Creating simulation tests

Create a simulation test to understand the effect of business changes in your application.

For example, you can create a simulation test to investigate whether an introduction of a new proposition affects the frequency with which your decisioning framework offers certain propositions to customers. When you complete a simulation test, you can view its outcome as a report in Visual Business Director or save the results to a data set for further processing.
Note: Perform this procedure if your application does not include Customer Decision Hub. For more information. For more information, see Simulation testing.
  1. Click Designer Studio > Decisioning > Decisions > Simulation Testing.
  2. On the Simulations landing page, click Create.
  3. In the Setup section, expand the drop-down list and select the application revision against which you want to run the simulation.
    The default context is Current Application.
  4. In the Strategy field, press the Down Arrow key and select the Strategy rule that you want to simulate.
  5. Select the input for the simulation test by performing the following actions:
    1. In the Input section, choose the input type by selecting the corresponding check box.
      You can select a data flow, data set, or a report definition.
    2. In the Input section, press the Down Arrow key and select the rule instance of the chosen type.
      You can select only the rules whose context is the same as the strategy that you simulate.
  6. Optional: Edit the default simulation test ID by clicking Edit in the Simulation ID prefix section.
  7. In the Purpose section, define the simulation test type by expanding the drop-down list and selecting one of the available simulation test types, for example, Impact Analysis.
  8. In the Outputs section, define the storage point of simulation test results by performing one of the following actions:
    1. Configure an existing rule instance as the simulation output, click Add Existing, and select a rule instance from the list.
    2. Create an output target for the simulation test, click Create New, and provide the Name and Type parameters of the new output target.
      You can add multiple outputs to a simulation. The available output target types are Database Table and Visual Business Director. You can view and edit the output that you created on the Output definitions tab.
  9. Optional: Clear any previous output data set before you run the simulation test by selecting the Clear previous results for simulation test check box.
  10. Optional: Add reports to the simulation output by performing the following actions:
    1. In the Reports section, click Configure.
    2. Click Add.
    3. In the Output column, click Add to assign a report to an output type.
    4. In the Report category column, select the report category of the report, for example VBD or Distribution.
    5. In the Report column select a report to assign to the simulation output. For example, if you selected Simulations as the report category, you can select Channel Distribution as the report to simulate how a new proposition is being distributed across a specific channel.
      Note: You can create custom reports and assign them to simulation tests. For more information, see Assigning custom reports to simulations.
    6. Click Done.
      Note: If you selected Visual Business Director as the output type for the simulation test, a corresponding Visual Business Director report is automatically added in the Reports section.
  11. Perform one of the following actions:
    1. To save the simulation test and run it later, in the top-right corner of the New Simulation Test screen, click Submit.
    2. To save the simulation test and run it immediately, in the top-right corner of the New Simulation Test screen, click Submit and run.