Gear Rule Processing Details

Gear Rules allow you to automate your project's data processing. This article describes the detailed steps of the triggering process, which may be useful for understanding specific gear processing scenarios.

Gear Rule Triggering Details

The system triggers a gear rule when a new file appears or metadata is changed and the rule condition passes.  The system applies an additional condition behind the scenes in order to avoid retriggering a gear rule.  So a gear rule runs only when all 3 conditions are met:

1. A new file appears or metadata is changed
2. Rule condition passes for current metadata
3. Rule condition fails using prior revision of metadata

Where this becomes important is when you want to manually retrigger a gear rule by manually changing the meta-data.  In this case you need to make two changes.  First make a change to the metadata that causes the Rule condition to fail.  Then make another change to the metadata that causes the Rule condition to pass.  This way the above 3 conditions are met and the gear rule will trigger.

Example Chronology:

This example shows a chronology of data changes along with the creation of a gear rule and explains why a gear rule would trigger (or not) based on the three conditions.