CostGuard Version 20.7 Details

Customer Care

FR 3257

Automate Bill Cycle Changes Through Workflow – The Modify Customer Bill Cycle action lets you automate changing a customer’s Bill Cycle based on Bill Cycle Assignment rules configured in the Client. The action can be embedded in a workflow or be tied to a trigger (for example Customer Modified).

Note:

This feature was originally introduced in version 20.6. Version 20.7 provides these enhancements:

• Order Date field renamed as Date

• Return values now include New Bill Cycle ID as well as New Bill Period ID

Workflow

FR 3169

Task Search includes Link Reference Type and ID – Link Reference Type and Link Reference ID have been added as search parameters on the Task Search page. This is an enhancement to FR 3169 – Enhanced bi-directional linkage between Workflows, Customer Care and Tickets – delivered in version 20.6.

Workflow

FR 3259

Export task search results – Users can export task search results to a csv file.

Workflow

FR 3260

Export Trigger page – Users can export Trigger page contents to a csv file.

Workflow

Customer Care

Tickets

FR 3232

Data Lifecycle Management on Communications Messages – The following functionality related to Data Lifecycle Management is available in Workflow and version 20.7 ahead of the full functionality which is targeted for Communications version 20.8:

• New Workflow Actions – These actions are intended and set up specifically for Data Lifecycle Management and do not require any configuration by users:

  • Archive Linked Workflow Messages action archives Communications Messages associated to Workflows.

  • Archive Linked Customer Messages action archives Communications Messages associated to Customer Accounts.

  • Archive Linked Ticket Messages action archives Communications Messages associated to Tickets.

• New informational text on Communications searches:

  • Search on a Workflow instance when the completion date is older than the Communications retention period. Message bodies cannot be searched on archived messages.

  • Search on Tickets when ticket closed date is older than the Communications retention period. Message bodies cannot be searched on archived messages.

  • Search on Accounts when customer disconnected date is older than the Communications retention period. Message bodies cannot be searched on archived messages.

Provisioning Scripts

FR 3252

Ability to edit provisioning script parameters on a scheduled job – IDI has been adding the ability to create parameters on scheduled jobs to make values configurable, and no longer hard-coded in the scripts. While some jobs were updated to allow this, not all jobs had been updated. Under this feature all remaining scheduled jobs related to provisioning have now been updated. This means all credentials and other related information required to interface with the 3rd party network elements are now configurable and can be modified without the need for an adaptive request.

Customer Care

83469

When using the ETF (Early Termination Fee) Calculator in Customer Care, the calculation was not accounting for Grace Days. This functionality was updated to use ContractTerm GraceDays for calculating fees, so if a contract is within its grace days, there will be no early termination fee ($0).

OnlineBill

83485

On deployment of AR 8453 – Enforce Credit Card Auto-pay functionality – with CostGuard version 19.7, when attempting to make a payment in OnlineBill, under certain conditions the Submit Payment button was grayed out so that customers could not make a payment. The system was requiring the Auto-pay option to be checked on the selected payment account; however, the check box was not available if the account was already set to Auto-pay. To resolve this, the system now checks to see if there is an active debit/credit card set to Auto-pay:

If there is an active debit/credit card set to Auto-pay, the AutoPay setting is ignored and users can proceed.

If there is NOT an active debit/credit card set to Auto-pay, the system enforces the requirement to check the Auto-pay check box.

This meets the requirements of AR 8453 and payments can be submitted.

OnlineBill

83488

The remember me check box on the Log-in page was allowing javascript to be injected into the page. This vulnerability has been closed.

Orders

83438

When using Direct Invoicing and the workflow has Billing System Update, Complete Order, and Force Complete Billing Order actions in that order, BTA adjustments were ending as BLOCKED/UNPOSTED. These adjustments should be posted as they are with Force Complete of Order Line Items in CostGuard Client. The Billing Order Management Web Service was updated so Force Complete functions the same as it does in CostGuard Client. Specifically it unblocks BTA adjustments.

Steps to reproduce/test:

With Direct Invoicing enabled and configured AND with a workflow that contains the Billing System Update, Complete Order and Force Complete Billing Order actions (in that order), put through a new web order for a Direct Invoicing item.

Select BTA and submit the order.

After the workflow completes, review the customer account. Note that the billing order appears as complete, but when you look at the customer’s Balances page in Care, the Unposted tab shows the new BTA adjustment as BLOCKED.

Modify the workflow definition to remove the Force Complete Billing Order action.

Put through another Direct Invoicing order as above.

After submitting the order (with BTA), go to the customer account in Care – on the Balances page, the BTA adjustment appears as BLOCKED and unposted, AND on the Orders page/Billing Orders, the order appears IN PROCESS.

Go to CostGuard Client, locate the in-process order, right click and select Force Complete Order Line Items.

Refresh the customer account in the client to see the order has completed.

Refresh the customer account in Care and go to the Balances tab – the previously blocked and unposted adjustment now appears on the Posted tab.

Orders

83487

When calling an API using the Catalog Service Product Catalog Tree Odata, only the Root item was being returned instead of the complete package structure. This was updated to be able to correctly fetch a complete package structure when starting with the RootCatalogID.

Orders

83519

When navigating the Orders web app, some actions were taking much longer than expected to load, or just time out entirely, particularly when viewing Order details. Changes were made to the ORD.vw_ORDsvr_OrderActionSummary view to improve performance and prevent timeouts.

Equipment Inventory

83484

In the Inventory web app, when using the Equipment Search drop down menus from both the main search screen and from the Assignment menu, the list of options only showed the top 100 items instead of the full list of available Equipment Types. This menu has been updated to include all records.

Payment Processing

83495

The Auto-Create Recurring E-Pay Transactions setting (introduced with AR 8514 in CostGuard version 20.4) was preventing transactions from being manually created when unchecked. This setting is supposed to only prevent the scheduled job from creating transactions, and not impact the manual process.

The Accounts Receivable Management > Manage Recurring Transactions page in CostGuard Client has been updated so that transactions can be created for a bill period when the Auto-Create Recurring E-Pay Transactions option is disabled/unchecked.

Payment Processing

83515

AR 8514 (CostGuard version 20.4) negatively impacted the Generate Recurring Transactions operation in the Balance web service by not respecting E-Pay account end dates. As a result it would create transactions for E-Pay accounts with an end date of today or in the past This operation has been updated to only create E-Pay transactions for active recurring E-Pay accounts.

Retail Installment Plans

83457

When swapping equipment with an active Installment Plan (at least 1 installment billed) using the Installment Plan exchange wizard, and the total due is $0, the Tender Window is bypassed because no money is due or owed. In this case the General Ledger was recording an incorrect amount for the Future Installment amount (it included the amount already paid instead just the installment balance amount remaining).

Note:

While this impacted the GL, customers were not being incorrectly charged.

This has been corrected by getting the CustomerID from the POSOrder instead of the POSTxn, so that the GetBilledThroughDate and CreateReturnInstallmentPlanTender are calculated correctly.

Retail Installment Plans

83458

When a device was returned outside of the assigned Register Policy’s return period but had Installments remaining, selecting No Refund (Return for Zero) resulted in an incorrect amount in the General Ledger (GL System Error). This was the result of tendering the installments already paid, when it should have been displaying the amount remaining to be paid.

Note:

While this impacted the GL, customers were not being incorrectly charged.

This tender amount has been updated to get the tender amount from InstallmentAmountNotYetInvoiced as calculated by the view.

CostGuard Reports

83513

PR 83395 (CostGuard 20.3) was deployed to improve performance of the Installment Plans by Account Report. The solution worked for newer versions of SQL Server, but actually hurt performance for older SQL Server versions. PR 83513 adds indexes to improve efficiency, and the report is now back to it’s previous performance level on any version of SQL Server.

Provisioning

83514

This is a Remote Scheduling Service startup prerequisite update. An extra 3rd party Microsoft reference library, required for the Remote Scheduling service startup process, was added to the installer payload.

Workflow

07/09/2020