When to Use Inclusions
Inclusions can be a very powerful way to work collaboratively, or reuse significant project assets, as rules, screens, styles and so on may be repeated across several policy models. The five examples below describe scenarios where the use of inclusions could be particularly beneficial.
Example 1: Consistent interview styling
To ensure all interviews across an organization have the same look and feel, a project containing the interview styles could be reused in other projects containing the interviews.
For example, an organization could have a single Corporate Styling project which contains only customized project styles (that is, no rules, screens and so on). That project could then be reused as an inclusion in all deployed Intelligent Advisor projects.
Example 2: Rule and screen reuse
Where the same sets of rules or screens are reused across multiple interviews, it may be useful to author each distinct set of rules in a separate project and then 'mix and match' these projects as desired into the final deployed projects.
For example, a financial institution may find the same on-boarding process is applied to all new customers, in which case the on-boarding process would be created in one Intelligent Advisor project and used as an inclusion in all deployed Intelligent Advisor projects. However, if the organization's standard income test is only needed for customers applying for a credit card or applying for a loan, it would be created in a separate project and only imported into projects relating to credit cards and loan approvals.
Example 3: Interview reuse
Entire interviews can be used as inclusions in other interviews.
For example, an income tax calculator may be useful as an inclusion in a deployed personal leave entitlement calculator, as well as being deployed independently. Note that it is quite acceptable for an inclusion to itself contain an inclusion. In this example both the leave entitlement project and the income tax inclusion may include a project containing custom styles (see Example 1).
Alternatively, where the interview you would like to reuse has been deployed independently, you may prefer to link to your related interview, rather than using inclusions.
Example 4: Segregated project authoring
Inclusions may be useful where different areas of your organization, or possibly other organizations, are responsible for maintaining policies that are ultimately applied together to make a decision.
For example, land zoning authorities, environmental agencies and utility companies may all need to be involved in approving each multi-storey residential development. The rules and screens for each policy area may be developed independently and then combined to form the final deployed project. Note that projects must still be on the same Hub to be used as an inclusion.
Example 5: Rule reuse for different audiences
Inclusions may be useful where significantly different interview experiences are presented to different user types, but are driven by the same set of decision making rules.
For example, an interview reporting an incident may need to be presented with a simplified user interface across multiple screens for a consumer web interface, a more detailed set of questions or third person text for agent interfaces and a chatty first person experience when deployed via a chat interface.
Note that simple changes may be more effectively made by reasoning with the User type field, see: Customize Multi-Channel Interviews for Different User Types.
