Service plans are made of resources, which are the building blocks of any service that you offer. Including resources in service plans is an important step of service plan creation.
Important: We recommend this procedure only for newly-created service plans. Do not include new resources in a service plan if the service plan is already offered to customers and there are subscriptions to this service plan. If you need to extend your customer's existing subscription with an additional resource:
1. Create a new service plan with the necessary resources.
2. Add the new service plan as an upgrade option for the customer's current service plan.
3. Then switch the customer to the new service plan.
Note: You can only include resources in service plans based on the Dummy Service Template. The other templates are not configurable.
To include a created resource in a service plan:
- Identify the service template of the service plan:
- Go to Products > Service Plans. Click the service plan in the list.
- In the General settings, find the Service Template field.
- Include the resource in the service template of the service plan:
- For a Billing resource (Service Gate = Dummy Gate): follow this procedure.
- For an Operations resource (Service Gate = Operations Automation): follow this procedure.
- Configure the resource rates for the service plan.
Known Limitations
A Limitation Related to Resource Usage Calculation and Unexpected Service Suspension as a Result of Certain Resource Configurations
When a service plan has an additive non-measurable resource controlled by Billing (Additive = Yes, Measurable = No, Controlled By = Billing) - such as, for example, 1Tb of Internet Traffic per month, for which a customer will pay in full and use without interruptions as long as the actual usage is below 1Tb per month - it is necessary to also include a measurable resource in the service plan (any resource which can be billed based on actual usage). In such a case, Billing will calculate the monthly usage of Internet Traffic correctly and there will be no unexpected service interruptions. Please see a configuration example.
When, along with an additive non-measurable resource controlled by Billing (Resource A), a service plan does not have a measurable resource (Resource B), Billing does not reset the usage counter of Resource A at the beginning of each billing period for subscriptions to this service plan. As a result, in the example above, the cumulative usage of Internet Traffic from the beginning of a subscription can reach 1Tb during one month and the service will be unexpectedly suspended, even if the usage for the current month is below 1Tb.
Configuration Example
This example illustrates how you can configure service plan resources to work around the above limitation.
In this example we assume that you have a "Business Communication" service plan, which includes an additive non-measurable resource controlled by Billing (Resource A), but does not include any measurable resources:
Resource A: Internet Traffic:
- Additive = Yes
- Measurable = No
- Controlled By = Billing
To ensure that Resource A usage for each billing period is tracked correctly for each subscription to the "Business Communication" service plan (to avoid unexpected service interruptions due to wrong usage tracking):
-
Add a measurable Resource B to the service plan with the following settings:
Resource B: Any resource with the following characteristics
Note: A resource with such settings will ensure that Billing will reset the usage counter of Resource A (and all the other additive non-measurable resources controlled by Billing which are included in the service plan) at the beginning of each billing period for subscriptions to the service plan. At the same time, such a resource will not be visible to customers and they will not be billed for it.
- Resource settings:
- Additive = Yes
- Measurable = Yes
- Controlled By = External System
- Service Gate = Operations Automation
- The resource cannot be used with the selected service. For the "Business Communication" service plan, a web hosting resource, such as “Additional database users”, can be chosen.
- Resource rates (for the "Business Communication" service plan):
- Inc. Amount = 0
- Setup Fee = 0
- Recurring Fee = 0
- Charge per unit (Setup Fee) = disabled
- Charge per unit (Recurring Fee) = disabled
- Overuse fee = 0
- Show in store = disabled
- Show in CP = disabled
- Resource settings:
- If there are subscriptions to this service plan, update subscriptions completing the wizard fields in the following way:
- Select = All Subscriptions
- Install new resource(s) = enabled
- Install into Provisioning System = Immediately
Now, for all subscriptions to the "Business Communication" service plan, the Resource A usage for each billing period will be tracked correctly.
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