Management Center: Testing Dialog activities

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Test Dialog activities

By testing Dialog activities in a test environment, you can ensure that the triggers and actions in the activity flow are producing the result you expect. If the Dialog activity contains targets, you can ensure that the actions reach the target customers. When the testing is successful, you can deploy the Dialog activity to the production environment.
This procedure and its supporting examples are designed for use in a testing environment. It is not recommended that you test Dialog activities directly in a production environment.
To save time when testing Dialog activities, you can set up the test environment to minimize the waiting period for triggers and actions to occur. Depending on the Dialog activity, this might require temporary changes to configuration files and database table data. For this reason, testing certain Dialog activities requires support from a Site Administrator or developer. This topic contains information for both technical and business users.

Before you begin
Make sure you understand when the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job processes Dialog activity triggers:

Schedule the SendMarketingTriggers job

Changing the daily scheduled time for marketing triggers and lists

If the Dialog activity contains the Wait trigger, you should also understand how to run the Wait trigger in test mode by changing a property in the marketing component configuration file.
Plan ahead how we will test the triggers, targets and actions in the activity, using the following topics for tips:

Tips for testing triggers and actions in Dialog activities

Tips for testing targets in Web and Dialog activities (if the Dialog activity contains targets)

Procedure

Log on to the server in the test environment.

Open the Marketing tool.

Open the Dialog activity to test and take note of details that are relevant to testing, such as the triggers and actions, and the target criteria (if the activity includes targets).

Tip: Consider taking a screen snapshot of the Dialog activity to refer to during testing.

Make sure the Dialog activity is active.

Work with the Site Administrator or developer on the following tasks:

Prepare the test environment so that it supports the Dialog activity requirements. For example, if the Dialog activity uses the Send Message action to send a marketing e-mail, the test environment must have an e-mail server configured with e-mail accounts.

Decide how to control when Dialog activity triggers are processed in the test environment. By default, the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job processes Dialog activity triggers every 30 minutes. You have three options:

Option 1: Wait for the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job to run according to its current schedule. This option requires no extra steps; however, during testing wait up to 30 minutes (or whatever the current schedule interval is) for the trigger to be processed, which can be inconvenient.
Option 2: Change the schedule interval of the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job in the Administration Console so that it runs more frequently than every 30 minutes. This option requires you to temporarily change the schedule interval, for example, to 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes, to reduce the waiting period during testing.
Option 3: Trigger the activity manually by opening the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job in the Administration Console, and then clicking OK, which forces the job to run immediately. This option lets you manually control when the trigger is processed; however, if you are running multiple tests, Option 2 requires less effort.

If you chose Option 2, change the schedule interval for the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job in the Administration Console to a shorter interval. See Schedule the SendMarketingTriggers job.

If the Dialog activity you are testing contains the Wait trigger, you can run the Wait triggers in test mode so that the time elapses in a matter of minutes, rather than days.
To do so, create a customized marketing component configuration file and change the values of the following two properties:

Property in marketing component configuration file
(wc-admin-component.xml) What to change
<_config:property name="timedEventTest" value="false"/> Change the value false to true. This forces the Wait trigger to run in test mode and to use the interval value specified in the following timedEventTestInterval property.
<_config:property name="timedEventTestInterval" value="1"/> Optionally, change the value 1 (for 1 minute) to any number representing the number of minutes for the Wait trigger to use in test mode. If the activity has multiple paths following a Branch element, you might want to set the interval longer than 1 minute.

For instructions on how to change this file, see Changing properties in the marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml). Do not push the changed file out to the production environment with the Wait trigger in test mode.

If you have not done so already, restart the test server to ensure changes you made to the test environment take effect.

If the Dialog activity contains targets, you might need to register a test customer who meets the target criteria before you trigger the activity. For example, if the Dialog activity contains a Purchase History target that requires customers to have placed at least three orders, you might need to register a test customer and place the orders in the test environment before you trigger the activity.

Trigger the activity and observe the results.

If necessary, make changes to the Dialog activity until you get the result you want.

When you have completed testing, make sure to restore any configurations in the test environment back to their original settings. This way, you can avoid propagating test environment settings to the production environment.

Restart the test server.

Deploy the tested Dialog activity to the production environment.

Related concepts

Dialog activities

Related tasks

Test Web activities

Related reference

Tips for testing targets in Web and Dialog activities
Tips for testing triggers and actions in Dialog activities
Tips for testing the Display Top Browsed and Display Best Sellers actions in Web activities

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Option 1: Wait for the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job to run according to its current schedule.	This option requires no extra steps; however, during testing wait up to 30 minutes (or whatever the current schedule interval is) for the trigger to be processed, which can be inconvenient.
Option 2: Change the schedule interval of the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job in the Administration Console so that it runs more frequently than every 30 minutes.	This option requires you to temporarily change the schedule interval, for example, to 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes, to reduce the waiting period during testing.
Option 3: Trigger the activity manually by opening the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job in the Administration Console, and then clicking OK, which forces the job to run immediately.	This option lets you manually control when the trigger is processed; however, if you are running multiple tests, Option 2 requires less effort.

Property in marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml)	What to change
<_config:property name="timedEventTest" value="false"/>	Change the value false to true. This forces the Wait trigger to run in test mode and to use the interval value specified in the following timedEventTestInterval property.
<_config:property name="timedEventTestInterval" value="1"/>	Optionally, change the value 1 (for 1 minute) to any number representing the number of minutes for the Wait trigger to use in test mode. If the activity has multiple paths following a Branch element, you might want to set the interval longer than 1 minute.