Getting Started

Welcome to the Decision Rule Engine — the easiest way to automate your business decisions inside Salesforce, without writing code or waiting on IT.

This page introduces what DRE is, what it does, and how it works — in plain business language. No setup steps, no technical jargon. Just the knowledge you need to decide whether DRE is right for your work and to understand it before you start building.

💡 No coding required. If you can describe a rule in plain English — "approve the loan if the credit score is over 680 and the applicant is employed" — you can build it in DRE.

What is the Decision Rule Engine?

The Decision Rule Engine (or DRE for short) lets you build, test, and run business rules right inside Salesforce. Think of it as a way to capture the "if this, then that" logic your team already uses — and let Salesforce make those decisions for you, every time.

DRE runs entirely inside your Salesforce environment, so your data stays where it already lives — secure, private, and within your existing controls.

What Can DRE Do for You?

DRE shines whenever your team makes the same kind of decision over and over, based on data that's already in Salesforce. Here are some everyday examples:

These aren't theoretical — they're patterns that DRE customers use every day.

Why Teams Choose DRE

Most teams adopt DRE for one of three reasons:

🚀 Speed

What used to take days of manual review now happens in seconds. Your team focuses on the genuinely difficult cases; DRE handles the routine ones.

🎯 Consistency

Every record is evaluated against the same criteria, the same way, every time. No drift, no forgotten edge cases, no inconsistent decisions across reviewers.

📋 Auditability

Every rule run leaves a complete trail — what was checked, what value was used, what was decided, and why. If a customer or auditor ever asks "why did this happen?", you have the answer.

💡 Business Ownership

You — the business expert — own the logic. No more long IT tickets to update a threshold or add a criterion. If you understand your business, you can build and update the rules yourself.

How DRE Works — The Three Building Blocks

Every rule you build in DRE has three parts. Once you understand these, you understand DRE.

🧱 1. Decision Rule — the rule itself

A rule is just a named piece of business logic — "Loan Eligibility Check" or "VIP Customer Flag."

Each rule is tied to a Salesforce object (like Account, Contact, or Loan Application) that it evaluates.

🧱 2. Conditions — what the rule checks

Conditions are the "if" part of your rule. Each condition checks something about the record:

• Is the credit score over 680?

• Is the customer in California?

• Has the account been a customer for more than three years?

You can combine many conditions using AND/OR logic — exactly like you'd describe the rule in conversation.

🧱 3. Actions — what the rule does

Actions are the "then" part. When the conditions are met (or not met), DRE can:

• Update fields on the record (e.g., set status to "Approved")

• Flag records for follow-up

• Record an outcome and reason

• Trigger the next rule in a chain

What You Get Back — The Audit Trail

Every time a rule runs, DRE creates two things you can see:

📊 Result Summary

The headline view: which rule ran, on which record, what the overall outcome was (Passed, Failed, or Unknown), and a quick snapshot of what happened.

📋 Result Items

The detailed view: a per-condition breakdown showing each condition that was evaluated, the value DRE looked at, what it was compared to, and whether it passed or failed.

💡 Why this matters: This audit trail is one of DRE's most valuable features. Whenever someone asks "why did this rule decide that?" — you have a clear, defensible answer, automatically.

How Rules Get Run

Rules can run in three ways. As a business user, you'll mostly use the first; the other two are options your admin can configure for you.

🖱️ Manually

You click a Run Decision Rule button on a Salesforce record, pick the rule from a list, and execute. This is the most common way for business users — and it's what we'll use throughout the Quick Start and Sample Workflow.

⚙️ Automatically

A rule runs in the background, triggered by an event — e.g., the moment a new application is submitted, or whenever a record's status changes. Set up by your admin once; runs forever.

🔗 In Sequence (Waterfall Rules)

Multiple rules chained together, where the outcome of one rule decides which rule runs next. Useful for multi-step decisioning — "if eligibility passes, then check credit; if credit passes, then approve."

The Sample Workflow shows a full example of this.

The Vocabulary You'll Hear

A few terms that come up often. You don't need to memorize them — they're explained as you encounter them in the docs.

What DRE Doesn't Do

A few things worth being clear about up front:

• DRE is not a workflow engine in the broad sense — it's a decisioning engine. It evaluates and decides; the broader workflow (notifications, approvals, integrations) is typically handled by Salesforce Flow or other tools.

• DRE doesn't replace human judgment for edge cases — it automates the clear-cut decisions so your team can focus on the ones that genuinely need a human.

• DRE doesn't pull data from outside Salesforce — it evaluates what's already in your Salesforce records. If you need to enrich data first (a credit pull, an external API call), that happens upstream.

• DRE doesn't replace your admin — they handle install, permissions, and configuration. You handle the business logic.

Other Resources

• 💡 Use Cases — See how other teams use DRE

• ✅ Best Practices — Tips from experienced users

• 🆘 Troubleshooting & FAQ — Common questions answered