AI and Business Rule Engines for Excel Power Users: Capture and scale your business knowledge into the cloud - with Microsoft 365, Decision Models, an (Paperback or Softback)

A power-packed manual to enhance your decision-making with the application of Business Rules using KIE, Drools, Kogito, MS Excel, Power Automate, Office Script, and MS Forms

Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Key Features

• Explore the business rule tools by implementing real-world examples to write sophisticated rules
• Discover how decision services solve current business challenges using AI
• Combine rules with workflows and scripting to deploy a cloud-based production environment

Book Description

Microsoft Excel is widely adopted across diverse industries, but Excel Power Users often encounter limitations such as complex formulas, obscure business knowledge, and errors from using outdated sheets. They need a better enterprise-level solution, and this book introduces Business rules combined with the power of AI to tackle the limitations of Excel.

This guide will give you a roadmap to link KIE (an industry-standard open-source application) to Microsoft’s business process automation tools, such as Power Automate, Power Query, Office Script, Forms, VBA, Script Lab, and GitHub. You’ll dive into the graphical Decision Modeling standard including decision tables, FEEL expressions, and advanced business rule editing and testing.

By the end of the book, you’ll be able to share your business knowledge as graphical models, deploy and execute these models in the cloud (with Azure and OpenShift), link them back to Excel, and then execute them as an end-to-end solution removing human intervention. You’ll be equipped to solve your Excel queries and start using the next generation of Microsoft Office tools.

What you will learn

• Use KIE and Drools decision services to write AI-based business rules
• Link Business Rules to Excel using Power Query, Script Lab, Office Script, and VBA
• Build an end-to-end workflow with Microsoft Power Automate and Forms while integrating it with Excel and Kogito
• Collaborate on and deploy your decision models using OpenShift, Azure, and GitHub
• Discover advanced editing using the graphical Decision Model Notation (DMN) and testing tools
• Use Kogito to combine AI solutions with Excel

Who this book is for

This book is for Excel power users, business users, and business analysts looking for a tool to capture their knowledge and deploy it as part of enterprise-grade systems. Working proficiency with MS Excel is required. Basic knowledge of web technologies and scripting would be an added advantage.

Table of Contents

1. Wrestling with Excel? You Are Not Alone
2. Choosing an AI and Business Rules Engine – Why Drools and KIE?
3. Your First Business Rule with the Online KIE Sandbox
4. More Decision Models, Business Rules, and Decision Tables
5. Sharing and Deploying Decision Models Using OpenShift and GitHub
6. Calling Business Rules from Excel Using Power Query
7. Using Business Rules in Excel with Visual Basic, Script Lab, or Office Scripts
8. Using AI and Decision Services Within Power Automate Workflows
9. Advanced Expressions, Decision Models, and Testing
10. Scaling Rules in Business Central with Docker and the Cloud
11. Rules-Based AI and Machine Learning AI – Combining the Best of Both
12. What Next? A Look inside Neural Networks, Enterprise Projects, Advanced Rules, and the Rule Engine
13. Appendix A, Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications
14. Appendix B, Testing Using VSCode, Azure, and GitHub Codespaces
15. Appendix C, Troubleshooting Docker

Paul Browne is a product and program manager currently working for Europe’s largest VC by deal flow. Most recently, he led a team from three partner institutions that won an EFMD award for ecosystem development, training over 100 eurozone companies to implement digital solutions together. This continues Paul’s previous work leading business and technical projects in the public, financial, and life science sectors across Ireland, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, and New Zealand.

Paul’s qualifications include a degree in European business and French from Ulster University and more recent certifications in finance (ACCA), procurement (CIPS), and business strategy (ESMT). He has technical certifications from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM and holds a master’s in advanced software engineering from University College Dublin.

Paul is the author of JBoss Drools Business Rules, by Packt Publishing, and has lectured in Excel and Visual Basic at the third level.