the Borrow operation for editing and perform similar changes there Other conditions that we will enter are e For the Reserve operation invoked from the form of the Item object and from the Item query we will add the following condition Item Available No e For the Return operation invoked from the form of the Loan object and from the reference table of the Loans attribute of the Member object we will add the following condition Loan Status Current e For the Renew operation invoked from the form of the Loan object and from the reference table of the Loans attribute of the Member object we will add the following condition Loan Status Current e F
122. to this entry that will invoke the Renew Loan operation see 3 3 10 and another button that will invoke the Return Item operation see 3 3 11 To achieve this we open the Loans attribute of the Member object for editing and then click on the Presentation button to bring up the Presentation dialog On this dialog we click on the Add button located next to the Operations with item table We specify the name of the operation Renew select the type of the operation Start Process and select the process to be started RenewLoan We click on the OK button on this dialog and define another operation called Return that starts the CloseLoan process Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 56 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application In a similar fashion we will also add the Cancel operation starting the CancelReservation process to the Reservations attribute of the Member object see 3 3 13 3 4 4 2 Applicability conditions for operations If an operation is not applicable under certain circumstances we may not want to show the button invoking the operation at all For example if an item is already on loan we do not want to show the Borrow button Of course even if the button was there and the user clicked on the button she would still get the error message and no harm will be done our business rules should take care of invalid situations irrespec
123. tomatically We will add the following attributes to the Main form section in the form FirstName LastName MemberNumber Address EmailAddress DateOfBirth Loans Reservations and OutstandingCharges We will arrange these attributes in two columns see 3 4 3 3 and we will add separators between two groups of attributes Personal details for the first 6 attributes and Activity for the last 3 To add a separator click on the Add button on the Form Section dialog and select the Separator row radio button on the Insert dialog Then move the separator row to the desired place in the layout by pressing up and down arrows The operations of the new form should be the same as operations of the Editing form with the addition of Edit operation that should bring up the editing form add an operation of the Edit type and specify the name of the form Editing Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 58 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application Once we have defined the new form we can configure a new process that will bring it up We should consider the fact that the operation will be used by members as well see 3 4 2 1 so the new process ViewMember will have the following actions IF LoggedInSystemUser AccessLevel Member THEN VIEW LoggedInMember USING Member details NOEDIT ELSE PICK FROM Member NO CONFIRMA
124. type specific numbers For example during certain periods such as school holidays the numbers can be increased The loan duration is determined by the item type see the item type table An item can be borrowed on any day The loan due date is determined based on the lent date and the loan duration The number of borrowed items of the same type at any given time cannot exceed the maximum specified for the type see the item type table A member can renew the loan up to the maximum number of times as determined by the item type see the item type table and provided there are no reservations on the item 8 If the borrowed item is not returned on the due day then on the next day a The member is charged 1 00 overdue fee b The member is sent an e mail if the e mail address is available or an ordinary letter otherwise informing the member of the overdue loans including the details of the loan c The fee and reminder letter are issued again with a 7 day interval until the borrowed item is returned 9 Upon item s return the return date is registered and the loan is closed 10 It shall be possible to produce at any time a printable loan statement showing the member details including currently borrowed items with indication of the following e Item code Se N e Item title e Lent date e Due date 11 Details of all loans whether current or past are kept for reference purposes 2 2 4 Reserving items lf an
125. uide Aware IM creates this object automatically for any business space The system administrator may create an instance of this object once and provide values for the attributes of this object The SystemSettings object by default contains attributes that allow storing values for automatic handling of outgoing and incoming e mails When we have been defining properties of the Email channel and incoming e mail handling see 3 5 1 3 and 3 5 1 5 we have specified that the properties should be taken from the attributes of Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 72 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application the SystemSettings object This allows us to let the system administrator enter these values in the Operation Mode rather than hardwire them in the configuration We can also add our own attributes to the SystemSettings object For our library application we will add the following attributes e LibraryName Plain Text the name will be used in document templates and e mails e LibraryAddress Plain Text the address will be used in document templates and e mails e LibraryTelephoneNo Plain Text the number will be used in document templates and e mails e MaxLoans Number this number identifies maximum number of loans that a member may have at any given time From time to time the administrator may change this number e PayPalAccountName the name of the PayPal account of the library see 3 5 2 We wil
126. us e Review unread e mails item in the TODO List folder searches the system for all received e mails with Unsent status Configuration of most operations is straightforward and is similar to the configuration of other operations that we have already covered in 3 3 You can check this in the configuration of the sample library application located in the samples directory of your Aware IM installation The only item that we want to mention here is Correspondence that should run a query to find communication with a member This query searches the business object Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 68 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application group not the individual business object as before see 3 3 2 for example Conditions of such queries can only involve attributes common to all members of the group they must have the same name and type and the query can only display common attributes As we wanted to check the text of the communication we made sure that all members of the group have Message attribute we ended up renaming the Text attribute in the OutgoingLetter object to Message for example We also wanted to display the names of the member that the communication was with At the moment it is not possible to include reference attributes into the list of attributes displayed by a query although it is possible to include them in query conditions so we added shortcuts to a
127. ution of a particular rule is important we want to be sure that the rule that makes a state transition is executed after the validation rules The mechanism to ensure this is to lower the priority of the Current state rule We can do this when we enter the rule we need to switch to the Advanced tab of the rule editor click on the I want to assign priority manually radio button and specify the lower priority than the default priority of 30 for example 20 see also the Rule Priorities section in the Aware IM User Guide 3 2 3 2 Rules of the Current state In this state we mostly need to concentrate on loan renewal We will consider the loan as being renewed when its renewal count is incremented and not zero we assume that the RenewalCount attribute is incremented externally to indicate an attempt to renew the loan Renewed due date rule This is the rule that re calculates the due date when the loan has been renewed IF Loan RenewalCount WAS CHANGED AND Loan RenewalCount gt 0 7 The question here is whether the Loan should move itself into the Current state or the state should be explicitly set to Current externally after the loan has been created There are merits in both approaches we prefer here to get the loan to set its state automatically and demonstrate rule priorities Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 23 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application
128. visual perspective This item will start the MakePayment process Our members can now pay by credit card online 3 5 3 System initialization The final topic that we want to cover regarding configuration of our application is initialization of the application When configuring an application we need to consider whether we are configuring it for a particular library or it will be used by many different libraries In the latter case every library that will be using the application may need to perform initialization of the application specific to that library For example every library may use its own logo name and address in documents that the library will be sending its members the library may allocate a specific e mail address to receive e mails from members the library may need to specify the name of the server that will be handling outgoing and incoming e mails etc We want system administrator of the library to specify all these values once before the application is used by operators and members she may also want to occasionally change these values during the operation of the system We will show in this section how to support this initialization in the configuration 3 5 3 1 System Settings object In Aware IM there is one predefined object called SystemSettings that is responsible for storing the application initialization values see also the Setting Initial Values of the Information System section in the Aware IM User G
129. wed number of items Due date Rule We must also have a rule that calculates the initial value of the DueDate attribute The rule looks like this At the moment the rule uses fixed number 10 as the maximum number of loans We will address the requirement that management should be able to change this number from time to time in section 3 5 3 1 Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 22 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application IF Loan Status New THEN Loan DueDate Loan LoanDate Loan Item Type MaxLoanPeriod Current loan Rule As we said before valid loan should automatically move itself into the Current state The rule looks like this IF Loan Status New THEN Loan Status Current The rule looks a bit strange The problem here is that the state transition should only be performed when the loan has been validated Note that the sequence of all previous rules is not important we can add them to the Loan object in any order even the DueDate rule it does not matter if the date is calculated for the invalid loan In most cases all rules associated with a business object are equivalent as far as their order of execution is concerned the system picks the order itself at random see also the Rule Evaluation section in the Aware IM User Guide Our automatic transition into the Current state is the rare case when the order of exec
130. ype indicates how many items of this type can be borrowed by a member at any one time maximum loan period in days and the number of times an item can be renewed Type Max Loan Max number period renewals that can be borrowed Book 10 28 days 2 Video 2 14 days 1 DVD 2 14 days 1 Magazine 4 14 days 1 CD 4 28 days 2 CD ROM 4 28 days 2 Cassette 4 28 days 2 Community language book 4 28 days 2 Literacy item 5 28 days 2 Talking book 10 42 days 1 7 Users shall be able to see the photograph of the item where available 8 The library may withdraw the existing item from use The withdrawn items are retained by the library but are not available for borrowing any more 2 2 2 Members 1 Only registered members can borrow items from the library 2 The following member information shall be registered e Name Address E mail address optional Age Gender Library assigned 8 digit leading zero padded membership number Copyright 2002 2015 Awaresoft Pty Ltd page 5 of 75 Aware IM 6 0 Library application 3 For certain violations the library management can suspend the membere ability to borrow items The management can reverse the suspension 2 2 3 Borrowing Items wech Unless suspended a member can borrow items from the library 2 The maximum number of borrowed items cannot exceed 10 at any given time From time to time the management can change this number as well as item

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