A user with the Profile Rules Admin permission can set up a Profile Rule that calculates a date or cost in a Contract, Company, or Project Profile screen or an additional form using the Formula Editor window.  A Profile Rules Admin builds a cost formula using one or more fields in a Profile screen or an additional form, along with math and precedence operators that identify the relationships between the fields. Static values can also be added to a formula if a constant needs to be applied to the calculation. In building a complex formula, precedence operators, which are denoted by parenthesis are used to encase the fields whose calculation must be performed before other components of the formula are calculated.

The fields used to build the cost formula must be required in order to produce an accurate calculation. Therefore, a Profile Rules Admin must ensure the fields in the Company, Contract, or Project Profile screen that are used in their formula are required fields.  If the formula uses an additional field in a Company, Contract, or Project Profile screen, or a field in an additional form captured in a Profile, these profile and additional form fields must also be designated as required.

There are four Math operators that can be used in a formula: Add ( + ), Subtract ( – ), Multiply ( * ), and Divide ( / ).

A Project Team is regularly assembled to test the current version of a software package before it is released to customers.  The team includes a variable number of employees from Quality Assurance (QA), Development (DEV), and Customer Service (CS).  A cost calculation is run for every release to determine the cost of testing based on the number of employees and the time spent in testing.  Therefore an additional project form was created to track the data, and a Profile Rule was created for the additional form.

1.  Click Admin in the Navigation Toolbar, and click the Profile Rules link in the menu.

2.  In the Profile Rules Admin screen, click the Release Testing Project link under the Profile Type: Project Additional Forms heading.  

3. In the Profile Rules Edit screen, click  Add Rule to display a blank rule record.

4.  In the Rules section of the screen, enter Release Testing Cost in the Rule Name field.

The Conditions section is not available for additional forms.

5.  In the Actions section, click  Add Action to display three fields, and build a formula that will populate the Projected Project Cost field in the additional form using the other fields in the form, along with math operators and symbols:

  • Select Calculate in the Action Type list.
  • Select Projected Project Cost in the Field list.
  • Click in the Value field to open the Formula Editor window.

6.  In the Formula Editor window, build the formula that says the projected cost = total number of employees testing the software X the average daily cost of using these employees X the number of days spent testing.

      Make sure there is a space between every variable, operator, and symbol.

  • Select Number of CS Team Members in the variable list, and enter the + (addition) operator, making sure there is a space before and after the operator.
  • Repeat the process using Number of Dev Team Members.
  • Repeat the process using Number of QA Team Members, but do not enter the + operator.
  • Enclose the three variables in parenthesis to indicate this calculation should be performed first, making sure there is a space after the opening parenthesis and space before and after the closing parenthesis.
  • Enter the * (multiplication) operator, select Average Daily Rate for Resources in the variable list, and then insert a space after the variable.
  • Enter another * (multiplication) operator, insert a space, and then select Average Daily Rate for Resources in the variable list.
  • Click Save.

7.  In the Profile Rules Edit screen, click Save.