Delete a Recommendation Strategy

You cannot restore a recommendation strategy that you delete. You can only recreate its configurations in a new strategy.

You can delete a recommendation strategy if it meets one or more of these criteria:

Isn't used in any recommendations actions in any Web experiences
Is used in recommendations actions in Web experience drafts or paused Web experiences
Is part of Product Finder questionnaires that are used in Web experience drafts or paused Web experiences
Is part of any unused Product Finder questionnaires

You cannot delete a recommendation strategy that's part of an active Web experience.

Determining How a Strategy Is Used

You can quickly find how a recommendation strategy is being used in two places in the Monetate platform:

The strategy's Experiences modal that you access on the Recommendation Strategies list page
The strategy's Experiences modal that you access by clicking View Associated Experiences on the recommendation strategy's configuration page

Both modals show if a strategy isn't used in any Web experiences or is used in any active and inactive Web experiences. The name of each active and inactive experience appears, and you can click an experience's name to open it in Experience Editor.

The Active designation in the TYPE column indicates one of the following states:

The experience is active
The experience has a scheduled start date and time
The experience's scheduled end time has passed

If you see the Active designation in a recommendation strategy's Experiences modal or Delete Recommendation Strategy modal, then you cannot delete it.

The Inactive designation in the TYPE column indicates one of the following states:

The experience is a draft
The experience is paused
The experience is archived

If you delete a recommendation strategy that's part of an inactive Web experience, then the recommendation strategy selector once configured with the now-deleted strategy in either the recommendations action or in the Product Finder questionnaire reverts to its SELECT RECOMMENDATION STRATEGY state. The recommendation strategy's name still appears in an inactive Web experience's Recommendation Strategy Report.

The Unused designation appears in the TYPE column only if the recommendation strategy isn't used in any Web experiences. This designation doesn't indicate that the strategy isn't used in any Web experiences and Product Finder questionnaires.

Finding Strategies in Unused Product Finder Questionnaires

To determine if a recommendation strategy that you want to delete is part of any unused Product Finder questionnaires, navigate to the Product Finder list page, and then use your browser's search tool to look for the strategy's name on the list page.

If you delete a recommendation strategy that's in an unused Product Finder questionnaire without first replacing it with a different strategy, the now-deleted recommendation strategy's name still appears in the RECOMMENDATION STRATEGY column on the Product Finder list page. However, the recommendation strategy selector once configured with the now-deleted strategy reverts to its SELECT RECOMMENDATION STRATEGY state in the Product Finder wizard.

Because the Experiences modals and the Delete modal don't indicate if a recommendation strategy is part of any unused Product Finder questionnaires, you shouldn't delete a recommendation strategy until you first check the Product Finder list page to determine if the strategy that you want to delete is part of any unused Product Finder questionnaires.

If the strategy is part of an unused Product Finder questionnaire, then follow these steps to replace it.

If the strategy is part of a Product Finder questionnaire associated with an active Web experience, then you cannot delete it.

Click COMPONENTS in the top navigation bar and then select Product Finder.
Use your browser's search tool to find on the Product Finder list page any occurrences of the recommendation strategy that you want to delete.
- If the search tool doesn't find the strategy name, then skip to Deleting a Strategy That's Unused or in Inactive Experiences or to Deleting a Recommendation Strategy in an Active Experience, as appropriate.
- If the search tool finds the strategy name associated with one or more unused Product Finder questionnaires, then continue to step 3.
- If the search tool finds the strategy name associated with a Product Finder questionnaire used in one or more active or inactive Web experiences, then skip to Deleting a Recommendation Strategy in a Product Finder Experience.
Click the name of the questionnaire to open it in the Product Finder wizard.
Select a different recommendation strategy.
Click UPDATE in the Changing Recommendation Strategy modal.
Click NEXT: BEGIN QUESTIONNAIRE.
If necessary, take any of these actions:
- Modify any of the questions, their filters, and their images.
- Click PREVIEW to ensure that the questionnaire works with the replacement recommendation strategy.
Click the X in the upper-right corner of the wizard to save the changes if you skipped the previous step, or click EXIT after you finish previewing the questionnaire.

You can now delete the recommendation strategy without impacting the unused Product Finder questionnaire.

Deleting a Strategy That's Unused or in Inactive Experiences

Follow these steps to delete a recommendation strategy that's not used in any Product Finder questionnaires or Web experiences or is part of inactive Web experiences.

Click COMPONENTS in the top navigation bar, select Product Recommendations, and then click the Recommendation Strategies tab.
Use the search bar on the Recommendation Strategies list page to find the recommendation strategy that you want to delete.
Place your mouse pointer anywhere in the strategy's table row, and then click the delete icon when it appears.
Click DELETE in the Delete modal.