Explore Nextmv with a new model and Console, without code¶

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Nextmv Marketplace to explore new decision models and the Nextmv Platform, from scratch. Complete this tutorial if you:

• Don’t have a pre-existing decision model and you want to explore the Nextmv Platform.
• Don’t have a background in programming and want a no-code way to explore the Nextmv Platform.

The Marketplace is based on community apps, which are Nextmv applications that showcase how to solve different decision problems with various languages and solvers. They are a great way to explore new decision models and the Nextmv Platform. You can think of community apps as examples that serve as strong references when building and customizing your own decision models.

At a high level, this tutorial will go through the following steps:

1. Subscribe to a Marketplace application.
2. Run the application remotely.
3. Perform scenario testing.

Let’s dive right in 🤿.

1. Create an account¶

The full suite of benefits starts with a Nextmv Cloud account.

1. Visit the Nextmv Console to sign up for an account at https://cloud.nextmv.io.
2. Fill out the form. A member of the Nextmv team will reach out to you to complete the sign-up process.
3. Log in to your account. The Nextmv Console is ready to use!

2. Subscribe to a Nextmv Marketplace application¶

Head to the Marketplace section, where various options for Nextmv applications are available. For this tutorial, select the Nextmv Routing app.

An overview for the Marketplace app will be displayed. Press the button to subscribe to the application.

Fill out the required information, you are ready to proceed to the next step.

3. Run the Nextmv application remotely¶

To run the Nextmv application remotely, you have several options. For this tutorial, we will be using the Nextmv Console.

1. Press the New run button.
2. Select the Input tab.
3. In the dropdown, select the General simple sample input, or any other input you like.
4. Start the run.

Once the run finishes, you can use the Nextmv Console to browse the information of the run:

• Summary
• Output
• Input
• Metadata
• Logs and more

Nextmv is built for collaboration, so you can invite team members to your account and share run URLs.

Go ahead and repeat this process to create a few more runs with different inputs. You can also modify the configuration of the run in the Configure tab. Try changing the Solve Duration option to see how it affects the results. You can set it to 2s (2 seconds) for example.

4. Perform a scenario test¶

We are going to take full advantage of the Nextmv Platform by creating a scenario test. Scenario tests are generally used as an exploratory test to understand the impacts to business metrics (or KPIs) on situations such as:

• Updating a model with a new feature, such as an additional constraint.
• Comparing how the same model performs in different conditions, such as low demand vs. high demand.
• Doing a sensitivity analysis to understand how the model behaves when changing a parameter.

Start by creating an input set. As the name suggests, it is a set of inputs, and it serves as a base so that we can perform runs varying one or more configurations (options). To create an input set, you have several options. For this tutorial, we will be using the Nextmv Console.

1. Navigate to the Input sets section.
2. Set a name for your input set.
3. Use the Instance + date range creation type given that we already have a few runs on the latest instance.
4. Create the input set.

Once your input set has been created, we are going to create a scenario test. Similarly to runs and input sets, you may use the Console or other alternatives. We will continue to use the Nextmv Console in this tutorial.

1. Navigate to the Scenario section.
2. Set a name for your scenario test.
3. Select the input set you just created in the previous step.
4. Select the latest instance.
5. Create configuration combinations, which will be factored in to create the scenarios. Scroll down to find the Solve Duration option. We are setting Solve Duration to be 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s.
6. Optionally, you may configure repetitions. These are useful when the results are not deterministic.
7. Create the scenario test. Review and confirm the number of scenarios that will be created.

Once all the runs in the scenario test are completed, you can visualize the result of the test. A pivot table is provided to create useful comparisons of your metrics across the scenario test runs.