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Creating simulation tests in Pega Customer Decision Hub

Updated on September 15, 2022

Create a simulation test to understand the effect of business changes on your decision management framework. For example, you can create a simulation test to investigate whether the introduction of a new business logic affects the frequency with which propositions would be offered across a segment of customers. When you complete a simulation test, you can view its output in Scenario Planner or in the simulation testing UI. You can also save the results to a data set for further processing.

Pega Customer Decision Hub
  1. In the Pega Customer Decision Hub portal, click Simulation Testing.
  2. In the top right corner of the Simulation Testing screen, click Create, and then specify the simulation test type:
    • To assess the actions made and the customers targeted when a campaign is executed, select Distribution test.
    • To assess how certain components and expressions influence the outcome of a decision framework, select Decision funnel.
    • To screen the decision strategy for bias related to factors like age, ethnicity, or gender, select Ethical bias.
    • To identify customers who are left without actions or with no relevant actions after any stage of the decision funnel, select Value finder.
    Simulation test types on the Simulation Testing landing page
    The available test types under the Create button on the Simulation Testing landing page
  3. In the Application context section, select the application context for the new simulation test.
    For example: You can select the current application or a specific revision as the simulation context, if your application is enabled for revision management.
  4. Configure the inputs for the simulation:
    ChoicesActions
    Run a test on a strategy rule
    1. In the Strategy section, click Configure.
      You can simulate only one strategy at a time. When you select a strategy, you can view the application context of the selected strategy and its Strategy Result (SR) class.
    2. Click Add next to the strategy that you want to simulate, and then click Apply.
      Note: To run a Value Finder simulation test on a strategy that does not use the Next-Best-Action Designer framework, ensure that the strategy has the appropriate structure. For more information, see the requirements for strategies.
    3. In the Audience section, click Configure.
    4. Click Add next to a data source to select it as the audience for the simulation test, and then click Apply.

      You can select a data set, data flow, customer segment, or report definition rules as the audience. For example, you can use a Monte Carlo data set to create a sample set of customer data for simulation purposes.

      If there is a specific data flow that you want to use as an audience, and you cannot see it for selection, ensure that the data flow meets the following requirements:

      • The source is not abstract.
      • The destination is not abstract.
      • The output class is the strategy's Apply-to class, or a child of this class.
    Run a test on a data set with strategy results
    Note: The option is only available for Value finder simulation tests.
    1. In the Configure inputs section, select Data set with strategy results and customer data.
    2. In the Data set section, click Configure.
    3. Click Add next to the data set that you want to simulate, and then click Apply.
      Note: Ensure that the data set includes the required fields and has the appropriate structure. For more information, see the requirements for data sets.
  5. Optional: Edit the default simulation name by clicking the Edit icon in the Simulation ID prefix section.
  6. Optional: In the Assign output destinations section, define the storage point of simulation results by doing one of the following actions:
    • To configure an existing rule instance as the simulation output, click Add Existing and select an output from the list.
    • To create an output target for the simulation test, click Create New and enter parameters in the Name and Type fields of the new output target.
    Note:
    • Simulations of the type Decision funnel use a predefined ExplainDetails database table as the output destination. You must define an additional output destination for this simulation type if you want to assign additional reports in the Reports section.
    • If you selected an output of the Visual Business Director type for the simulation, a corresponding Visual Business Director report is automatically added in the Reports section.
    • You can add multiple outputs to a simulation test. The available output target types are Database Table and Visual Business Director.
  7. Optional: Add reports to the simulation output:
    1. In the Assign reports to outputs section, click Add report.
      In this section, you can view all the outputs that you configured for this simulation.
    2. In the Output column, assign a report to an output type.
    3. In the Report category column, select the report category, for example, Simulations.
    4. In the Report column, select the 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.
    5. Click Save.
    Note: Simulations of the type Decision funnel use a predefined set of reports out of the box. To define additional reports for this simulation type, define an additional output destination as described in step 6.
  8. To save the simulation test and run it immediately, click Submit and run.
    Tip: You can also click Submit to save the simulation for later use. You can later find the saved simulation on the Simulation Testing landing page in the Pega Customer Decision Hub portal. For more information, see Running simulation tests.
  9. After the simulation has finished running, Review the results by clicking Review reports.
  10. In the Audit section at the bottom of the page, expand the History section, and review the log.
    Result:

    For Pega Customer Decision Hub applications on Pega Cloud for which simulation optimization is enabled in the Business Operations Environment (BOE), the log might contain messages about cloud optimization being disabled during the simulation run. If you see such messages in the log, follow the guidelines for Troubleshooting simulation tests.

  11. Optional: If required, you can edit and re-run the simulation after it has finished running, by clicking ActionsEdit simulation.
    Editing the simulation settings removes data about the previous simulation run, and changes the simulation status back to In Build.
  12. To mark the simulation as completed, click Wrap up.
    After you wrap up a simulation, it is considered resolved and you can no longer rerun it. However, you can still review any reports created for the simulation.
    Tip: On Pega Cloud, you can configure an automatic archiving job for simulation-related case data. For more information, see Creating an archival policy.

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