Meters

A meter is a non-financial counter that tracks service usage, charges to a balance, balance discounts, balance amounts, or the overdraft amount of a set of balances.

Note: Meters cannot be marked as private balances. For more information about private balances, see the discussion about private balances.

Pricing administrators define meters with a template in My MATRIXX, and subscription operations create instances of them in a subscriber or group wallet.

Usage quantity and charged amount meters are impacted by a measured usage quantity, a measured charged quantity, or an amount of 1, each time the usage or charge occurs. Discount amount meters are impacted by discounts; discounts to a discount amount meter act as positive charges. Balance amount meters are impacted by charges or grants. Overdraft meters are impacted by grants.

Meter Configuration describes options and restrictions for each measured quantity option.
Table 1. Meter Configuration
Meter Type Description
Balance Amount
  • Associated with all service types defined for the system.
  • Cannot be a session meter.
  • Cannot be a turnstile meter.
  • Cannot be periodic.
  • Cannot have filters.
  • Must have a measured balance class or balance.
  • Cannot be aggregated in a group hierarchy.
Charged Amount
  • Can be associated with a specific service type in a service hierarchy or to all services defined for the system.
  • Can be a session meter.
  • Can be a turnstile meter.
  • Can be periodic.
  • Can be dynamic.
  • Can contain filters that can limit when they apply.
  • Must have a measured balance class or balance.
  • Can be aggregated in a group hierarchy.
  • Can track one-time events (Immediate Event Charging).
  • Can track non-usage events (recurring, first-use, purchase, cancelation, and auto-renew).
  • Can be reset to 0 or adjusted with the subscriber management API but cannot be topped up.
  • Can limit the amount authorized or charged for any diameter Credit Control (CC) message (start, interim, and stop-accounting).
Discount Amount
  • Can be associated with a specific service type in a service hierarchy or to all services defined for the system.
  • Can be a session meter.
  • Can be a turnstile meter.
  • Can be simple or periodic.
  • Can be dynamic.
  • Can be device-specific.
  • Can contain filters that can limit when they apply.
  • Can be aggregated in a group hierarchy.
  • Must have a measured balance class or balance.
  • Does not track grants.
Overdraft
  • Associated with all service types defined for the system.
  • Cannot be a session meter.
  • Cannot be a turnstile meter.
  • Cannot be periodic.
  • Cannot have filters.
  • Cannot be aggregated in a group hierarchy.
  • Must have a measured balance class or balance.
  • Can be owned by both group and subscriber objects.
Usage Quantity
  • Can be associated with a specific service type in a service hierarchy or to all services defined for the system.
  • Can be a session meter.
  • Can be a turnstile meter.
  • Can be periodic.
  • Can be dynamic.
  • Can contain filters that can limit when they apply.
  • Can be aggregated in a group hierarchy.
  • Usage quantity to which the meter applies can be selected.
  • Can be configured to track usage throughout the duration of a usage session and are only valid for impacts during that session.
  • Can track one-time events (Immediate Event Charging).
  • Can track non-usage events (recurring, first-use, purchase, cancelation, and auto-renew).
  • Can be reset to 0 or adjusted with the subscriber management API but cannot be topped up.
  • Can limit the amount authorized or charged for any diameter Credit Control (CC) message (start, interim, and stop-accounting).
Usage quantity, charged, and discount amount meters:
  • Track a gross amount and a reserved amount during rating.
  • Have a specified quantity unit so conversions can occur between the usage, charge, or discount quantity and the meter quantity during rating, if necessary.

    For example, a data session might be reported in bytes from the network, but a usage meter can be configured to record the quantity in megabytes.

  • Can have credit limits and threshold notifications.
  • Can have one or more associated balance normalizers that can limit when they apply.
  • Can be adjusted.
Usage quantity, charged amount, and discount amount meters are incremented by a measured usage quantity, a charge quantity, or a discount quantity. To change the default behavior so they are updated by an amount of one, regardless of the measured quantity, you set a Turnstile property in the meter definition.
Note: Turnstile meters, which are defined to count a usage, charge, or discount occurrence, do not have a quantity unit.

To limit charges from rate tables that have Allow Charges to Exceed Credit Limit enabled, create an overdraft meter. An overdraft meter measures the overdraft amount of a set of balances of a given balance template or class. For more information about how MATRIXX Engine determines whether charges are allowed to exceed the credit limit, see the discussion about exceeding credit limits in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Simple Meters

By default, simple balances and meters are valid immediately and never expire. To limit their availability, you can set effective start and end dates. The end date can be set to indefinite, to a specific date, set after the specified time period relative to the start time or purchase time, or aligned with the end time of the catalog item that creates the balance or meter.
Important: End time alignment to a catalog item is for initialization only. If a balance or meter end time is aligned to a catalog item end time that is modified, an adjustment is required to that balance or meter because balance and meter end times do not track the purchased item cycle, billing cycle, and so on.

Composite Meters

A composite meter defines both aggregate and component views in a single meter definition. A composite meter is a periodic meter with periods that close, and measures or counts a total usage, charge, or discount amount. This includes the values that measure or count portions of the total amount (composite value). The value of one of the measured or counted portions of the total amount is the component value, and the sum of the component values always equals the composite value. A composite meter can also produce a daily component value for each day. A composite meter cannot be a session meter.

To define a composite meter, you add aggregation selectors and aggregation fields in the Aggregations tab.

Note: Composite meter periodic cycles cannot be expressed in hours or minutes.

For more information about setting up composite meters, see the discussion about configuring composite meter details.

Virtual Balance Credit Limit

Configure a virtual balance with a credit limit that is a percentage of the threshold limit of the shared group G/L balance. The threshold limit is raised when a shared asset is granted. The threshold limit is lowered when a previously granted asset is forfeited, such as when a recurring grant is canceled or suspended. Lowering the threshold limit of a G/L balance might also lower the thresholds and credit limits of the virtual balance and the balance amount meter.

Notifications and other actions occur only when impacts cause the balance amount to reach some threshold value. Notifications do not occur when the threshold value reaches the balance amount.

For example, suppose a balance or meter amount is at $9, with a threshold that causes a notification to be sent when it reaches $10. If you charged $1, causing the balance or meter amount to rise to the $10 threshold, a notification would be sent, indicating that the balance or meter amount has met the $10 threshold.

If you were to modify the threshold to $9 while holding a balance or meter amount of $9, a notification would not be sent, as the threshold amount will have dipped to the balance or meter amount, and not the reverse.

The threshold might meet the balance or meter amount, without producing a notification, under the following circumstances:
  • The threshold is changed from $10 to $9 within a pricing configuration, or by a subscriber management request.
  • The threshold is defined as a percentage of another value, and that value changes, such as the total credit in a shared group G/L balance, or across the underlying balances of a balance amount meter. For example, the threshold might be 10% of what was $100, but has now become $90, having forfeited a recurring grant.

For more information about creating meter templates, see the discussion about creating a meter template.