How to Create Your First Decision Flow in SAS Decision Builder

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Welcome to SAS Decision Builder! This guide will walk you through creating a basic decision flow to automate a business process. Follow these steps to set up your first decision flow, using rule sets, variables, and validation to automate key decisions.

Want to see these steps in action? You can also watch our Get started with Decisions video guide to creating your first decision flow in SAS Decision Builder. The video walks through each stage of the process, making it even easier to follow along and get started!

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Step 1: Create a New Decision Flow

1. Click on ‘Create New Decision’ in SAS Decision Builder.
2. Name your decision flow according to your business need (e.g., ‘Decision_Flow_Name’).
3. Open the flow editor to start building the decision flow.

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Step 2: Add a Rule Set to the Flow

1. Inside the flow editor, right-click on the Start decision step.
2. Select ‘Add’ and choose ‘Rule Set’ from the menu.
3. A dialog box will appear with a list of existing rule sets. Select a rule set that matches your decision criteria. This rule set will contain the logic to evaluate input data against predefined conditions. Lean more about How to Create a Rule set.

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Step 3: Create and Define Variables

1. In the flow editor, go to the Variables tab to add the necessary input and output variables.
2. Define the variables that your decision flow will use to process data, such as numerical values, categories, or other criteria specific to your business context.
3. For each variable, mark it as an Input (if it’s coming from the input dataset) or Output (if it’s part of the decision outcome) by checking the corresponding checkbox.

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Step 4: Review the Rule Set Logic

1. After adding the rule set, right-click on it and select ‘Open Rule Set’ to view the specific rules and conditions within it.
2. Review the logic to ensure it aligns with your decision-making criteria, such as specific thresholds, conditions, or actions.
3. Once you’re familiar with the rule set's logic, return to the decision flow editor to continue building the rest of the flow.

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Step 5: Run the Decision Flow

1. Once the decision flow is set up, click on the Run button to execute the flow.
2. A dialog will prompt you to choose an input dataset from your Microsoft Fabric lakehouse. Select the dataset that contains the data relevant to your decision flow.
3. Next, specify the lakehouse destination for the decision outcome table, where the results will be saved.
4. Click Confirm to run the decision flow.

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Step 6: View the Decision Outcomes

1. After running the decision flow, go to the lakehouse destination you selected.
2. Open the decision outcome table to view the results, which will show the decisions made based on your criteria (e.g., Approved, Denied, Flagged for Review).
3. This table provides an immediate overview of how the flow processed the input data and generated outcomes based on the criteria defined in the rule set.

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Congratulations! You’ve just created a decision flow in SAS Decision Builder to automate a business decision process. This flow enables efficient, data-driven decisions and provides real-time insights into outcomes.

Explore further to add advanced logic, Python code files to your flows for even more powerful decision-making.