Rule Condition Operators [DONE]

Submitted 6/23/2010 by rhett

Please consider adding the ability to specify operators for the Rule Conditions.  The operator could be specified in the text field for a given Condition, for instance:

Comment text > Contains > toner OR ink

The "OR" being the operator.

Comments

Nathaniel Rasmussen: 

Agreed.  What is the assumed operator now--AND?

6/30/2010 3:21:19 PM +03:00
John Haronian: 

I agree this sounds good, and would be loved by us power users.  But even then it might be more confusing than useful.  If you add the capability for an "or" operator, you almost definitely need some sort of grouping (like parentheses).

If I say a the conditions are:

sender = Joe

or

sender = Mary

and

subject contains dancing

... what does that mean?  I see at least 2 interpretations.

It would be a little clumsy, but easier to understand, if you could just make a rule that captured one of those scenarios, then COPY the whole rule to a new rule, and change one of the conditions, so you would have 2 rules:

rule 1...

sender = Joe

subject contains dancing

rule 2...

sender = Mary

subject contains dancing

Otherwise, maybe the system would have to force all "or" conditions to come first in the list and must be true as a group (Mary or Joe), and everything after the first "and" would be "and" and they would be a group that must each be true.  Pretty easy to understand for a programmer, not easy to implement clearly to a user on a form.

Or as the original poster says, maybe if "or's" were only allowed to be of the same type on the same line...

sender = "Joe" OR "Mary"

That would be very useful... but copying a rule would solve this instance and allow easier rule creation in general, so I would vote for that if I had to choose.

10/21/2010 12:32:51 AM +03:00
admin: 

Really very usefull!

3/23/2011 6:22:45 PM +02:00