Product Offer Versions and Revisions

You can create any number of product offer versions and revisions. Product offer versions are closely related, such as continuations of a product offer with new validity dates. Existing purchasers continue to use the older product offer version while you offer new purchasers the newer version. Revisions change existing product offers. For example, if you create a new revision with different pricing, both existing owners and new owners pay the new prices.

A new version of a product offer is a copy of the original product offer with changes to one or more of these details:

  • ID
  • Version Name
  • Version Description
  • Version External ID
  • External ID
  • Purchase Start Date
  • Purchase End Date

All other product offer properties are carried over to the new version. The new version does not change the original version already owned by subscribers. It is applicable only to subscribers who purchase the new version. For example, existing subscribers might own a product offer that charges $50 a month for wireless Internet access. You would create a new version of the product to increase the price to $60 a month. Existing subscribers continue to use the original version and be charged $50 per month, but customers who purchase the new product offer version are charged $60.

If you create a new revision of a product offer you can change more product offer details. You use revisions to change the pricing for both new subscribers and existing subscribers. The revision changes the instance owned by existing subscribers when it becomes active in the system. When a new offer revision becomes valid, the old one becomes invalid. The activation date is controlled by the start date defined for the revision, which defaults to the date the revision is created.

Setting future start dates 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 occurs. When an event is received, the rating engine determines which revision is applicable to the event time and it uses that one. This allows the 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.

You can make changes to these product offer details when you create a new revision (not all apply to all offers):

  • General
  • Start/End Dates
  • Price Components
  • Parameters
  • Balances
  • Balance State
  • Rollover Components
  • Meters
  • Priority
  • Policies
  • Proration
  • Tax/GST Classes
  • Custom Fields
  • Attributes
  • Template Fields
  • Cycle Data
  • Activation
  • Usage Quota
  • Usage Trigger
  • SH Repository Data
  • Offer Owner State
  • Sponsorship
You can make changes to these product offer details when you create a new revision, but your changes do not affect subscribers who already own the offer or bundle. Only subscribers who purchase the new revision of the offer or bundle see the following new values:
  • Required Balances
  • Meters

For information about catalog item revisions, see the discussion about catalog item revisions.

For information about how new product offer versions and revisions are saved in the pricing repository, see the discussion about pricing corrections and revisions.