Documentation Index

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CostGuard Version 21.5 Details

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CostGuard Version 21.5 Core Bulletin

Change Orders

Functional Area

AR/FR

Description

Customer Management

AR 8773

End-dating sales channels

Sales channels can accumulate in the system over years and some may no longer be applicable. This solution updates Sales Channel Management to let you set Start/End Dates on sales channels to mark them as inactive.

Orders/Customer Care

AR 8808

Facilitating scanning QR code to activate eSIM devices

This solution supports generating and storing QR codes for orders with eSIM devices where subscribers need to scan the QR code into their phone to complete the activation process. It also supports storing related activation URLs as these can help sales representatives troubleshoot activation issues (by validating the URL). A new Bulk Data Import is provided to load SIM information including the activation URL into the IDI System.

Equipment Protection Plans

AR 8795

Managing protection plans

Enhancements for managing protection plans are being deployed over multiple releases and implemented in several areas.  Version 21.5 provides:

  • A new web-based Product Catalog application (separate from the IDI Desktop Client based catalog) lets you set up Protection Plan Profiles that establish rules for processing different plans.

  • A Protection Plan menu item is available in Customer Care to support full Protection Plan capability planned for a subsequent release.

Note:

It is recommended that you not use the Protection Plan Management functionality available in the 21.5 release until the full functionality of this feature is made available in a subsequent release.

Compliance – Revenue Recognition Standards

AR 8760

Compliance with FASB ASC 606 Revenue Recognition Standards

New functionality in the IDI Desktop Client Product Catalog lets you identify Contracts and Retail Discount Reasons as FASB ASC 606 Eligible. The solution also provides functionality to calculate and store a Contract Asset Value to be used by the billing system to accurately apply in the General Ledger, and a new Contract Asset Audit report. A subsequent release will provide additional reports.

OnlineBill

AR 8821

New Invoice Detail Export Available inOnlineBill

OnlineBill users can now download an invoice detail file which will include corporate details (when applicable) from the Invoice Details page in OnlineBill. Users can download a csv file that contains the charges for MRCs, NRCs, taxes, contract penalties and installment plans as well as discounts. This capability needs to be enabled for a specific invoice format by an IDI associate. The file is provided in a .zip file that can be downloaded from OnlineBill with usage details.

Taxes – Extended Tax Exemptions

AR 8853

Automate adding extended tax exemptions to a customer account

A new workflow action lets you automatically set extended tax exemptions under specific conditions (for example, when changing a customer’s account type). The new Set Extended Tax Exemptions action supports setting up to 10 extended exemptions on a customer account, at the account level. The action must be paired with a Workflow trigger to specify the condition(s).

Note:

Customers wishing to use this functionality should take version 21.5 R2. This R release provides a needed enhancement to facilitate selecting extended tax exemptions.

Resolved Known Issues

Functional Area

PR

Description

Web Modules – Daylight Savings Time

83685

Modules no longer obey Daylight SavingsTime

CostGuard web modules use time zone and daylight savings (DST) data in a third party library to calculate dates and times. The data in this library was only valid through 2020. Once the first DST shift in 2021 occurred various times were displaying as off by one hour. This PR resolved the issue by updating the third party library to have current DST data to correctly take into account daylight savings time.

The following areas were known to have issues with time/date time stamps:

  • Customer Care

    • Journals & Follow-ups

    • E-Pay transactions

    • Billing tab posting and transaction date information

  • Trouble Tickets information (open dates, close dates, etc.)

These areas had the potential of being impacted (suspected but not observed):

  • Order Information – Order History bill order date, complete date

  • Customer Care Orders > Retail History time stamps

  • Equipment Inventory time/date stamps

Customer Care

83674

Automatic E-Pay retry not handling positive timezone offset

On attempting to test CostGuard’s automatic E-Pay retry functionality, the recurring triggers were not running as expected in some cases. These recurring triggers were encountering an object reference error that was traced back to a time zone issue. The recurring triggers were not properly handling cases when the time zone and offset created a positive value.

This solution was originally provided in CostGuard version 21.4 to correct this functionality in Communications. With CostGuard version 21.5 this has been corrected in Customer Care as well. The OData used to get the recurring triggers has been updated to handle the positive time zone offset values.

Orders

83659

Contract end date failed to auto-update

When using the Set Start Date workflow action, the Contract End Date was not auto-updating after the Start Date had been reset. For example, if a Start Date was updated to one month later, the End Date should automatically be pushed out, as well (to match the Contract duration since the Start Date), but this wasn’t happening.

Orders now matches CostGuard Client functionality to correctly update End date.

Orders

83664

The selector for list-based POD properties cuts off at 100 items

This issue is related to workflow-based provisioning orders where users are attempting to edit a list-based POD property. If the list contained more than 100 items, only the first 100 items were available for selection in the list.

This has been corrected to properly search and return all items in the list.

Orders

83703

Service-level retail item returned at the account level

When returning a retail item in the Orders web app originally sold under a service, the return incorrectly put the item at the account level.

The system now finds missing service order line item information and correctly returns the item at the service level..

Communications

83621

DLM Archive message trigger performance issues
The following data lifecycle management triggers provided in CostGuard version 20.9 (FR 3232) had performance issues:

  • |Communications DLM| Archive messages associated to disconnected customers

  • |Communications DLM| Archive messages associated to closed tickets

  • |Communications DLM| Archive messages associated to completed workflows

  • |Communications DLM| Archive unlinked messages

In systems where these triggers did not exist, the data installer file would run, see that the triggers were missing, and install them. To address the performance issue IDI Support has been working with customers to disable them.

With this PR, the data installer no longer installs the triggers if they’re missing.

Workflow Provisioning

83660

Mismatching DSL Port to XML tags leading user to misconfiguration
This issue is related to Calix provisioning. The Update E7 OS xDSL Port Action was fixed so the DSL Port calls send a dslport element in the message as required by Calix. Also, a Data Port that sends an ethintf element was added.

Workflow Provisioning

83661

Error message returned in XML does not match what is shown in UserInterface

If a provisioning request gets an error from Calix – the error message returned in the XML, does not match the error message in the UI.There was a problem with how errors were passed from a message up to the provisioning request which lead to an incorrect error message. The returned error message was not applicable to the actual error message from the switch. This has been resolved by returning the switch error is being.

Workflow Provisioning

83664

Selection list for list-based POD properties on orders not filtered properly

This issue is related to workflow-based provisioning orders where users are attempting to edit a list-based POD property. If the list contained more than 100 items, only the first 100 items were available for selection in the list.

This has been corrected to properly search and return all items in the list.

Workflow Provisioning

83687

Error on deleting service from cart after updating POD data

An FK error iocurred on deleting a service from a cart that had its Provisioning Object Definition (POD) data changed. This has been corrected.

Workflow Provisioning

83669

Stronger Password for Metaswitch & Calix

Adding a new service for MetaSwitch and Calix services requires a password that is used to connect the two providers. The password format has new minimum requirements to make passords complex and minimize security/fraud exposure risks:

  • Minimum length = 12 characters

  • Must Include at least:

    • 1 Capital letter

    • 1 lower case letter

    • 1 number

    • 1 special character

SIM File Import

83708

Unable to upload a SIM file due to a fatal error
A problem was discovered with the non-nullable SIMClassID column that was added to the SIMCard table in FR 3347 (CostGuard release 21.4). Prior to FR 3347 imports created temp tables based on the specified table’s structure, including the nullability of a column. For this import, it created the table SIMCardTEMP, and even though a default value was defined for the column at the table level, column defaults were not used.This was corrected to store a default SIMClassID value of 3 (SIM Card) when not defined.

OnlineBill

83645

Security Issue – Users able to access otheraccounts without proper authorization

After signing onto their account an OnlineBill, a customer was able to access the account for another customer.

To prevent this, a check has been added on the OnlineBill main landing page. If the check finds the user is logged in as OnlineBill system user rather than their actual user account they are logged out and required to log back into OnlineBill.

Note:

This issue has not been found to occur frequently and is not reproducible, so the impact on users should be minimal .

RateBill

83658

Dynamic Charge fees not accounting for credits

Dynamic charges set up to calculate a fee that is a percentage of the total charges for contributing products did not take into account any credit amounts for the contributing products. This resulted in the dynamic charge (calculated at the time billing) to be higher than expected.

The logic for Dynamic Charges configured as Tier Units = Currency and Amount Type = Percent has been updated to include negative charge amounts when calculating contributing product amounts.

83683

Error in parse lookup table

The Admin Console > Data Management > Parse Lookup screen was preventing users from inserting entries with the same FileFormat and Lookup String values.

The Parse Lookup page has been updated to allow for FileFormat, Keyname, and LookupString as the unique key.

Platform System Deployment Updates:

Module

Target Deployment Updates

Audit Log

05/12/2021

Bulk Data Import

05/07/2021

Communications

05/04/2021

Documentation Storage

05/06/2021

Payment Gateway Application

05/13/2021

Provisioning

05/11/2021

Security

05/05/2021

Workflow

05/05/2021