Release 33

New or Updated Account Access for Credit and Rebill Features (DEV-9957)

• The default minimum CSR (Customer Service Representative) Level required to access the cash credits and service credits features has been changed from View-only CSR to Power CSR. This change applies to these features (under Configuration > Security > Account Access > Payments & Credits > Pages): Create a New Cash Credit, Void a Cash Credit, Create a New Service Credit, and Cancel a Service Credit. This means that only your Aria application users at the Power CSR level or above will have access to those features. The CSR Level that has access to the Create a New Service Credit feature will also have access to the Apply Cash Credits feature.
• You can change the minimum CSR Level access for the above features from the default to your chosen user level (example: Basic CSR).
• In addition, you can now specify the minimum CSR Level required to access the Rebill feature (under Configuration > Security > Account Access > Statements & Invoices > Pages).

Use Direct Post to Collect Direct Debit Payments (DEV-9985)

If you use Direct Post, you can now collect payments made using the Direct Debit payment method. To do so:

1. Set the new Perform DD Collection field to True in your Direct Post configuration in the Aria application (under Configuration > Client Settings > USS Reg Configuration > new or existing configuration).
2. Pass DD into the <formOfPayment> field in your Form of Payment Page.
3. Pass values into the additional new fields required for Direct Debit payments as described in Form of Payment Page Inputs.

• In addition, if you pass DD into the <formOfPayment> input in your Form of Payment Page and you leave the <bban> or <iban> field blank, this new error is returned:

• error_key: serverbankaccountrequired
• error_code: 1010
• error message: bban or iban

New/Updated Fields Available for Displaying Cash Credit-related Information on Statements (DEV-10033)

1. These new fields are available for inclusion in your statement templates to be used for your customer's statements:  

• insertAcctTxnCreditComment: Comments about cash credits that you a) passed into the <comments> field in the apply_cash_credits_m API or b) entered in the CSR Comments field when you created a cash credit in the Aria application
• insertAcctTxnCreditReasonText: Credit reason code description   
• insertAcctTxnCreditReasonCode: Credit reason code

2. In addition, these pre-existing fields in the beginLoopAcctAllTxns statement data can now display information about cash credits:

• insertAcctTxnNo: Cash credit transaction identifier
• insertAcctTxnTypeDesc: Cash credit transaction comments
• insertAcctTxnDt: Cash credit creation date
• insertAcctTxnAmt: Cash credit amount

Please contact Aria Customer Support to set up your statement templates.

Improvement on Billable Usage Units with a High Water Mark-enabled Usage Service (DEV-10035)

After using high water mark functionality when invoicing for billable usage units across more than one usage record, the billable units are now correctly updated to 0 as recorded units for all usage records not meeting the high water mark threshold. If two or more usage records have the same number of billable units meeting the threshold, the oldest usage record will be applied to track billable units for the usage service.

Statement BCC Email Address is now available for invoices (DEV-10041)

The Aria application has a new feature called Statement BCC Email Address. This gives you the ability to include a BCC email address in invoice statement emails. Statement BCC Email Address can be configured in Configuration > Notifications > Notification Settings > Statement BCC Email Address.

Aria has enhanced the Invoices and Credit Memos screens (DEV-10044)

The enhancement allows more entries to display on the Invoices and Credit Memos screens. The Invoices screen will now display 2000 entries, and the Credit Memos screen will now display an unlimited number of entries.

Data Streaming Object Subscription UI (DEV-10046)

This feature allows users of Aria's Data Streaming Web Service to subscribe to the objects that they want to see in their data streams. This optimizes the efficiency of the stream, because only the objects subscribed to appear in the streams.

Access this feature in the Aria UI via Configuration > Notifications > Stream Object Subscription for clients who have purchased the Data Streaming service, and its display is controlled via the roles of the logged in user. By default, all roles will have ‘read only’ access. Modifications to roles access can be done from the Roles module in the Aria UI.

Read more about subscribing to objects in the Data Streams.

New Client Parameter - Include Credit Memo in Dunning (DEV-10068)

A new client parameter has been added (Configuration > Payments > Payment Settings) called Include Credit Memo In Dunning. If set to True, this removes an account from dunning by applying an invoice-based credit memo to a master plan instance within the account to bring the outstanding balance below the dunning threshold (False is the default). 

Click here to learn more about changing a payment setting.

Application Fixes 

• In the Account Overview screen the Recent Payments section has been updated so that when you have view only access all the fields will align as expected. (TICKET-18081)
• In cases where a plan with a longer billing interval is changed to a shorter interval and the billing dates are rewound back, you can now do a combined invoice to bill all past cycles based on the shorter interval. (TICKET-18104)
• For an account assigned a plan with a tax-inclusive service, the tax exempted lines on an invoice are now excluded from the invoice tax rounding process when (TICKET-18141):
  • You are using the Aria Internal Tax Engine; and
  • The Aria Internal Tax Rounding Method is set to "Per Invoice."
• Import processing enhancements now allow you to overwrite import data for an existing client more than once (from Configuration > Utilities > Import) when that client has data configured in account fields (more on importing a configuration is here). (TICKET-18176)

• The Cash Credit and Service Credit details can now be viewed as expected when you have access to the Payments & Credits > Cash Credits and Service Credits screens respectively. (TICKET-18205)

• If you have a statement template that includes beginLoopMPIAllTxnsWLinkedCreditsTaxes data (displays all plan-level transactions), the corresponding statement information now excludes account-level transactions, as expected. Please contact Aria Customer Support to set up your statement templates. (TICKET-18261)
• When (TICKET-18283):
  • the United Kingdom is entered as a country code (Configuration > Billing > Countries); and
  • a payment option is selected when creating a new account; then
  • the United Kingdom selection appears from the Bank Country Code drop-down list if the Direct Debit Payment Type is selected.

Ingenico Level 2 and Level 3 Enhancements (DEV-9945)

This feature adds Level 2 and 3 data processing support to the Ingenico payment gateway. Level 2 data are included for determining a card's affluence, which may influence your marketing initiatives, and Level 3 data includes invoice line item details that allow you to receive lower transactional fees from credit card processors. Level 2 and Level 3 data are supported by the Credit Card and Tokenized Credit Card payment methods and the Visa® and Mastercard® card types.

Learn more about Aria's integration with the Ingenico payment gateway from here.

Additional Filtering Options Available for Retrieving Transaction Records (DEV-9951)

Aria has enhanced the get_acct_trans_history_m API with additional filtering options as described below. This enhancement will also allow you to control the number of records that you transfer to your other systems that may have size limitations:

1. When you call the get_acct_trans_history_m API:
   1. You can now pass in the new <offset> input to specify the number of records to skip in a customer’s transaction history.
   2. If you pass an invalid number into the <offset> field, this error is returned: “5068 offset must be greater than or equal to zero".
2. In addition, when you call the get_acct_trans_history_m API:
   1. You can now use the pre-existing <record_limit> input to restrict the returns to a maximum of 999 records.
   2. If you pass an invalid number into the <record_limit> field, this error is now returned: “5067 limit must be between 1 and 999".

Specify Billing Group-level Collection Group when Using PayPal Express Checkout (DEV-9968)

1. When you use PayPal Express Checkout as your payment gateway, Aria now honors the collection group configuration that you set at the billing group level. To identify the billing group whose collection group you want to use for payment transactions, pass values into API inputs as described below:

2. In addition, the init_paypal_bill_agreement_m API now returns the new <billing_group_no> output that identifies the billing group associated with any of the 4 inputs that you passed in as described above.

Use Direct Post to Collect Direct Debit Payments (DEV-9985)

If you use Direct Post, you can now collect payments made using the Direct Debit payment method. To do so:

1. Pass 1 into the new <do_dd_collect> field in the set_reg_uss_config_params_m API.

2. Pass DD into the <formOfPayment> field in your Form of Payment Page.
3. Pass values into the additional new fields required for Direct Debit payments as described in Form of Payment Page Inputs.

• In addition, if you pass DD into the <formOfPayment> input in your Form of Payment Page and you leave the <bban> or <iban> field blank, this new error is returned:

• error_key: serverbankaccountrequired
• error_code: 1010
• error message: bban or iban

Ingenico UK Direct Debit - New Payment Method (DEV-10017)

The Ingenico payment gateway now processes Direct Debit transactions for United Kingdom (UK)-based payments. The existing <mandate_id> input field will be honored now for the Direct Debit Basic Bank Account Number (BBAN) payment method for payments and refunds.

This enhancement applies to the following APIs:

• collect_from_account_m
• create_order_m
• create_order_with_plan_m
• manage_pending_invoice_m
• settle_account_balance_m
• update_order_m

Learn more about Aria's integration with the Ingenico payment gateway from here.

Additional Filtering Options Available for Retrieving Usage Records (DEV-10027)

1. You can now use the get_usage_history_m API to retrieve the usage records as follows:
   1. Retrieve the usage records associated with all master plan instances (MPIs) for an account by passing -1 into the <master_plan_instance_no> field; or
   2. Retrieve the usage records associated with a specific usage code that you pass into the new <client_record_id> input; or
   3. Retrieve the usage records associated with a combination of these pre-existing inputs: (<specified_usage_type_no> or <specified_usage_type_code>) and/or (<date_range_start> and <date_range_end>) and (<invoice_no>).
2. In addition:
   1. If you pass in an incorrect <specified_usage_type_no> with an <invoice no>, this error is returned: "20003: Invalid Usage Type".
   2. If you pass in an incorrect <specified_usage_type_code> with an <invoice no>, this error is returned: "20004: Invalid Usage Type Code".
   3. If you pass in a <specified_usage_type_no> or <specified_usage_type_code> without an <invoice no> or a <date_range_start>, an error no longer occurs.”

Usage Output Parameters Added to get_invoice_details_m API (DEV-10034)

The following output parameters have been introduced for the get_invoice_details_m API:

These are needed to explicitly identify usage period details for all invoices.

Use <client_acct_id> in Additional APIs to Identify Accounts (DEV-10042)

The new input <client_acct_id> (client-defined account identifier) has been added to the APIs listed below. You can pass in the <client_acct_id>, and/or <acct_no> and/or <user_id> (if available for the API) to identify the customer who will be affected when you call the APIs listed below. Please see the documentation for these APIs for more information:

• adjust_acct_plan_billing_dates_m
• assign_acct_plan_m
• authorize_electronic_payment_m
• ban_acct_m
• cancel_acct_plan_m
• cancel_acct_universal_contract_m
• create_acct_universal_contract_m
• modify_acct_universal_contract_m
• replace_acct_plan_m
• reverse_authorized_electronic_payment_m
• set_session_m
• update_acct_billing_group_m
• update_acct_plan_m
• validate_payment_information_m
• write_acct_comment_m

Enhanced Support for Concurrent Calls to Plan and Rate Change API Calls (DEV-10071) 

This feature introduces enhanced support for concurrent calls to an API that causes plan rate updates or changes with better tracking of rate histories of Plan Instances. Enhanced APIs include assign_custom_acct_plan_rates_m, update_acct_plan_multi_m, assign_acct_plan_m, cancel_acct_plan_m, edit_acct_plan_queued_changes_m, modify_acct_plan_unit_instances_m, remove_acct_plan_custom_rates_m, replace_acct_plan_m, update_acct_plan_unit_instance_m, and update_acct_plan_m.

Promo Code Error Code Corrected in get_promotion_details_m (DEV-10076)

If you pass an invalid <promo_cd> into the get_promotion_details_m API, error code 1016 is returned, as expected, instead of error code 0.