To use Postcode Anywhere Client in your applications you need rules. Rules are what are used to tell our software how to insert an address into your desktop applications. They are very flexible, allowing you to insert any element of an address into your chosen application. In short, rules rule!

When you first start up the Rule Editor this is the screen that you'll be presented with. Existing rules available to you are listed with the name of the rule owner and whether the rule is for yourself or for everyone (indicated by the icon on the left).

The buttons on this window should be fairly self-explanatory:

• New Rule: Uses the wizard to create a new rule.
• Edit Rule: Select a rule in the list then click this button to edit the rule.
• Delete: Deletes the selected rule in the list.
• Refresh: Reloads the list to get any new rules.

The New Rule button will take you through the rule wizard which you can read about here. For this section though we will look at what happens when you edit an existing rule.

Here you can alter the name and the description for your rule. These details are for reference only but may help other users understand what the rule is intended to do.

The priority of the rule is important. Where more than one rule exists for an application the rule with the highest priority will be executed. Therefore, if one rule is set up for all users and a single user needs to input an address in a different way they can set up a private rule for the same application with a higher priority.

Where an application has more than 1 screen requiring an address with different layouts 2 different rules can be used. If the priority of each rule is the same then the software will ask which rule is to be used once the desired address has been selected.

There are 3 basic formatting options:

• Letter style
• Database applications requiring separate address elements (building number, street, etc.)
• Database applications with standard address lines

If your application has just one space for the address, or (as the name suggests) you are using the address in a letter, the first option is the one to use. This will write out the address in the standard format (like on an envelope).

The second option will let you choose which elements of the address are written in which fields of your application. This is the option to choose if the application you are using has separate fields for building number, flat number, street, etc.

The final option is the one to choose if the application has fields for line 1, line 2, line 3, etc. You will need to specify the number of these lines so that the addresses can be arranged correctly.

In addition to these options there are 2 further options. You can choose to record the company and department names in separate fields. Again, if you have an application that has a separate field for the company name then you need to check this box. Similarly, if there are separate fields for town, county and postcode check the second formatting option here.

To clarify take a look at the following screenshots.

Use option 1	Use option 2
Use option 3	Use option 3 and both extra formatting options

In addition to the address you can choose to access extra data sets to store in your database. The options are:

• Grid reference for the postcode
• Mailsort, DPS (Delivery Point Suffix) and barcode - useful if you use bulk mailings and mailsort
• Acorn data - geodemographic profiling based on postcodes
• Ward, district and parliamentary constituency data
• Objective 2 eligibility - postcodes fall into areas that may be eligible for ERDF funding for certain projects (only useful if you know what it is)

This screen shows the steps that will be taken once you have selected the address to insert into your application. From here you can add new steps, edit existing steps or delete steps. There are 6 buttons at the top of this window.

• AutoFill: This replaces any steps you have with the default steps based on the formatting options selected.
• New Step: Add a new step into the list (the new step is inserted at the bottom of the list
• Edit Step: Highlight a step and click this button to open the step editor. You can also double-click the step in the list.
• Delete: Highlight a step and click this button to remove it from the list.
• Up/Down: Highlight a step and click one of these buttons to move it up and down the lsit.

Click here to learn more about the step editor.

In this box will be the titles of all the windows in which this recogniser rule will run. The title will be whatever you see in the blue bar at the top of your application window. You can enter more window titles as needed adding new titles on a new line for each.

It is also possible to enter partial names to match more than one window. For example, if one your application windows is entitled "CRM - Clients - New" and another is "CRM - Clients - Edit" you can enter "CRM - Clients" in the windows box and both windows will use the rule.

When a rule is created it can only be edited by the user who created it. However, any user can have access to it to use it in the same application. To enable this the sharing setting needs to be set to "Anyone on my account", otherwise the rule is only visible to the owner.

If a rule is shared amongst users but one user needs the rule to be different they can set up their own private rule to use instead. As long as the priority of the private rule is higher than that of the shared rule it will be used in preference for that single user.

Finally, it is possible to alter the positioning of the Postcode Anywhere Client lookup window when a rule is invoked. The window will open by default in the centre of the application window that it was triggered from, but this can be changed if desired. Other options are to have the popup open in the centre of the desktop or to provide coordinates for the popup to use.