Question

As a part of WAP (Windows Azure Pack) integration I am asked to enable feature FEA_CalculateNip if pay-as-you-go model is intended to be used. What does it mean, what will happen if I enable the feature?

Answer

This feature enables postpaid functionality, the general description can be found in the documentation.

It can be enabled in the pba database:

update "Features" set "IsActive" = 1 where "FeatureName" = 'FEA_CalculateNip';

PBA restart (/etc/init.d/pba restart) is required for changes to be applied.

The model is used for services that are post-paid like PACI or WAP(pay for actual resource usage in the end of period), but the setting is global, affects all the system (not only applied to PACI/WAP plans).

As a result of this feature enabling:

  1. it is required to configure the Deposit fee for the post-paid service plans. Deposit fee amount is not included in the invoices, it is put into account balance and used for future billing orders.

  2. it is required to configure Balance Top-up: for amounts with which an Account Balance is recharged Provider can set minimum and maximum. Such limits are set at the Settings > System > Customer CP screen with the Allow Standalone Payments option enabled. The configuration is made for each vendor individually and applies to his all payment methods.

  3. the additional parameters appear in the credit terms which require configuration:

    Threshold to Send Low-Balance Notifications
    Balance Shift to Resend Low-Balance Notifications
    Automatically put Subscriptions on Credit Hold
    Threshold to Put Subscriptions on Credit Hold
    

    In accordance to these parameters the notifications are sent out. Please refer to the documentation for the parameters description.

    More details about the notification configurations can be found in the documentation.

  4. every day the resource usage is controlled for post-paid services. With every daily billing, PBA performs calculation of the used resources and creates a Nip order ("fake" billing order, not shown in the interface). Every day PBA sums up NIP orders and finally the total will be equal to real Billing Order amount. NIP orders are used for checking if customer balance enough to pay for the used resources. Please see the details in the Model Description.

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