Testing the Next-Best-Action strategy framework
You can verify that your Next-Best-Action Designer configuration is giving the desired results by using the Customer Profile Viewer or defining a data transform that represents a test customer persona, and running a test for this persona directly from the strategy canvas.
Customer Profile Viewer
Starting in Pega Customer Decision Hub 8.7, use the Customer Profile Viewer to execute the NBA framework in test mode using real customer data (or a customer persona). To access the Customer Profile Viewer, click Explore arbitration results in the Final Priority section of the Arbitration tab of Next Best-Action-Designer.
Strategy framework
If the Customer Profile Viewer does not explain the unexpected results, then it may be necessary to drill down into the individual strategies.
The strategy framework consists of the following components:
- Import actions, to import the actions using Proposition Data shapes
- Engagement policies, which filter out actions based on eligibility, applicability and suitability criteria using Proposition Filters
- NBA strategy framework, which applies constraints, calculates the action and treatment propensity using AI, performs arbitration, and finally applies channel-specific rules to select the top actions based on the channel requirements.
These parts of the strategy framework are tested in slightly different ways. These approaches will be discussed in detail in the sections that follow.
- Test mode implementation
Activate test mode to facilitate the testing and debugging of you next-best-action framework. When test mode is active, actions that would otherwise be removed from the strategy results (SR), are instead flagged as being selected for removal.
- Using test mode features
Use the Explain filtering by feature report in the Customer Profile Viewer to view where actions are being filtered from the result.
- Testing trigger strategies
Trigger strategies are referenced by the dataflow which is invoked by the channel services. To test a trigger strategy, use the data transform (persona) that was automatically generated for you based on your Context Dictionary and run the trigger strategy to identify where the actions are dropping out or where the strategy results are unexpected.
- Using the trigger strategy to test an engagement policy
If you see that strategy results are getting dropped from one of more of the engagement policies in the trigger strategy, this is often expected behavior since the policy conditions may be legitimately excluding actions that do not meet the criteria. However, if the results are not as expected, the next step is to test the engagement policy strategy to find the issues and groups where the results are unexpectedly dropping out.
- Using the trigger strategy to test the NBAStrategyFramework component
If you see unexpected strategy results from the NBA Strategy Framework component in the trigger strategy, the next step is to test the NBA Strategy Framework strategy to find the high level component where the results are dropping out or are unexpected.
- Testing the lower strategies
Once you identify the point in the framework where you are seeing unexpected results, you may want to test that sub-strategy and perhaps some related strategies.
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