AI and Business Rule Engines for Excel Power Users

A hands-on book to increase efficiency of using excel spreadsheets using Microsoft Office and the Red Hat Business Rules Engine

Key Features

• Additional Tools to leverage the power of Business Rule Engines and Excel
• Advanced Work Bench features
• Kogito Business Central workbench

Book Description

Microsoft Excel 365 is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, with more using equivalent tools such as Google Sheets and OpenOffice. Sooner or later, Excel Power Users reach it's limitations e.g. formulas becoming too complex, business knowledge buried in spreadsheets that cannot be explained, not easy to scale (still emailing sheets back and forward?), not secure and anybody can edit a sheet, no way of managing different versions, cannot easily be deployed onto the web. In short, these power users have no clear path to migrate to Enterprise Level solutions.

The book begins by introducing the Rule Engine approach to AI and shows how to solve many of the issues facing Excel users as their spreadsheets become more complicated. It gives them a roadmap supporting them in getting started, but also shows how to scale the approach by working with colleagues on Enterprise grade solutions.

As the book progresses, readers will learn how to move existing Excel spreadsheets into a solution that solves many of your current headaches (e.g. formulas too complex to understand). It will allow you and your team to save time, both on day to day tasks but also in maintaining your solution in the future.

By the end of the book you'll understand how to leverage the power of Rule Engines on top of your existing Excel knowledge. You'll have solved many of your current Excel headaches and taken a key step towards using the next generation of AI and Office tools.

What you will learn

• Readers will realize that they are not alone in the problems they are facing using Excel.
• Readers will be able to articulate to colleagues what a Business Rule Engine is and how it can help them.
• Have signed up / downloaded / setup the tools - Kogito, Microsoft Power Automate - for free, and be ready to use them.
• Have worked though the Web Based, Kogito Business Central workbench, and are able to use it to capture their Business Knowledge.
• Have written a real world example proving that the business rules approach is relevant to them, and be ready to extend it to solve their particular business problem.
• Understand other tools (such as workflow / Power Automate) that can help in this space and integrate it into their real life examples.

Who This Book Is For

Core target audience includes Excel Power users, Business Analysts, looking for a tool to capture their knowledge and deploy it as part of Enterprise grade systems. Prerequisites of target audience includes familiarity with excel. Knowledge of KIE Workbench and Azure Web Portal would be beneficial but not compulsory.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction - You're not the only one facing these problems with Excel
2. Choosing a Business Rules Engine
3. Writing your first Business Rule
4. More Business Rules
5. Better Ways to link Excel and Rules Engines
6. Advanced Rule Editing Tools
7. Testing Business Rules
8. Scaling from Excel Desktop to Enterprise
9. Workflows with Rules and Microsoft Power Automate
10. More on Machine Learning
11. Looking under the covers
12. Rules in the real world - AI no longer needs to be a "black box"
13. Appendix 1