You may create several different types of rules in TeamConnect:

•Security Rules—Protect records when they are in certain states. For example, when users open a matter record that is in a certain phase, no one may be able to modify it except for a certain group of users.

•Pre-population Rules—Populate fields with predefined values. For example, a filing date field may be populated when the Lawsuit category is added to a dispute record. You may define pre-population rules in conjunction with templates, which you may create through Designer without the need for class files or JavaScript.

•Validation Rules—Confirm the conditions that exist in a record at the time an action is attempted. For example, when a user clicks save, determine whether the appropriate custom fields are filled out for each category. If not, prompt the user with a message and do not save the changes.

•Approval Rules—Send requests for approval to specified users before an action is completed, such as posting an invoice. The requests then appear in each of those users' My Approvals screen.

•Custom Action Rules—Perform custom actions according to the needs of your organization. These actions are defined in class files or JavaScript or through the use of a template.

•Scheduled Action Rules—Custom action rules with parameters set through Designer to schedule when and how often an action is executed. Unlike custom action rules, scheduled actions do not support templates.

•Audit Rules—Capture and log events by creating history records that contain information about user activities in TeamConnect.

•Post Commit Rules—Perform a task after an action has completed successfully. For example, send an email notification to associated users after a record has been updated.

These types of rules may be categorized into the following groups based on the actions that they may perform:

•Predefined actions—Defined through Designer, security, pre-population, validation, approval, and audit rules have predefined actions such as the following:

oDeny an operation.

oSend the operation on a route for approval.

oPopulate fields based on values in a template.

oRecord user activities in history records.

•Custom and scheduled actions—Defined by creating class files or JavaScript and the TeamConnect API, custom action rules may perform any action written in Java or JavaScript.

Scheduled action rules use custom Java or JavaScript actions that you may schedule using certain parameters in Designer.

Custom action rules also support templates, whereas scheduled action rules do not. However, the predefined actions defined by a template are not custom actions.

By default, TeamConnect does not perform duplicate contact checking if custom code creates or updates contacts. See the ContactService.readDuplicateContacts() method in the API Javadocs to use duplicate contact checking functionality.

•Page transitions—Defined on wizard screens, you may create rules to govern how users enter information in a wizard. For more details about page transition rules, see Creating Page Transition Rules.