Coverage Scenario

Create Coverage Scenarios to test run a simulation for customers and know if they have enough offer coverage for each group of their customer base, or for certain groups or segments.

Adding a new Coverage scenario

To add a new Coverage scenario, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. In the Coverage tab, click + Scenario.
    A panel appears containing three tabs: General, Parameters, and Zone.
  2. In the General tab:
    1. Provide appropriate values for Name and Description.
    2. Select the Audience level.
      By default, the new coverage scenario is run for all audiences in the mapped profile table. Optionally, you can define filtering conditions that select sub-set of audiences to do coverage analysis.
    3. Select Filter to define filtering conditions. The Audience ID panel opens.
    4. Set the desired conditions and click Find.
      The audiences that match conditions appear in the table that follows. If the result is a large number, the table only displays 100 results. By default, first 10 profile attributes in mapped profile table appears in the audience table.
    5. Select the required profile attributes in Add/Remove Columns dropdown.
      The attributes displayed in the table are also the profile attributes included in results of Runtime simulation when SimSaveProfileAttr set to 1 in startSession.
    6. In the DB table name for storing results field, define the table name to store the simulation results. This table is created in the Design time database. By default, this field is populated with a default value [DEFAULT]. Leaving it as is, the application forms the result table name in form of UACI_SimResults_<scenarioID>. You can change the default value, but this field is required.
    7. There are two checkboxes:
      • Warn to export previous run results: If you select this option, a reminder message will be shown to the user to export the previous run results, in case the user re-runs the scenario. If you do not select this option, no reminder message will be shown.
      • Using existing event Pattern states and offer suppression rules: If you select this option, Interact will consider the event pattern and offer suppression states for those audience IDs. This means that the existing event pattern or offer suppression rules will be applied to the simulation results. If you do not select this option, Interact will ignore the existing event pattern states or offer suppression rules while displaying the simulation results.
  3. In the Parameters tab:
    1. Define parameters for a coverage scenario, which are parameters passed into Interact Runtime API startSession call, the first API called in a coverage simulation. The Select Parameters dropdown lists all system defined parameters for startSession API. Users can either select from the dropdown or define new session parameter by typing in Name textbox. If the system parameters SimSaveProfileAttr (in the dropdown) is selected and set to 1, the profile attributes will be included in results of scenario simulation.
  4. In the Zone tab:
    1. Optional. Specify parameters for each selected zone, which are parameters passed into getOffers. The Select Parameters dropdown lists all system defined parameters for getOffers API. Users can either select from the dropdown or define new session parameter by typing in Name textbox. If the system parameters SimSaveOfferAttr (in the dropdown) is selected and set to 1, the offer attributes will be included in results of scenario simulation.
    2. Click Add/Edit Zones.
      The Zones panel opens.
    3. Drag-and-drop the required number of configured zones from Available Zones to Selected Zones. You must select at least one configured zone.
    4. In the Selected Zones section, select a zone.
      The Parameters section appears.
    5. Select the required parameter in Select Parameter, provide values for Name, Type, and Value, and click Add.
    6. Repeat Step e to add more parameters.
    7. If you have added more than one zone, repeat Step d and Step e to configure the remaining zones.
    8. Click Save.
  5. Click Save button to save the scenario.
    Note: You must save the unsaved changes before running the scenario. If you run the scenario without saving, the last saved scenario will get executed.

Results

After saving the scenario, the system creates the following tabs in view mode:
  • General
  • Parameter
  • Zone
  • Simulation results
  • Run history

Running the Coverage scenario

After saving the created coverage scenario, you can test it by running the scenario.

Procedure

  1. Open a scenario.
  2. Click Run
    The Select Server Group dialog appears.
  3. Perform the following steps:
    1. Select the required server group from the Server Group List dropdown.
    2. Select the required instance from the Instance dropdown. If you do not select an instance, the system automatically assigns the value Any Instance.
    3. Click Run.
      In earlier Interact versions, scenarios always run on server group defined in Configuration setting (Affinium|Campaign|partitions|partition1|Interact|simulator) and the first instance of that server group. From this version, you can run coverage scenarios against selected server group and runtime instance. This gives you more control on where you can run coverage scenarios.
  4. Click the Refresh button to check the status.
    Interact UI does not automatically refresh the History tab to show its progress. Sometimes a coverage scenario can take long time to run due to large number of audiences that need to be processed. From this version, the UI request to Interact Design time to run a scenario is an asynchronous call. If the response from Runtime side is not received within the specified timeout time (default 30 second), the request from Design time will come back with run status as Running. Users can click Refresh button to check running process. We have introduced Reporting running progress so that you can export successful run results to a CSV file. Similar to run scenario, you can check exporting progress as percentage in Status column of run history record that is exporting.
  5. Cancel running: This icon is available only for the Simulator Coverage Scenario when a run starts or when the status is Running. When user clicks on this icon, the running of the Simulator Coverage Scenario is stopped.

Viewing the Simulation Results

After running the Coverage scenario you will see the following results:

About this task

Simulation Results tab

This tab is populated for following fields only after ‘Simulator Coverage Scenario’ is executed successfully by clicking on the Run button. For the failed run, this tab will be empty.

This tab will be always displayed for a coverage scenario. If there are no run results, user clicks it, it will say “No simulation result available". Once a run is completed and there are results in specified result tables, clicking the tab will make the simulation results, with two sections:

Section 1: ‘Run Summary’, which displays:

Overall status of this run in ‘Run Status’ field, Total time for the run in seconds in Duration (sec) field.

How many audiences being processed in ‘Audiences processed’ field and total number of offers are presented in ‘Offer count’ field.

Section 2: It displays a table with columns of

  • Segment: Segment to which the AudienceID belongs
  • Zone: Zone to which offer is assigned.
  • Offer: Name of the offer which is presented to the audience.
  • Audiences served offer: Number of audiences being served offers

This table will help user to know how their coverages are for their customer base.

Viewing the Run History

About this task

This tab displays all run history records in pagination. By default 10 run results are displayed on one page.

This tab is populated with following columns only after ‘Simulator Coverage Scenario’ is RUN.

It has following columns:
  • Run ID: The application will generate a unique RUNID for every run of Simulator Coverage Analysis scenario. This will be displayed on screen after the run is completed.
  • Start time: It store the run start time of the Coverage Scenario run. By default it displays the start time in the ‘MMM DD, YYYY hh:mm:ss’ format.
  • Run duration (sec): This column display the time taken by the Simulator Coverage Scenario takes to run.
  • Run on: Interact Runtime URL on which the simulation run is executed.
  • Status: : This column, display the status of the Simulator Coverage Scenario run.

The different status are as follows:

  • Succeeded: If the Coverage Scenario run is completed successfully.
  • Failed: If the Coverage Scenario run is failed to complete successfully.
  • Running: If the Coverage Scenario run is still in progress.
  • Exported to CSV: If the run result of the Simulator Coverage Scenario is exported into CSV file, then the status of the Coverage Scenario is set to Exported to CSV. By default user can export only the latest run result of scenario.

Number of audiences processed: This column displays the number of audience IDs processed in each run of the Simulator Coverage Scenario. This column will be populated only when the status is “Succeeded" or “Exported to CSV", It will be blank if the run is failed.

Summary: This column displays the summary for the status of each Simulator Coverage Scenario.

If Run is in progress then the Summary is displayed as ‘Running’.

If Run is Succeeded then the Summary is displayed as ‘Running simulation succeeded’

If Run is Failed then the Summary is displayed as ‘Server error running simulation’.

If run result of the Simulator Coverage Scenario is exported into CSV file the it gives the location where this file is exported.

Actions: This column displays the icon with actions within it. These icons are as below:

  • Delete history record: This is available for every Simulator coverage scenario Run. By clicking on this icon the corresponding history record can be deleted.
  • Download CSV: This icon appears only when the run result of the Simulator Coverage Scenario is exported into CSV. When it is clicked, the system retrieve CVS file saved on the DT server and download it to user’s browser.
On the Run history tab there are three buttons:
  • Refresh: Checks the run status.
  • Delete all histories: Deletes all the run history
  • Export to CSV: When user clicks on this link, latest run of the Simulator Coverage Scenario is exported to CSV and the status of this run is changed to Exported to CSV.

Export to CSV

Only latest results are saved in result tables, Interact system will pick up records from result tables and export them to an CSV file. The file name is in format of <ResultTableName>_<RunID>.csv.

The status for that run is changed to Exporting to CSV while DT server is processing (A message like “Exporting CSV is in processing" will be displayed). User can also see status in Run History tab. Once the CSV file is generated, the run history’s status changes to “Exported to CSV". The CSV file will be saved in system temp folder(/tmp/Interact_ExportedCSV/ ) of DT web server. The file name with full path will be saved in Summary field of the run history record.

Note: When you export to CSV, Interact UI does not automatically refresh the History tab to show its progress. Click the Refresh button to check the status.

For a coverage analysis, which could results in millions records, exporting could take long time. User can check run status for when it is done. For small set of data and if user session is still alive, the CSV file will be downloaded to user’s browser as well.