With the Automation Designer Simulator, you can test an Autopilot's behavior and simulate flows of a conversation between a human user and the Autopilot.
The Simulator can also be used to test Smart Scripts and all sorts of conversational automations.
This feature is useful to retest, for example, the settings after editing a flow in Automation Designer, among other scenarios.
Accessing the Simulator
To access the Automation Designer Simulator feature, please follow these steps:
1. On the Autopilot app, choose a model from the list [1] and select “Automation Designer”. You will be taken to the Automation Designer tab inside the “Builder” app, where the flow configuration will take place.
2. Within the “Automation Designer” [2] you can choose one of the following options to open the Simulator:
- Click Test [3].
- Select the “Simulator” section [4].
3. Then, the “Simulator” side panel appears.
Notes:
- To use the Simulator, you have to publish a flow.
- The Simulator runs over the last published version.
Using the Simulator
On the “Simulator” side panel, you can either:
- Simulate a conversation by directly typing messages [1] that are used as input to the Simulator. Here, you can interact with the Simulator as a web chat and test both Voice and Digital Autopilot, independently of the type of channel that it will be delivered. To send the messages, you can either press ENTER on your keyboard or click Send [2]. If you wish to restart the session, select the Restart button [3], and it will start over.
- Instead of manually interacting with the Autopilot, you can define multiple “Contact Messages”. Note that the messages that you need to fill in are the user's messages, not Autopilot’s. To do so, select the Test script button [1] to add the “Contact Messages”.
- Once you click Save [2] and select Play script [3], it will run the messages inserted in the test script.
- You can also Export [4] the script and save it to reuse later. For example, by reusing it, you can verify if the results are still the same.
- Besides exporting, the Simulator allows uploading a JSON file containing user inputs to serve as a script to simulate the conversation. To do so, you can Import [5] the script. This option allows you to run all the scripts simultaneously and import sessions from the Session Monitor that, for example, have some issues, and you wish to verify what went wrong. The session will be restarted if you select Clear all [6].
- Simulate the variable, set values to Talkdesk Studio™ “businessHours” system variable and custom variables of the automation to mimic the collected values throughout a conversation and apply them to the simulation. To do this, select the Variables icon [1].
- Then, add a “businessHours” variable [2] or a “Custom” one [3]. Once you press Save [4], the variable(s) become active. The session will be restarted if you select Clear all [5].