The following information describes MATRIXX Charging Application rating functionality.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MATRIXX Engine supports Advice of Charge (AoC) for usage and non-usage rating.
MATRIXX Engine can detect when a duplicate network message is received and does not repeat the processing for the duplicate message.
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.
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 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.
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 (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.
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).
MATRIXX supports charging for usage related to the 5G Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF).
MATRIXX supports charging for the following services in the 5G Release 17 Specification:
MATRIXX supports charging for the Network Exposure Function (NEF).
The Charging Server supports balance cycles, billing cycles, and purchased item cycles.
