Testing the Display Top Browsed and Display Best Sellers actions in Web activities

To check whether these actions are working as expected in an e-Marketing Spot, we can force the daily processing of top-browsed or best-seller lists in a test environment. This reduces the waiting period during testing.

1. Register as a test customer with the store in the test environment.

2. For the Display Top Browsed action, browse multiple, different catalog entries in the target category. For the Display Best sellers action, place orders for multiple, different catalog entries in the target category.

3. For Display Best Sellers only: Either wait 5 minutes or manually run the RaiseECEvent scheduled job. To manually run the job, open the RaiseECEvent scheduled job in the Administration Console, and then click OK, which forces the job to run immediately. This job must run so that the marketing services are informed of the test orders you placed. By default, this job runs every 5 minutes.

4. Manually run the SaveMarketingStatistics scheduled job. To manually run the job, open the SaveMarketingStatistics scheduled job in the Administration Console, and then click OK, which forces the job to run immediately. This job must run so that the marketing services can access order and browsing statistics in the database. By default, this job runs every 15 minutes.

5. Run an SQL query to force the daily processing of the best-seller or top-browsed list to occur again. Once a day at 2:00 AM (by default), the marketing services process the statistical data collected during the day, and update the top browsed/best sellers lists. On the day we are testing, if the send time has already passed, we can force the marketing services to process the current statistical data. To do so, use the following SQL query to remove the entry from the DMACTATTR table that records that the data has already been processed. As a result, the best-seller or top-browsed list will be generated the next time the SendMarketingTriggers scheduled job runs:

   DELETE FROM DMACTATTR WHERE DMACTIVITY_ID = 0 OR DMACTIVITY_ID = 
   (SELECT DMACTIVITY_ID FROM DMACTIVITY WHERE NAME = 'activity_name');

   Whereactivity_name is the name of the activity we are testing.

6. Use the Administration Console, either run the SendMarketingTriggers job manually or wait for the next time the job runs according to its schedule interval setting. By default, this job runs every 30 minutes.

Related concepts
Action: Display Top Browsed
Action: Display Best Sellers

Related tasks
Testing dialog activities

Related reference
Tips for testing targets in web and dialog activities
Tips for testing triggers and actions in dialog activities