Release 38

Converting Master Plan Instance Child Accounts from Parent-Pay to Self-Pay (DEV-8167)

Aria has enhanced MPI parent-pay to self-pay account conversion with several new features. In order to map billing group responsibility from a parent-pay to self-pay plan, validation has been added to restrict unassigning child accounts when its child account’s MPI or its descendant account’s MPIs have the responsible MPI from its ancestor account. So, before unassigning the child account from the parent account, the child account MPIs should be converted from parent to self-pay by mapping the valid billing group. If the valid billing group is not mapped, an error message now appears stating that a billing group is required for a self-pay child account's MPI.

A new field has been added to map the billing group from the child account’s MPI from parent-pay to self-pay (Accounts > [search for a parent account] > Manage Child Accounts). Also, at the Manage Child Account screen, the Update and Unassign links are now available for the child accounts only.

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OAuth 2.0 Token Based Event Notification Parameter Enhancement (DEV-9963)

This feature enhances Aria’s OAuth 2.0 support for its Event Notification to include the following OAuth parameters:

• scope: Specifies the scope of the access request (e.g, admin, contacts, calendar, etc.). The value of the scope parameter is a list of space-delimited, case-sensitive strings.
• resource: Specifies the target service or resource for which access is being requested. This value should be an absolute Uniform Resource Indicator (URI).

Learn more about specifying Event Notification Methods.

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Dispute-Specific Expiration Date Phase 1 (DEV-10124)

Aria introduces a new client parameter, Dispute Hold Expiration Override Maximum Days, that allows clients to set the maximum override days within the range of 2 and 540 days before its individual disputes are allowed to expire.  If the client parameter is set, each individual dispute can be set to expire with the range of 2 and the specified maximum override number of days.  The expiration days number set at the dispute level take precedence over the client-level expiration days setting.

Learn more about creating a Dispute-Hold.

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New User Access Features (DEV-10126)

This feature adds new and improved User Access functionality for users of the Aria Billing Cloud application, including new user statuses and a new, more secure user password activation process flow.

New and Updated User Statuses

Previously, users could only have the statuses "active" or "locked." Users can become locked after three consecutive login failures, or by being manually locked through the Aria application UI (Configuration > Security > Users > [click a user name]. Locked users cannot login to the UI until they are unlocked by another client user who has access to the Users application module or by an Aria Customer Support representative.

There are now four distinct user statuses:

• Active (1): User is able to use the Aria application UI.
• Locked (0): User has been "locked" and is unable to login to the Aria application UI until they are unlocked by another client user who has access to the Users application module or by an Aria Customer Support representative.
• Pending (-1): User account has been created that has not yet been activated by the associated resource by creating a password.
• Archived (-99): User is not in use anymore. The user account will not be deleted from the system, but it will be hidden by default from the user list in the Aria application UI unless the new "show archived users" option is selected. When toggled to display, archived users appear in gray in the user list.

New User Password Activation Process

Previously, a client admin could create new users and assign them temporary passwords, and the users would be prompted to change this password when logging into the Aria application UI for the first time.

Now, new users will be emailed a password activation link immediately after their accounts have been created. This link will direct them to a password activation form. After creating a valid password, users will be directed back to the login form where they will login using their new password. Once they login, their account status will change from "Pending" to "Active."

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New "Accounts and Master Plan Instances" Events (DEV-10181)

Aria introduces four new Event Notifications in the "Accounts and Master Plan Instances" Event Class to inform when ‘product field’ values on Master Plan Instances, Supplemental Plan Instances, or related Plan Unit Instances are modified (any change excepting the initial creation of the containing object): 

• Account Master Plan Instance Product Field Modified (event 754)
• Account Supplemental Plan Instance Product Field Modified (event 755)
• Account Master Plan Unit Instance Product Field Modified (event 756)
• Account Supplemental Plan Unit Instance Product Field Modified (event 757)

Learn more about selecting and configuring Event Notifications.

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Ability to Manage Quarterly Templates With Monthly Detail (DEV-10182)

This feature introduces a new loop for statement templates, beginLoopUsageTxnsByMonth, to present a monthly breakdown of usage charges on plans with longer billing intervals. This new loop only works if usage is already rated. 

Learn more about Statement Templates, and contact customer support to add this capability to your statement templates. Additional service charges might apply.

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SCA 3DS Exemption for Chase Paymentech (DEV-10187)

For Chase Paymentech, a new setting has been added under Options at the payment gateway and collection group level for a low-value payment strong customer authentication (SCA) exemption (for 3DS-enabled merchants). The default selection for this field is No Exemption. Using this setting, a Chase customer will not get a pop-up confirmation message for the 3DS transaction under the exempted amount and currency, which will ensure more seamless transaction processing. To access the Chase Paymentech gateway, navigate as follows in the Aria UI: Configuration > Payments > [Payment Gateways][Collection Groups].

Learn more about the Chase Paymentech payment gateway from here.

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Contract Rollover Enhancements For Custom Rates (DEV-10245)

This feature improves Aria's default logic for contract rollover end actions when the current plan instance is assigned custom rates, ensuring the proper plan and/or rate schedule is assigned upon rollover, and honoring the specified plan and/or schedule and defaulting properly when one or both are not specified. 

You can now specify rollover plans and custom rate schedules in the API calls create_instance_contract_m and create_acct_complete_m, and when creating a contract in the Aria application UI.

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Fraud Scoring and Level 2/Level 3 Payments Now Part Of Stripe Integration (DEV-10330)

The Stripe payment processor integration has been enhanced to support fraud scoring and Level 2/Level 3 payments. Since Stripe fraud scoring returns both “review” and “failure” statuses, Aria has introduced the following fraud scoring settings on the collection group and payment gateway screens: Send Fraud Scoring Request, Change Status on Fraud Scoring Failure, Status on Fraud Scoring Failure, Change Status on Fraud Scoring Review, and Status on Fraud Scoring Review. For Level 2/Level 3 payments, these data are sent for payment actions regardless of Level 2/Level 3 eligibility; Stripe will pass this information on to the card networks for eligible transactions.

Learn more about the Stripe payment gateway from here.

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Remainder Discount Rules Phase 2 (DEV-10343)

This new Aria application UI feature (Marketing > Discount Rules > [click the New button]) allows you to create and update a “Remainder” Discount Rule for recurring-in-advance services using monthly intervals. When creating a new Discount Rule, specify "Use invoice and proration factors" under Invoice Application to designate the new Discount Rule as a "Remainder" Discount Rule.

In Release 37, the ability to specify this discount rule property in the API calls get_acct_coupon_details_m, create_coupon_m, and get_coupon_details_m was added. 

Learn about creating a Discount Rule.

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New Account Status Added for Order Tracking Eligibility (DEV-10346)

A new Allow Order Bill Account status has been added for tracking order billing eligibility (Accounts > [search for an account] > Account Status}. This enhances the efficiency of the Permanent account status (allowing order creation but not billing} and the Temporary Service Ban account status (not allowing order creation but allowing order billing for the orders that were previously created when the account was in a different status that allowed order creation).

Learn more about Account Statuses from here.

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Usage Types screen has been optimized (DEV-10353)

The load time of the Usage Types screen (Products > Usage Types) has been optimized to ensure a quicker response time when the usage types are used in a large number of usage-based services and accounts.

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Application Fixes

• When the Process Plan in Queue batch job runs, handling of queue failure is now improved in such a way that all the bad queues will be marked as “failed”, the system memory will be cleared and the good queues will be executed on the effective date itself. In addition, whenever the plan instance is moved to “Deleted“ status, then the pending queues of that plan instance and its all child instances will be deleted (this is existing behavior, even though a defect resolution was required). (TICKET-18005)

  Also, when assigning a master plan at account creation and managing a child account, a “dummy” plan which is pending to be assigned but not eligible to be set as a responsible master plan instance will not be available for selection. Such a dummy plan will not be filtered in the Create Account UI. Instead, the error message “The Responsible Master Plan Instance provided is queued for assignment and not allowed to be used for payment responsibility.“ will be displayed in the top of the screen.

  Finally, Aria introduces a new client parameter “Failure Behavior in Processing Multiple Queued Plan Changes for a Billing Group.” This parameter determines whether Aria should roll back all changes during any sort of failure or some clients view all changes for a given Billing Group on a given day as a single transaction. This parameter applies to any failures that are queue level failures, invoicing failures, or Billing Group failures (except payment failures which are covered by another payment failure client parameter). Allowable values are:

  • "Mark All as Failed" which will fail all queue entries for the Billing Group (even ones that succeeded and ones that Aria hasn’t yet processed) and roll back all changes for the Billing Group

  • "Fail Only the Single Queue Entry" with a problem or the last one in the billing group in case of billing group level processing failure, and "continue".

  The default behavior is to "Fail Only the Single Queue Entry" (Configuration > Billing > Invoice Settings).

• When discarding a pending invoice for an account with a master plan having a usage service and usage pooling enabled (with the client parameter Automatically Rate Un-rated Usage Records at Load Time set to True), the pooled usage plan number is now no longer cleared while discarding the pending invoice and the pooled usage rates are calculated correctly. (TICKET-18329)
• Special characters such as "é" are now saved and updated correctly when creating a client-defined field for an account (Accounts > [search for an account] > Account Overview > Client-Defined Fields). (TICKET-18374)
• When attempting to discard unselected billed and unbilled usage records with 0 records selected, an error message is now generated without allowing the user to proceed, enhancing statement update generation in Data Streaming (Note: Aria does not allow discarding of billed usages) (Accounts > [search for an account] > Account Overview > Usage > Retrieve Usage). (TICKET-18437)
• Custom-created usage types will no longer have duplicates displayed in the (Products > Usage Types) list screen. (TICKET-18505)
• Proration invoices resulting from API calls to create_acct_complete_m and assign_acct_plan_m (when assigning a Master Plan Instance), with <invoicing_option> = 2 (perform prorated invoicing), now display in the Aria application UI with the number of days in the billing period used in the proration calculation. (TICKET-18510)
• An error now correctly appears when trying to update the payment responsibility level from self pay to parent pay without selecting the master plan instance for payment responsibility. (TICKET-18514)
• When performing the following steps: An invoice is now correctly generated for a period starting from the queue execution date to the override bill thru date (advance period and usage period dates display properly). (TICKET-18534)
  • Assigning a new master plan and supplemental plan to an account with a new effective date and override bill thru date
  • De-queueing the plan via the batch job or the edit_acct_plan_queued_changes_m API
• For Ingenico the (Payments and Credits > Current Authorization Reversal) screen has been updated and will now display the appropriate status when creating an authorization reversal. (TICKET-18540)

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Converting Master Plan Instance Child Accounts from Parent-Pay to Self-Pay (DEV-8167)

Included in this Aria enhancement to map billing group responsibility from a parent-pay to self-pay plan, the <billing_group_no> and <client_billing_group_id> input parameters have been added to the following APIs:

• update_acct_plan_m
• set_payment_responsibility_m

Use either the <billing_group_no> or <client_billing_group_id> input parameters to pass the billing group number or client defined identifier (either of these fields are mandatory for self-pay conversion).

If either of these values are not passed, the following error message appears:

Error Code	Description
7038	A Billing Group is required for a Self-Pay Child Account's MPI.

Also, the following error messages are generated if an invalid billing group number or client billing group identifier are entered:

Error Code	Description
26010	Invalid billing group number
26012	Invalid client-defined billing group ID

In addition, the following error message is returned when running the update_acct_complete_m API under the following conditions:

• Unassign the senior account number when its current child account has parent pay MPI’s.
• Change the existing senior account to a different senior account number.
• Change the existing senior account to a different senior account number, bypassing a valid responsible master plan instance from the new senior account number.
• Convert the parent-pay MPI to self-pay in the same call by passing the valid BG.

For any action above, the user has to first convert the child account’s MPI from parent to self-pay (ensure all child account’s MPI are self-pay) so that the user can unassign/change the senior account.

If not, the following error message is returned:

Error Code	Description
5077	This child account currently cannot be unassigned. One or more master plan instances of this child account or its descendant accounts (child, grandchild, etc.) are using the master plan instance from one of its ancestor accounts for payment responsibility.

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New and Updated User-Access-Related APIs and Error Messages (DEV-10126)

This release brings several new User-Access-Related API calls, API fields in existing API calls, and improved error messages.

New API Calls

• create_user_m: Creates a new user for a given client.
• get_users_m: Retrieves every user for a given client. 
• get_roles_m: Retrieves every role for a given client. 
• get_user_details_m: Retrieves properties of a given user for a given client.
• delete_user_m: Deletes a given user for a given client. Users may only be deleted if they have never logged in.
• update_user_m: Updates properties of a given user for a given client.

API Call	Updated Error Messages	New Fields
create_promotion_m	*	*
update_promotion_m	*	*
get_promotion_details_m	*
get_promotions_m	*	*
create_promo_plan_set_m	*
update_promo_plan_set_m	*
get_promo_plan_set_details_m	*
get_promo_plan_sets_m	*
create_discount_rule_m	*
get_discount_rule_details_m	*
get_discount_rules_m	*
delete_rules_m	*
delete_discount_rules_m	*
create_discount_rule_m	*	*
create_usage_type_m	*
get_coupons_m	*
create_coupon_m	*	*
get_coupon_details_m	*	*
update_coupon_m	*	*
create_coupon_group_m	*	*
create_discount_bundle_m	*
get_discount_bundles_m	*
get_discount_bundle_details_m	*

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Calculation Enhancement for calc_credit_reference_line_m API Call When Calculating Discounts On Tax Inclusive Services (DEV-10142)

The API calc_credit_reference_line_m, which estimates the credit reference over invoice line items in the past, has been enhanced to consider discounts for tax inclusive charges.

Learn more about Tax Inclusive Services. 

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Contract Rollover Enhancements For Custom Rates (DEV-10245)

This feature improves Aria's default logic for contract rollover end actions when the current plan instance is assigned custom rates, ensuring the proper plan and/or rate schedule is assigned upon rollover, and honoring the specified plan and/or schedule and defaulting properly when one or both are not specified. 

You can now specify rollover plans and custom rate schedules in the API calls create_instance_contract_m and create_acct_complete_m, and when creating a contract in the Aria application UI.

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Transaction Qualifier Values Returned Ordered by Name and Create Date in get_extended_transaction_info_m (DEV-10337)

Aria has enhanced the return of the API call get_extended_transaction_info_m so that transaction qualifiers in the <extended_transaction_qualifiers> output field are returned in the order of qualifier name and create date.

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API Fixes

• Aria has introduced a new validation for a responsible master plan instance whereby when the user tries to create/assign/update a master plan instance for a child account, the responsible master plan instance that is queued for future assignment is not allowed to be set as the responsible master instance number, and the below list of APIs will return the following error code and error message: (TICKET-18005)
  • Error Code: 14135
  • Error Message: The Responsible Master Plan Instance provided is queued for assignment and not allowed to be used for payment responsibility.
  This applies to the following APIs: create_acct_complete_m, assign_acct_plan_m, set_payment_responsibility_m, update_acct_complete_m, update_acct_plan_m, and update_acct_plan_multi_m (assign/update).
• When assigning a Master Plan Instance (MPI) using the API call assign_acct_plan_m and specifying <do_write> = false and <invoicing_option> = 2 (perform prorated invoicing), the <do_write> = false is now honored as expected, and the plan change is not executed. (TICKET-18494)
• The update_contact_m API has been enhanced so that, when selecting Option 1 at the <contact_ind> input field, the service destination contact is also updated. In addition, Option 5 has been added to update the account contact only. (TICKET-18504)
• When future plan assignments are scheduled via the update_acct_plan_multi_m API with an <effective_date> and <override_bill_thru date>, the process plans in queue batch assigns the plans correctly and also correctly generates the advance period and usage period for the next invoice. (TICKET-18506)
• Proration invoices resulting from API calls to create_acct_complete_m and assign_acct_plan_m (when assigning a Master Plan Instance), with <invoicing_option> = 2 (perform prorated invoicing), now display in the Aria application UI with the number of days in the billing period used in the proration calculation. (TICKET-18510)
• When calling the API call update_acct_plan_m to update a plan instance field only, specifying <plan_instance_supp_field_update_only> = 1, and specifying do_write = false, the <do_write> = false is honored and the field value update is not executed. (TICKET-18513)
• For Ingenico the API reverse_authorized_electronic_payment_m  for has been updated and will now display the appropriate status when creating an authorization reversal. (TICKET-18540)
• Plan Unit Instance Product Fields are now assigned to Supplemental Plans when specified in calls to the API create_acct_complete_m. (TICKET-18554)