Pricing Corrections and Revisions

Corrections

A correction changes the current revision of the pricing item, which overwrites the information previously set. It does not create a new file in the pricing repository. Corrections take effect immediately when they are loaded into the system, so they affect existing subscribers and new subscribers. They are intended for emergency fixes, not normal pricing update operations. Only make corrections when your pricing plan has errors.

You can correct pricing items that are currently active in the system and those that will not be activated until a future date.

If your pricing plan has errors (for example, missing pricing components or required balances), a Pricing Issues link displays by the page header with a blue Refresh Pricing Issues icon next to it. Click the link to view the issues. Once issues are fixed and saved, click the refresh icon to recheck the object for issues and update the number of issues listed by the Pricing Issues link. If no issues are found, refresh the page to remove the link and icon.

Revisions

A revision creates a new file in the pricing repository, copies the contents of the previous revision into the new file, and lets you change it to make a new revision. You use revisions to change the pricing for both new subscribers and existing subscribers. The revised version changes the instance owned by existing subscribers when it becomes active in the system. When a new revision becomes active, the old one becomes inactive. The activation date and time are controlled by a start date/time defined for the revision, which defaults to the date and time the revision is created. Setting future start dates/times allows you to have several inactive revisions of a price component saved with a product offer. Each one becomes valid as soon as the start date/time occurs. Revisions act like a date normalizer. When an event is received, the rating engine determines which revision is applicable to the event time and it uses that one. This allows MATRIXX Engine to handle older events that are received along with new events and apply the proper rating. Only one revision can be active in the system at one time.

Subscribers, groups, devices, and wallets can have associated purchased offers and balances that are not valid at the time of an event. For any reference to a pricing item, either from any of these subscriber objects or from other pricing items that are valid at the time of the event, there must be a valid revision associated with the subscriber, group, device, or wallet for it to be applicable during rating. For example, during rating, a product offer with a future date is not valid. If there are no revisions of a product offer valid at the event time, rating will fail for the incoming event.

When you compile your pricing plan, the latest correction of all revisions—past, present, and future—are loaded into the pricing database. This ensures that past revisions are available if necessary and all future pricing items are available when the time comes. For example, product offers reference all revisions of price components. During rating, only one revision is valid for a particular event or authorization request. The MATRIXX Engine uses the event date or the subscription date to select the right revision of a pricing object to use.

My MATRIXX is configured to limit the number of pricing revisions that get compiled into the pricing configuration file, and subsequently loaded into the pricing database. This provides administrators a way to manage the size of the pricing database. The number of revisions to compile is time-based, and the default is 45 days' worth. Any revisions that ended prior to the specified time are not compiled. Administrators can change the default value when configuring My MATRIXX.