PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 88 now available

With this new update, you’ll be able to enforce payment collection, apply late payment fees, and save time on troubleshooting by using the web interface to check an event’s provisioning status. Read on to find out more about the latest new features in PortaSwitch!

Enhanced payment collection

Now you have more options to gradually force outstanding payment collection. Step-by-step service deactivation encourages customers to pay their invoices on time and helps you maintain positive relationships.

This new feature includes a variety of ways to stimulate payment – each step optional, so you can design the enforcement pathway that works best for you. Options include:

• Service limitation: Reduce a customer’s level of service (e.g., 10Mbps instead of 100) when an invoice becomes overdue. Service limitation can be lifted upon customer payment.
• Customer suspension: While suspended, the customer can no longer use the services. Once the overdue invoice is paid in full, the customer can use the services again.
• ?ommitment termination for all accounts: Customers benefiting from a discounted subscription rate (a so-called “commitment” that is tied to keeping the service active for a certain period) will lose the discount and will be required to repay the full cost of service backdated from the start of the contract.
• Customer termination: If payment is still not received after all of your selected options are enacted, the customer’s service can be automatically terminated.

BENEFITS

Late payment fee

You can set a late payment fee that will be applied if an invoice is not paid on time. For example, if you define the fee as $2, that amount will be automatically added to the next invoice if a customer does not pay on time.

This new feature also allows you to set a reactivation fee. This is an additional amount that has to be paid for service reactivation if customer services are suspended.

BENEFITS

Web interface for External System Provisioning Framework

Our web interface for External System Provisioning Framework (ESPF) lets you track whether changes to the configuration of a given customer account have been successfully provisioned to third-party systems you may be using (e.g., IPTV platform).

Previously, troubleshooting a failure in this process would require you to access the logs through the command line interface. Now, you can easily see the provisioning status (e.g., failed, queued, successful) of an event and check the event logs directly on the PortaBilling web interface. After solving the issue, simply re-start the provisioning in one click, right from the web interface.

BENEFITS

Transcoding for Opus codec

With MR88, PortaSwitch now supports transcoding for the Opus codec. This is an open, royalty-free audio codec for smartphone dialer apps and it is one of the “standard” WebRTC codecs. Opus allows the delivery of good-quality sound even over a poor Internet connection – for example, if a customer is using a browser to make a call in a hotel with low-quality WiFi.

With the hotel example, Opus can deliver the call to PortaSwitch to ensure quality, but first the call has to go to the actual telephony network via a VoIP gateway that only supports “old school” telephony codecs such as G.711 or G.729. With MR88, PortaSIP will convert the media from Opus into G.729 to allow it to go to the vendor and back, ensuring no added costs, good sound quality, and codec compatibility on the VoIP vendor side.

BENEFITS

Find more details on these and other PortaSwitch MR88 enhancements in our latest New Features Guide.

Sourced from: PortaOne. View the original article here.