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MATRIXX Pricing and Rating
Rating
The following information describes MATRIXX Charging Application rating functionality.
Cycle Processing
The Charging Server supports balance cycles, billing cycles, and purchased item cycles.
Purchased Item Cycles
A purchased item cycle is a recurring processing cycle assigned to a purchased catalog item. The purchased catalog item is a purchased item or bundle. If the purchased item represents a bundle with multiple offers, all offers in the bundle are aligned to the same purchased item cycle.
Purchased Item Cycle Alignment
When purchasing a catalog item, you can specify if the purchased item cycle is independent or aligned to a billing cycle, balance cycle, or a different purchased item cycle. The cycle to which a purchased item cycle is aligned is the master cycle.
Purchased Item Cycle-Aligned Balances
Balances associated with a billing cycle or a purchased item's cycle are explicitly aligned to that cycle and immediately track any changes to the associated billing cycle or purchased item cycle.

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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.
  - 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.
    - Recurring Processing
      Recurring processing can be triggered when MATRIXX Task Manager sends a message to the Charging Server because a trigger time in a subscriber or group wallet is reached.
    - Billing Cycles
      The billing cycle specification associated with a subscription is retrieved from a predefined billing profile template in the subscription wallet. The template is created as part of pricing configuration and forces all billing cycle pricing associated with the subscription to be applied with the same cycle settings. Each wallet can contain only one billing profile template. Define billing cycles in billing profile templates in My MATRIXX.
    - Billing Cycle Management
      Billing cycles properties are configured during global system configuration and managed using the SubMan APIs with which you can create or change a subscription or group billing cycle.
    - Balance Cycles
      You can define balance cycles in balance templates.
    - Purchased Item Cycles
      A purchased item cycle is a recurring processing cycle assigned to a purchased catalog item. The purchased catalog item is a purchased item or bundle. If the purchased item represents a bundle with multiple offers, all offers in the bundle are aligned to the same purchased item cycle.
      - Cycle Holding Balances
        A product offer (or bundle) defined with its own recurring cycle (purchased item cycle) can have a cycle holding balance to be used for paying its recurring charges. Cycle holding balances apply to prepaid services and are applied only to product offers or bundles that have a purchased item cycle defined. A purchased item cycle is a cycle that enables recurring processing to succeed or fail on a per offer or bundle basis (rather than on a per balance cycle or per billing cycle basis).
      - Purchased Item Recurring Processing
        In My MATRIXX, you can specify that the trigger for a recurring component is a balance cycle, billing cycle, or purchased item cycle.
      - Purchased Item Cycle Events
        An MtxPurchasedItemCycleChangeEvent Event Detail Record (EDR) is generated when an explicit purchased item cycle change occurs (including the breaking of alignment without any cycle offset changes). Changes that occur as the result of being aligned to another cycle do not generate an MtxPurchasedItemCycleChangeEvent EDR.
      - Purchased Item Cycle Status Life Cycles
        When recurring status conditions (success or failure) for purchased item cycles specify the resource ID of a product offer or bundle, the conditions apply only to cycles for catalog items associated with that product offer or bundle. If a resource ID is not specified, the conditions apply to all purchased item cycles owned by the subscription, group, or device.
      - Purchased Item Cycle Notifications
        A purchased item cycle can reference notification profiles for generating notifications for recurring processing or recurring processing failure.
      - Purchased Item Cycle Alignment
        When purchasing a catalog item, you can specify if the purchased item cycle is independent or aligned to a billing cycle, balance cycle, or a different purchased item cycle. The cycle to which a purchased item cycle is aligned is the master cycle.
        Purchased Item Cycle-Aligned Balances
        Balances associated with a billing cycle or a purchased item's cycle are explicitly aligned to that cycle and immediately track any changes to the associated billing cycle or purchased item cycle.
        Purchased Item Cycle-Aligned Meters
        A periodic meter can be aligned to a bill cycle or a purchased item cycle and immediately track any changes to the associated billing cycle or purchased item cycle.
        Defining Purchased Item Cycles During Purchase
        You can define cycle data for purchased item cycles in product offer and bundle templates, and if the template allows purchase-time configuration of cycle data, you can define cycle data during the purchase of a catalog item. When a purchased item's cycle is aligned to a referenced cycle (such as a balance cycle or subscriber-owned purchased item), any change to the referenced cycle results in a change to the cycle of the purchased item.
        Modifying a Purchased Item Cycle Alignment
        You can modify a purchased-item cycle alignment if the target purchased item cycle is not a master cycle for another purchased item, it is not a pending master cycle, and the target purchased item is not aligned to a billing cycle that has a pending period termination. Note that you cannot align a purchased item to a purchased item that is aligned to another purchased item cycle.
- Pricing
- Appendices
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Glossary

Purchased Item Cycle-Aligned Balances

Balances associated with a billing cycle or a purchased item's cycle are explicitly aligned to that cycle and immediately track any changes to the associated billing cycle or purchased item cycle.

When a purchased item cycle with associated balances is modified immediately, the time of the modification is used as the balance period end time, regardless of the balance's configured cycle time of day (such as a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly balance).

A purchased item cannot be aligned to a device-specific balance unless the purchased item is owned by the device associated with that device-specific balance. Purchased item cycles cannot be aligned to virtual or on-demand balances.

A device-owned purchased item cycle can align to a subscriber purchased item cycle by setting the CycleOwnerType field in the MtxPurchasedItemCycleData MATRIXX Data Container (MDC). The cycle alignment information for balances aligned to device-owned purchased items is removed immediately when the associated device is removed from the subscriber or deleted.

For more information about modifying a purchased item cycle alignment, see the discussion about modifying a purchased item cycle alignment in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating. For information about configuring periodic meters, see My MATRIXX Help.