Dry runs

A dry run shows what a rule would do without changing a price or adding anything to the recommendation queue. There are two kinds:

• A simulation replays the rule over the last days of competitor data, for all or some of the products in its scope, and keeps the result so you can explore every decision and compare runs. Use it before you switch a rule on, or after you change one.
• A quick preview, in the rule editor, runs the rule once on a few products you pick, against today’s competitor data.

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Before you start

• The rule must be saved. A simulation uses the rule as it was saved when you started it.
• To open Dry-run and see the simulations, you need the Dry-run simulations permission, under Pricing Intelligence > Repricer. The Dry-run menu item also needs Repricer Rules. Create dry-run simulations lets you start one, and Cancel dry-run simulations lets you stop one that is running.
• The quick preview needs only the Repricer Rules permission.

See Repricer roles.

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Run a simulation

While it runs, the page shows “Calculating dry-run simulation” with a progress bar, “Processed: X of Y SKUs” and the number of decisions so far. You can leave the page: the simulation keeps running and its result is waiting in History when you come back. To stop it, click Cancel simulation. A rule can have one simulation queued or running at a time.

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Read the result

The result opens when the simulation finishes. It covers every decision point: one product on one day.

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Verdict

The line under the title gives a verdict: When the verdict is not the first one, a hint says what drove it:

• Missing purchase prices: “Many products have no usable purchase cost, so their margin floor couldn’t be checked and they weren’t priced. Fill in purchase prices (in the price’s currency) before promoting — loosening the rule won’t help.” See Purchase prices.
• Too little competitor data: “Limited competitor data — the rule couldn’t run on most days. Add more scrape sources or shorten the lookback.”
• The rule’s constraints: “Most decisions hit your margin floor or MAP. Loosen the constraint, change the strategy, or narrow the scope.”
• A margin that no price can meet: the rule’s minimum margin is outside 0–100%. Open the rule and set it within that range.
• A mix: “Mixed issues — partly data coverage, partly proposed prices hitting constraints.”

The verdict is a guide. It does not switch the rule on or off.

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Key figures

Daily margin plots, day by day, the average margin at the simulated prices (Simulated) and at the product’s current price (Actual). Decisions breaks the decision points down by outcome: Click a segment, or its line in the legend, to filter the decisions below; click the centre to clear the filter. Things to know lists what deserves a look. Each item except Purchase price approximated before history has View affected decisions, which filters the decisions below:

• Margin floor blocked changes and MAP violations prevented: decisions that would have priced below the floor or the MAP.
• Products without a usable purchase cost: the purchase price is missing, zero, or in another currency than the price, so the margin floor could not be checked.
• Purchase price approximated before history: days before the product’s purchase price history began. They used the earliest purchase price on record, or today’s for a product with no history.
• Skipped products: decisions the rule skipped.

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Explore the decisions

Top margin winners and Top margin losers list the 10 products whose average margin rises and falls the most. Click one to see its days. Below them, two tabs:

• Decisions: one row per product and day, with Date, SKU, Name, Current, Proposed, Outcome, Δ margin pp, Offers (how many competitor offers the rule saw) and Min comp. (the lowest of them). Use the outcome chips to filter, and click a column heading to sort. 25 rows per page.
• Per SKU: one row per product, with Days, Outcome mix, Avg Δ margin, Σ |Δ price| (the total price movement) and Last proposed. Click View days to see the product’s decisions.

The search box finds a SKU or a product name in both tabs. Clear filters removes every filter. A simulation keeps up to 250,000 decision rows. Beyond that, the list says “Decision detail was capped at 250,000 rows — the aggregates above still cover the whole run.”

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See one decision in detail

Click a decision row. Decision detail opens on the right with the product, the day, the outcome and the price change, and the steps the rule took: the competitor offers it saw, the strategy’s price, the constraints and the rounding. Show raw step data shows the engine’s raw values. Use ‹ and ›, or the left and right arrow keys, to move to the previous or next decision, and × or Escape to close. Omnilinker works the decision out again when you open it, so the detail can carry a note:

• “The rule was modified after this simulation ran — today’s rule may decide differently.”
• “The replay no longer matches the stored result (historical data or the rule changed) — the header shows the original run’s values.”
• “Some competitor offers from the original run have since been pruned by data retention.”
• “Replay unavailable — the product no longer has pricing data. The header shows the stored result.”
• “The original rule snapshot couldn’t be restored — replayed with the rule as it is configured today.”
• “Computed under a previous (net) pricing basis — live replay unavailable.”

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Compare two simulations

Compare simulations shows both runs side by side: when each ran, its period and products, its verdict, and a table of Avg margin (current), Avg margin (proposed), Margin Δ pp, Top-offer rate (current), Top-offer rate (proposed) and Avg price change %, with the difference between them. Click Exit comparison to go back. Simulations made before prices switched to a gross basis carry the net (legacy) tag in History. They cannot be compared with newer ones: the difference column is hidden.

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History

History lists the rule’s simulations, newest first. Each shows its status (Queued, Running, Completed, Failed or Cancelled), when it was requested, its period and products, and, once complete, the change in average margin and the number of decisions. A failed or cancelled simulation shows Simulation failed or Simulation cancelled, with the reason when there is one. Click Retry to set up a new one. Omnilinker keeps the 10 most recent finished simulations of each rule (completed, failed or cancelled). Older ones are deleted every night. The settings page has no field for this number. A simulation from an older version of Omnilinker shows a short table of sample decisions instead of the decision explorer, with “Re-run this simulation to unlock the decision explorer — full per-day decisions, per-SKU rollups and drill-down.”

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Preview a rule in the editor

Quick preview shows the verdict, the decisions by outcome and anything to know, for those products with today’s competitor data. Nothing is saved. Click Run full simulation to open the rule’s simulations. Products kept out of the rule with Keep my price are left out. The quick preview lists the ones you picked under Kept out of this rule, each with “Kept through ‹date›” or “Kept”. A full simulation leaves kept products out too. See Keep my price. The preview takes up to 500 products, unless your organization set another number in Dry-run sample size on the Repricer settings tab.

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How a simulation works

• The rule is the one saved when you started the simulation. Later edits do not change the result.
• Competitor prices are each day’s latest collected offers, within the same freshness window the live repricer uses, so a day without fresh offers is skipped.
• Purchase prices are the ones known at the end of each day. A day before the product’s purchase price history uses the earliest one on record.
• Your prices are today’s: the products’ current prices, price levels and VAT rates. Actual in Daily margin is the margin at today’s price, not the price you had on that day.
• Days are calendar days in UTC.
• Markets are not separated: “Not scoped by market: a simulation blends markets that share the product’s currency, exactly as a live run does.”

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Troubleshooting