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Understand Eligibility Criteria for Programs
Eligibility criteria define who can enroll in a program and receive benefits. Set up criteria for each program to help intake coordinators efficiently check an applicant’s status during the intake process. For example, criteria can include age ranges and ZIP codes.
You can share eligibility criteria across programs with different requirements. For example, the minimum age can be 18 for one program and 25 for another. Use Business Rules Engine to set up eligibility criteria.
Business Rules Engine and Program Eligibility
To set up eligibility criteria for a program in Business Rules Engine:
- Create a field to represent each eligibility criteria on the program recommendation rule object.
- Create a program recommendation rule record for each of your programs to specify the acceptable values for each criteria.
- Create a decision table that the Evaluate Participant Eligibility for Program flow can use to automate checking these rules.
- Optionally, introduce expression sets to add further complexity to your rules.
For more information, see Business Rules Engine and Specify Eligibility Criteria for Programs.
Salesforce includes two out-of-the-box templates to help you get started.
| Template | Description |
|---|---|
| Program Eligibility decision table | A decision table that includes three eligibility criteria:
You can create your own decision tables from this template and modify the criteria to suit your needs. |
| Program Eligibility expression set | An expression set that calculates age and uses a decision table to determine eligibility. You can create your own expression sets from this template to design sequential rules with a no-code, drag-and-drop visual builder. |
Eligibility Criteria and Decision Tables
Programs that share criteria but require different values can share a decision table.
Programs with different eligibility criteria require separate decision tables.
The more consistent your criteria across programs, the fewer decision tables you must create and maintain. For example, consider an organization with three programs that have these eligibility criteria.
| Program | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Job Readiness |
|
| Housing Support |
|
| Family Stability |
|
The Job Readiness and Housing Support programs share three criteria with different acceptable values. Therefore, they can share a decision table. Because the Family Stability program includes the Household Members criteria, that program requires its own decision table.
