Analyze Rule Impact

You can use rule impact analysis to assess the effect of item rules on a given set of existing items.

Purpose of Impact Analysis

When you add new item rules, or modify existing rules, it's important to know the impact the rules have on production item data.

By running a scheduled process for rule impact analysis, you can perform a what-if analysis of the effect that draft rule sets would have on existing items. After the process runs, you examine the results of the analysis. If the results are acceptable, you can add the impacted items to a batch, and import the batch to update the items. For convenience, you can select items by defined criteria (rather than individually), schedule the analysis process (rather than running it manually), and automatically run data updates after analysis (rather than submitting them separately).

Defining an Impact Analysis: Procedure

Impact analysis is based on the ability to designate item rule sets as being in Draft status, and on defining the scope of a particular analysis by selecting a set of items on which to analyze results.

To define an impact analysis:

In the Product Information Management work area, select the Manage Item Rule Sets task.
Create a new rule set, select the Draft check box and save the rule set. This is the rule whose impact you want to analyze before putting it into production. You can also edit an existing rule set to put it in draft status.
Repeat this step for other rule sets to analyze.

Note: Draft rule sets don't operate on production data during ordinary transactions.
To enable the running of your draft rule sets, add them to the master rule set, which is named MASTER_RULE_SET. In the master rule set, specify the sequence number that determines the order of execution of the included rule sets.
In the Product Information Management work area, select the Analyze Item Rule Set Impact task.
The Analyze Item Rule Set Impact page contains a list of all of the rule impact analyses. For each analysis, key information is displayed:
- The name of the analysis, as a link. Click the link to access the analysis details.
- Status: whether the analysis has been Completed, or Not Started.
- If Completed, the date the analysis was submitted.
- A graphic link showing the number of items impacted, or not, by the rule sets in the analysis. Click the link to access the analysis details.
- Autoupdate: Whether rules that aren't in draft status will automatically update items after the analysis runs.
- Import Status: Whether the import of the impacted items has been Completed, or Not Started.
- The user who created the analysis.
- A menu for submitting or scheduling the analysis.
You can search the list by analysis name in the search field. You can click Show Filters to access other filters, including analysis Status, and Autoupdate setting.
Click Create to create a new analysis.
On the Scope tab of the new analysis, enter a name and optional description.
Leave Autoupdate set to No yet. You can't change it back to No once you have run the analysis.
Select Select and Add from the Actions menu, to select the items to be in the scope of the analysis. If you select an item class, then the search fields are adjusted to include fields from associated attribute groups.
- To specify a scope of manually chosen items, select the items in the search results list and click Add Items. The items are added to the table of criteria in the scope of the analysis.
- To specify a dynamic scope, add a saved search to the criteria table. In the Search and Select dialog box, select any existing saved search, or create a new saved search, and set it as default saved search. Then click Add Saved Search. When you later run the analysis, the saved search is executed. All the items that meet the search criteria at that point in time are considered as the scope of the impact analysis, and the analysis is run on this set of items.
When you have completed the scope criteria for the analysis, click Save.
Click Submit to run the Analyze Item Rule Set Impact process immediately. You can alternatively click Schedule to open the Schedule dialog and specify a schedule for when the analysis process runs.

When the analysis process runs, the draft rules included in the master rule set are force-applied to the items in the scope of the analysis, along with all the production (non-draft) rules included in the master rule set.

Reviewing Impact Analysis Results

When an analysis process completes successfully, you can open the analysis and review the results, on the Results subtab, which contains the affected items and any changes that would be made by the rules.

On the landing page of the Product Information Management work area, you can review impacts at a high level, using the Rules Impact Analysis infolet:

By default, the infolet displays graphics linked to items impacted by runs of analysis processes during the Time Interval displayed at the top of the landing page. In the infolet, you can click the menu link for Items Impacted to select Items Not Impacted.
A bar chart indicates the number of items impacted, or not impacted, for each impact analysis. The names of the analyses are keyed to the bars. Hovering your mouse over a bar displays the name of the analysis and the number of items.
Clicking on a bar opens the Results tab of the Edit Impact Analysis page for the linked analysis.

On the Edit Impact Analysis page, you can review the details of the selected analysis, and filter the list of items in its scope in different ways, to better understand the impact.

The Results tab displays the results of the analysis for all of the items specified in the scope of the analysis on the Scope tab. You can filter the list of items.
Selecting one of the following infotiles enables you to work with the different categories of impacts:
- Impact: Displays the number of items that are impacted or not impacted by the draft rules in the analysis.
  
  Infotile filters: Impacted Items, Nonimpacted Items
  
  Item results filters: Assignment Type (for associated assignment rules), Severity (for validation rules), Rule Name (for an analysis that contains multiple rules)
  
  Item results actions: Export to Excel
- Rule Type: Displays the number of items associated with either assignment rules or validation rules.
  
  Infotile filters: Assignment, Validation
  
  Item results filters: Assignment Type, Rule Name
  
  Item results actions: Export to Excel
- Actionable: Displays the number of items that require action. Items can be either ready to add to a batch for import, or need corrections before being imported. If items need corrections, you can edit the items in a spreadsheet or use other means to make the corrections, then reload them for import.
  
  Infotile filters: Ready, Need Corrections
  
  Item results filters: Assignment Type, Severity, Rule Name
  
  Item results actions: Export to Excel, Add Items to Batch, Edit Items in Spreadsheet
You can filter the list by the Assignment Type (for associated assignment rules), Severity (for validation rules), and Rule Name (for an analysis that contains multiple rules).
For each item in the item results list, you can display a variety of fields, including:
- Attribute values before and after being changed by assignment rules
- New organizations and catalogs or categories assigned by rules
- User messages caused by validation rule sets
- The name of the rule that impacted the item

Scenarios for Post-Analysis Update

After you review the results of an impact analysis, you can rectify errors caused by rules, if any, by editing the items in a spreadsheet or using other means to make the corrections, then reload the items for import.

Consider an example scenario in which you have modified an assignment type item rule to reflect a pending change in a local sales tax. The rule will be applied to any new items that are created, but many items already exist that were created under the previous tax. You need to analyze the impact of applying the new tax assignment to those items.

To resolve the effects of the rule analysis:

Click the Actionable infotile. You will be determining the action to take before the impacted items are ready for import back into production.
Take the rule sets that produced the impact out of draft status. You can click the name of a rule set in the item results list to access the Edit Rule Set page. Deselect the Draft check box to take the rule set out of draft status.
The actions you can take are determined by the category of actionable items that you choose: Ready or Need Corrections. Use one of the following scenarios.
- Ready: These items are likely to be imported with no errors produced by the impact of the rules in the analysis set. Suggested actions include:
  - You can add these items to a new or existing batch so that they can be imported into production.
    
    Action: Select Add Items to Batch from the Actions menu. If you select New Batch, make selections in the Process Details dialog. The resulting rules update impact type of batch is predefined as an import to the Product Information Management Data Hub spoke system, which means that it updates only items that already exist. You can also add items to an existing rules update impact batch that was previously created by this option, . You can examine the results of the batch import on the Manage Item Batches page of the Product Information Management work area. You can examine the record of the import process in the Scheduled Processes work area, using the process ID displayed when you submitted the batch.
  - Optionally, you can add the items to a spreadsheet, to further prepare them for import.
    
    Action: Select Edit Items in Spreadsheet from the Actions menu.
- Need Corrections: These items are likely to have errors when imported that are produced by the impact of the rules in the analysis set. For example, import errors would be caused by the triggering of rules with Reject severity.
  
  Rules that cause errors typically require an you to make a decision on how to correct the data. For example, if there is a rule which says Minimum Temp should be greater than Maximum Temp, the item data could be corrected by correcting either the Minimum Temp or the Maximum Temp attribute values.
  
  Suggested actions include:
  - You can add the items impacted by a rule to a spreadsheet, to edit them to be suitable for import when impacted by a rule.
    
    Action: Select Edit Items in Spreadsheet from the Actions menu. In the Edit Items in Spreadsheet: Select Rule dialog box, select the rule set and rule that impacted the items that need correction, then click Download. The spreadsheet opens on your local computer, containing the selected items. After you edit the item data, you can import it.
  - If you determine that corrections are needed because the impacting rule isn't acting as expected, then you can edit the rule instead of the item data. In a row for a selected item, click the Edit Rule control to edit the rule that produced the impact shown on that item. To see which other items are also impacted by the same rule, use the Rule Name filter on the results list, which filters the list to the items affected by the same rule.
    
    After you make the needed corrections to the item data or to the rules, you can select and add these items to a new or existing batch so that they can be imported into production.
    
    Action: Select Add Items to Batch from the Actions menu.