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MATRIXX Pricing and Rating
Pricing
Pricing Plans
Pricing plans define the pricing and policies that allow you to control how you provide services to subscribers and how you are paid for those services. Pricing plans are comprised of catalog items, offers, bundles, and supporting objects required to implement pricing.
Product Offers
Product offers are the basis for the pricing components that subscriptions, groups, and devices purchase, either singly or in bundles.
Extending Product Offers and Bundles
Service providers can extend product offer and bundle templates to include private fields that hold provider-specific information. The extensions are valid for both subscription offers and one time offers. The private fields can be identified in normalizers and rating formulas to influence how rating and charging occurs. The field values are included automatically in offer notifications and in Event Detail Records (EDRs) in the applied offer array.

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MATRIXX Pricing and Rating
- About Pricing and Rating
  MATRIXX Pricing and Rating provides an introduction to MATRIXX pricing and rating functionality and describes how to define the catalog components necessary for rating and policy selection. It also provides an overview of the MATRIXX rating process and an introduction to My MATRIXX, a web-based user interface application you use to create and manage product catalogs.
- Rating
  The following information describes MATRIXX Charging Application rating functionality.
- Pricing
  - Pricing Overview
    The MATRIXX pricing model is highly flexible and enables you to create innovative service offerings and tailor pricing to subscriber needs. It is compatible with the TM Forum (TMF) Shared Information/Data (SID) model.
  - Pricing Data
    The MATRIXX Engine pricing data model is compatible with the Shared Information/Data (SID) standard, as defined by the TM Forum (TMF).
  - Pricing Corrections and Revisions
    Make corrections and revisions to all pricing items except balance classes, meter classes, balances, meters, and products. For information about product offer versions, see the discussion about product offers.
  - Updating Pricing After Purchase
    Not all pricing items can be updated after pricing is loaded and subscribers are using it.
  - Pricing Plans
    Pricing plans define the pricing and policies that allow you to control how you provide services to subscribers and how you are paid for those services. Pricing plans are comprised of catalog items, offers, bundles, and supporting objects required to implement pricing.
    - Balances and Meters
      When you define rates, you specify which balances and meters to impact when rating occurs. The impacts are a result of the price components applied, and represent the financial liabilities to subscribers and groups.
    - Thresholds and Credit Limits
      Create thresholds and credit limits when you create or change balances and meters.
    - Decision Tables
      Decision tables consist of a number of _glossary/normalizer.html columns that define a set of business logic (one or more condition sets) that can be reused in different circumstances. Decision tables can be combined with a set of results into any type of component table, such as a policy table, rollover table, rate table, _glossary/gl_transaction_type.html table and account table, filter, or priority generator.
    - Contracts
      You can create finance or service contracts. A finance contract defines the terms and conditions of a contract. A service contract defines the terms and charges for a service, for example, voice or data.
    - Final Unit Indication
      You can configure Diameter Final Unit Indication (FUI) information to be static or dynamic.
    - Announcements Components
      MATRIXX Engine uses announcement pricing components for determining the list of announcements to play to a subscriber during a voice call, and the language they must be played in. You configure announcement data to be dynamic, so a different result occurs based on conditions that are valid at the time of rating.
    - Data Modifying
      You use the data modify interface in My MATRIXX to configure data modify actions, data modify profiles, and data modify profile selectors.
    - Filters
      Filters are independent, reusable, pricing items that can be associated with balances, meters, subscription product offers, and notifications.
    - Normalizer Templates
      Normalizer templates identify the MATRIXX Data Container (MDC) and its fields, catalog item parameters, balances, quantities, or times that are normalized during rating to determine which rates to apply. The fields can be located in a network message or in a MATRIXX database MDC, such as a subscriber, device, group, or purchased offer MDC.
    - Normalizer Instances
      Normalizer instances condense large sets of discrete field values into a manageable set of parameters. Each parameter represents the aggregate value set, so that assigning a result to every possible field value is not required.
    - Parameters
      You can configure definitions for parameters that you can use in pricing items such as catalog items, bundles, product offers, and price components.
    - Products
      A product represents the provisioning of a service type when a _glossary/catalog_item.html is purchased for a _glossary/subscription.html, _glossary/device.html, or _glossary/group.html. The products identify the service type, which in turn determines the pricing that can apply.
    - Catalog Items
      Catalog items are customizations of offers and bundles that are offered to a specific group of subscribers.
    - Catalogs
      A catalog contains catalog items and eligibility rules. The eligibility rules determine which catalog items are included or excluded from the catalog. You can also add metadata fields to further define the catalog.
    - Eligibility
      Eligibility rules define requirements and exclusions.
    - Product Offers
      Product offers are the basis for the pricing components that subscriptions, groups, and devices purchase, either singly or in bundles.
      - Subscription Offers
        Subscription offers identify the pricing for a service. When purchased, a subscription offer is saved with the subscriber or group for which it was purchased, any required balances are added to the wallet, and all applicable pricing is applied. During usage, any policies defined for the product offer are returned to the GGSN.
      - One Time Offers
        One time offers provide instant pricing when they are purchased. A one time offer can contain purchase and cancel pricing components including purchase charges, discounts, grants, and meters that track balances updated by these price components, and cancel charge, discount, refund, and forfeiture pricing components.
      - Global Offers
        Global offers are used to define the pricing that is applied during service usage for a wide set of subscribers without the need for each subscriber to purchase the product offer. During rating, a global offer is available to be applied to any subscriber or device that has a balance associated with the usage components defined for the global offer. You can have one version of each global offer; each version can have any number of revisions.
      - Finance Contract Offers
        A finance contract provides an installment plan for purchase of an entity such as a device. This allows a subscriber or group to purchase an entity and pay for it over time with periodic installments. A finance contract offer defines the pricing components required to set up the contract. A finance contract cannot be purchased by a device.
      - Service Contract Offers
        A service contract offer defines terms and charges for a service such as voice or data, allowing the subscriber, group, or device to gain additional benefits or discounts for a long-term contract.
      - Product Offers with Device-Specific Balances or Meters
        You add a device-specific balance or meter to an offer to collect financial liabilities for a device or a collection of devices.
      - Product Offer Notifications
        You can configure product offers to trigger notifications when they are purchased, canceled, or expire.
      - 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.
      - Product Offer Validity Periods
        A product offer can have a purchase validity period and a rating validity period that set when it is valid for purchase and rating, respectively. By default, both validity periods start immediately when the product offer is added to the pricing database and do not end until the product offer is deleted.
      - Usage-Triggered Asset Renewal
        Usage-triggered asset renewal (auto-renewal) grants assets in real-time during usage when rating would normally fail due to insufficient balance quantities or expired balances.
      - Pricing Proration
        Proration can be applied to recurring charges and grants when product offers are purchased, canceled, suspended, or resumed in mid-cycle, and when a period is terminated or started due to a cycle change. The proration settings determine how much of the total charges are applied or refunded, how much of the total recurring charges are applied for refund, and how much of the total recurring grants are applied or forfeited.
      - Purchasing Product Offers
        Product Offer versions can be purchased as catalog items for a subscriber, group, or device and can be configured to trigger a notification to be sent at purchase time.
      - Canceling Product Offers
        Subscription, one time, and global product offers can be canceled at any time for a subscriber, group, or device and can be configured to trigger a notification to be sent at the cancelation time. A contract product offer terminates either when the contract term ends or when the subscriber terminates the contract early through a cancel offer operation.
      - Suspending and Resuming Product Offers
        Use the MtxRequestSubscriberSuspendOffer, MtxRequestSubscriberResumeOffer, MtxRequestGroupSuspendOffer, MtxRequestGroupResumeOffer, MtxRequestDeviceSuspendOffer, and MtxRequestDeviceResumeOffer APIs to suspend or resume an offer for a subscriber, group, or device if it is permitted by the current offer status class.
      - Adding Parameters
        You can add a list of pre-defined parameters to pricing items, such as catalog items, bundles, offers, and price components.
      - Product Offer Required Balances
        Product offers can identify zero or more balances that are required by that product offer. You can limit rating to just the required balances by selecting the Charge Only Required Balances general property, and adding all required balances on the product offer Balances tab. Otherwise, both the required and non-required balances and meters are charged for an offer.
      - Product Offer Required Tier Balances
        For aggregated required balances, product offers can specify at which tier in a group hierarchy the G/L balance is created.
      - Extending Product Offers and Bundles
        Service providers can extend product offer and bundle templates to include private fields that hold provider-specific information. The extensions are valid for both subscription offers and one time offers. The private fields can be identified in normalizers and rating formulas to influence how rating and charging occurs. The field values are included automatically in offer notifications and in Event Detail Records (EDRs) in the applied offer array.
      - Adding Catalog Item Template Fields
        You can add more catalog item template fields to default product offers and bundles by creating new custom MATRIXX Data Containers (MDCs). Some default offer and bundle templates include useful example fields, but you should extend that list. Your new custom MDCs extend a base MDC with the template fields that your MATRIXX implementation requires. Pricing Users then decide on a per-offer or per-bundle basis whether to make the new fields available to Catalog Users to configure for catalog items. Only simple data types are allowed.
      - Removing Expired Purchased Offers
        Purchased product offers that have expired (purchased individually or as part of a bundle), either because they have been canceled or their validity period has ended, are removed from the owning subscriber, group, or device after a configured amount of time.
    - Bundles
      Bundles group one or more product offers together so they can be purchased as a unit. You can also create bundle-specific charges, grants, and discounts that override or supplement the existing price components defined in individual product offers.
    - Price Components
      MATRIXX price components are reusable pricing items that can be included in any number of product offers. They include charges, discounts, grants, refunds, and forfeitures.
    - Policies
      Policies provide the business logic for real-time policy decisions and rules, allowing you to track subscribers' service usage in real-time and change the behavior of a service based on that usage (for example, by throttling bandwidth).
    - Inbound Roaming
      Configure inbound and emergency roaming requests to define the agreements with third-party operators that allow requests for subscribers that are not identified in MATRIXX.
    - Denial Codes
      Denial codes are a way to deny service access to subscribers for a specific reason. You define them in My MATRIXX and add them to rate table rows in place of a rating formula, so the value is returned to the network based on the row selected during rating.
    - Offer Life Cycle Profiles
      An offer life cycle profile consists of a set of offer statuses, a set of policies associated with each offer status that describe behavior that can be executed in this status, and a set of transitions that can have conditions defined that can trigger a transition and actions defined that are executed after the transition is performed. Both offers and bundles can have an offer life cycle profile defined. Use offer life cycle profiles to customize the behavior of MATRIXX for your business processes.
    - Status Life Cycles
      A status life cycle is a collection of object states, policies, and transition rules that are defined for a specific object type. You can define a status life cycle for user, device, subscription, group, and offer objects to customize the behavior of MATRIXX for your business processes. For example, a device life cycle can begin with a provisioned status, transition to an active status, and finally transition to an inactive status.
    - Status Notification Profiles
      Notification profiles are reusable pricing components that define when expiration and recurring processing failure notifications are sent and the frequency with which those notifications are sent. Notification profiles can be assigned to each status in status life cycles. For a complete list of possible notifications, see the discussion about notifications in MATRIXX Integration.
    - System Attributes
      System attributes are custom properties you can attach to product offers, price components, rate tables, and rate table rows to add metadata to the object in the pricing database. They contain a mapping of attribute values to _glossary/mdc.html fields. The MDC fields get populated with the attribute values during rating and returned to the network in an MDC message.
    - Virtual Fields
      You use virtual fields to avoid creating multiple pricing configurations if your MATRIXX environment accepts multiple rating message types, for example, messages from Diameter and 5G networks.
    - Usage Triggers
      Use usage triggers to add lists of re-authorization triggers to the charging response messages for a session or rating group. Usage triggers are available for both Diameter Gy and 5G charging messages.
    - Usage Trigger Gy and 5G AVPs
      You trigger re-authorization for a session or rating group by assigning the Diameter Gy Trigger-Type and 5G triggerType AVP values listed here to usage trigger profiles.
    - Metadata
      Metadata summarizes basic information about other data and makes working with specific data easier. Metadata provides information about pieces of information that have meaning in relation to another piece of information in My MATRIXX.
  - Planning a Pricing Plan
    Before you create a _glossary/pricing_plan.html, determine how you want to name, organize, and set up the items that form planning a pricing plan.
  - Deploying a Pricing Plan
    Deploying a pricing plan involves compiling the pricing plan into a configuration file and loading the configuration file into the pricing database. During compilation, the pricing schema is validated and any errors that occur are displayed.
  - Group-Owned Pricing
    Groups can own product offers that define service pricing for group members. The product offers can define pricing for both usage and non-usage event types.
  - Taxation
    MATRIXX supports two types of taxation: tax classes and selectors, and US taxation. Tax classes specify tax rates or fixed taxes, and tax selectors dynamically select the tax rate, and apply one or more taxes to a charge. US taxation determines the taxes for a given location, and specifies the tax type, product category the tax applies to, and the tax authority who receives the tax based on CCH tax data.
- Appendices
MATRIXX Pay Now
MATRIXX Subscriber Management
MATRIXX Subscriber Management API
MATRIXX Business API SDK
My MATRIXX Help
MATRIXX Backoffice Customer Tool Help
MATRIXX Third-Party Licenses
Glossary

Extending Product Offers and Bundles

Service providers can extend product offer and bundle templates to include private fields that hold provider-specific information. The extensions are valid for both subscription offers and one time offers. The private fields can be identified in normalizers and rating formulas to influence how rating and charging occurs. The field values are included automatically in offer notifications and in Event Detail Records (EDRs) in the applied offer array.

Use My MATRIXX to set the private field values when creating product offer and bundle templates. The private fields are accessible from the product offer or bundle template revision in Custom Fields.

Before adding private fields to a product offer template, integrators must use the create_config.py script to add a custom MDC that extends the base product offer MDC and add the private fields to it. This custom MDC has an external representation called a product offer extension that ends in Extension (for example, MyPrivateOfferExtension). When a product offer extension is selected in My MATRIXX, all fields defined in the custom MDC are displayed in Custom Fields with the field name value specified when the custom MDC was created. To make the fields available for rating formulas, you must add the field to the Field Definitions in My MATRIXX and then, when creating the rating formula, set the Quantity Definition value to Field and select the new field.

Custom fields specified in the product offer template can be used to pass in custom purchase offer parameters such as a recharge amount, an offer price override, an offer code, a discount percentage, and a locale when offers are purchased.

For information about creating custom MDCs and adding fields to them, see MATRIXX Integration. For more information about adding fields to use during rating, see the discussion about field definitions in My MATRIXX Help.

To enable the custom MDCs and their fields to be displayed in My MATRIXX, My MATRIXX must be configured to point to the MATRIXX Engine containing the latest schema changes or have access to a local up-to-date system configuration. For information about configuring to point to a running MATRIXX Engine, see the discussion about My MATRIXX in MATRIXX Web App Administration.