After digital resource classification roles have been defined, files and folders added by the File System Service are classified according to the defining conditions of those roles. For this classification to result in the files/folders being associated with file collector fields contained in your forms, you need to configure the association rules for those file collectors. Association rules for file collectors may be specified using the Association Rules tab of the Digital Resources Classification Plug-in of the MetaData Service Snap-in.

Remember: You can only associate classified files and folders with file collectors contained in forms. If you do not have any file collectors in your forms, you will not be able to create any association rules. For information on adding file collectors to your forms, refer to your Administration Guide.

Configuring association rules for a file collector

1. Switch to the Association Rules tab of the Associator Plug-in.

2. Select the file collector for which you would like to set up association rules from the tree on the left side of the Association Rules tab. Any association rules that have previously been defined for the file collector will be displayed on the right side of the Association Rules tab.

Note: Only file collectors that exist in Forms will appear in the File Collectors pane of the Association Rules tab. If you do not yet have any file collectors defined for your forms, you will not be able to create Association Rules.

3. Click the Modify button in the “Association Rules for File Collector <File Collector Name> of <Folder/Document Type Name>” section. A dialog window will appear, allowing you to add the association rules for the file collector field.

4. In a rule row of the Association Rules dialog, click <role> and select the digital resource role which you would like to be associated with the file collector field.

5. OPTIONAL: To add more roles to the association rule, right click the role name and select “Add Role to List”. A new <role> placeholder will appear, separated by a comma from the previous role.

note: The following three steps contain the instructions for defining the association criterion of the rule. The association criterion is used to determine whether a reference to a particular digital resource (that has been classified as playing one or more of the roles defined for the rule) should be placed in the file collector field of a particular record.

6. To begin specifying the association criterion of the rule, click <Ticket field> and select a database field of the folder/document type. The fields available will be those of the parent folder/document type of the file collector field.

7. Click <DR field> and select a database field of the Digital Resource folder type. The association criterion is the comparison of the value of this database field will that of the database field selected in the previous step.

8. Click <Operation> and select the comparison operator that will be used when comparing the values of the fields chosen in the previous two steps. The type of the previously selected <Ticket field> determines available comparison operators. Numeric fields include: is less than (“<“), is greater than (“>”), is equal to (“=”), is not equal to (“<>”), is less than or equal to (“<=”), and is greater than or equal to (“>=”). For character fields they are: is equal to (“=”), not equal to (“<>”), “includes”, and “does not include”. The operations “includes” and “does not include” are used to compare a <DR field> with a <Ticket field> that represents a comma or semicolon separated list.

9. OPTIONAL: To add more conditions to a rule, right click an existing condition and select an action from the popup window. For the current rule to be true, all conditions included in the rule must be satisfied.

10. OPTIONAL: To add more association rules, right click a rule row and select an “Insert rule before” or “Insert rule after” command, then repeat steps 1-3. Rules are analyzed in a sequence they have been specified, one after another. As a rule succeeds, more file/folders are added to the resulting set of digital resources to be associated with the file collector.

11. OPTIONAL: In the “File Collector Association Options” section, specify the way in which the Associator should place the digital resource references it generates in the file collector field:

Append generated references to file collector contents - the digital resource references generated by the associator will be added to the set of references already in the file collector.

Replace file collector contents with generated references - the contents of the file collector will be modified in the following manner: references to digital resources located within the scope of the Associator will be replaced with the references generated by the Associator (references not in accordance with the association rules for the file collector will be removed).

12. Click Save. The Association Rule will be saved.