Design/change-time policies execute when events within the policy's scope occur in the registry. The scope of a policy specifies to which type of registry objects the policy applies (for example, Service objects, Policy objects, User objects) and during which types of events the policy is triggered (for example, a PreCreate event, a PostCreate event, a PreStateChange event).

Classifying assets can help you create highly targeted design/change-time policies, because the scope of a policy can be additionally constrained to objects that are classified in a specified way. For example, instead of applying a particular policy to all Application Server assets, you might want to restrict the policy to just the Application Server assets that are classified by the “APAC” category from the Domains taxonomy.

When you define a custom asset type, think about whether you will need to apply different design/change-time policies to specific subsets of that type. If so, make sure the asset type includes a Classification attribute that can be used to distinguish those subsets. (Consider making this a required attribute to ensure that users do not forget to classify assets of this type.)