Release Notes

Vendor-rated Data Manager release notes are listed in descending order starting with the latest version on the top of the list.

Vendor-rated Data Manager Release 1.3.377

With this release:

The distribution chain can contain any number of resellers, including the provider's and resellers' operating units ("OPCOs"):
- L₀ (Provider): CloudBlue Commerce installation owner
  - L₁ (Provider's OPCO): Provider
    - L₂ (Reseller): Reseller
      - ...
        L_i (Reseller): Reseller
        L_i+1(Reseller's OPCO): Reseller
        ...
        L_n (Customer): End Customer
Providers and resellers can configure margins and markups at any distribution chain level. Resellers at any level can have their own distribution contracts with vendors and serve as providers for their distribution subchain.

Warning: Be careful when making margin and markup configuration changes. Such changes may result in business disruptions for both providers and resellers due to conflicting configurations across the distribution chain and resulting incorrect charges for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) services. To avoid unwanted issues, please follow Changing Margin and Markup Configurations.
Changes:
- To avoid business disruption risks at multiple reseller levels resulting from human error, changing the rating model for a service plan is now prohibited. Service plan owners can set the rating model only once - during the initial configuration of margins and markups. If the rating model must be changed, a new service plan must be created with the required rating model.
- The Rating Attribute configuration process has been changed. Now, you add a list of attribute values first and then configure respective margins in the table, where new lines are added automatically for each product item and attribute value. Also, the Set default sales margins checkbox has been removed: the default configuration is now identified by the empty Attribute and Attribute Value fields.
- The margin and markup tables have been updated to simplify price management and reconciliation.
- Now, for simpler and more consistent configuration, the Total Recommended Margin and Total Recommended Markup values are set per product item and cannot be customized per reseller.
- For the All Tiers model, when usage data is reported without provider costs, it is no longer necessary to pass --set PROVIDER_COSTS_OPTIONAL=TRUE for the Vendor-rated Data Manager to process the usage data.

Backward Compatibility

The new features are fully backward compatible. After the upgrade, all existing functionality will behave as before.

Activation

No actions are required to enable these features. They are enabled automatically after the upgrade.

Known Limitations

None.

Vendor-rated Data Manager Release 1.2.296

With this release:

The discounts functionality is supported: Vendor-rated Data Manager applies discounts set for customers and customer classes.
You can customize margin and markup configurations per reseller.

Backward Compatibility

The discounts support is fully backward compatible. After the upgrade, all existing functionality behaves as before.

After the upgrade, the existing margin and markup configuration functionality becomes the default settings.

Activation

To activate the discounts support after the Vendor-rated Data Manager upgrade:

Configure the necessary discounts.
Assign the discounts to the resources that aggregate usage.
Assign the discounts to the necessary customers or customer classes.

To activate the per-reseller margin and markup customization, after the Vendor-rated Data Manager upgrade, add the necessary custom configurations.

Known Limitations

None.

Vendor-rated Data Manager Release 1.1.253

In this release, direct distribution through third-party resellers is supported: you can configure margins and markups at the L0 level in UX1 for Providers in addition to the existing capability to configure margins and markups at the L1 level in UX1 for Resellers. The configuration procedure is the same.

(new) Distribution through third-party resellers:
- L0 (Provider) ← Set margins and markups at the L0 level in UX1 for Providers
  - L1 (Reseller)
    - L2 (Customer)
(existing) Distribution through regional operating units (L1):
- L0 (Provider)
  - L1 (Operating Unit) ← Set margins and markups at the operating unit level in UX1 for Resellers
    - L2 (Reseller)
      - L3 (Customer)

Backward Compatibility

After the upgrade, the existing margin and markup configurations for operating units (L1) in UX1 for Resellers will not be affected.

Activation

To activate the feature:

Enable UX1 for Providers.
Make sure that the classic Provider Control Panel is also enabled.

Known Limitations

Only 3 tiers in the distribution chain are supported:

Provider: the owner of the contract with the vendor
- Reseller
  - End Customer

Vendor-rated Data Manager currently cannot calculate charges for distribution chains with more than 3 tiers.

Vendor-rated Data Manager Release 1.1.234

Now, for testing purposes, you can configure Vendor-rated Data Manager not to validate the usage report date and charge dates during usage data import.

Vendor-rated Data Manager Release 1.0.204

Starting from this version, the former Rating Engine for PAYG services is called Vendor-rated Data Manager.

This version of Vendor-rated Data Manager delivers the following improvements:

You can upload a file with vendor-rated usage data from the CloudBlue Commerce Provider Control Panel.
Integration with CloudBlue Connect is supported: integrated services can pass rated data to Vendor-rated Data Manager using API.
The following rating models have been implemented:

Note: The model names reflect the kind of imported data: in what way the usage data was processed by the vendor.
- Usage data rated by the vendor for all parties (All tiers)
- Usage data rated by the vendor for the End Customer (Price-rated)
- Usage data rated by the vendor for the Provider (Cost-rated)
For the Price-rated and Cost-rated models, CloudBlue Commerce rates the charges for the rest of the distribution chain parties based on the respective margins, which are configured per service plan resource.