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Setting limits on the number of actions

Updated on September 15, 2022

The Final Action Limits feature can be used to control the number of actions delivered to contacts.

Pega Customer Decision Hub

Action Limits Concepts concepts

The Final Action Limits DDR along with some other related concepts is described below.

ConceptDescription
Context entityAn entity on which next-best-action decisions can be made, for example, I want the next best action for a Customer, or the next best action for an Account.
Multilevel Context DictionaryA configuration that has a hierarchy of context entities where actions may be relevant for specific entities, for example:
  • Retail Banking
    • Customer – can have multiple Accounts
      • Account – one per card or account
  • Telecommunications
    • Account – can have multiple Subscribers
      • Subscriber – one for each phone number, can have multiple Devices
        • Device, for example, phone, tablet, watch
  • Healthcare
    • Policy – can have multiple Members
      • Member – can have multiple Claims
        • Claim
Primary Context entityThe entity to which all actions will be communicated, that is, the entity representing the person with the contact details such as phone number, email address, etc. In the above examples, this would be the Customer, Subscriber or Member.
Primary ContactAn instance of the Primary Context entity that is authorized to make decisions on behalf of the account or relationship, also known as an Authorized Contact. For example, this may be a parent for a family phone plan or the primary member on a healthcare policy. Note that there may be more than one Authorized Contact for an account / relationship. The IsPrimaryContact property is set to true for any actions that are assigned to an authorized contact.
Authorized ContactThis is the name of a sub-strategy that is configured by the user during the implementation phase to only select Primary Contacts for an account or relationship.
Action ContextThis is set on the action rule and is stored in the ActionContext property on the action. This is the name of the context entity for which the action is relevant, for example, a phone upgrade action would be for a Subscriber (or possibly Device), whereas a family data plan action would be for an Account, or a new credit card action would be for a Customer, whereas a credit line increase would be for an Account.
Final Action LimitsThis is a Data Decision Rule (DDR) containing settings that are evaluated after actions for all contexts and all contacts have been arbitrated and merged. This is one of the final processes that occurs in the NBA framework prior to output bundling.

As such, limits can be applied to combinations of action contexts (using the CombineContexts setting), and to individual contacts, or across all contacts (using the LimitByContact setting).

Also, since all outbound channels are evaluated together, a limit can be applied across all outbound channels, whereas for inbound channels, only a single channel will be processed during any interaction.

Note: A contact is an instance of the primary context entity with its own unique pySubjectID.

Final Action Limits DDR

PropertyDescription
pyLabelA user-friendly name for an action limits setting.
pyDirectionAction limits are defined separately for Outbound and Inbound directions.
pyChannelThe channel (in combination with the action context) to which the Action Limit is to be applied. Possible settings are described below.
  • Each - The same Action Limit is to be applied to each channel for the Action Context. This removes the need to define a separate limit for each channel.
  • <Channel Name> (for example, Web, Email, and so on) - Applies the Action Limit to the specific channel. This setting overrides any value already set by the Each functionality.
  • <Blank> - Indicates that the Action Limit is to be applied over the combination of all channels. That is, it sets a limit for the Action Context regardless of channel. This limit is applied after individual channel limits have been applied, and is only available for Outbound processing, since for Inbound only a single channel is processed at a time.
pyIssueThe Issue (in combination with the action context) to which the Action Limit is to be applied. Blank indicates all issues.
pyGroupOnly used if pyIssue is not blank. The Group (in combination with the action context) to which the Action Limit is to be applied. Blank indicates all groups within the issue.
pyNameNot currently used.
CombineContextsWhen set to true for multiple contexts within a channel specification, this allows a single limit to be applied to the combination of selected Action Contexts.
ActionContextThe Action Context to which the Action Limit is to be applied.
ActionLimitThe maximum number of actions allowed for the combination of Direction, Channel, Issue, Group and Action Context.
LimitByContactDetermines whether a limit applies to each contact or to the interaction as a whole. Possible settings are described below.
  • true - Apply the limit n to each contact separately so that the top n actions ordered by descending priority are emitted for each contact.
  • false - Apply the limit n to the interaction across all contacts, so that the top n actions ordered by descending priority within contact priority are emitted. Contact priority is determined by whether the contact is a primary contact or not, with primary contacts having a higher priority; the order for contacts with equal priority would be undefined.
Note: For the CombineContexts property, the Action Limit needs to be set for each Action Context being combined. If actions for only one of the contexts are available, then the limit assigned to that context will be used; if more than one of the combined contexts are available, then the maximum of the limits for those contexts is used.

In the following example, if only Account context actions were available (i.e. had passed engagement policies, arbitration etc.), a maximum of 2 (Account-context) actions would be output, although if actions for both contexts were available, up to 3 actions (Account and / or Subscriber context) would be output.

ActionContextCombineContextspyChannelpyDirectionActionLimit
AccounttrueEmailOutbound2
SubscribertrueEmailOutbound3
  • Action Limits Use Cases

    The Action Limits use cases below are examples of how these two features can be utilized. These examples use the telecommunications paradigm of Device within Subscriber within Account.

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