About Operators

Role: Administrator.

Minimum Version: Neurons for ITSM 2022.4.

Operators allow you to perform calculations, compare values, evaluate conditions, and manipulate data in expressions.

The following categories of operators are supported:

Relational and equality operators compare two expressions or values and return a Boolean value of true or false.

When comparing values, use compatible data types. If the operands have different data types, Neurons for ITSM might implicitly convert one of the values before performing the comparison. Implicit conversion can produce unexpected results, so explicit type conversion is recommended.

Use a type-conversion function when the operands do not have the same data type. For example: $(number("6") >= 5)

The number function converts the text value "6" to a numeric value. The resulting comparison is: $(6 >= 5The expression returns true.

For information about the supported data types, see About Type Conversions.

The following table illustrates the order of precedence of the operators, from highest to lowest precedence.

Operators in the same row have the same precedence, which are evaluated from left to right, based on the appearance of the operators in the expression.

You can use parentheses to control precedence and associativity. When you save an expression, if you did not specify parentheses, the application automatically adds additional parentheses.

For example, if you enter the following expression:

$(3 + 4 * 5)

When you save it, the application displays the expression as:

$(3 + (4 * 5))

This is consistent with the order of precedence as shown in the previous table.

The Boolean operators (||, &&) are short circuiting:

For the Boolean AND (&&) and Boolean OR (||) operators, while defining the expression, you can opt to specify the operators as AND or OR, respectively. The application automatically converts them to && or || when you save the expression.

For example, if you define the if expressions as:

When you save the expressions, the application converts them to:

Neurons for ITSM recognizes the following binary operators:

in, not in, before, not before, during, not during, after, not after, *, /, %, +, -, <<, >>, <, >, <=, >=, ==, !=, &, |, ^, &&, and ||

For example:

$(Status == "Closed" || Status == "Denied")

This conditional expression can be found as a read-only condition in the Layout Editor. If the value returned is true, then the status is closed and the form field becomes read-only. If the value returned is false, then the status is denied.

For example, when constructing an operator in the If block of the Workflow Designer, you can use binary operators:

Based on the outcome of this expression, the exit port of the If block can connect to a different block, creating a different path within the workflow.

The && (AND), || (OR), and ! (NOT) operators have Boolean operands and evaluate to a single Boolean value. && and || operators are short-circuiting, meaning that the right operand is not evaluated if the left operand determines the value result of the operator. This is only important if the right side expression has side effects, for example, in the case $(x && Prompt(...)).

The Prompt function is executed only when x is true. If x is false, the result of the && operator is always false regardless of the value of the Prompt function, and therefore the right operand is not executed in this case.

There are several new bitwise operators. Unlike the Boolean operators, these work on the individual bits of an integer value, treating a 0 it as false and 1 as true.

The bitwise operators are often useful in conjunction with hexadecimal literals, since the bit pattern of the resulting value is more apparent, for example, $(m & 0#f0f7).

DateTime interval operators consist of a pair of DateTime values that represent the start and end. They are often a calendar interval but do not have to be.

See Interval, Day, Week, Month, Quarter, and Year for information about built-in functions that use these DateTime interval operators.

The in and not in operators can function on the server, on the client, and in Microsoft SQL queries.

The syntax is as follows:

The right side of the operator is a comma-separated list of values surrounded by parentheses. Starting in Neurons for ITSM Release 2015.2, the values do not need to be constants. Therefore, the following example is valid: Status in ("Open","Log"+"ged",Status).

The right side of the in and not in operator expressions can also be any built-in function that computes a list. Currently, the only ways to compute a list are by using the built-in functions called CurrentUserTeamNames and CurrentUserTeamIds.

Therefore, expressions like $(OwnerTeam in CurrentUserTeamNames()) now work.

A conditional expression is a tool that lets you evaluate alternatives depending if a condition is true or false. You can enter conditional expressions using the if statement in the following syntax:

$(if condition then whenTrue else whenFalse)

This expression has three parameters:

Neurons for ITSM only evaluates either the whenTrue or whenFalse value, based on the outcome of the condition.

You can nest if expressions within one another, so that the return value of one if expression feeds into another expression. It is most common to nest an if expression in the else part of another if expression. It is also possible to nest expressions in the then and else parts of the expression., but that is less common. In all cases, note that the Neurons for ITSM expression syntax $() applies to the outermost expression.  You do not need to use the $() syntax anywhere within the nested expression.

A conditional expression evaluates a condition and returns different values depending on whether the condition is true or false.

The following expression returns false if the incident status is Logged; otherwise, it returns true:

$(if Status == "Logged" then false else true)

You can use the return value of this expression to make the Owner field in the Incident business object required when the status is not Logged:

Owner is required when $(if Status == "Logged" then false else true)

The previous example returns a Boolean value (true or false). Conditional expressions can also return text values.

$(if Priority == "High" then "Urgent" else "Normal")

You can use Boolean operators such as && (AND) and || (OR) to evaluate multiple conditions in a single expression.

$(if Urgency == "High" && Impact == "High" then "Critical" else "Standard")

The following is a more complex example of a conditional expression. This expression is used in a default incident editing rule to determine the priority when the Urgency and Impact fields change:

In this example:

There are two types of case expressions: Boolean AND value.

The Boolean case expression is similar to an if-then-else statement.

For example, this statement:

case

when a > 0

then 44

when a < 0

then 22

else 11

is equivalent to this statement:

if a > 0 then 44 else if a < 0 then 22 else 11

In this example:

The application executes the case statements in order. You can also nest case expressions, as in this example:

case

when a > 0 then case

when b > 0 then 11

when b < 0 then 22

else 33

when a < 0 then case

when b > 0 then 44

when b < 0 then 55

else 66

else case

when b > 0 then 44

when b < 0 then 55

else 66

A value case expression compares a single value against multiple possible values and returns the result from the first matching when clause.

The application evaluates when clauses from top to bottom and returns the result from the first matching clause.

Unlike a Boolean case expression, which evaluates conditions, a value case expression compares one value to a list of possible values.

Use a value case expression when you want to evaluate a single field or value against multiple possible values and return a different result for each match.

$(case expression

when value1 then result1

when value2 then result2

...

else defaultResult)

Where:

Basic Example - The following example returns a label based on the value of Status:

$(case Status

when "Logged" then "New"

when "Active" then "In Progress"

when "Resolved" then "Completed"

else "Unknown"

)

This expression evaluates the Status value and returns the corresponding label for the first matching when clause.

Multiple Values Example - A single when clause can contain multiple values:

$(case Priority

when "High", "Critical" then "Urgent"

else "Normal"

)

In this example, both "High" and "Critical" return "Urgent".

Advanced Example - The following example calculates a priority value based on the values of Urgency and Impact:

$(case Urgency

when "High"

then (case Impact

In this example, the outer case evaluates Urgency, and the nested case evaluates Impact to determine the final priority value.