2015-07 Quicksilver Release Notes

Overview

The Quicksilver Release consisted of several improvements and bug fixes as outlined below. Highlights include:

  • Automation of Late Notice Emails
  • Ability to rate long distance calls based on Product Type, Access Type and Carrier
  • Updating Cash Posting to improve data entry efficiency
  • Several bug fixes.

 

The updates in this release are organized as follows:

 

General TBS - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

28204 - New Process to automatically Email Late Notices

TBS now has the capability to generate and email customer late notices. System administrators can set up this functionality as follows:

1. Create one or more email templates that can be associated with each Base.

This administrative tool is found under System Administration -> Email -> Email Templates.

The Late Notice templates support replacement values using fields from the Customer record (ex: Name, Account Number, Balance, Days Late, etc) and the Base record (ex: Company Name, Customer Service / Payment address, Company Phone Number, etc). The full list of replacement fields can be found on the Email Template administrative page by selecting "Late Notice" in the "Replaceable Columns" drop down list.

With this release, default Late Notice Templates have been set up for 30, 60, and 90 Day Late Notices.

2. Associate the desired Late Notice Email Template with each Base.

This administrative tool is found under System Administration -> Customers -> Bases. See the Tabs at the bottom of the page.

When associating the Late Notice Templates with a Base, administrators define:

  • Template Type of "Late Notice"
  • Criteria such as 30, 60, 90, etc. When the Late Notice Process runs, any customer account that has a Days Late value matching the Criteria and has a balance greater than the Client's application setting, MinimumBillingAmount, will be sent a Late Notice.
  • The desired Email Template

 

Only Customers on a Base with associated Late Notice Email Template will be evaluated during this process. This allows administrators to include / exclude entire sets of customers from the Late Notice process.

Individual customer accounts can be excluded from this process by checking the "Skip Late Notice" flag located on the Customer Screen -> Account Settings Tab -> Invoicing Sub Tab.

3. Precision will schedule this process to run daily. By default, the process will be scheduled to run after the Nightly AR Update at midnight. Please contact your account manager if you would prefer the process to run at a different time.

33756 - Ability to rate calls differently with the same ProductID but from different carriers

Long Distance Rating has been updated to provide the ability to have a single line rate on different rate plans based on the following "CDR Attributes":

  • Product Type (Long Distance, Toll Free, Travel Card, etc)
  • Access Type (Switched, Dedicated, VoIP, etc)
  • Carrier

 

In order to rate a Long Distance product in this manner users must take the following steps:

1. On any Long Distance product that should rate in this manner, check the new "CDR Attribute Rating" flag. This causes the rating engine to find the proper rate based on the attributes of each call record processed.

Make note of the Rate Plan assigned to the line. In the screen shot below, the rate plan assigned to the line is "130". This will be used as the default or fall back Rate Plan.

2. Using the LD Rate Plans Administration screen, found under System Utilities-> Products -> Long Distance -> Long Distance Rates, create new rate plans. On these rate plans, it is important to a) name them correctly and b) assign the proper CDR Attribute Rating values.

Naming the rate plan: The plan names MUST be in the format: <AssignedRatePlan>.XXX. For the example screenshot above, new rate plan names should look like: 130.A, 130.B, 130.XXX. It does not matter what values follow the dot (.), just that the portion of new rate plan name before the dot (.) exactly matches the rate plan assigned to the line.

Setting the proper CDR Attribute Values: The rate plan must have the Product Type, Access Type, and Carrier Type set. Note that ALL attributes must be set if any of them are set.

27317 - Transaction Posting - make "Alternative Find Options" the default

On the Transaction Posting page, the Find by Account Number text box has been removed. The Find by Name, Account or Invoice Number combo box provided the same functionality and is now the preferred way to search for a customer.

37756 - Add GL Group field on Trans Class/GL Codes

The Transaction Classification / GL Code administration table has been expanded to include a "GL Group" field. This new field is used for reporting purposes.

The administration screen can be found by navigating to Utilities -> System Administration -> Transaction Classifications / GL Codes.

28816 - Bug Fix: Carrier field values are duplicated on Trouble Tickets

A bug has been fixed that caused the Carrier field on Trouble Tickets to be filled with duplicate values.

28816 - Bug Fix: Clear Term Acceptance Timing Out

The 'Clear Term Acceptance' button on the customer base administration screen was timing out on large bases. The process is now much faster but no longer writes metrics showing the clearing of the data to the history database.

31003 - Bug Fix: Comment Commit date mouse scroll over

A bug on the Comments screen would fill the commit date and sets the assigned to, if you happen to have your mouse just over the commit date field (cursor is NOT in the text box), and you scroll down or up.

To fix this bug, the library providing the calendar functionality in newer date controls has been upgraded to the latest version. Using the mouse scroll wheel when hovered over these controls will no longer change the date.

 

Provisioning Service - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

27311 - Exceptions to sending disconnects to all carrier

TBS includes an application setting that controls the behavior of the Long Distance Provisioning Disconnect process. By default, the system will send a Disconnect Provisioning Action to (only) the Carrier / Account assigned to each individual line. TBS includes a "ProvisionDiscosToAllCarriers" application setting that, if set to "true", will send the Disconnect Provisioning Actions to ALL carriers / accounts defined in TBS.

An enhancement has been made to allow users to exclude specific LD Carrier Accounts from the Disconnect From All Carriers process.

Please contact Precision Support if you would like to enable the "ProvisionDiscosToAllCarriers" setting in your version of TBS.

Once enabled, users can navigate to the System Administration Menu -> Provisioning -> LD Carrier Account Lookup screen and change the "Enable Disco All" option on each desired Carrier Account record.

Note: The "LD Carrier Account"  "Enable Disco All" values are "true" by default. Changing the value will have an impact ONLY if the above mentioned application setting is "true", otherwise, the record level values are ignored.

36782 - Bug Fix: MCI 800 Provisioning Error when spaces are in Customer Main Phone Number

A minor MCI Provisioning Bug has been corrected. The error occurred when provisioning Toll Free and the Customer Main Phone contained non-numeric values like dots, spaces, dashes, parenthesizes, etc.

36782 - Bug Fix: LD Carrier not updating off CDRs

A bug in the process that updates Carrier and CIC from Daily CDR Usage has been corrected.

On Traditional Long Distance, there is are fields for: Interstate Carrier / CIC and Intrastate Carrier / CIC . Previously, this process used the carrier assigned call type (Interstate, Intrastate, International, etc) to determine which Long Distance carrier fields to update. The problem is that some carriers do not correctly identifying the call type in the CDR. The process has been updated and now uses the TBS determined Call Type to update the proper fields.

Traditional Products - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

26021 - Traditional Product Local/VoIP Tab Updates

The Local screen has had the following fields added:

  • Auto Attendant check box (yes/no)
  • Auto Attendant Numbers
  • Voicemail check box (yes/no)
  • Voicemail Password
  • Concurrent Calls
  • Shared Call Appearance check box (yes/no)
  • Devices drop down list - this is field from the list of devices associated with the current account. The full list can be seen on the Products tab -> Devices sub tab
  • Device Port
  • Device Display Name

 

The screen has been updated to better display related fields.

A LineType column has been added to the Voice Services and Local Grids.

Integrated Products - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

37657 - Do Add Integrated Product Tabs by Form to Customer Screen Development

The Customer Products screen now shows tabs for each product type in addition to the All Products tab.

Clicking Create Product from a product type tab will set the default product type on the new record to the tab's product type.

In most cases (e.g. when editing a single product that does not have a parent), a new breadcrumb has been added to the product screen that will return you to the customer's product type tab.

32711 - Bug Fix: Deleting a product with descendants error

An issue that prevented Product with children (sub products) from being deleted has been corrected.