Service templates are necessary in the creation of service plans. The Dummy service template is used when you need to provision some services manually in CloudBlue Commerce because those services are managed outside your CloudBlue Commerce system.
To add a dummy service template:
- Go to Products > Service Plans > Service Templates. Click Add New Service Template.
- In the list of available service gates, select Dummy Gate and click Next.
- Complete the form:
General Settings
- Name: Input the service template name. Use a maximum descriptive name as it will ease further manipulations with the service template.
- Version: Input the service template version. Each time the template is changed, its version can be increased at will. The roll back to previous versions is not implemented.
- Active: Tick the checkbox to make the template available for creating service plans.
- Parent Subscription Required: Tick this checkbox if you want to use this service template to create up-sales service plans. That is, to sell service plans based on this service template only if a customer has already purchased another (parent) service plan.
One-time Fee Item: Tick this checkbox to create a service template for the one-time fee sales, which do not require creating subscription. A service plan based on the service template with this option enabled cannot include up-sales.
Note: The subscription periods are not applicable for the service plans of the one-time fee item type. The only possible subscription period value for these service plans is 0 hours. A customer cannot purchase additional resources to such subscriptions. Only the Service Creation notification template is applicable for this type of subscriptions.
Destroy Service on Cancel: tick the checkbox if you want the respective service to be destroyed on subscription cancellation.
Important: Even if the Destroy Service on Cancel option is set to No, the service can be destroyed after cancellation. If the Destroy Service after Hold Period option of the service term assigned to the service plan created on the base of this service template is set to Yes, the service will be destroyed in the time period specified in the Subscription Hold Period (days) field of the service term. Refer to the Destroying Cancelled Subscriptions section for details.
Event Handlers
Depending on your business processes and how your CloudBlue Commerce installation is integrated with your other systems, you can define how the subscription lifecycle events will be processed for the services based on the service template that you are creating. For each event (or operation) in the list, define the following:
Method: Choose how Billing will execute the operation:
- Automatic: Choose this option if the operation must be executed automatically and does not require a user to perform a manual action in the system (add a comment, click a button and so on). For example, when setting up a service requires message exchange with a third-party system over API and does not require a sales agent to manually provision the service in CloudBlue Commerce.
- Manual (not available for some of the operations): Choose this option if the operation requires a user to perform some business actions outside CloudBlue Commerce and then reflect the results of those actions in CloudBlue Commerce, for example: to process a payment in another system and then add a payment document to the system, press a button to send an order to further processing, and so on.
- Exec Script: Choose this option if the operation must be executed automatically by running a script. Place the script to the Billing Application Node and specify the path in the Command field.
- Request URL: Choose this option if the operation must be executed automatically by calling a remote web service. Specify the web service URL in the Command field. For more information, please refer to General Procedure of Custom Service Integration.
Resource usage is collected by Billing depending on how you set the Method field for the Get Resource Usage event:- Automatic: Choose this option if you want Billing to receive usage data from a third-party system through SetResourceUsage_API or IncrementResourceUsage_API. Usage data is saved automatically to the ResUsageCache table in Billing database.
- Manual: Not applicable for usage collection. However, you can manually update usage data.
- Exec Script: Choose this option if you want Billing to collect usage data by executing a script. Place the script to the Billing Application Node and specify the path in the Command field. Usage data is saved automatically to the ResUsageCache table in Billing database.
- Request URL: Choose this option if you want Billing to call a remote web service at the specified URL during each running of the daily billing process and save the current resource usage automatically to the ResUsageCache table in Billing database.
- Command: The path to a locally executable script or the URL of a remote web service. For more information, please see Method.
Notification to Send: Select the template for email notifications.
Note: Email notifications for service plans based on dummy service templates are to be set up manually. In this case, notifications setup consists in selecting notification templates for events connected with services provisioning and subscription lifecycle. If notification templates are not selected, no e-mail notifications will be sent. Notification templates can be selected during service template creation or later, for a ready service template.
To select a notification template:
- Click
next to the necessary event type (for example, Service Creation, Service Starting, and so on); select the notification template that you want to use for CloudBlue Commerce to send notifications when an event of the chosen type takes place. Into the Command field, enter the path to the script to be executed instead of Billing method in case an operation over the service is performed. The parameters that can be passed to a script for each type of operation are the following:
Operation
Parameters Passed
Service Creation
Order Item ID
Service Stopping
Subscription ID, Reason ID
Service Starting
Subscription ID
Service Renewal
Order Item ID
Service Deletion
Order Item ID
Service Destroy
Subscription ID
Service Params Changing
Order Item ID
Service Plan Changing
Order Item ID
Get Resource Usage
Subscription ID, FromTime, ToTime
Change Parent Subscription
Subscription ID, Parent Subscription ID
Set Service Param
Subscription ID, Resource ID, Order Item ID
- Service Params Changing is actually a resource limit changing
- Set Service Param is subscription synchronization with a service plan it is based on.
- Service Destroy takes place only automatically in case of subscription termination and if allowed in respective service terms.
- Service Deletion takes place when a subscription is canceled and if allowed by the respective service template. The operation requires the Destroy Service on Cancel option to be enabled.
Note: This functionality is not available to resellers. It is done for the security reason to forbid access to Billing server for anyone, but provider. Provider may configure service template with scripts for automatic provisioning, then delegate it to reseller. In this case, reseller is allowed using scripts, but cannot change the configuration.
- Click
- Сlick Save to finish adding a dummy service template.