New Features in Billing Care

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 8

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 8 includes the following enhancements:

It is now possible to set a flag for whether a notification for a business event needs to be opted in, needs to be opted out, or is mandatory (cannot be opted out). Also, at the subscriber preference level, there are separate lists for business events that can be opted in or opted out, based on this new flag. This flag is available in both the GUI and the REST API. See "Viewing and Adding Subscriber Preferences" in Billing Care Online Help.
Billing Care and the Billing Care REST API deployment in a cloud native environment now supports a zero-downtime upgrade without the use of an alternate namespace. This simplified approach to upgrading in place, and the reduced dependence on other components of the solution like load balancer (to reroute traffic), will enable faster upgrades.
See "Configuring Billing Care, Billing Care REST API, and Business Operations Center for Cloud Native" and "Upgrading Your Billing Care and Billing Care REST API Cloud Native Services" in BRM Cloud Native Deployment Guide for more information.
Billing Care now supports overriding credit limits when creating accounts, subscribing to new services, purchasing bundles, transitioning packages, and viewing the balance overlay for currency and non-currency resource flows. Two new fields have been introduced.

A new Configure Bundle section is added when you are creating an account, purchasing a service, purchasing a bundle, or transitioning a package. This section contains the Credit limit check field, which can have the following values:
- Override credit limit: The credit limit will be overridden
- Prorate based on credit limit: Prorated until the credit limit is reached
- Enforce credit limit: The transaction will fail if the credit limit check fails
A new Credit limit check field is added to the Balance view overlay, which can have the following values:
- Enforce credit limit
- Override credit limit
These new fields are available in both the GUI and the REST API. See "Creating an Account" in Billing Care Online Help.
Billing Care now supports selecting multiple events and specifying a single amount (for example, $5.00) by which to adjust each of the selected events. See "Adjusting Multiple Events for an Account" in Billing Care Online Help.
The Billing Care Asset view now supports a tabular product-focused view with the option to apply filters and sort based on any column. See "Working with Assets in a Product-Focused Table" in Billing Care Online Help.
Billing Care is now certified to integrate with Oracle Identity Cloud Service using SAML. See "Configuring SAML for SSO Using a Service Provider" in Billing Care Installation Guide.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 7

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 7 includes the following enhancements:

Billing Care now allows you to create promise-to-pay agreements in which customers can pay off the amount due through multiple installments. The installment schedule and amount can be set up automatically by Collections Manager or manually according to the customer. You can now also configure whether credit limits are automatically increased when an account enters a promise-to-pay agreement and then decreased when the amount due is paid off.

See "Working with Promise-to-Pay Agreements" in Billing Care Online Help.
Billing Care now supports the dynamic credit floor feature added in Patch Set 7. The dynamic credit floor is calculated using the granted amounts from all sub-balances that are valid for a resource’s current cycle. Dynamic credit floor configuration is supported in both the GUI and the REST API.

This feature allows BRM to set the credit floor automatically when your customers are granted limited-time resources.

See "Working with Credit Limits, Credit Floors, and Thresholds" in Billing Care Online Help.
Billing Care now supports rolling up a child account’s credit limits to the parent billing account. This configuration is supported both in the GUI and the REST API.

See "Working with Credit Limits, Credit Floors, and Thresholds" in Billing Care Online Help.
You can use the Billing Care GUI to configure notifications to be delivered after the due dates of certain business events, making use of the functionality added to BRM in Patch Set 7.

This feature allows you to send reminders to customers at fixed intervals after a triggering event has occurred.

See "Creating a Notification Specification for Post-Event Delivery" in Billing Care Online Help.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 6

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 6 includes the following enhancements:

Billing Care GUI Enhancements in Patch Set 6

The Billing Care GUI includes the following enhancements:

The notification screens have been updated. See "Notifications" in Billing Care Online Help.
You can create, collect, and refund customer deposits for devices, services, packages, or accounts. See "Deposits" in Billing Care Online Help.
The payment and adjustment screens have been updated to display more detailed tax information. See "Payments" and "Working with Adjustments" in Billing Care Online Help.
The bill details now display any dynamic taxation that has been configured. For information about dynamic taxation in BRM, see "About Creating Tax Codes (Patch Set 6 and Later)" in BRM Calculating Taxes.

Billing Care REST API Enhancements in Patch Set 6

The Billing Care REST API has been enhanced to support managing loans, notifications, deposits, and installments. See REST API Reference for Billing Care for more information.

Billing Care SDK Enhancements in Patch Set 6

You can now use the Billing Care SDK to make these customizations:

You can now customize whether failed transactions in the Billing Care REST API are recorded in the BRM database. To do so, use the new request.record.failure flag in the Configurations.xml file. See "Recording Billing Care REST API Request Failures" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
You can now customize the fields displayed in the Billing Care Make a Payment screen according to the selected payment method. See "Customizing the Make a Payment Screen" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
You can now customize Billing Care to display a Success toast message when a payment or adjustment is submitted successfully. Success toast messages appear at the top of the Billing Care page and then disappear after a few seconds. See "Displaying Success Toast Messages in Billing Care" in Billing Care SDK Guide.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 5

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 5 includes the following enhancements:

You can now use Billing Care to create notification specifications, which provide the rules for sending messages to your end customers through an external notification application. They define which customers can receive each type of message as well as how and when to deliver the message. See "Notifications" in Billing Care Online Help.
You can now use Billing Care to enable your customers to pay their bills in installments. See "Installments" in Billing Care Online Help.
When you purchase a product in Billing Care, you can now change the length of the grace period. Customers can reactivate and extend their expired product if they repurchase it within the grace period. See "Purchasing New Products and Services" in Billing Care Online Help.
Your customers can now specify their preferences for receiving messages from an integrated system with both BRM and an external notification application. For example, customers can specify their messages' preferred language, delivery time, and delivery method. See "Viewing and Adding Subscriber Preferences" in Billing Care Online Help.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 4

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 4 includes the following enhancements:

Monitoring Billing Care and Billing Care REST API

You can now use external applications, such as Prometheus and Grafana, to monitor Billing Care and the Billing Care REST API. For more information, see "Monitoring Billing Care and Billing Care REST API" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Billing Care Application Enhancements in Patch Set 4

The Billing Care application includes the following enhancements in Patch Set 4:

Billing Care now allows you to manage contracts, which are subscriptions that include terms that your customers agree to when they purchase it. You can use Billing Care to:
- Modify a contract's auto-renewal options
- Purchase optional bundles that are associated with a contract
- Cancel optional bundles in a customer's contract, applying any early termination fees for doing so
- Cancel a customer's contract before the end of the commitment period, if allowed by the contract's terms, incurring any early termination fees for doing so
Note:

Contracts are supported only when deliverable-based revenue recognition is enabled in your system.
Your customers' subscription cards now show more details about the contracts and no-contract subscriptions that they have purchased.

Note:

Contracts and no-contract subscriptions are supported only when deliverable-based revenue recognition is enabled in your system.
You can now search for entries in the Billing Care Newsfeed by account number or payment ID.
You can now add account-level notes. Account-level notes consolidate all comments that CSRs have entered for an account, allowing you to easily track and view all interactions that have occurred with your customers. Each note includes the name of the CSR that posted it, the date that it was entered, the note's comments, and any follow-up comments in the note's thread.
You can now transfer negative balances (credits) from one bill unit to another bill unit that owes money. For example, if a customer's mobile phone bill has a balance of -$10, that balance could be transferred to their $50 Internet bill. In this case, the balance would become $0 for the mobile phone bill and $40 for the Internet bill.
Your customers' Asset cards now show more details.

For more information on these enhancements, see Billing Care Online Help.

Billing Care SDK Enhancements in Patch Set 4

You can now use the Billing Care SDK and OPSS policies to make these customizations:

You can extend the Billing Care REST framework to process custom headers sent in HTTP requests and responses and then perform additional functionality such as order tracking. You do this by adding filters to the Billing Care SDK that do the following:
- Intercept HTTP requests before they are sent to the resource, and then make decisions based on the header value. For example, a filter could check whether the request is a duplicate and, if so, reject the request.
- Intercept HTTP responses before they are sent to the client, and then make decisions based on the header value. For example, a filter could construct tracking objects and persist them in the BRM database.
For more information, see "Extending REST Services to Filter Custom Headers" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
You can extend the Billing Care REST API to return complex data, such as all data stored in a BRM storable class, in a JAXB-annotated class. For example, it could return all fields in an /account object or the /profile object linked with an account. When you extend the BRM REST API to enrich response data, it returns object information in the extension field of response objects in JSON or XML format.

For more information, see "Extending REST API Response Objects" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
You can extend the Billing Care REST API to support any OAuth token management tool. By default, the Billing Care REST API uses Oracle Access Manager to generate and validate OAuth requests from clients.

For more information, see "Using Custom OAuth Providers with Billing Care REST API" in Billing Care SDK Guide.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 3

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 3 includes the following enhancements:

For more information on these enhancements, see Billing Care Online Help.

Hierarchy Enhancements

You can now view organization hierarchies and billing hierarchies in Billing Care from the parent account through to the child accounts.

For more information, see "Organization Hierarchies" and "Billing Hierarchies" in Billing Care Online Help.

Billing Care Installation Enhancements

The Billing Care installer now allows you to:

Deploy Billing Care on a WebLogic Cluster.
Deploy Billing Care on a managed server that is currently offline.
Deploy Billing Care on a managed server that is also part of a cluster.

The Billing Care GUI installer now displays the state (Running or Shut Down) of target servers on which to deploy Billing Care. At the end of the installation process, it also provides a sample link for accessing Billing Care.

For more information, see Billing Care Installation Guide.

Billing Care SDK Enhancements

You can now use the Billing Care SDK and OPSS policies to make these customizations:

Open custom views in Billing Care in full screen mode. See "Opening Custom Views From Landing Page" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
Set the time in Billing Care to a time zone that automatically handles Daylight Saving Time (DST) changes. To do so, use the brmserver.timezone registry entry in the Configurations.xml file. See "Default Configuration File Entries" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
Display summary or detailed account balance information in the Billing Care Home tab. See "About Customizing the Billing Care Home Tab" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
Remove the Balances section from an account's home page in Billing Care. See "About Removing the Balances Area" in Billing Care SDK Guide.
Create Billing Care search templates using your choice of attributes. See the sample XML search templates in the SDK_home/BillingCare_SDK/samples/SDKTemplatesCustomization directory.

Enhanced Billing Care Security

To secure your Billing Care Web cookies, you must now set the SECURE_COOKIE variable to true in your WebLogic Server plan.xml file. See "Securing Web Cookies" in BRM Security Guide.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 2

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 2 includes the following enhancements:

For more information on these enhancements, see the Billing Care Online Help.

SDK Enhancements for Customizing Billing Care

You can now use the Billing Care SDK and OPSS policies to perform the following in Billing Care:

Customize reason codes displayed for event adjustments.
Limit the adjustment percentage entered by customer service representatives (CSRs) for event adjustments.
Disable the event adjustment options based on user roles.
Restrict debit and credit adjustment options for event adjustments.
Make the Notes field mandatory for additional product purchase and event adjustments.
Display only event adjustments in the Bills section for performing adjustments.
Restrict the purchase of additional bundles based on user roles.
Restrict the validity or end date set by the CSRs while purchasing additional products or services.
Set the maximum adjustment limit based on the currency resources used for event adjustments.
Filter the bundles available for purchase.
Filter start and end dates for additional purchase.
Disable the Charges not related to services link and the link to child accounts in the Bills tab, My Charges area, and Payment Details dialog box.

For more information, see Billing Care SDK Guide.

View Bills Generated Before Moving the Account to a Hierarchy

In previous releases, when an account was moved to a hierarchy as a child account, the bills generated for the account earlier were not displayed in the bills list.

With this enhancement, you can view the bills that are generated before and after moving the account to a hierarchy in the account's Bills > Switch Bills menu. For more information, see the discussion about switch bills in the Billing Care Online Help.

Support for Account Number and Bill Number in Billing Care Embeddable URLs

In the previous releases, only account ID and bill ID was supported in the Billing care embeddable URLs.

With this enhancement, you can also use account number and bill number instead of the corresponding POIDs in Billing Care URLs that are embedded in external applications.

For more information, see the discussion about embedding billing care screens in Billing Care SDK Guide.

Embeddable URLs for Purchase Package and Purchase Bundle Screens

Billing Care supports embedding screens into CRM applications and online account management interfaces to directly access the Billing Care functionality.

With this enhancement, you can embed Purchase Package and Purchase Bundle screens into external applications.

For more information, see the discussion about embedding billing care screens in Billing Care SDK Guide.

New Features in Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 1

Billing Care 12.0 Patch Set 1 includes the following enhancements:

For more information on these enhancements, see the Billing Care Online Help.

Additional Options for Searching Bills

Billing Care now allows you to search for:

Specific bills by using bill number
The last generated bill
Bills generated between specific dates by using date range

Billing Care Is Now Certified with Mozilla Firefox 58.0

Currently, Billing Care 12.0 is certified with Mozilla Firefox 54.0.1. With this patch, Billing Care 12.0 is certified with Mozilla Firefox 58.0.

For more information, see Billing Care Installation Guide.

Billing Care is Now Certified with Oracle Identity and Access Management 12c Release 2

Currently, Billing Care 12.0 is certified with Oracle Identity and Access Management (OIAM) 11g Release 2 (11.1.2.3.0). With this patch, Billing Care 12.0 is certified with OIAM 12c R2 (12.2.1.3.0).

For more information, see Billing Care Installation Guide.

SDK for Customizing the Purchase Flow and Assets Display

You can now customize the Purchase Catalogue screen, add custom fields, and customize the Assets area to display the custom fields by using the Billing Care SDK. For example, this SDK allows you hide notes, fields, and the purchase start date or end date in the Purchase Catalogue screen and view the newly added custom fields in the Assets area.

For more information on customizing Billing Care to customize Purchase Catalogue and Assets display, see Billing Care SDK Guide.

Support for Backdated Account Creation and Product Purchase

Billing Care now allows you to backdate the account creation and product purchase. You can now enter or select an account creation date or a product purchase date that is earlier than the current date.

Support for Creating Wholesale Accounts and Billing Hierarchies

Billing Care now allows you to create wholesale accounts and billing hierarchies. You can create wholesale parent and child accounts and set up a wholesale billing hierarchy by assigning the bill unit of the wholesale parent account to the wholesale business profile and the bill unit of each wholesale child account to the wholesale parent account for payment.

Support for Customizing Product Information Post Account Creation

Billing Care now allows you to customize products after account creation by using the Rate Customizations option. For example, you can modify a package or bundle and the start date and end date for charges (such as recurring, one time, and usage charges).

Support for Deferred Actions

Billing Care now allows you to perform actions on the account, service, and collections-related deferred actions that are already created. By using the Deferred Actions option, you can edit, run, and delete the deferred actions.

Support for Multischema

Billing Care now supports multischema. You can now view the accounts in the different schemas in Billing Care.

Support for Undefined Payment Method

Billing Care now allows you to create account and access services without defining any specific payment method. You can now set the payment method for a bill unit to No Payment Method when there is no payment method currently defined for an account or service. This enables you offer free trial for customers. You can define a specific payment method after the free period has ended.

Support for Enabling SSO using SAML

You can now use SAML to enable single-sign on (SSO) in Billing Care. SSO allows you to log in to applications using a single user name and password combination.

For more information, see the discussion about configuring SAML for SSO in Billing Care Installation Guide.