Information
Information is everything needed in a case to successfully execute a process.
It is central. You always attach information to an ontology, which means the information you define will be collected about each created instance of that ontology.
Everything you define as information can be used in documents and rules as well. Information is the brick that builds the other concepts in atfinity.
The following examples of information prove how basic, and thus fundamental, this concept is to atfinity:
account_type
currency
expected_aum
first_name
domicile
date_of_birth
fee
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These are the options for Information:
Option | Description |
Ontology/Role | |
Key | Provide the key which atfinity can use to identify this information in the RuLa, for example |
Name | The name of the information in English. |
Information Type | Select the suitable information type, for example 'Date' or 'Number'. Different types come with different configuration options. These are described on the pages for each type. |
Category | Organizing information pieces with a common theme into categories, helps display them in a logical order. See Information Category for more on this. |
Optional | Yes: the information will be shown to users. Providing it, however, is not required. Example: a second phone number. |
Read Only | Yes: user will not be able to change the value. This can be useful when the value is assigned by a rule. Example: risk score. |
Calculated | Yes: the information will be calculated based on a condition and other provided information. The user cannot fill out anything, as atfinity will deduce the correct value automatically. See Calculated Information. |
Shown title / Question | Name: Sometimes, a question works better than a term to help a user understand what information is requested. For names, for example, just the titles 'First Name' and 'Last Name' are sufficient. So in that case, Select 'Name' here. Question: Many people find it easier to answer the question 'How many founders does this trust have?', than to provide a value to the field 'Number of trust founders'. In this case, select 'Question' and write the question that should appear with the field in the next box. |
Description | Give a description of this piece of information in English. |
Shown in Overviews | If the information is fundamental to the ontology it's connected with, you should want it to appear in overviews of that ontology. 'First name' and 'Last name' describe a person well, for example, so they should appear on overview lists of people: set this value to yes. |
Column Position | Choose whether you want the column with this information to appear on the left, the right or have a flexible position. |
Spans two columns | Indicate whether the information is allowed to span over two columns. |
A step-by-step guide on how to create Information can be found here.
The order in which Information fields appear in a case, is determined by the order they have in the configuration. Find details on how to change this order here.
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Short answer: Choose unique information keys across your configuration. Only duplicate keys when you are sure you know why you are doing that.
Long answer: When atfinity evaluates rules, it predominantly takes the instances within a case into account. The information keys within an instance are a combination of the ontology of the instance and all its assigned roles. This means there is usually no problem if different ontologies would have the same information keys, e.g. Entity.name and Person.name, but problems arise when a role has the same information, e.g. Father.name and Husband.name. If now an instance peter is both a father and a husband, it becomes unclear to atfinity what you mean by peter.name.
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Information interacts with:
​Document Field: the place on a document where the information is entered into the case.
​Ontology: information is always attached to the ontology the information is about.
