Quick Primer

An application in Knowledge Builder that interacts with a user will do so using 'Dialogs' which are user interface 'forms' that are used to capture data/attributes from or display information/outcomes/decisions to the end user. This section will give you a high-level overview of the powerful features supported by Knowledge Builder for building highly attractive and interactive user interfaces (dialogs).

The Default Dialogs

The Knowledge Builder environment comes with a number of pre-built dialogs which we call the default dialogs. There is one default dialog per class of knowledge attribute (list, numeric, date, boolean and text). These dialogs will be automatically invoked by the inference engine to obtain a value for an attribute during the running of the rules. So for example, if you built a decision tree consisting of a number of attributes and then ran it, then the default dialogs will be used by the rules engine to capture the value of attributes as they are encountered in the tree.

The default dialogs can also be customised and styled to your requirements. You can style the default dialogs individually or collectively by customising the Master Template that they all use.

Building a Dialog

Building a dialog consists of a number of steps:

Create a dialog object.
From the object explorer, drag and drop the multiple knowledge objects that you want capturing/displaying by the dialog.
For each object decide on the capture method (listbox, checkbox, radio button etc.).
Insert text labels and images as required.
Move each object on the dialog to the required position on the dialog (x y coordinates).
Add CSS styling for web deployment.
Add action buttons (next, previous, macros).

For further details see the sections on Dialog Object Editors and User Interface Customisation for Web deployment

Adding Interaction Intelligence to the Dialog

The main advantage of building user interfaces within a rules automation environment is the ease with which you can add intelligence and dynamic interactivity to the dialogs. This can be achieved through the use of dialog events, object events and procedures.

A new simpler way to develop interactive dialogs is through the use of Form Rules, this approach is currently only supported by the web runtimes. These are rules that are fired every time the end user makes a selection on the dialogs. These rules can cause the following dynamic behaviour:

Validate the values of the captured data to ensure that they are not outside valid limits and that they don't conflict with the values of other attributes. Invalid controls will be highlighted in red.
The rules can make objects on the dialog visible/invisible. For example if the user selects "Include Partner" then the object "Enter Partner Age" will appear.
Set the values of other objects.
Make certain data controls read only.

Advanced Features

Knowledge Builder enables the rapid development of attractive and interactive user interfaces. In addition, Knowledge Builder supports advanced user interface design features for the power user. These are summarised below:

Creating (dynamic) tabs.
Deploying CSS and jQueryUI themes.
Master/child dialogs.
Sub-dialogs for capturing multi-instance objects (example multiple medical conditions).
Dialog events.
Advanced validation.

Invoking Dialogs in Rules Inference

There are various ways in which a dialog can be invoked during rules inference the simplest of which are:

The default dialogs previously described.
By embedding the dialog object in a Decision Tree.
By calling the dialog from a script via the @Do command. This can be done from the Main Agenda, Procedures, or Events.

See the section Using Dialogs for details.

How To Section

This section gives a guideline on how to implement a number of common user interface requirements:

Integration between a Knowledge Builder web based user interface and other applications.
Embedding html graphs in dialogs.
Retro-styling a dialog with CSS.