A dependency provides one means to link different Operational Rules. If you add an Operational Rule B as dependency to an Operational Rule A, Operational Rule A will only be launched if Operational Rule B was successfully executed. If Operational Rule B failed, Operational Rule A cannot be launched.
A typical situation in which to use a dependency is for Microsoft Office installations: Before a patch or an upgrade for the Office software is installed the Operational Rule makes sure that the Office software itself was successfully installed.
There are two ways of adding dependencies: either in the Operational Rule Creation Wizard while creating an Operational Rule or adding a dependency to an existing Operational Rule.
The following examples also shows a common scenario. We will use the previously created operational rule installing the software package. To this we will add a verification that the target device must be of a specific operating system and if not the software will not be installed. For this we first need to create the OS verification rule.