Project Gear Rules
Introduction
Gear Rules allow for customized automation of a project's data processing. Whenever the conditions of the gear rule are met, the rule triggers a specific gear to run based on the logic set in the rule.
When any acquisition file is added or modified (including classification and metadata), all files in the acquisition will be compared to all Project Gear Rules to determine if any new gears should be run on the data in the acquisition.
One useful application of this feature is to have new data added to a project automatically processed. For example, new dicom image files in a project could trigger the dicom classifier gear. Adding classifications to a file could in turn trigger a format conversion gear like the dcm2niix gear which creates a nifti image. This new nifti image could trigger another gear to run further quality assurance gears, post-processing gears, and so on.
Gear Rules are unique to a Flywheel Project. New projects are created with default rules that are defined for a given site, but any changes to a project Gear Rules or additional rules added are specific to that project.
Instruction Steps
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View and Manage Project Gear Rules
Gear Rules are viewed when selecting the Rules tab on the Project Dashboard.
Here you can view all of the current Gear Rules set up for the project. Project Admins can toggle them on or off from this page, expand an individual rule to edit its logic, or add a new rule.
Expanding on an individual Gear Rule shows the logic criteria and the gear information. To learn more about defining the logic of a gear rule, see this article for more details.
Rules must specify a Gear Rule Description, logic to identify acquisition files, and a gear to run. The description can be any text, but the more descriptive it is, the better.
Selecting the Gear
When selecting a gear for the Gear Rule to run, a menu to choose a Utility or Analysis Gear will appear.
The Project Admin will then choose the gear from a dropdown menu of all of those types of Gears available to be used in a Gear Rule.
If the Always use the latest gear version toggle is enabled, then:
- The default configuration options are used
- The version of the gear will be fixed to latest
- When a new version of the gear becomes available on your Flywheel site, it will automatically be used when the Gear Rule is executed
In order for the Always use the latest gear version option to be enabled:
- Default configuration options must be used
- The gear must require no more than 1 input (no fixed-inputs are set)
If the Project Admin wants to select a specific version of the Gear or change its configuration options, they will need to deselect the toggle button. This will allow for another version of the gear to be selected in the dropdown menu. If this option is used, then the gear will not automatically update when a new version becomes available.