System and method for enforcing in real time corporate business rules on web users
The invention relates to a method for enforcing corporate rules in real time at a user end within a business web application operated from the corporate site server, wherein said web application conveys to a user browser a form to fill in, and wherein said form includes one or more pages, each page comprises one or more fields for receiving user entries, the method comprising: (a) providing a monitoring server at the corporate side; (b) providing a corporate rule base accessible by said monitoring server, wherein each rule within the base comprises at least: (i) a scenario definition, each scenario definition comprises at least one condition depending on a user behavior within a form; and (ii) a predefined action to be activated in real-time when said scenario definition is met; (c) upon accessing the corporate server to receive a form, sending to a user terminal a first page of the form, including an RT monitoring program for monitoring the meeting of one or more rule scenarios at the user terminal and at least a reference to said monitoring server; (d) upon receipt of the form at the user side, activating said RT monitoring program at the user terminal including said reference, thereby to access said monitoring server; (e) upon accessing said monitoring server, sending by the monitoring server to said user terminal one or more rules from said rule base; (f) monitoring by said RT program the user behavior within at least one of the form pages; and (g) upon detection that a rule scenario is met, immediately activating the action which corresponds to said rule scenario.
1 . Method for enforcing corporate rules in real time at a user end within a business web application operated from the corporate site server, wherein said web application conveys to a user browser a form to fill in, and wherein said form includes one or more pages, each page comprises one or more fields for receiving user entries, the method comprising:
a. providing a monitoring server at the corporate side;
b. providing a corporate rule base accessible by said monitoring server, wherein each rule within the base comprises at least:
(i) a scenario definition, each scenario definition comprises at least one condition depending on a user behavior within a form; and
(ii) a predefined action to be activated in real-time when said scenario definition is met;
c. upon accessing the corporate server to receive a form, sending to a user terminal a first page of the form, including an RT monitoring program for monitoring the meeting of one or more rule scenarios at the user terminal and at least a reference to said monitoring server;
d. upon receipt of the form at the user side, activating said RT monitoring program at the user terminal including said reference, thereby to access said monitoring server;
e. upon accessing said monitoring server, sending by the monitoring server to said user terminal one or more rules from said rule base;
f. monitoring by said RT program the user behavior within at least one of the form pages; and
g. upon detection that a rule scenario is met, immediately activating the action which corresponds to said rule scenario.
2 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said user behavior is at least one predefined user entry within at least one field within a form page.
3 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said user behavior is a predefined navigation sequence into at least one predefined form page.
4 . Method according to claim 2 , wherein the scenario condition further includes specific data entries from the corporate database into form pages in response to one or more user entries.
5 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said one or more rules are sent from the monitoring server to the user terminal within a cookie.
6 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein the one or more rules that are sent from the monitoring server to the user terminal are sent as an XML file.
7 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said RT program is a Javascript, Ajax or ActiveX program.
8 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein the form comprises more than one page, and wherein with each access of the client to receive a form page, a copy of the RT program is also provided and activated at the client side.
9 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said action involves an access to the monitoring server to receive an additional program which is activated at the client terminal.
10 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein the action includes initiation of at least one of the following:
a) displaying at the client terminal a predefined message;
b) preventing the insertion of specific data to a specific field of the form;
c) preventing the possibility of submitting the form; and
d) providing guidance to the user for an allowed field entry.
11 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein the business application is a CRM or ERP application.
12 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein the communication between the business application, the monitoring server and the user browser is stateless.
13 . Method according to claim 1 , wherein said rule base is a common corporate rule base wherein a portion of the rules within said rule base are used for enforcement only over in-house users, another portion is used for enforcement over only web users, and at least a portion of the rules is used for enforcement over both in-house users and web users.
14 . Method according to claim 1 , the rule definition further comprises at least one milestone, in which a communication is made to the corporate server for receiving corresponding data in response to reaching said milestone.