Rules
Article Topics: NATS Admin
Rules are a feature in NATS that give clients a great amount of control in setting permissions and actions for individual affiliates. They let you dictate things like which events happen when and who sees what, and are indicated by a purple arrow icon in the NATS interface.
The rules system is based on the same general format, with a few key differences depending on in which area the rules are set. Rules are required in some cases to perform certain actions. These include sending out mass e-mails, showing join options, and showing cascades.
Important: Make sure you have at least one rule when you want to perform these actions.
Why Rules?
Rules exist to make NATS a more flexible environment for you and your affiliates. They allow you to exercise a great degree of control over the everyday occurrences in your affiliate program. Here are a few examples of where rules can be useful:
You may want to have certain billers only used for specific sites in your program. You could set up a rule that would enable a certain cascade for one set of sites and another cascade for the other sites.
You may want to send an e-mail to all affiliates that have reached some amount of profit earned to congratulate them. The rules in the Mailing Admin allow you to specify only affiliates that have exceeded this amount.
You may want to offer different join options to surfers that come in from different countries to account for different currencies. You can specify what countries certain join options will display for.
General Rule Format
Rules will always follow the same general format: they can be in one of three states.
The first state is an enabled state, which can appear as enable, show, or send. When a rule is created in the enabled state it will perform a given action when the specified criteria is met. Next is the disabled state, which can appear as disable, hide, or hold. When a rule is created in the disabled state the action will not be performed based on the specified criteria. The final state is the ignore state. This state causes a rule to basically act as if it were not created. This can be useful for testing the implementation and usage of a rule you create.
Rule Relations
Rules have a specific order of precedence that is always followed: disable rules have priority over enable rules.
For example, if you want a popup to show for all affiliates but not on affiliates X, Y, and Z, you could create an "ENABLED" rule for all affiliates on all sites, tours, etc., and create a "DISABLED" rule for the affiliates X, Y, and Z. The "IGNORE" rule will take precedence over the "ENABLED" rule, allowing popups to show for everyone other than affiliates X, Y, and Z.
The ignore rules also supersede enable and disable rules (NATS skips all ignore rules).
Section Specific Description
Cascades
Rules are necessary for the Cascades function to properly operate. To display a payment type associated with a cascade you must have an ENABLE rule for it. Without one the cascade will not display. Use the DISABLE rule to disable a cascade for some subset of the ENABLE rule.
The following are the criteria available for the cascade rule's simple form:
Change Type - Can be one of ENABLE/DISABLE/IGNORE. Choose from one of the three states that a rule can be.
Start Time - Sets when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free form dates please see Freeform Date.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Affiliate - Type in the name of the affiliate that you want this rule to effect or type ALL for all affiliates.
Program - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Programs for all.
Site - Choose a site from the drop-down menu that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Sites for all.
Tour - Choose a tour from the drop-down menu for the rule to apply to or click All Tour
Join Options
If you did not select the Active for all Tours check box when you created the join option you are required by NATS to display options using the SHOW rule.
Change Type - Can be one of SHOW/HIDE/IGNORE. Choose one of the three states that a rule can be.
Start Time - Sets when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free form dates please see Freeform Date.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Tour - Choose a tour from the drop-down menu for the rule to apply to or click All Tour
Program - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Programs for all.
Affiliate - Type in the name of the affiliate that you want this rule to effect or type ALL for all affiliates.
Country - Choose a country to target this rule towards or choose ALL for all countries.
Biller - Choose a biller to target this rule towards or choose ALL for all Billers.
Emails
There are two types of mass mailers that can be setup, member mailers and affiliate mailers. Two types of rule forms correspond to these two types of mails, each with its own specific criteria.
Member Email Criteria
Change Type - Can be one of SEND/HOLD/IGNORE.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Start Time - Sets when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free form dates please see Freeform Date.
Site - Select the site's members you want to send an email to.
Tour - Choose a tour from the drop-down menu for the rule to apply to or click All Tour
Options - Select the join options members you want to send an email are enabled on
Programs - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Programs for all.
Biller - Select a biller to send an email to members who joined using that particular biller.
Optin - Check this box if you want to send an email only to members who have opted in to recieve emails.
Status - Select "at least" for a status where the member must be at a minimum of a certain status or more and "exactly" to only target members of this status. Choose between submitted for members that have submitted the join form, joined for a member that has fully joined, and expired for members that have expired.
Time Since Last Action - Specify how long a member needs to be active in order to be affected by this rule.
Rebills - Specify here how many rebills a member must have in order to be affected by this rule.
Trial - Select All for all members, Trial for trial members, and Full for full members.
Affiliate Email Criteria
Change Type - Can be one of SEND/HOLD/IGNORE.
Start Time - Sets when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free form dates please see Freeform Date.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Affiliate - Type in the name if the affiliate you want to send an email to.
Programs - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Programs for all.
Status - Use to send email to affiliates of a particular status. Choose from ANY, ACTIVE, DISABLED, and BANNED.
Optin - Check this box if you want to send an email only to affiliates who have opted in to recieve emails.
Time Since Last Action - Specify how long a member needs to be active in order to be affected by this rule.
Profit - Specify here how much profit an affiliate must have earned in order to be affected by this rule.
Traffic - Amount of hits given a certain time period
Cross Sale
Change Type - Can be one of ENABLE/DISABLE/IGNORE.
Start Time - Sets when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free form dates please see Freeform Date.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Affiliate - Type in the name of the affiliate that you want this rule to affect or type ALL for all affiliates.
Option - Choose the join option from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Options for all.
Program - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Program for all.
Site - Choose a site from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or click All Sites.
Tour - Choose a Tour from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or click All Tours.
Cascade - Choose which cascade you would like this rule to be in effect for.
Country - Choose the countries you would like to target with this rule
Site Redirects
Redirect - The Tour from which the Redirect will come from.
Change Type - Can be one of ENABLE/DISABLE/IGNORE.
Start Time - Set when the rule will take effect. This can be expressed by any free-form date style or by the keywords TODAY and NOW. For more info on free-form dates please see Freeform Date.
End Time - Sets when the rule will expire. This can be expressed by any free-form date style or by the keywords TOMORROW and FOREVER.
Tour - Choose a Tour from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or click All Tours.
Program - Choose a program from the drop-down that you would like to use this rule for or choose All Program for all.
Affiliate - Type in the name of the affiliate that you want this rule to affect or type ALL for all affiliates.
Country - Choose the countries you would like to target with this rule
Language - Choose the Language you would like to target with this rule. Language is determined by the visitor's browser language.
Mobile - Whether the target of the Redirect applies to Mobile Sites, Standard Sites, or Both.
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