Compatibility Rules

Use this topic to understand how you create and manage compatibility rules.

You use compatibility rules to define contextual dependencies or exclusions among catalog entities in both simple and bundle offers. You can define compatibility rules for product offers, product lines, and product specifications.

As a product manager, you can specify the subject and the target for the compatibility rule. The subject defines the product that requires or excludes another product and a target defines the product that's required or excluded. This dependency can also be mutual where both the subject and the target require each other. You decide the rules for your entity when creating the compatibility rule. For example, a requires rule could be that a faster internet plan requires a router that supports the new bandwidth.

Compatibility rule is a top-level resource in the Launch application. You can define these rules using both REST APIs and from the Launch application UI. See Use REST APIs to Create Catalog Entities.

Create Compatibility Rule

Here are the quick steps to creating a compatibility rule as part of the guided flow for creating offers. If you're an administrator, you can also navigate to the Rules landing page directly from the application home page to create rules.

1. On the Rules page, click Create Compatibility Rule.

2. Specify the required details including entity type and rule type. Some of the rule types are: REQUIRES, REQUIRES (MUTUAL), EXCLUDES, and COMPATIBLE.

3. Specify the search criteria as either product offering or product line and enter the effective start and end date for the rule.

4. Click Create.

Note: The COMPATIBLE operator provides design flexibility at runtime. For example:

• You can allow device modeling outside the package.
• You can reduce dependency on offer aggregation constructs.
• You can create a storefront experience of selecting a package and listing all compatible offers and product lines or selecting a device and listing the compatible packages.