Composite resources in BA are used to make service offer customer-oriented, e.g. instead of forcing a customer to choose the number of Exchange mailboxes and disk space or available types of access (OWA, Outlook, POP, IMAP) for them as separate resources, Provider may combine all required Exchange resources into a single composite resource with single set of pricing and limits and sell bundled offer.
Refer to the following articles for more information about composite resources:
Note: measurable resources cannot be added to a composite resource, see the Knowledgebase article https://kb.cloudblue.com/en/6368 for more details.
Using composite resources has number of known issues, peculiarities and limitations in case the same resource is included into a Service Plan as standalone (regular) resource and as part of a composite resource; they are described below in the article.
Unclear displaying of 'Usage' and 'Available amount' for resources included in subscription as regular and composite resources.
Provider configured the 'Diskspace' resource as non-measurable and 'Controlled by Billing' in BA.
Provider created a composite 'Controlled by Billing' resource and included the 'Diskspace' resource into it.
Provider created a Service Plan and added both regular 'Diskspace' and composite resource above as resource rates into it with non-zero 'Included' and 'Max Units' values for both resource rates.
A customer subscribed to the Service Plan above and used some amount of Diskspace in their subscription.
The following screens in the BA Control Panel demonstrate the problem:
- The 'Resources' tab in the subscription properties in the Provider Control Panel (PCP) and in the Customer Control Panel (CCP)
- The 'Resource Upgrade Wizard' in the CCP
Usage for composite resource is not defined, therefore all 'Diskspace' usage that ever occurs in the customer's subscription will be displayed in the 'Current Usage' field for the regular 'Diskspace' resource rate.
In case current usage exceeds purchased limit of the regular resource and does not exceed the combined purchased limit (regular + composite resources), it may seem like resource is overused if you look only on usage of the regular resource, despite of the fact that it is not the case because the resource is also purchased as part of the composite resource as well:
The problem was reported as PBA-38360 and will be resolved in the future updates to BA.
The resource limit is counted incorrectly in 'Limit Notifications'
Configure resources and Service Plan in BA as in the previous example (a single resource is included into the Service Plan as the regular resource and as part of the composite resource).
Attach a 'Limit Notification' to the Diskspace resource rate in the Service Plan to send daily notifications for some low threshold, e.g. 5%. Create a subscription for a customer based on the Service Plan above.
When the customer used Diskspace > 5% of purchased amount in the regular 'Diskspace' resource rate they will receive the notification which is not fully correct because customer also has some amount of 'Diskspace' purchased as composite resource and the actual usage of the Diskspace resource may be less than 5% of the total amount (purchased as the regular resource and as part of the composite one).
The problem is that resource usage percentage shown in the notification does not take the purchased composite resource amount into account. It is calculated as
instead of
The problem was fixed in the PBA 5.4.15 as PBA-48446, consider to upgrade PBA to this or higher version.
Customer cannot purchase desired amount of the regular measurable resource if usage is more than purchased amount.
Although a measurable resource cannot be included into a composite resource, a composite resource itself may be marked as measurable in a Service Plan in PBA.
Imagine the following situation:
Provider created the composite resource 'Bundled Exchange' with 2 units of the regular resource 'Exchange mailboxes' in it (along with some amount of diskspace and required types of access to Exchange mailboxes).
Provider created a Service Plan, included the composite resource 'Bundled Exchange' and the regular resource 'Exchange mailbox' into it with Max Units set to Unlimited and marked both regular resource and composite resource as measurable.
A customer subscribed to the Service Plan above and the subscription was created for them.
The customer purchased two units of the regular resource 'Exchange mailboxes' and 1 unit of the composite resource 'Bundled Exchange', so total amount of purchased Exchange mailboxes is 4 (2 units of the regular resource and 2 units from the composite resource).
Since the resources are measurable the subscription in OA has unlimited value set as limit for the Exchange mailboxes. The customer created 6 Exchange mailboxes in their subscription in POA.
Two problems will arise as the result of such resource configuration:
BA shows the regular resource 'Exchange mailboxes' as overused:
BA does not let the customer to purchase 1 unit of the regular resource 'Exchange mailbox', the Upgrade Wizard displays the error message "The Current Usage of
Hosted Exchange/Mailboxesexceeds Total Amount" if the customer tries to enter 3 in the 'New Limit' field:
The customer may only place order for 2 or more units of the regular resource 'Exchange mailboxes', not for 1 unit.
The problem was already reported as PBA-50820 and is fixed since BA 5.5.2
In the mean time Provider may place order for 1 unit of the regular resource 'Exchange mailboxes' on behalf of the customer in the BA Provider Control Panel.