This document provides an overview of the CMP 8.17 release with specific focus on the additional functional and non-functional enhancements with respect to CMP 8.16.
This document is aimed at internal and external audiences familiar with CMP, to explain the key features of the release including any changes in how existing functions or processes are working.
With respect to CMP 8.16, CMP 8.17 introduces new functionality as well as changes to existing functionality and non-functional improvements. These changes can be summarised as follows:
Shared allowances allow multiple subscriptions to consume from a single allowance. Shared allowances can be purchased at agreement level and can be consumed by all subscriptions under that agreement that have the same underlying tariff. By default, subscriptions will not be limited in how much they can consume from a shared allowance; a shared allowance will allow all subscriptions associated with that shared allowance to consume from it up to the total allowance amount. The order of allowance consumption, with respect to personal allowances, will be controlled by the OCS. The limit will remain against the subscription once the shared allowance has expired or been fully consumed. If a subscription changes Price Plan (and changes the underlying tariff associated with the price plan) they will no longer be able to consume from the shared allowance. Similarly, if a subscription changes agreement, through a cut and paste operation in AgentView, they will no longer be able to consume from the shared allowance to which they were previously associated. Multiple shared allowances can be exist on the same agreement.
It should be noted that this is the first part of the Shared Allowance implementation and contains some limitations:
CMP 8.18 will build on the Shared Allowance functionality released as part CMP 8.17.
A new Cancel Subscription function has been introduced in CMP 8.17.
A subscription can be cancelled before it gets connected to the network, and has a status of Not Connected, or if the network connection attempt fails and the subscription is left in a status of Connection Failed, or Future Connection Pending.
This new function allows for all associated serial numbers to be removed from the subscription to become available for further new subscriptions.
NetEngage generate notifications that are sent to CMP when an allowance or balance threshold is crossed. In CMP 8.16, these notifications were not fully supported as NetEngage require the threshold to be set when the allowance, balance or spend cap was provisioned for a subscription. In CMP 8.17, multiple usage thresholds can be defined as either a fixed value used, or percentage used, for allowances, balances and spend caps.
Two new account type usages were introduced as part of CMP 8.12 and CMP 8.13 for when subscription charging was suspended and when an identity was blacklisted. This caused issues with Credit Control if both these account type movements were defined as stages within the same credit control procedure.
In order to address this, the two account types have been removed and replaced by flags on the credit control procedure stage (see section 3.4.2.1 below).
In CMP 8.16, the logic to create table partitions, for the purpose of purging them, resided in the jobs relating to the table to be partitioned.
In CMP 8.17, a PostgreSQL extension, pg_partman, designed to simplify and automate table partitioning, has been added to the release and the partitioning logic in the individual jobs has been moved into pg_partman.
The following web services have been modified in CMP 8.17:
termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the following web services:The functional and non-functional changes highlighted in section 2 above have had an impact CMP in the following areas:
No new screens have been introduced as part of CMP 8.17.
A Cancel Subscription radio button has been added to the list of available actions on the Subscription Management pop-up panel. This allows a subscription in a status of either Not Connected, Connection Failed, or Future Connection Pending to be cancelled and the associated serial numbers made available again for use in future connections.
The Subscription Contract History popup has been updated to remove the Carried Over Days and Freeze Days columns as these are no longer used.
In addition, the following columns have been renamed:
TCG has been renamed to Ts&Cs GroupTCG Description has been renamed to Ts&Cs DescriptionTCG Effective has been renamed to Ts&Cs Effective Date.The panel now shows information on the current contract as well as contract changes.
No new bulk actions have been introduced as part of CMP 8.17.
No bulk actions have been changed as part of CMP 8.17.
No new jobs and daemons have been introduced as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
In CMP 8.16, when invoice production was writing invoice detail records for tax exclusive services, the tax amount was written to a precision of 4 decimal places, there was no rounding involved.
CMP 8.17 introduces the possibility to round tax amounts to a configurable precision. The precision is defined by a new system property, EXCLUSIVE-TAX-DETAIL-PRECISION. See section 6.5.1.2 below.
In line with the changes made to the configuration of a credit control procedure stage, as detailed in section 3.4.2.1 above, the Credit Control job has been enhanced to either suspend charging on an account or remove an account from charging suspension dependent on the current state of charging on the account and the status of the charging suspension checkbox. Similarly, the Credit Control job will either add the identity on an account to the blacklist or remove the identity on an account from the blacklist dependent on the current state of account identity blacklisting and the status of the identity disallowed checkbox. If there are multiple accounts associated with a blacklisted identity, then the Credit Control job will leave the identity disallowed. A workflow will automatically be raised based on the configuration on the configuration of the identity disallowed workflow event property (see section 6.5.1.1 below).
The Provisioning Job has been modified in CMP 8.17 to process workflow events based on their priority. The high priority workflow events are selected first to be processed by the Provisioning job, followed by the lower priority events.
No changes have been made to any of the options within the System Management menu option in CMP 8.17.
The creation of table partitions in CMP has been centralised in CMP 8.17 with the introduction of pg_partman. pg_partman will create daily partitions for 48 CMP tables, 2 days in advance. In order to ensure that partitions are being created as expected, a new probe has been provided that checks that partitions have been created for the following day after the probe runs.
To ensure partitions are being created as expected, the Partition Creation Verification Normal probe should be scheduled to run once a day.
No changes have been made to any of the options within the System Configuration menu option in CMP 8.17.
No changes have been made to any of the options within the System Administrator menu option in CMP 8.17.
There are no new Business Configuration screens that have been introduced as part of CMP 8.17.
Two new account type usages were introduced as part of CMP 8.12 and CMP 8.13 for when subscription charging was suspended and an identity was blacklisted. This caused issues with Credit Control if both these account type movements were defined as stages within the same credit control procedure.
In order to provide greater flexibility, these two states have now been added as flags on the credit control stage configuration.
Setting the Suspended Charging? checkbox indicates that charging should be suspended if it isn't suspended currently.
Unchecking the checkbox for a stage indicates that charging should to be re-enabled on the account.
Setting the Disallow Identity? checkbox indicates that the identity used for the account should be blacklisted (if not already).
Unchecking the checkbox for a stage indicates that the identity should be removed from blacklisting.
In 8.15, the currency symbol was displayed inconsistently in several Business Configuration screens. In CMP 8.16.1, a number of screens were change to address this. The following additional screens have been refactored in CMP 8.17 to remove the currency symbol:
The currency symbol appearing against the Maximum Network Price, Price, and Default Cap Amount fields has been removed from the following screens:
The currency symbol against the Min, Max, and Default textboxes on the Price field of the Add Service screen has been removed.
The Price column on the Service List screen now displays the correct decimal format as defined in System Properties.
The currency symbol against the Max Termination Fee field on the Add Contract and Edit Contract Screens has been removed.
The currency symbol appearing against the Spend Limit, Minimum Qualifying Balance, Default Cap Amount, and Maximum Cap Amount fields has been removed from the following screens:
The Add button has been removed from the following View panels to be consistent with other panels:
The Export button has been removed from the following List panels:
There are no new Pricing Configuration screens that have been introduced as part of CMP 8.17.
The Thresholds option with Pricing Configuration can now be used to define notification thresholds for online networks such as the NetEngage OCS. Prior to CMP 8.17 threshold notifications could only be configured for use with the CMP offline rating engine.
The Thresholds option of Pricing Configuration allows notification thresholds to be defined and linked to specific allowances or spend caps for both online and offline networks.
No new SOAP web services have been introduced as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
No SOAP web services have been changed as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
No new RESTful web services have been introduced as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
The following web services have been enhanced for CMP 8.17:
A workflow event and comms are generated when creating a purchase. The Create Purchase web service request has been modified to ensure that the response for a successful purchase is returned even when an error has occurred with the creation of the workflow.
The termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the Change Subscription Price Plan web service request.
The termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the GET Subscription web service request.
The termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the Create Subscription web service response.
The termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the Activate Subscription web service response.
The termExtensionDays element has been removed from the contract section in the Update Subscription web service response.
No new Business Configuration RESTful web services have been introduced in CMP 8.17.
No RESTful web services have been updated as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
No additional TMF APIs have been provided as part of the CMP 8.17 release.
No changes have been made to integration adapters in CMP 8.17.
The NetEngage-specific adapters are optional components of the CMP deployment that are based on the licence agreement with MDS Global.
The NetEngage Notification adapter has been changed as part of CMP 8.17 to support the linking of notifications received from NetEngage to trigger identifiers defined in CMP. To support this, the following additional module properties have been added to the sabre-netengage-notification-adapter:
OCSLOWALLOWANCETRIGGEROCSLOWUSAGETRIGGEROCSUSEDALLOWANCETRIGGEROCSUSEDUSAGETRIGGERThe default values will need to be aligned to the trigger ids configured in Business Configuration for the NetEngage trigger channel (Communications -> Triggers). It should be noted that the two allowance trigger properties above are used for both allowances and balances.
To support the shared allowance functionality described in section 2.1.1 above, the NetEngage Provisioning adapter has been enhanced to include a new module property, system-properties.OCS.INTERFACE-OCS.NETENGAGE.SHARED.GROUP.ID.PREFIX, which defines a prefix to be used when creating a shared allowance group on the OCS.
A shared allowance group consists of all the subscriptions that are eligible to consume from the shared allowance. By default, this property is set to 999.
The NetEngage Provisioning adapter has also been changed as part of CMP 8.17 to support the provisioning of any configured notification thresholds for an allowance, balance or spend cap provisioned against a subscription on the OCS.
The Openet-specific adapters are optional components of the CMP deployment that are based on the licence agreement with MDS Global.
No changes have been made to the Openet adapter as part of CMP 8.17.
The Lifecycle-specific adapters are optional components of the CMP deployment that are based on the licence agreement with MDS Global.
No changes have been made to the Lifecycle adapter as part of CMP 8.17.
No changes have been made to UK-specific adapters in CMP 8.17.
In addition to functional and non-functional changes and improvements, the CMP 8.17 and 8.17 product versions also addresses a number of application support issues. This section provides a summary of the issues fixed in this release.
The following issues have been addressed within this release:
| Reference | Area | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CMPIS-3244 | CMP Installer | As part of the upgrade to 8.16.1, the installation failed with a connection error caused by missing port configuration in the Webswing properties files as a result of non-standard ports being used. |
| CMPIS-3243 | CMP Installer | As part of the upgrade to 8.16.1, the installation failed with a permissions error when attempting to write to the /logs/webswing/ directory on the root filesystem. This was caused by a Tomcat property specifying a relative directory rather than absolute directory. |
| CMPIS-3237 | Invoice Print | Invoice Posting failed due to multiple duplicate invoices having been generated. |
| CMPIS-3232 | Rated Usage Processing | A degradation in performance of the Rated Usage job was observed due to a non-performant eligible usage allowance query. |
| CMPIS-3231 | RESTful Web Services | When attempting to use the RESTful Cancel Disconnection web service, a 503 was returned with an illegal argument exception. |
| CMPIS-3217 | Invoice Print | Following an upgrade to CMP 8.16, it was observed that the JSON files sent to the print bureau were not being encrypted. |
| CMPIS-3210 | Rated Usage Processing | It was observed that overage records were remaining in Usage Batch Detail table with a status of '04' (invalid allowance id) as the allowance id column was not being populated on usage allowance batch detail table. |
| CMPIS-3209 | Data Warehouse | The Analyser extract failed due to a missing table relationship. |
| CMPIS-3207 | RESTful Web Services | The Change Serial Numbers REST API allowed a serial number to be used even if the serial number was associated with another subscription in a status of 'Changing' on the subscription serial number table. |
| CMPIS-3204 | Invoice Production | When a "catch-up" invoice run was being performed, unbilled calls were being left unbilled and not included in the invoice production run. |
| CMPIS-3199 | AgentView | When attempting to delete an unprocessed workflow action through the Subscription Event Summary in AgentView, an error was thrown. |
| CMPIS-3197 | AgentView | When perfroming a plan change through AgentView, the Price Plan Combo box was observed not to be ordered and was not correctly displaying the full price plan code. |
| CMPIS-3194 | Invoice Production | When calculating a termination fee it was observed that some calculated values were incorrect by up to 0.03. This was caused by different decimal precisions being used as part of the calculation. The calculation now uses a precision scale of 4 consistently with a "half up" rounding method. |
| CMPIS-3185 | RESTful Web Services | An error was observed in the shared services log when either the REST GET Compatible Price Plans api was used or the select price plan/tariff change radio button was selected in AgentView. |
| CMPIS-3149 | Bulk Action | The Plan Change option within the Bulk Action Console was inconsistent with the AgentView plan change wizard in that the as of date should be defaulted to tomorrow but could be overwritten to today if required. |
| CMPIS-3148 | Sabre Server | When attempting to select web service user permissions in the System Administration part of the Administration Console an error was recorded in the sabre server log file. |
| CMPIS-3041 | Invoice Production | It was observed that when 2 sales ledger adjustments were added to a subscription along with a subscription service, the invoice that was subsequently generate had duplicated invoice lines for the non-subscription elements. |
| CMPIS-2625 | Sabre Server | The Administration Console became unresponsive after clicking on a System Alert link. |
| CMPIS-2534 | Rated Usage Processing | When a usage record was received into CMP with an invalid allowance identifier, the rated usage batch job handled the call as an error but the retention flag was being set incorrectly. |
The product documentation is available online on the documentation portal. This online portal requires authorised access, which can be obtained by contacting MDS Global support. The documentation is also available as downloadable PDFs as follows:
| Document | Version | Document Changes |
|---|---|---|
| AgentView Function Security Guide | 1.0 | On the Subscription Summary Upper Panel, the status hyperlink section has been updated to include the new Cancel Subscription function. |
| Batch Jobs and JSON Schema Guide | 1.0 | The Batch Jobs and JSON Schemas Guide has been updated to include the changes to the jobs and daemons highlighted above. |
| Billing | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Billing Functionality Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Business Configuration Overview | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Business Configuration Overview as part of CMP 8.17. |
| CMP Overview | 1.0 | There are no updates to the CMP Overview as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Communications Functionality and Configuration Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Communications Functionality and Configuration Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Documentation Overview | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Documentation Overview as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Extracts Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Extracts Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Glossary | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Glossary Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Installation | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Installation Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Online Analytics | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Online Analytics Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Operational Overview | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Operational Overview as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Payments Functionality Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Payments Functionality Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Propositions Functionality and Configuration Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Propositions Functionality and Configuration Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Purge Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Purge Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| RESTful Web Services API Guide | 1.0 | The REST web services guide has been updated based on the changes highlighted in section 3.7.1 above. |
| Security Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Security Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| SOAP Web Services Semantics Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the SOAP Web Services Semantics Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Standard Reporting Guide | 1.0 | There are no updates to the Standard Reporting Guide as part of CMP 8.17. |
| System Admin | 1.0 | pg_partman has been added to the third party software packages. |
| Technical Architecture | 1.0 | pg_partman has been added to the third party software packages. |
Online help is available in AgentView, Business Configuration, the Administration Console and the Bulk Actions console. The following table summarises the current versions of the online help and the changes since CMP 8.16:
| Online Help | Version | Document Changes |
|---|---|---|
| AgentView | 1.8 | The following topics have been added or updated as a result of changes made to AgentView in CMP 8.17:
|
| Business Configuration | 1.22 | Any reference to the hard coded currency symbol has been removed from the following topics:
|
| Administration Console | 1.19 | There are no updates to the Administration Console as part of CMP 8.17. |
| Bulk Action Console | 1.11 | A home page has been added to the Bulk Action Console to assist in navigating the help topics, and be consistent with the other console help modules. |
The CMP 8.17 installer includes the capability to upgrade a CMP 8.16.1 installation without the loss of configuration or customer data provided that the software, file system and database structure of the installation in question are at no point manually modified.
The CMP 8.17 Installation Guide, and the details below, should be read before attempting the upgrade to CMP 8.17.
It is important that the following sections are read prior to performing the upgrade, specifically the Configuration Changes section, as it may be advisable to backup relevant configuration prior to performing the upgrade to ensure the configuration can be replicated, if necessary, post upgrade.
The CMP 8.17 release provides a direct upgrade from CMP 8.16.1 to CMP 8.17 only. This will be automatically handled by the installer based on the current version of CMP already installed. Upgrading from previous CMP versions will require a step-wise upgrade through each supported version of the product unless otherwise specified in the release notes of each CMP release.
It is important that the latest CMP 8.16.1.4 patch is applied prior to commencing the upgrade to CMP 8.17. If the patch is not applied first, then the upgrade will fail.
It is important that the existing installation is left running before starting the upgrade. There is no reason to shut down any components however service may be affected whilst performing the upgrade.
The Installation Configuration Tool has been updated to enable a password to be specified of the PostgreSQL internal user (cmpjobmon) which is used to monitor the background worker of pg_partman for automatic partition creation.
A new third party component, pg_partman (PostgreSQL Partition Manager) has been added to CMP 8.17 to simplify the management and creation of partitioned tables. pg_partman is an extension for PostgreSQL that automates the process of creating, maintaining, and managing partitions, making it easier to work with time-series data or data sets that benefit from partitioning. The supported version is 5.1.
The following table has been added in CMP 8.17:
The following table attributes have been added in CMP 8.17:
The following tables or views have been dropped in CMP 8.17:
The following attributes have been dropped in CMP 8.17:
As part of CMP 8.17, the following table attributes have been modified in CMP 8.17:
In CMP 8.17, the definition of the workflow event type and code to use when creating a workflow for an invoice amount in query has been moved from the companyParameters table to the workflow properties table resulting in a new workflow property being required. In addition, the changes to the Credit Control job to remove an identity from blacklist requires an additional workflow event property to raise a workflow where multiple accounts are defined with the same identity. To support these changes, the following workflow properties need to be added through the System -> Workflow Properties option of Business Configuration:
| Property Group | Property Name | Event Type | Event Code | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FINANCIAL | query.amount.event | TBD | TBD | Raised when an invoice amount is placed in query. |
| CREDIT_CONTROL | creditcontrol.job.identityDisallowed.Event | TBD | TBD | Raised by Credit Control when multiple accounts are found to use the same identity. |
The workflow event type and code that will be used for the amount in query (TBD above) will need to be configured through Business Configuration prior to creating the workflow property above.
CMP 8.17 introduces the first phase of the Shared Allowance functionality when CMP is integrated to a NetEngage OCS. Shared Allowances allow subscriptions under the same agreement to consume from the same usage balance.
In order to use the Shared Allowance functionality, additional configuration is required in CMP to allow a subscription to be added to, and removed from, a shared allowance 'group' (a collection of subscriptions on the OCS that are eligible to consume from the shared allowance):
| Property Group | Property Name | Event Type | Event Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| SHARED_GROUP | add.subscription.event | Workflow Event Type of the add workflow | Workflow Event Code of the add workflow |
| SHARED_GROUP | remove.subscription.event | Workflow Event Type of the add workflow | Workflow Event Code of the add workflow |
The addition of functionality in CMP 8.17 to define the tax amount rounding precision for tax exclusive services, as described in section 3.3.1.2 above, has introduced a new system property EXCLUSIVE-TAX-DETAIL-PRECISION defined under the GENERAL_SETTINGS parameter group.
A default value of 4 is pre-configured but this can be configured through the External Configuration module if a different precision is required.