Team Collaboration

Version Control

It is also important to ensure that you and your colleagues are always working with the latest version of your decision model, while older versions are preserved and can be restored whenever necessary. In practical business situations, you may need to apply the latest business rules or go back and execute the rules that were valid 3 months ago or earlier.

To support different versions of your decision models, you may utilize any standard version control system such as GitHub. You may add your decision projects with all Excel and other files to the existing version control system.

Authorized Access

You also need to ensure that changes in your rule repositories are done securely and without any overlaps. Authorized access should guarantee that only authorized people can view or modify certain files inside your rule repository and other files such as “project.properties” and “pom.xml”.  To do this, many OpenRules customers utilize the standard protection mechanism supported by MS Excel. Excel gives you the ability to protect your work, whether it’s to prevent someone from opening a workbook without a password, granting Read-Only access to a workbook, or even just protecting a worksheet or a particular decision table. You may assign people to different Windows admin groups ans associate access rights with these groups. Microsoft provides good documentation about different levels of Protection and Security in Excel.

Local Rule Repository

When OpenRules customers keep their rule repositories in local Excel files, they rely on the standard version control systems such as Git and the standard protection mechanism supported by MS Excel and Windows admin groups.

SharePoint Rule Repository

OpenRules customers can rely on the powerful capabilities of MS Sharepoint as a single platform for storing and sharing documents across the organization. It allows employees from different departments, offices, or regions to access important documents securely. SharePoint’s version control ensures employees are always working with the latest version, while older versions are preserved. Using SharePoint Teams can collaborate on documents in real-time using Microsoft Office integration (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).