It is a valuable tool for modeling and managing decision logic in many domains, including healthcare, finance, insurance, and supply chain management. FEEL is designed specifically for decision modeling and execution and to be human-readable to business users, while still maintaining the expressive power needed for complex decision-making. Its simplicity, expressiveness, domain-agnostic functionality, strong typing, extensibility, and standardization make FEEL a valuable tool for representing and executing complex decision logic in a clear and efficient manner. Organizations using FEEL enjoy better collaboration, increased productivity, and more accurate decision-making.

What Are Expression Languages?

FEEL is a low-code expression language, but what is the difference between Expression Languages, Scripting Languages, and Programming Languages. They are all different types of languages used to write code, but they have distinct characteristics and uses.

Is FEEL Like Microsoft Power FX (Excel Formula Language)?

FEEL and Power FX are both expression languages used for data, business rules, and expressions, but in different contexts. Power FX is a low-code programming language based on Excel Formula Language, tailored for Microsoft Power Platform, with some limitations in handling complex decision logic. As soon as the business logic gets a bit tricky, Power FX expressions tend to become highly complex to read and maintain. On the other hand, FEEL is a human-readable decision modeling language, designed for business analysts and domain experts, offering a rich set of features for defining decision logic, including support for data transformations, nested decision structures, and iteration. FEEL provides clear logic and data separation, making it easier to understand and maintain complex decision models.

While Power FX has a visual development environment in the Microsoft Power Platform, FEEL is primarily used within business rules and decision management systems supporting DMN and process orchestration platforms. FEEL is a language standard across multiple BPM and decision management platforms, providing interoperability, while Power FX is tightly integrated with Microsoft Power Platform services. For further comparison, Bruce Silver’s articles FEEL versus Excel Formulas and Translating Excel Examples into DMN Logic.

Trisotech FEEL Support

Most comprehensive FEEL implementation

Trisotech provides the industry’s most comprehensive modeling and automation tools for DMN including support for the full syntax, grammar, and functions of the FEEL expression language. To learn more about basic types, logical operators, arithmetic operators, intervals, statements, extraction and filters supported by Trisotech see the FEEL Poster.

FEEL Boxed Expressions

Boxed Expressions are visual depictions of the decisions’ logic. Trisotech’s visual editor makes the creation of Boxed Expressions and FEEL expressions easy and accessible to non-programmers and professional programmers alike.

FEEL Functions

FEEL’s entire set of built-in functions are documented and menu selectable in the editor. The visual editor also offers supports for the Trisotech-provided custom FEEL functions including functions for Automation, Finance, Healthcare, and other categories.

Autocompletion

The Trisotech FEEL autocompletion feature proposes variable and function names including qualified names as you type when editing expressions thus saving time and improving accuracy.

FEEL as a Universal Expression Language

Trisotech has also expanded the availability of the international standard FEEL expression language to its Workflow (BPMN) and Case Management (CMMN) visual modelers. For example, FEEL expressions can be used for providing Gateway logic in BPMN and If Part Condition expressions on sentries in CMMN.

FEEL Validation and Debugging

Trisotech provides validation for FEEL and real-time full-featured debugging capabilities. To learn more about testing and debugging read the blog Trisotech Debuggers.

Additional Presentations and Blogs

You can also watch a presentation by Denis Gagne on using FEEL as a standards-based low-code development tool and read a blog by Bruce Silver about how using FEEL in DMN along with BPMN™ is the key to standards-based Low-Code Business Automation.

Hi, I’m Sandy Kemsley of column2.com. I’m here today for the Trisotech blog with some practical design tips for when you’re combining process and decision models.

let’s start with the big three modeling standards for processes and decisions. There’s BPMN for structured processes, CMMN for case management and DMN for decisions. The standards tell you how to combine the models and you can look at graphical versions like Trisotech Triple Crown infographic to see how this works. Basically, process models and case models can call each other, and then either of them can call a decision model. Now what the standards don’t show is why you would use a particular model type to model different parts of your operations? Now, this might seem like a really silly question. If you have a process, you model it using BPMN, if you have a case structure, you use CMMN and if you have a decision you use DMN. But the real world is not that simple. In any sort of business, operation, any sort of complex business operation, you’re going to have a combination of process, case, and decision logic. And you need to be able to use more than one model type together. Now when you start doing modeling, you’ll find that process people and rules people come at these business models from different directions: if you’re a process person, like me, then you’ll tend to start with a BPMN or a CMMN model and that’s going to show the overall flow, and then you’re going to add in decision tasks where you need to call out to more complex decision models and then build the DMN models that are called from there. Now, on the other hand, a rule specialist will start by modeling the key decisions in the business operation and then they’re going to add processes to tie those decisions together.

Watch this short video for more…

Follow Sandy on her personal blog Column 2.