PORTA ONE. Porta Switch. Maintenance Release. New Features Guide.

Transcription

1 PORTA ONE Porta Switch 35 Maintenance Release New Features Guide

2 Copyright Notice & Disclaimers Copyright PortaOne, Inc. All rights reserved PortaSwitch: New Features Guide, July 2013 Maintenance Release 35 V Please address your comments and suggestions to: Sales Department, PortaOne, Inc. Suite #408, 2963 Glen Drive, Coquitlam BC V3B 2P7 Canada. Changes may be made periodically to the information in this publication. The changes will be incorporated in new editions of the guide. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement, and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms thereof. It is against the law to copy the software on any other medium, except as specifically provided for in the license agreement. The licensee may make one copy of the software for backup purposes. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without the prior written permission of PortaOne Inc. The software license and limited warranty for the accompanying products are set forth in the information packet supplied with the product, and are incorporated herein by this reference. If you cannot locate the software license, contact your PortaOne representative for a copy. All product names mentioned in this manual are for identification purposes only, and are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 2

3 Table of Contents Preface... 4 LTE Service Provisioning and Billing... 5 Improved Balance Announcements... 6 Simplified Administration of Dial-by-name Directory... 8 Revert Transaction Invisibly... 9 Web Self-care Password Change Notification Auto-provisioning for New Models of IP Phones Integration with Luottokunta Payment Processor

4 Preface PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 35 is the next leap-forward release, consistent with our fast releases, precisely on time ideology introduced in Where to get the latest version of this guide The hard copy of this guide is updated upon major releases only and does not always contain the latest material on enhancements introduced between major releases. The online copy of this guide is always up-to-date and integrates the latest changes to the product. You can access the latest copy of this guide at: Conventions This publication uses the following conventions: Commands and keywords are given in boldface The exclamation mark draws your attention to important information or actions. NOTE: Notes contain helpful suggestions about or references to materials not contained in this manual. Timesaver means that you can save time by performing the action described here. Tips provide information that might help you solve a problem. Trademarks and Copyrights PortaBilling, PortaSIP and PortaSwitch are registered trademarks of PortaOne, Inc. 4

5 LTE Service Provisioning and Billing LTE (Long Term Evolution) is becoming the new standard for building wireless networks. Numerous benefits in terms of radio technology (which are beyond the scope of this document) allow service providers to deploy the LTE network rapidly and at reduced cost. The large amount of bandwidth available to each consumer allows the provision of high-speed Internet combined with VoLTE and IPTV services. Standardized network infrastructure and interconnection between network elements (based on IMS) allow fast network expansion, easy replacement of some components and seamless interconnection with other operators. PortaBilling can serve as the B/OSS system for LTE services, i.e. it manages customer data (including unified balance), service configuration details, product/rate tables, and so on for LTE just like for other services (VoIP or DSL Internet access). This allows the creation of a truly convergent environment and easy migration of existing customers (e.g. using WiMAX service) to the LTE network. Porta Billing Provisioning Provisioning Diameter (Gy) HSS PCEF SAE GW PCRF MME In terms of the network, PortaBilling performs the function of an OCS (Online Charging System). It communicates with SAE-GW via Diameter (Gy) for real-time session authorization and rating. The same Gy interface is used to disconnect a customer exceeding his credit limit or switch him to a different class of services when the usage quota is used up. PortaBilling can also provision customer data into HSS (to allow centralized user authentication across the network) and PCRF (to allocate the correct policy/qos parameters to the customer). 5

6 Improved Balance Announcements PortaSwitch serves as a unified platform for various services, so frequently operators will end up using the same system to cater to traditional postpaid users (replicating their PSTN service) as well as to newgeneration communication services, which are usually prepaid. But even for prepaid there will most likely be multiple accounts (e.g. family) billed together, and there is a need to produce invoices and the like, and so end users are represented as customers in PortaBilling One minor challenge in this set-up is how to provide a good user experience when announcing the current balance for different types of customers provisioned on the same system. There are two main types of these: Classic postpaid users, who best understand the term balance currently owed. Usually these customers do not even need a credit limit. Considering the increasing amount of VoIP fraud, and since you already have access to the real-time call authorization, overdraft protection and rating capabilities of PortaBilling, it is highly recommended though to assign credit limits to all of your customers, even those with a classic postpaid service. Prepaid users for whom, during normal operations, the balance is negative (reflecting the fact that the service provider actually owes some money to the customer) and the credit limit is typically set to zero. Obviously such customers will better understand a positive number, which represents their available funds, since a negative number is automatically associated with a balance overdraft situation. Recent improvements in the internal intelligence of the PortaSIP selfcare IVR module and the IVR configuration options which are available to you allow fine-tuning of communication with the end user. You can configure your IVR applications to announce the current balance in one of two modes: For prepaid customers (those who have a credit limit of 0 or less), announce available funds (calculated as credit limit minus balance) and announce the current balance for others (postpaid customers); Always announce balance (this is the classic mode, ideal for typical postpaid customers). 6

7 This is controlled by the Credit Accounts Balance Announcement option. There is also a third mode available: "Backward compatibility". It preserves the announcements exactly the way they were working in previous releases. This allows to perform the upgrade seamlessly and keep the IVRs functioning the way your users are accustomed to. You also have one extra option (Announce Credit Limit), which controls whether the balance announced to the end user should be followed by announcement of the credit limit. This allows you to separate cases where credit limits are assigned only as a precaution (and so the end user should not really know about them) from cases where they are an integral part of the service (e.g. loyal customers are rewarded with an increased credit limit the longer they stay with you) These options are available on the Instance Parameters tab for the following IVR applications: Balance Information, Prepaid card calling, Callback, Account top-up via voucher, Account top-up via credit card, Account Self-care, Own Voice Mailbox Access. In the table below you can see available variants for balance announcements with the Credit Account Balance Announcement option set to backward compatibility or funds / balance value: Balance = 10; Credit Limit = 300 Balance = 10; Credit Limit = n/a Balance = -10; Credit Limit = 300 Balance = -10; Credit Limit = 0 Backward Compatibility You have 290 dollars. You have unlimited available funds. You have 310 dollars. You have 10 dollars. Funds/Balance You have 290 dollars available. Your balance is 10 dollars. Your balance is minus 10 dollars. You have 10 dollars available. In the following table you can see available variants for balance announcements with the Credit Account Balance Announcement option set to balance value (with the Announce Credit Limit option enabled / disabled): Balance = 10; Credit Limit = Balance Without Credit Limit Announcement Your balance is 10 dollars. With Credit Limit Announcement Your balance is 10 dollars, your credit limit 7

8 300 is 300 dollars. Balance = 10; Credit Limit = Your balance is 10 dollars. n/a limit. Balance = -10; Credit Limit = 300 Balance = -10; Credit Limit = 0 Your balance is minus 10 dollars. Your balance is minus 10 dollars. Your balance is 10 dollars, there is no credit Your balance is minus 10 dollars, you credit limit is 300 dollars. Your balance is minus 10 dollars, you credit limit is 0 dollars. The improved IVR logic allows you to fully utilize customer selfmanagement and reduce the load on your helpdesk/customer care while expanding your business into both the postpaid and prepaid communication service space simultaneously. Simplified Administration of Dial-by-name Directory Now there is a single, unified dial-by-name directory for each IP Centrex environment. Basically it is linked to the list of extensions, and so when creating an extension you can mark it as published so that it is included in the dial-by-name directory, and upload voice prompts with the person s name. Previously, the dial-by-name directory was linked to a specific DID number, so extra administrative efforts were required if the company s auto-attendant was accessible via multiple phone numbers (e.g. local and toll-free numbers). 8

9 The integration of the extensions list and the dial-by-name directory will save time for administrators of IP Centrex environments where multiple DID numbers or auto-attendants are used, since the data only need to be edited once. Revert Transaction Invisibly If an erroneous charge has been applied to a customer s account and you notice it early enough, you will probably want to just remove it, so it looks like it never happened. Of course a simple delete is not an option, since the original transaction (and the correction) must still be kept for audit purposes. The new Revert Transaction option allows you to do exactly that: It creates a transaction record (xdr), with a negative amount exactly corresponding to the original one, so the overall change of the customer s balance is zero. It marks both the original and the correction xdr as hidden, so the end user will not see them on his invoice or web self-care portal. At the same time, both xdrs remain in the database, so they are properly reflected in various accounting reports and the like. 9

10 With this new functionality, your customers will not see extra fields that could be confusing or inappropriate on invoices, in statistics or on selfcare portals. Web Self-care Password Change Notification In order to improve the security of online access to the self-care portal, every time the access password is changed for an administrator, account, customer or reseller an alert is sent to them via and/or SMS. Just like all other notifications, the actual message content is generated based on a template, and can be edited by the administrator. The notification template is quite flexible, so you can customize the text for different types of users e.g. for the most forgetful ones you can even include the actual password in the (but note that this is quite insecure, and is incompatible with the security requirements for online credit card processing, for instance). 10

11 Auto-provisioning for New Models of IP Phones The list of IP phones which are auto-provisioned by PortaSwitch has been extended to include the Yealink T32G and Yealink T38G IP phone. Integration with Luottokunta Payment Processor PortaSwitch is integrated with the Luottokunta payment processor allowing your customers to make payments using their VISA, MasterCard and American Express cards. The payment process is as follows: the end user opens the self-care portal, goes to the Make Payment page, specifies the amount of money he would like to pay and clicks the Pay button. Then the user is redirected to the external Luottokunta page where he enters credit card information. After the payment is processed by Luottokunta, the end user is redirected back to their self-care portal where they can view the payment confirmation. This enables one very important advantage of the Luottokunta payment processor: since the credit card details are entered on an external website (which belongs to Luottokunta), the service provider does not have to pass through PCI DSS certification (since he never deals directly with credit card numbers). This allows you to launch the service quickly, without any delays or administrative overhead related to security certification. 11

12 Perform the following steps to configure the Luottokunta payment processor: In the admin WI configure payment system on the Payments page (Payment Systems tab), use the merchant ID provided by 12

13 Luottokunta for the name. A password is not required. Choose required payment methods. On the configuration server set the following options: o PurchaseURL = o MAC_Key = specify here a key for MAC calculations provided by Luottokunta. Assign configured currency to EUR on the Currencies page (Luottokunta only supports EUR at the moment). Luottokunta is used on the self-care interface as a preferred payment method or by choosing it from the Other Payment Methods list. Integration with this payment processor provides secure and easy handling of payment authorizations and charges with Visa, Visa Electron and MasterCard. 13