25 About Folds
Learn how to use folds in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) product offerings.
Topics in this document:
About Folds
When a fold event occurs, BRM checks whether the balance is valid or expired. The balance is folded if the sub-balance is expired or if the sub-balance is always valid.
For example,
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500 minutes are valid forever; therefore the balance can be folded at any time as shown in Figure 25-1.
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500 minutes that expire on February 1 can be folded after January 31 23:59:59. The end time of the fold event must be January 31 23:59:59 or later as shown in Figure 25-2.
Figure 25-2 500 Minutes Expiring on February 1st
Description of "Figure 25-2 500 Minutes Expiring on February 1st"
Note:
If you use delayed billing, folds occur at the end of the delayed billing period. This is to ensure that delayed events can continue to consume granted balances before final billing is run. However, free balances are granted at the beginning of each cycle, before the fold event occurs. If the newly granted balances do not have a configured validity period (that is, their validity period never ends), the fold event will remove those balances.
When you use fold events to remove unused balances and you also use delayed billing, you should always configure a validity period for the granted balances. This prevents fold events from removing balances that are granted at the beginning of a cycle before final billing is run.
About Applying Folds Only For Account-Level Products
If a fold is configured at account level, the fold is applicable to all the services in the account. The fold is then applied to the first service that is retrieved. If the resource balance is non-zero after applying the fold to the first service, the fold is applied again to the next service until the resource balance is zero.
To apply the fold only to account-level products, you can configure an account-level balance group to track the resource that you want to fold. The fold is then applied to only the products associated with the account-level balance group and not to all the services in the account.