Overview
This article contains a detailed overview of Quarantine, an essential tool for service providers who are selling service types with a usage component. Quarantine is used to review usage that cannot be mediated and provides the ability to send usage back through the rating and billing engines once any identified issues are resolved.
For a detailed look at the steps the system takes to mediate usage, see the diagram on this page.
Why Do Issues Occur?
Issues can arise for many reasons, including but not limited to:
- missing service information
- incorrect rating data
- missing tariffs
- missing prices
- a change is made to the usage record structure by the carrier without Emersion's knowledge.
The system places all usage that cannot be fully mediated into Quarantine so a user can review, investigate and resolve the issue. Once the issue is resolved, the records can be cleansed. Cleansing usage will send the records back into the system for re-processing.
Quarantine Pages
The following pages are available to assist users manage quarantined usage. The pages that are enabled is dependent on the modules and features your organisation subscribes to.
BMS Quarantine
The following pages display usage that has not passed the Identify stage.
| Page | Description |
|---|---|
| BMS Quarantine | The BMS Quarantine pages aim to show users records that have been received that cannot be identified, meaning the system cannot find a matching service for the usage to be appended to. It displays the raw usage records as they are received from the carrier. No modifications to the data have been made. There are sub tabs for users to review quarantined usage records.
These pages are located under Billing > Quarantine |
Non Existent Services | Like the BMS Quarantine pages above, these pages show usage records that have been received, but cannot be matched to a service in Emersion. While these pages display the same usage records as the BMS pages above, they group the data by service providing a valuable insight. Services with a high number of usage records with a corresponding high value can be seen quickly versus services with perhaps 1-2 records that attract only a few cents. Users can see the number of usage records and the value of the usage per service. There are 3 sub tabs for users to review quarantined usage by service.
|
- BMS Quarantine
- Telephony BMS
- Data BMS
- Misc BMS
- Misc Wholesale
- Rating Quarantine
- Telephony Rating
- Data Rating
- Misc Rating
- Non Existent Services
- IPND Quarantine
- Service Feature Quarantine
Proactive Maintenance
In order to ensure a smooth bill run, it is highly recommended that Quarantine is checked daily and efforts to resolve it are performed as soon as possible. If too many records are allowed to accumulate in Quarantine, the time taken to review, investigate and resolve each issue will increase. At best, it may mean a big rush to get the usage out of quarantine prior to the period closing so it can be billed. At worst the usage cardline generated after the period has closed will not include the usage that should have been billed to the customer. Missing or incorrect charges on your customer's invoices can lead to customer dissatisfaction and missing out on revenue.
Bulk Maintenance
The Cumulus Quarantine pages are excellent at handling smaller numbers of quarantined records at any one time, however the more records it is asked to process, the longer that processing will take to occur. Web pages are not designed to process large amounts of data. If too many records are chosen to be processed in one action, users see decreased performance and are subject to page time outs.
To protect the performance of the system, users can display, then cleanse or write off up to 1000 records at a time via the Cumulus user interface.
Emersion provides the following tools to help manage large numbers of quarantined records. These tools are designed to cater for up to 10,000 records at a time.
If more than 10,000 records are required to cleansed or written off, break the import files up into batches of 10,000.
Alternatively, Emersion are able to process these for you via a Work Request. Fees will apply to have us update your data.
1 Comment
Dean Cowan
Sharon Carpenter This page is incomplete. And locked. Given Quarantine is in use by 99.9% of our clients, can we please look at prioritising getting all quarantine articles together in Confluence?
cc Sussana Gosios