You can test a time trigger using the Preview feature which is available on the Rule Manager page of Oracle Commerce Workbench.

In Oracle Commerce Workbench, you can specify a preview time that allows you to preview the results of dynamic business rules as if it were the preview time, rather than the time indicated by the system clock. Once you set a preview time and trigger a rule, you can examine the results to ensure the rule promotes the records that you expected it to. The Preview feature is available to Oracle Commerce Workbench users who have Approve, Edit, or View permissions.

Note that temporarily setting the MDEX Engine with a preview time affects only dynamic business rules. The preview time change does not affect any other aspect of the engine, nor does the preview time affect any scheduled updates between now and then, changes to thesaurus entries, changes to automatic phrasing, changes to keyword redirects, and so on. For example, setting the preview time a week ahead does not return records scheduled to be updated between now and a week ahead.

The MDEX Engine supports the use of a parameter called the merchandising preview time parameter as a way to test the results of dynamic business rules that have time triggers. Setting a preview time with the parameter affects only the query that uses the parameter. All other queries are unaffected.

You set a preview time in the MDEX Engine using the Java setNavMerchPreviewTime() method or the .NET NavMerchPreviewTime property in the ENEQuery object. This call requires a string value as input. The format requirement of the string is described in the topic “MDEX Engine URL query parameters for promoting records and testing time triggers.”

You can also set this method by sending the necessary URL query parameters to the MDEX Engine via the UrlENEQuery class. For details, see “MDEX Engine URL query parameters for promoting records and testing time triggers”.