Adding, Editing, and Deleting Minute Plans.
Minute plans define fixed "bundles" of minutes to certain destinations and their prices per billing period.
To Add, Update or Delete Minute Plans, navigate to the Service Plans heading under the Tariffs and Currencies tab in your Customer Menu. Below is the Add Service Plan screen.
Adding Minute Plan
Minute Plans are a core part of the Service Plan mechanism of your Sippy Softswitch. A Minute Plan can be added to any of the Service Plans, as long as the Service Plan has not already been assigned to an Account or Customer. Once an Account or Customer has been assigned to the Service Plan, it is deemed 'in-use' and a new plan has to be created with a valid Minute Plan.
To Add a Minute Plan select Service Plans from your Customer Menu. Select Add New under the Add Service Plan title, as shown below:
The Add New Plan window will appear as shown:
Fill out the Basic Parameters. The Service Plan "Platinum Member" is used below as an example; It is a plan to be billed Monthly, on the date of Assignment and bound to the Tariff "local CA".
A Service Charge sets fixed prices per billing period for additional services you may provide. An Example can be a Maintenance Fee, which is a recurring charge set in the Basic Parameters. In this instance it's a Monthly charge set at $0.25 per billing cycle.
Selecting the green "+" symbol adds new parameters to your Service Charge. The green arrow clears the fields.
By selecting the green "+" option, the Service Charge is added to the Service Plan.
To Add a New Minute Plan, enter your Minute Plans details. For this example, our Minute Plan Name is "Platinum Down Under", you can call the plan anything that makes sense to you and your customers.
The Included Minutes drop down box will be populated by the previous Minute Plans you have created. For a new Minute Plan, the default setting is "Unlimited".
To specify the amount of Included Minutes, add the desired amount to your Minute Plan. In this example, 250 Included Minutes will be part of the Monthly Service Plan, as shown below:
Minute Plans can be assigned individual Prices, this charge is additional to all other call charges and Service Charges, billed according to the frequency selected in Basic Parameters. The Price is listed in the country's denomination of your Tariffs Exchange Rate. In this instance, the 250 included minutes to Australia will cost an additional $5.00 CAD per month.
To determine the charge frequency of calls in your Minute Plan, enter Interval 1 and Interval N values in form of seconds. In this example, the call is configured to be billed on a per-second basis. For more information on setting these values, see Understanding Rating and Billing.
The Enable Grace Period parameter determines the number of seconds before a call is routed with charges. The Grace Period in seconds is configured and adjusted in your assigned Tariff. Check box to allow Grace Period if desired.
Once Minute Plan parameters are configured, you must determine the Destination Patterns. To download the .xls template of Destination Patterns, select the Get Template option as indicated below:
Once downloaded, add values according to your list of Included Prefixes and Excluded Prefixes. In the example of the 'Platinum Down Under' Minute Plan, all Australian Prefixes have been included in the plan. Given that '614' is a premium number, it has been excluded from the Minute Plan, as shown. Save the document for importing.
To import your values, select "Import From..." on your Minute Plan, and choose the template file you saved.
Once the file has been imported, the "Import From..." option displays the name of your Template file. Select the green "+" option under the Action banner to add the parameters you configured to the Service Plan.
Once added, notice that Destination Patterns lists details of your Prefix Template. Click Save & Close to finish editing your Service Plan.
The Service Plan will be listed in the Service Plans window, where it can be Adjusted, the Tariff can be changed and any Unassigned plan can be Deleted.
Editing Minute Plans
Select the Service Plan listed under the Name banner that you wish to adjust. In this example, the Service Plan "Platinum Member" will be adjusted.
If the Service Plan "Platinum Member" has not been assigned to any Accounts or Customers, all details can be edited. Once a Service Plan is assigned, Service Charges and Minute Plans cannot be added through this window. A new Service Plan must be created to add new parameters to a duplicated Minute Plan before you can assign the Minute Plan to existing customers.
To edit your Minute Plan, click on the edit icon in the Action column of the Minute Plan.
The system will allow you to edit your Minute Plan as shown below:
In this example, we will change the Included Minutes from 250 to 300.
To save your editing, select the Save icon in the Action column of your Minute Plan.
Once Saved, the system previews the changed parameters.
Select Save & Close to assign your changes and to return to the Service Plans window.
Your changes will be saved to the Service Plan, and can be assigned to your Account or Customer.
Deleting Minute Plans
Once an Account or Customer has been assigned to a Service Plan with a Minute Plan, the Minute Plan cannot be deleted. To delete the Minute Plan, the Accounts or Customers must be assigned to another Service Plan, or deleted beforehand, ensuring that the Service Plan is not in use.
To Delete a Minute Plan, navigate to the Service Plans tab under Tariffs & Currencies on your Customer Menu. The Service Plan window is shown below. The example below shows how the "Platinum Down Under" minute plan from the Service Plan "Platinum Member" would be deleted.
Select the Service Plan that the Minute Plan is associated with. In this case "Platinum Member".
The Service Plan "Platinum Member" window is shown below.
As you can see, this Minute Plan cannot be deleted because it is assigned to an Account.
Assigned Service Plans are listed under the Service Plan banner in your Accounts window
(Below) Account Name "freddy" is assigned the Service Plan "Platinum Member", which is the Service Plan associated with the Minute Plan to be deleted; meaning it will not be possible to delete the Minute Plan associated with this Service Plan.
The Account must be reassigned to another Service Plan by editing the Account. The example below shows that it is reassigned to Service Plan "Call Wizards".
To delete it, you would select the red "X" in the Action column of the Minute Plan for the Service Plan "Platinum Member".
The Minute Plan would be removed from the Service Plan "Platinum Member" as shown below.
Select Save & Close to finish deleting the Minute Plan and return to the root Service Plan window.
