When a rule that is not specifically associated with a file suite (such as the SA.ACYR files) has to be changed, the RLDE screen in Colleague can be used to make the necessary updates, or even to create a new rule. (Rules that are associated with a file suite, and so are year-specific, can be accessed by starting in the APAC screen.) If several rules have to be replicated to be like existing rules, sometimes it is helpful to do a redwood copy to initialize the new rules, but this requires assistance from ISS.
For example, recently the FABOOKS rule, which is used during batch budget assignment for students (screen SBGT), had to be changed. During the course of changes like this, when viewing an existing rule, clicking on a line number in the coding for the rule opens a pop-up which allows the user to insert a new conditional statement above the one that was selected, or to delete the conditional statement which was selected. In this case, a portion of the changes involved the addition of some "ORWITH" conditional statements to the rule. The "ORWITH" statement allows a set of conditions to be checked, allowing the process to continue (i.e. not "fail") if any of the several conditions is true. There also were some "EVERY" statements added to the rule in this case. These "EVERY" conditional statements are often found grouped together, when there are a set of values for a multivalue field that cannot appear in any position within that multivalue field, in order for the record to "pass" the test at hand.
I-descriptors used in Colleague rules have to be created as "computed columns" via Colleague Studio. See the KB article, "Creating Computed Columns in Colleague Studio", for information on how to do this.