TeamConnect® Legal Matter Management 3.4 includes the following general sets of business rules that should meet the common needs of most clients:

•Business rules for matter objects

•Business rules for Involved party objects

•Business rules for Contact system object

•Business rules for Invoice system object

•Business rules for matter budgeting

This section provides Matter Management-specific guidelines regarding adding, modifying, activating, deactivating, and reordering rules.

Adding Rules

If you need to incorporate new rules, you should use the configuration tool in the UI. All rules can be created, viewed, and modified on the Rules tab of the corresponding object definition.

If you must use Java code to create the necessary rules, see Utility Class Files and Base Classes and review the corresponding files in the code.

Modifying Rules

If you must modify a rule, do not modify it directly. Instead, copy and rename it and make your modifications to the copy. You should deactivate the original rule.

You should be very careful when modifying rules for the Dispute and Transaction Involved Party objects because there are many dependent fields, categories, and other items. Most of these rules use class files.

Activating Rules

You can activate a rule on the General tab of the corresponding rule screen.

Before activating rules, consider the affect it will have on users. For example, if you activate the Contact object rule Only certain users can update contacts of type External Attorney or External Law Firm - SYS, only users that belong to the Legal Administrator group as their default group will be allowed to update contact records with the External : Attorney or External : Law Firm categories.

Deleting Rules

You should not delete rules; instead, deactivate them.

Deactivating Rules

You can deactivate a rule on the General tab of the corresponding rule's screen.

However, you must not deactivate or delete the following rules:

•Create Accounts For Matter Budget - SYS

•Set Matter Specific Budgeting Type - Update - SYS

•Update Dispute Budget - SYS

•Update Transaction Budget - SYS

•Create Accounts For Vendor Budget - SYS (for the Dispute and Transaction Involved Party objects)

By default, the Invoice object requires a matter type and matter. To deactivate this feature, you must modify the New Invoice wizard and deactivate the following rules:

•Require Matter When 'MatterType' Set - Create - SYS

•Require Matter When 'MatterType' Set - Update - SYS

•Set Invoice Project To Line Items - Update - SYS

•Set Invoice Project To Line Items - Post - SYS

•Set Invoice Project To Line Items - Create - SYS

You must modify the New Invoice wizard. Set the Default Value field of the WzSingleMatterTypePreference wizard parameter to No. On the Invoice object's Line Items tab, set the Show in Concise View and Show in Detailed View lists to Show for the Project field.

Reordering Rules

Rules of the same type are executed in order from lowest to highest. You can modify the order of most rules. However, the following rules are exceptions:

•Set Matter Specific Budgeting Type - Update - SYS Dispute and Transaction rule MUST have a higher order than Update Dispute Budget - SYS or Update Transaction Budget - SYS.

•Set Non-Root Category As Default - Create - SYS MUST have a higher order than Matter Must Have Category Besides Root - Create - SYS

•Set Non-Root Category As Default - Update - SYS MUST have a higher order than Matter Must Have Category Besides Root - Update - SYS