What is a Rule? A Rule is an event that will automatically generateit's related events by just calendaring one trigger event (the Rule). To add a Rule go to File|Setup|Rules. You will see the following screen:

These are the sample Rules that come with Abacus. Highlight CLOSING and click on Edit. You will see the the following screen:

This is a list of the events that will automatically be calendared when you create an event and use this Rule:CLOSING (when you add an event you put the word CLOSING (the rule name) in the What field. Once the event is full filled out and you click on Save the Rule will generate the other events). Event# This shows the number value of each event, this is important to Relative (covered later in this document). What This indicates what the event is (meeting, trial, lunch, birthday, holiday, etc, etc.). Interval How many days (or court days,weeks,months,years) before or after the event it is relative to. Relative Each event is relative to some other event with a lower event# (if event 2 had an interval of 10 (days) relative to event 1, it would be calendared 10 days after event 1). Description This is just a description of the What field.

If you click on the right arrow button, there are more choices for the Rule setup. Most of them are self explanatory. The Weekend Adjust means if the event lands on a weekend, do you want it to move back to Friday or forward to Monday.

Once you have looked at this Rule, you should not have too much trouble creating your own Rules. Close this Rule by clicking on OK. You should then be looking at the list of existing Rules. Click on Add. You will be prompted to type in the name of this new Rule. Type in TEST. Once you click OK you will be prompted for a description. Click on OK. You will then see the following screen:

The Rule itself is considered Event# 0. Event number 1 is the first event to be calendared after the Rule itself. Type in the name (What) for the first event. If the word you type in for the What field does not currently exist as a What code, you will see a Valid What Entries box. This is so you can Add this new What code to the list of What codes (all the What codes have to exist in the list of valid What codes).

You can type in a description, but it is not mandatory. Rule Calculation is where you set the Interval (number of days) after event# 0. You can type in a number or click the up/down arrows. If you want to indicate the number of month or years, click the down arrow next to the word Days.

The Relative to Event box lets you tell this event what event it is relative to (the first event is always relative to 0). Move weekend date to allows you to tell this event, if it lands on the weekend, to move to Monday or Friday. Once you click you will then see something similar to the following screen:

You now have a Rule with one event in it. Click on Add to add the next event to this Rule. You can add as many events to a rule as you want.

P.S. The relative is very useful. If you had a Rule with six events in it for a Bankruptcy (for example) and you knew that the third event was never going to be the same number of days after event number 2 and events 4, 5 and 6 had to always be the same number of days after 3, you could make events 4, 5 and 6 relative to 3. Any time you change the date of event 3, events 4, 5 and 6 would automatically adjust as well.