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Testing your Nudges with Simulate Mode

Simulate what? Simulate mode! Simulate mode is the perfect tool to make sure that your nudges are set up juuust right. While you can always preview how a nudge looks just by opening it in the Dashboard, if you want to ensure that your nudge behaves just right, that's when you'll want to test your nudge in simulate mode. Simulate mode makes it easy to confirm all the complex conditions (the who, where, and when a nudge should show) are configured correctly by letting you test the nudge your yourself with an extra debug toolbar to simulate those conditions. Check it out!

Simulate toolbar for testing nudges

How do I use Simulate mode?​

Simulate mode is quick to enable. Just click the ▶️ button at the top of the Editor when viewing a nudge:

Starting simulate mode

Check the conditions for when a nudge should show​

Once started, you can check each of the conditions that must pass for the nudge to be shown. You can also hover over any of the conditions to see even more details and options about each nudge.

  • A green check means the check has passed
  • A yellow warning means the check will not currently pass
  • Gray means the condition hasn't happened, yet.

Walk through and test out a nudge​

Walking through a nudge can be a great way to make sure your nudge is working and has the right feel. With simulate mode you can easily see if:

  • Button actions behave exactly as you expect
  • Multi-step nudges have the right pace and feel
  • Pin nudges are in the perfect spots

Neat! What else can simulate mode do?​

A lot! When you hover over each of the conditions, simulate mode gives you more options for testing out your nudge. Here's a shortlist of things you can do that can save you some time while testing out nudges:

  • Automatically include yourself in the Audience
  • Force trigger a nudge
  • Disable the global nudge rate limit
  • Directly open the nudge in the editor
  • Reset a multi-step nudge back to step one

Why does the nudge appear for me if I'm not in the Audience?​

When using simulate mode, we'll automatically include you in the Audience. We've found most admins are trying to test all the different behavior for a nudge, and rarely just the audience, so it's a lot quicker to test out all the rest of the behavior and come back to testing Audience when you are ready.

When ready to test out the Audience behavior, hover over the Audience option, and you'll be able to toggle off the option Include me in this audience while testing

Why aren't my nudges displaying when I navigate around the app?​

This can be a bit surprising! As one of the most intuitive ways of testing a nudge that you just set up, it makes sense to try and navigate to a page to see a nudge. However, since you are an admin and creating and testing nudges, it can be pretty confusing if we displayed nudges normally for you. Instead, when you are signed in to the CommandBar extension editor, we'll prevent nudges from displaying as you interact with your app. To test the nudge behavior, we recommend using simulate mode as described above.

If you really want to test a nudge as an end-user would, you can either sign out of the extension editor or open an incognito window to test out the nudge.