Create a basic scenario to run simulations

Create a basic scenario to test your startSession and getOffer APIs in design time to make sure they return the expected results.

About this task

Procedure

  1. From the Simulator tab in your interactive channel, click Create a basic scenario in the Scenario palatte.
  2. Enter a name for your basic scenario.
  3. Enter a description.
  4. Select an audience level from the drop-down list.
  5. Select an audience ID.

    You can either enter an audience ID manually or search for an audience ID.

    1. To use the search option to search your profile table for the audience ID, click . By default, only the first 10 records and 20 columns of a table are displayed.

      The simulator uses the server and profile database defined in Campaign | partitions | partition[n] | Interact | serverGroups | [serverGroup set for Simulator] | prodUserDataSource property to load profile records and perform audience ID searches. This prodUserDataSource should be configured the same as Interact | general | serverGroups | prodUseDataSource, so the audience ID that is set during scenario definition exists when the simulation runs. The profile table mapped in the Interactive Channel Summary tab from design time database should be a subset of the profile table in runtime database.

    2. Click Add condition to specify search criteria. If you add more than one condition, your conditions are treated as AND conditions in your search results.
    3. Click Find to populate the results for your search criteria.
    4. From the Select display column tab, you can choose specific columns to see in your search results by selecting Show all, Show selected, or Show unselected from the drop-down list. Use Search attributes to search within your filtered list. When you select or deselect an attribute, the search results table is updated immediately.
    5. Highlight the record that matches your criteria and click Select. This audience ID is added to your scenario.

    If no record is found that matches your search criteria, you can create a temporary record with the scenario definition to match the criteria. This scenario definition is not in your database. Unica Interact creates a temporary record that matches your search conditions. The audience ID textbox displays as Temporary Record. The Temporary Record is always created with anonymous audience ID, regardless what you specified in the search conditions. The scenario can be saved with Temporary Record conditions, reloaded, and run with saved the Temporary Record, but this Temporary Record is not created in the profile table. It is only saved with the scenario definition as name-value-pairs. If you select a profile record that exists in the profile table, the Temporary Record is removed from scenario definition.

  6. Select a Zone from the drop-down list. Since all interact points in a zone behave the same, Unica Interact picks the first IP in the selected zone and sets it as the IP parameter in the getOffers API. Only zones that have IPs defined are displayed in the drop-down list.
  7. Enter the Number of offers for the scenario to return. If you do not enter the number of offers, Unica Interact returns all offers assigned in the strategy.
  8. Click Save to add this scenario to your saved scenarios. From Saved scenarios you can also edit, copy, or delete previously saved scenarios.
  9. Click Run to test this scenario.

    The simulation runs on a different thread. You can still browse or edit simulation scenarios, but cannot start another run until your previous run is complete.

    Note: You cannot run an unsaved scenario. If you create or edit a scenario, you must save it before you can run the scenario with your updates. If you try to run an unsaved scenario, your last saved scenario runs instead.
  10. Click Abort to abort the simulation run, if needed.

Results

When the run completes you can view the returned offers from the getOffers method on the Simulation results tab. You can view the offer name, description, offer code, treatment code, and score. You can view additional attribute by clicking the icon in the View attribute column. By default, the results are displayed by highest score.

Under the Log tab, you can also view the log results for your scenario run. Only the log entries for the last scenario run is displayed. The logs displayed on this tab are the as same as those logged in interact.log, but this tab filters the logs by the session ID and the start timestamp of your simulation run. The level of logging is determined by interact_log4j.properties.