About Using Customization in Agents

Using customization in agents enables you to create generic agents that you can use for more than one circumstance. This helps you to reduce the number of agents and conditions that you must create for your organization. It also lets you provide the specific alert required for a particular circumstance.

Customization in an agent is accomplished by overriding the operators and values of prompted filters associated with analyses that are used in the agent. (A prompted filter is a filter whose operator is set to Is Prompted. For more information on prompted filters, see "Creating Column Filters.")

You use analyses in an agent when you specify that the agent is to:

• Conditionally deliver its content and execute its actions using a condition (either named or inline) that is based on an analysis. For more information on conditions, see Chapter 9, "Working with Conditions."

• Deliver an analysis as its content.

Prompted filters can be customized at various points, depending on how the analysis with which it is associated is used:

• If the analysis is used as the basis for a named condition, then the chain for customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the named condition

  3. In the agent customization of the condition

  4. In the subscription customization of the agent condition

• If the analysis is used as the basis for an inline condition created in an agent, then the chain of customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the agent customization of the condition

  3. In the subscription customization of the agent condition

• If the analysis is specified as the delivery content for an agent, then the chain for customization is as follows:

  1. In the analysis

  2. In the agent customization of the delivery content

  3. In the subscription customization of the delivery content

When using customization in an agent, keep the following points in mind:

• Once a filter is overridden, it cannot be overridden again further in the customization chain. For example, if you override a filter in the agent customization of the delivery content, then the subscriber cannot override it later in the subscription customization of the delivery content.

• If any filters in an analysis are combined (that is, constructed using AND and OR), then this AND and OR structure is not displayed in the customization.

• If the same filters are used more than once in an agent, then only a unique set of the filters is displayed for customization. The customized values that you specify are applied to all instances of the repeated filter.

  Exception: If the analysis is the result of combining two or more analyses based on a union operation, then unique filters from each part of the union are displayed for customization. For more information on combining analyses, see "Combining Columns Using Set Operations."

• Filters passed between agents participating in a chain (see the Invoke Agent action in "Actions that Invoke Operations, Functions or Processes in External Systems") do not support customization. The filters passed from the parent agent are those without subscriber customizations. The filters passed to the child agent replace the respective prompted filters before subscriber customizations are applied.