Challenge Aug-2016

Greeting a Customer with Unknown Data                                                        Solutions

unknownIn the Business Rules domain the simplest “Hello World!” example is usually presented with a decision model that automatically generates greetings like “Good Morning, Mrs. Robinson!” (think about an IVR system) based on known data about the calling customer. The proper rules may look like below:

DefineGreeting

DefineSalutation1

 

 

 

However, like in the real-world, this simple case leads to many questions:

  • How is “Current Hour” is defined?
  • How the thresholds for the “Current Hour” (such as 11, 17, and 22)  are defined?
  • What if Gender and/or Marital Status are unknown?

Possible answers:

  • Current Hour should be defined based on Customer’s Location by calculating the current time at this location.
  • Customer’s Location can be defined by the phone from which we received a call. If this phone is unknown and the customer is a known customer, use Customer’s Address to define Customer’s Location.
  • The thresholds 11, 17, and 22 are valid only when the customer is on Summer Time. During the Winter Time these thresholds should be changed to 12, 16, and 21 correspondingly.
  • The variable “Customer’s Season” with two values “Summer Time” and “Winter Time” can be defined based on the Customer’s Location (if known).
  • If Current Hour or Customer’s Season remain unknown, use the greeting “Hello”.
  • If Gender is Female and Marital Status is unknown, use “Ms.” as Salutation
  • If Gender is unknown skip Salutation.

We are looking for working decision models that deal with all these situations. Note that DMN recommends to use “null” for unknown values. Will it be sufficient and still business friendly for your decision models?

Send your solutions to DecisionManagementCommunity@gmail.com.

Solutions: