Journey Dry run journey-dry-run
Journey Dry run is a special journey publication mode in ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Journey Optimizer that allows journey practitioners to test a journey using real production data without contacting real customers or updating profile information. This feature helps journey practitioners gain confidence in their journey design and audience targeting before publishing it live.
Key benefits journey-dry-run-benefits
Journey Dry run boosts practitioner confidence and journey success by enabling safe, data-driven testing of customer journeys using real production data—without the risk of contacting customers or altering profile information. This feature empowers journey practitioners to validate audience reach and branch logic before going live, ensuring that journeys align with their intended business goals.
With Journey Dry run, you gain the ability to identify issues early, optimize targeting strategies, and improve journey design based on actual data—not assumptions. Integrated directly into the journey canvas, Dry run delivers intuitive reporting and visibility into key performance indicators, allowing teams to iterate confidently and streamline approval workflows. This enhances operational efficiency, reduces launch risk, and drives better customer engagement outcomes.
Ultimately, this feature improves time-to-value and reduces journey failures.
Journey Dry run brings:
- Safe testing environment: Profiles in Dry run mode are not contacted, ensuring no risk of sending communications or impacting live data.
- Audience insights: Journey practitioners can predict audience reachability at various journey nodes, including opt-outs & exclusions based on Journey conditions.
- Real-Time feedback: Metrics are displayed directly in the journey canvas, similar to live reporting, enabling journey practitioners to refine their journey design.
Dry run execution logic journey-dry-run-exec
During the Dry Run, the journey runs in simulation mode, applying the following specific behaviors to each journey activity without triggering real actions:
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Channel action nodes including Email, SMS or Push notifications are not executed.
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Custom actions are disabled during Dry run, and their responses are set to null.
To enhance readability, custom actions and channel activities appear greyed out during the execution of a Dry run.
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Data sources, including external data sources, and Wait activities are disabled by default during Dry run. However you can change this behaviour when activating the Dry run mode.
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Reaction nodes are not executed: all profiles entering it will exit with success. However, the following priorityn rules apply:
- If a Reaction node is used with one or multiple unitary event nodes in parallel, profiles will always go through the reaction event.
- If a Reaction node is used with one or multiple reaction event nodes in parallel, profiles will always go though the first one in the canvas (the one at the top).
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Permissions to start a Dry run are restricted to users with the Publish journeys high-level permission. Permissions to stop a Dry run are restricted to users with the Manage journeys high-level permission. Learn more about managing Journey Optimizer users’ access rights in this section.
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Before starting using the Dry run capability, read out the Guardrails and Limitations.
Start a Dry run journey-dry-run-start
You can use the Dry run capability in any Draft journey with no error.
To activate Dry run, follow these steps:
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Open the journey you want to test.
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Select the Dry run button.
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Select the if you want to enable or disable Wait activities and External data sources calls, and confirm the Dry run publication.
A status message, Activating Dry run, appears while the transition is happening.
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Once activated, the journey enters Dry run mode.
Monitor a Dry run journey-dry-monitor
Once the Dry mode publication is launched, you can visualize the journey execution and how profiles progress through journey branches and nodes.
Metrics are displayed directly in the journey canvas. Learn more about journey live reporting and metrics, in Live report in the journey canvas.
You can also access the Last 24-hours reports and All-time reports for the Dry run. To access these reports, click the View report button on the upper-right corner of the journey canvas.
Stop a Dry run journey-dry-run-stop
After 14 days, Dry run journeys automatically transition to the Draft status.
Dry run journeys can also be stopped manually. To deactivate the Dry run mode, follow these steps:
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Open the Dry run journey you want to stop.
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Select the Close button to end the test.
Links to last 24h and all time reports are available in the confirmation screen.
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Click Back to Draft to confirm.
Guardrails and limitations journey-dry-run-limitations
- Profiles in Dry run mode are counted towards engageable profiles
- Journeys in Dry run mode are counted towards live journey quota
- Dry run journeys do not impact business rules
- Jump actions are not enabled in Dry run.
When a source journey triggers a Jump event to a destination one, that jump event would not be applicable to a Dry run journey version. For instance, if the latest version of a journey is in Dry run and the previous one is Live, then the jump event would ignore the Dry run version and only be applicable for the Live one.
Journey Step Events and Dry run journey-step-events
Journey Dry run generates stepEvents. These stepEvents have a specific flag and Dry run ID: inDryRun and dryRunID.
_experience.journeyOrchestration.stepEvents.inDryRunreturnstrueif the Dry run is activated, andfalseotherwise_experience.journeyOrchestration.stepEvents.dryRunIDreturns the ID of a dry run instance
If you export stepEvent data to external systems, you can filter Dry run executions using the inDryRun flag.
When analysing journey reporting metrics using ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Platform Query service, Dry Run-generated step events must be excluded. To perform this, set the inDryRun flag to false.