2017-08 Asteroids Release

Overview

 

General TBS - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

141398 - Customer Portal Corporate View

The Customer portal has been enhanced to now allow Corporate accounts the ability to view their sub account detail information. When logged in as a Corporate account, a new "Currently Viewing" selection box will appear at the top right allowing the corporate account to view the Entire Corporate View or select an individual sub account.

The items that this new control interacts with include the Locations list, Trouble/Task Tickets, Orders list, Products list, Account information, and Billing Statements.

A new "Linked Accounts" tab has also been added to the Customer portal to show a complete list of accounts in the Corporate / Sub structure.

The new Linked Accounts tab displays customer records that have the same CorpAccountNumber as the customer that is logged in to the Customer Portal.

The customer that is logged in must have "Corporate" as their billing type, and must be the top level account (its AccountNumber is the same as its CorpAccountNumber.)

Allow access to the Customers_CustomerLevel module is required to view the page.

Note: "COOP" customers optionally may be directed to the COOP portal.

141673 - Multi-Tenant Company Support

Over the years, we have found that several Clients need the ability to segregate data within the TBS system at a level that is at least at the Base level, but potentially even higher. For example, a Client who performs CRM and Billing as a contracted service for another telecom services company all out of the same TBS system has been limited in their ability to silo information and, if desired, segregate the supporting customer information available for selection (i.e., charges and plan records, invoice messages, etc.) that a particular set of customers receive. Example: "Base A" customers should only see and be allowed to have a particular set of Charges & Plans tied to their products.

The same goes for default settings when adding new customers to a particular Base of customers. Different Bases might want different report settings, different billing cycles, etc.

This functionality is now iteratively being rolled out to the TBS system. The Asteroids release starts this support by introducing a new top level "Company" definition that can then be tied to Bases. Coming soon, the Company will also be tied to Charges & Plans and additional future items such as Invoice Messages, specific rate/free plans, Agents, etc.

To start, the "Company" record will only contain a Key and a Company Name. Future iterations will allow more detailed items such as SMTP settings to be set at this company level so that if a Client desires to do things like send emails masked with different domain email addresses, TBS can support this.

The admin screen can be found under Setup > Customer Settings > Company. By default, each existing Client will automatically have a Company record created at the time of the Asteroids release using the Company Name tied to the default Base record (now required). This Company record will also be tied to any existing Charges & Plans record during initial setup (also now required) but filtering on the Add Charges & Plans screens is not yet enabled.

The Maintenance TBSModule is required to access this admin screen.

130092 - ACH Authorization Form updates

ACH Authorization forms can be setup in TBS to be "Requested" or "Required" for automatic Bank account payments. On the Automatic Payments tab, if a form is Required and has not been submitted, the Bank Account will appear in a separate table below the Bank Accounts and Credit Cards tables along with a button to send the ACH Authorization Form to the customer's Payment Confirmation email address. If the customer's payment confirmation email address is not entered, then a message will appear saying so.

126798 - Make Customer Information Group Required

The group field on the Customer Information screen is now required. All clients will now have a default Group set on Create. This can be changed before saving but must be set to a valid Group.

137662 - Add Late Notice Shutoff Day for use in Email and Invoice Late Notices Development

There is a new email and invoice message parameter available that shows the "late notice shut off date" defined by the Client. This date is meant to be used as a date in the future when services will be shut off if late payments are not received. In email templates the parameter can be added as {%CYCLE.LateNoticeShutOffDate%} and on invoices the parameter can be referenced using LL/LL/LLLL.

This field is calculated based on a new field added to the Billing Cycles screen called Late Notice Shut Off Day. This field represents the day of the month the shut off will occur on. In the email and invoice messages this field is converted into a date by comparing it to the current date. If the day in the field is greater than or equal to the current date the parameter will be filled with the current month and the day listed in the field. If the day in the field is less than the current date the parameter will be filled with the next month and the day listed in the field.

Note: Clients cannot access the Billing Cycles maintenance screen. Please work with your Client Solutions Expert to setup this feature if desired.

140067 - Wholesale Products Menu

The "Products without a Customer" menu item in the "Products" menu was previously showing in the Wholesale portal. This has been updated to only show if the user's UserType is Employee.

65451 - Update Lockbox Errors Page

The lockbox import errors page has been updated.

The page has a new grid to display the errors. Only errors that are unprocessed appear in the grid. After marking the errors as processed and saving changes, they will disappear from the grid.

143429 - Tax Jurisdiction: Update Data Issues Process

We have been transitioning clients to a new billing data QA process. This process will now warn clients if a taxing jurisdiction cannot be determined for a customer being billed.

139204 - Bug: File Transfer issues

The send files process will now recover from server connection trouble and attempt to send files to the next server instead of stopping, potentially bypassing other servers.

137550 - Bug: Error Deleting Email From Distribution List

Previously, an error occurred upon attempting to delete a distribution list or delete an email from a distribution list. Setup -> Notifications -> Email -> Distribution Lists.

139010 - Bug: Email Distribution List Permissions

Go to Setup -> Notifications -> Email -> Distribution Lists

Previously, if a user did not have proper permissions they would receive a generic error when attempting to view an email distribution list. Now it will tell them they don't have the proper permissions. Access to the Scheduler module is needed to access these tools.

 

Traditional Products - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

135021 - Add Commissions DDL to Wireless Features

Commission plans can now be set on Wireless Features.

On the Wireless Service screen, users can see the Commission Plan in the Features grid and can set it by drilling into the desired feature and selecting the commission plan from the drop down list.

The Commission Plans available on Wireless and Wireless Features are the same.

115013 - Bug Fix: Wireless Activation Charge not shown in summary

A bug which caused the Wireless Activation Charge not shown in summary has been corrected.

 

Integrated Products - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

105777 - Add Ability To Set BTN per Product on the Replicate Development

When replicating products, BTNs can now be specified on product types which have BTNs in addition to the new productIDs to create. To use the frontend for this, add the "|" character and a desired BTN after a productID in the ProductIDs box.

This is also supported in the products/{keyString}/replicate endpoint. The endpoint now takes in a list of objects with BTN and ProductID attributes rather than just a list of ProductIDs, and these BTNs can be specified in the ProductIDs box with the new product IDs.

138973 - "Customer specific rates exists" notification

If a customer has a product detail with an exception code, then on the customer screen an information notification will show saying "Customer specific rates exist".

35128 - Add Company to Charge & Plans Inventory

A new field, "CompanyKey," has been added to the Charges & Plans inventory.

This will allow future filtering of Charges by Company when adding these to a product.

139157 - Bug: Detail LD Rate Plan Record on product

View the information for a Rate Plan of type "LongDistance". Information on IntrastateInterlata and IntrastateIntralata rates will be visible under the "Plan" heading. Previously these would show as "Unknown".

The information on this screen previously did not match up with the information that would be visible on the hover-text for a rate plans information on the products screen.

 

Task Ticket / Quote Requests - Enhancements & Bug Fixes

The Task Management infrastructure is being enhanced and expanded with each release. Please see all the new updates below that will apply to Quote Requests

138775 - Task Ticket Aux Fields

Two new fields have been added to the TasksAux_Troubles table: Application and NetworkDevice.

These fields are both drop down lists. The drop down options can be managed on the Drop Down Lists screen.

141352 - Field Overrides: change Field Name to drop down list

A Field Overrides grid has been added to the bottom of the Task Types edit screen.

The field overrides grid allows users to override certain properties of task-related fields. Users are able to give each field a different title on the tasks page, and control whether or not the field is editable, visible, or required.

To select a field, users must first select the table that the field is on from the table drop down list. After choosing the table, the field drop down list is populated with all the fields that are on the selected table, from which users can easily find their desired field.

Note: The field overrides only apply to the TaskTypes that they exist on. For example, if a user adds an override on the Trouble Tickets.Internet task type that makes the Description not editable, it will only apply to Internet, so the Description field on a Cable Task Type will still be editable.

141210 - Bug: Issues adding products and locations

Create a new task of a task type which has locations enabled, or on an existing task which has locations enabled go to the locations tab, and then click "Select Existing Locations."

The methods for adding locations which previously did not function properly (either adding one of the locations on the task details page with the drop-down list or adding an existing location from the locations tab) now work.

 

REST API Enhancements & Bug Fixes

140399 - Setting InCity flag from REST Service

The REST service will now use the LkZipCodes table to lookup a value for InCity if one is not specified for locations. This affects the locations and customers endpoints.

Release Database Changes

Database Changes

These are the differences that will be made to your existing database when upgrading to version 39.00.

TBS Database

 

The following fields will be dropped:

  • None

 

The following fields will be altered:

  • -- BillOptions.Group IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- CustomerFilterView.Group IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- CustomerInformation.Group IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- CustomerInformation.GroupName IsNullable (True -> False)
  • -- DetailsLkDetailsView.IsActive IsNullable (True -> False)

 

The following tables will be added:

  • Company

The following fields will be added:

  • Company.CompanyKey
  • Company.CompanyName
  • DetailsLkDetailsView.ExceptionCode
  • lkBaseInfo.CompanyKey
  • lkDetails.CompanyKey
  • LkDetailsView.CompanyKey
  • Locations.PCode
  • LocationSuggestions.SuggestClock
  • LocationsView.AccountNumber
  • LocationsView.CorpAccountNumber
  • OrdersView.CorpAccountNumber
  • ProductsView.CustomerCorpAccountNumber
  • T4BillingCycles.LateNoticeShutOffDay
  • T4CompanyMaster.TaxProvider
  • T4CompanyMaster.AvalaraApiKey
  • TasksAux_Troubles.Application
  • TasksAux_Troubles.NetworkDevice
  • TasksView.CustomerCorpAccountNumber
  • TraditionalProductsView.CorpAccountNumber
  • TroubleTicketsView.CorpAccountNumber
  • WirelessFeatures.lkCommissionsKey