Inventory-based DID provisioning

PortaBilling provides flexible methods for provisioning DID numbers to users. Administrators can assign DIDs to:

• Customers
• Resellers

For increased autonomy, self-provisioning can be enabled, allowing customers to log into the self-care portal, select the DIDs they need from an available list, and manage them independently.

This flexibility also extends to resellers: resellers can provision DID numbers from the DID pool to their own customers, helping expand the sales network while reducing administrative workload.

Depending upon your business model, you can provision DIDs to your customers so that:

• A customer is charged the same price for using different DID numbers ($5 monthly for US and UK DID numbers). This is defined by the pricing parameters of the pricing batch directly assigned to the customer.
• A customer is charged different prices for using different DID numbers (e.g., $5 monthly for the US DID and $8 monthly for the UK DID number). This is defined by the pricing parameters of the pricing batch that a particular DID belongs to.

Additionally, you can define whether customers will be charged as soon as the DID numbers are assigned to them (and not yet provisioned as customer accounts) or only after the DID numbers have been provisioned to accounts or account aliases.

When the alias or the account with the assigned DID is terminated or the account/alias ID is changed, this DID can either be kept allocated to the customer or released to the pool.

Customers can keep the DIDs assigned to them (e.g., to provision them to other accounts later). To make this happen, a customer clicks Edit and unassigns the DID from the alias or the account. This helps you fulfill your contractual obligations if customers have purchased DIDs for the long term.

However, if the customer is terminated, the DID number is released from the customer and has Not in use status within the DID inventory.

Please refer to the Managing DIDs for customers manually handbook for detailed instructions on ways to provision DID numbers to customers.

Customers can self-provision DID numbers. For customers’ convenience, DID numbers are grouped by country and area.

If prior to deletion, the DID number was assigned to an account as an alias, this alias is removed.

Access to the DID pool allows resellers to use as many DID numbers as they need and then provision these numbers to their customers. This helps an administrator avoid micro-management of DIDs and boosts sales.

To access the DID pool, resellers or subresellers of any level must have pricing batches assigned to them.

Then, they can perform the following actions when provisioning DID numbers via the DID inventory:

• Define the pricing batches for DID number provisioning.
• Distribute DIDs from the DID pool to pricing batches.

  

• Assign DID numbers to subcustomers and their accounts.
• Release DID numbers to the DID pool.

A reseller first sets the desired DID markup for provisioning numbers within a pricing batch. To associate a DID markup with a DID number, a reseller adds the number to the corresponding pricing batch. From this moment, the DID becomes available to this reseller only. Though the DIDs may not yet be provisioned to customers, charges for them are already applied to the resellers.

When the price for a DID is unknown (for instance, in the case of on-demand DID provisioning), a reseller can assign a default pricing batch to the customer. Any DID numbers provisioned to a customer will automatically receive the defined in the pricing batch markup (e.g., 10% markup for the recurring cost).

When a DID number is provisioned to a reseller’s customer, the charges are calculated for each party involved and are distributed as follows:

• A top-level reseller is charged a DID number fee plus additional fees defined in the pricing batch assigned to this reseller.
• A subreseller is charged the top-level reseller’s fees plus additional fees as defined in the pricing batch assigned to this subreseller.
• A subcustomer is charged the subreseller’s fees plus the DID markup as defined by the subreseller in the pricing batch associated with this number.

Any DID number managed by a reseller can be released by this reseller back to the DID pool if the DID number is not used as an account ID, an account alias, or an access number. To do this, a reseller must select the Release DIDs to the pool option. Once the DID is released, the assigned pricing batch is removed. While in the DID pool, the DID number is again visible to all other resellers and is available for provisioning.

A reseller can provision a DID number to a customer either from a DID pricing batch or via a pricing batch that’s assigned to this customer.

• In case a DID number is provisioned to a customer from a DID pricing batch, it is released back to this pricing batch. This means that the reseller continues to bear the charges for this DID, though the customer is no longer charged for it.
• In case a DID number is provisioned to a customer via a pricing batch assigned to this customer, a DID number is automatically released to the pool. This means neither the reseller nor the customer owns this DID number, and therefore, no charges apply for the DID usage.

To easily manage a large number of DIDs, administrators may use DID groups – a tool that allows arranging DID numbers into categories (for example, by geographic location).