# Rules

Rules are a way of automating workflows on the affinity platform.

## Why Rules?

Rules make automating training distribution across your portfolio organizations (if you're external) and your learners (internal) seamless, low touch, and reliable. You can set up a rule once and know that every time you onboard a new member to your team, or you onboard a new organization they will have the correct setup.

You can think of it like a workflow management tool for training distributions.

For more details on the types of rules you can set up, please read the details in the references below.

## Do I need Rules?

Affinity works perfectly well without any rules. They might be helpful for larger internal organizations that are growing or any external organization. However, you can get all the value out of the Affinity platform without rules. We suggest after you get familiar with the platform without using rules, you then try out instituting rules into your workflow.

## Rule Evaluations

The Rules are run based on events that happen in your organization. The platform evaluates and processes the rules every few minutes and applies the results to your organizations.

As an example, you might have a rule to assign a training to a new employee and you invite the employee at 2:05pm and the training gets assigned at 2:07pm automatically.

## External Admin Rules

{% content-ref url="/pages/InY8Kgcb6EvESX9ZUL1i" %}
[Rules Engine Management](/product-guides/external-organizations/rules-engine-management.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}

## Internal Admin Rules

{% content-ref url="/pages/oyLO9Ss5THLnVaJbQTS0" %}
[Rules Engine Management](/product-guides/internal-organizations/rules-engine-management.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}


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