Allowance Property Introducer Operator

As of SP04, SAP Convergent Charging 4.0 features the Allowance Property Introducer Operator allowing you to retrieve the property values of a set of allowances and save them in generated properties that are available for the next components of the decision tree.

Use

You use the Allowance Property Introducer Operator when:

• The properties of the available allowances of a charging contract are needed for the decision tree of the price plan of a charge, the refill logic, or the allowance logic.

• Some properties of allowances must be reported in charged items.

• The properties of allowances must be used in the Allowance Event Sender Operator for sending an event to allowances.

Example

You want to retrieve the lowest and greatest credit values from the following set of allowances but only through the “USER” scope:

To do that, you configure an Allowance Property Introducer Operator to select the allowances whose property named 'Scope' is equal to 'USER', and you create two generated properties named 'LowestValue' and 'GreatestValue' to save the values of the 'Scope' properties.

From the previous set of allowance properties, the Allowance Property Introducer Operator thus selects the allowances whose ID are 1234, 1236, and 1240:

The Allowance Property Introducer Operator then creates a generated property named 'LowestValue' with the value of 10 (the allowance whose ID is 1234) and a generated property named 'GreatestValue' with the value of 300 (the allowance whose ID is 1236).

Identification Area

Name: Type the name of the component (mandatory).

Description: Allows you to type the description of the component (optional).

Definition Tab

This tab includes two tables:

• The Allowance Selection Criteria table that defines the criteria for selecting allowances according to the values of their properties

• The Generated Properties table to define generated properties in which you save the values of the allowance properties

Allowance Selection Criteria

This table defines the conditions for selecting the allowances of a provider contract.

: Adds a row to the table

: Deletes a row from the table

Property Name: Select the name of the allowance property, which can be:

• A parameter of the Allowance Interface

• A counter of the Allowance Interface

• A default allowance property such as:

• The unique identifier of the allowance

• The allowance activation date (Validity Start Date)

• The allowance expiration date (Validity End Date)

Type: Displays the type of the allowance property (Date, Number, or String)

Operator: Provides the list of comparison operators. Select an operator:

• Date (Equals, Before, After, Before or Equals, After or Equals)

• Number (Equals, Greater Than, Lower Than, Greater Than or Equals)

• String (Equals, Starts With, Ends With, Contains)

Comparison Value: Type a value or select a rating context property (a parameter or a counter).

Generated Properties

This table allows you to create generated properties which are initialized with the result of operators. You need to select an operator that is applied to the selected allowance properties. The generated properties are then available as computed properties in the rating context.

Allowance Count Property Name: Type the name of the generated property that represents the count of selected allowances.

: Adds a row to the table

: Deletes a row from the table

Property name: Select the name of the allowance property.

Type: Displays the type of the allowance property: Date or Number

Operator: Select one of the following operators to initialize the generated properties:

• Greatest: Returns the greatest value of a given allowance property. If no allowance has been selected, the default value defined in the allowance interface is returned.

• Lowest: Returns the lowest value of a given allowance property. If no allowance has been selected, the default value defined in the allowance interface is returned.

• Sum: Returns the sum of the allowance property if exists. If no allowance has been selected this operator returns ‘0’.

Generated Property name: Type the name of the generated property.

Scope Tab

Extend the scope to the parent contract allowances: If you select this option, the selected allowances include the allowances of the parent provider contract and the allowances of the current provider contract; otherwise, the selected allowances only include the allowances of the current provider contract.