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MATRIXX Pricing and Rating
Rating
The following information describes MATRIXX Charging Application rating functionality.
How Rating Is Performed
When events are received in MATRIXX Engine, a list of candidate product offers is created and examined for each event segment to determine which ones apply. Determining the candidates involves identifying the valid price components, which is dependent on the validity of the balances and normalization values.
How Rating Occurs When Pricing Cannot be Applied
When an event is received from a Diameter 3GPP application and there are no applicable rating formulas, the MATRIXX Charging Application either returns an error message or does not charge for the event.

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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.
  - Rating Overview
    MATRIXX Charging Application can perform both online and offline rating in support of next-generation networks and legacy systems. It can also handle hybrid sets of convergent, prepaid, and postpaid services, enabling service providers to have a diverse subscriber base.
  - Usage and Non-Usage Rates
    Rates can be based on service usage and on activities not related to service usage, such as cycle processing, first use of a balance, catalog item purchases, and product offer cancelations.
  - Event Types
    MATRIXX Engine supports multiple built-in event types that are defined in a tree hierarchy based on pricing configuration and stored in the pricing database. You can define custom subordinate event types (sub events) for an event type.
  - Operation Types
    Use operation types to customize non-usage events. The operation type in an event mapping must match an event type. For example, the recurring_subscriber operation can only correspond to a recurring event, such as SubscriberCustomRecurringEvent.
  - Service Types
    Each network message received for subscriber usage is associated with a service type, and each category of usage within the network message is associated with a service context.
  - Device Types
    The MATRIXX Engine supports mobile and login devices. A mobile device uses one or more associated phone numbers to identify the subscription associated with the device. Login devices use a string value (SIP URI (Session Initiation Protocol Uniform Resource Identifier), an NAI (Network Address Identifier), or a PrivateId) for identification.
  - Normalization
    MATRIXX Engine uses a process called normalization to condense large sets of discrete field values into a manageable set of parameters. Each single normalizer parameter value represents an aggregate value set, so that assigning a result to every possible field value is not required.
  - Rating One-Time Events
    MATRIXX Charging Application supports 3GPP Immediate Event Charging (IEC) to authorize and charge for one-time events, such as SMS, MMS, or other messaging services (such as purchases of ring tones, media, or mobile Apps) and in-app micro-transactions. Typically the data for event-based requests maps to debit, refund, query, and price checking operation types. If configured, after a successful IEC operation, a notification (MtxEventChargeNotification) is triggered.
  - Rating Sessions
    MATRIXX Charging Application supports the 3GPP Session Charging with Unit Reservation (SCUR) and Event Charging with Unit Reservation (ECUR) to handle authorization and accounting for subscriber usage.
  - How Rating Is Performed
    When events are received in MATRIXX Engine, a list of candidate product offers is created and examined for each event segment to determine which ones apply. Determining the candidates involves identifying the valid price components, which is dependent on the validity of the balances and normalization values.
    - Authorization and Rating Workflow
      During rating, the MATRIXX Charging Application creates a candidate list of all owned product offers that can potentially apply. From this candidate list, the price components that can apply are identified and their associated rating formulas are used to perform authorizations and rating, if applicable.
    - Calculating Offer Priority During Rating
      When MATRIXX Charging Application receives a usage event to rate, it uses the dynamic offer priority formula to calculate a priority value for all candidate product offers. The event is then rated using the product offer with the highest numerical priority value, and any supplemental product offers that might also apply. The dynamic offer priority formula calculates the offer priority value using priority settings from the offer, priority settings from priority generators, and priorities based on the expiration date of any product offer primary balances.
    - Usage Rating with Beats
      A beat is a measurement unit on which you can apply usage rates. For example, charging $5.00 for every 5 megabytes used means you have a beat of 5 megabytes. The unit for the rating formula is the beat, and the quantity applied to the formula is the number of beats.
    - Parallel Usage Rating with Secondary Beats
      You use usage charge price components with secondary beats to perform separate, parallel rating for a single time-based service flow usage.
    - Event Segmentation During Rating
      During rating, a valid rating formula is applied to an event until something causes the rating formula to no longer be valid, such as a time change that causes a rate change, or a credit limit is reached. The change creates an inflection point that segments the event. Therefore, all valid product offers, balances, and price components are examined again to determine the rating formula to use.
    - Balance Selection During Rating
      To determine which price components are applicable during rating, the balances associated with the contained rate tables are checked in the order they are listed within each price component to see if they can be impacted.
    - Rate Table Selection During Rating
      There are three possible outcomes when considering whether the rate tables in a charge component are applied during authorization and rating: pass, fail, and not applicable. The outcome depends on the contents of the rate table row selected and the validity of the impacted balance.
    - Charge Selection During Rating
      There are three possible outcomes when considering whether a charge component is applied during authorization and rating: pass, fail, and not applicable. The outcome depends on the contents of the rate table row selected and the availability of the impacted balance.
    - Impacting Balances by Consumption Priority
      Assign a Consumption Priority to an asset or currency balance template during pricing plan creation. Assigning a balance consumption priority to balance templates enables service providers to control which balances are charged first. The default balance consumption priority is 0.
    - Product Offer Selection During Rating
      When trying to apply a product offer for its charges, there are three possible outcomes—pass, fail, and not applicable. The outcome depends on whether the product offer is supplemental or non-supplemental.
    - How Rating Occurs When Pricing Cannot be Applied
      When an event is received from a Diameter 3GPP application and there are no applicable rating formulas, the MATRIXX Charging Application either returns an error message or does not charge for the event.
  - Advice of Charge
    MATRIXX Engine supports Advice of Charge (AoC) for usage and non-usage rating.
  - Detecting Duplicate Network Messages
    MATRIXX Engine can detect when a duplicate network message is received and does not repeat the processing for the duplicate message.
  - Using Time Zones for Rating
    You can configure rates based on the time zone of MATRIXX Engine, the time zone of the subscription, or the UTC offset in the network message.
  - Generating Notifications During Rating
    Real-time notifications enable you to alert subscribers and group administrators immediately when product offers are purchased, canceled, or expire, when balances expire, and when balances are nearing credit limits and assets are about to expire, so they are aware of their current spending situations.
  - MATRIXX Event Detail Records
    MATRIXX Engine generates an _glossary/edr.html for all activities that can trigger rating, such as usage, catalog item purchases and cancelations, recurring cycle processing, or the first use of a balance. MATRIXX Engine also generates EDRs for non-rated events such as forfeitures. You configure event generation in My MATRIXX, including the events to generate and whether to add a custom container with additional mapped fields.
  - Processing Call Detail Records
    The MATRIXX Engine can rate call detail records (CDRs) in Solution42 format and save the results to MATRIXX Event Detail Records (EDRs) so the information can be imported into a third-party system for billing or analytical processing.
  - MATRIXX Event Files
    MATRIXX Event Files (MEFs) contain a list of usage and non-usage event types generated during transaction processing. MEFs are meant to be published to, and consumed outside of, MATRIXX, and can be input to third-party applications.
  - Multi-Tenancy Support
    MATRIXX supports multi-tenancy for service providers who want to host more than one tenant on the same sub-domain, where a tenant is a subset of the subscribers within a subscriber base that use the same pricing configuration and that have the same set of business behaviors, such as prepaid or postpaid, or the same Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO).
  - 5G AMF Charging
    MATRIXX supports charging for usage related to the 5G Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF).
  - Other 5G Service Charging
    MATRIXX supports charging for the following services in the 5G Release 17 Specification:
  - Network Exposure Function Charging
    MATRIXX supports charging for the Network Exposure Function (NEF).
  - Cycle Processing
    The Charging Server supports balance cycles, billing cycles, and purchased item cycles.
- Pricing
- 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

How Rating Occurs When Pricing Cannot be Applied

When an event is received from a Diameter 3GPP application and there are no applicable rating formulas, the MATRIXX Charging Application either returns an error message or does not charge for the event.

Invalid Rating Behavior lists the rating behavior that the MATRIXX Charging Application uses for Diameter 3GPP applications when there are no valid rates to apply during rating. The behavior is dependent on the Diameter packet type and whether error codes are defined for the associated price components.

Table 1. Invalid Rating Behavior
Diameter Packet	MATRIXX Charging Application Behavior
START_RECORD	Sends an error message or an error code back to the network so service access is denied.
INTERIM_RECORD	Sends an error message or an error code back to the network so service access is denied.
STOP_RECORD	Does not charge for the session and logs a warning.
EVENT_RECORD	Does not charge for the event and logs a warning.