Choosing Account Creation Options

1 Choosing Account Creation Options

Learn how to set options for how customer accounts are created in Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM).

Topics in this document:

About Customer Information Collected When an Account is Created

When you create an account, you collect information about the customer such as:

The package that the customer signs up for.
Contact information, such as name, address, and telephone number.
Service login and Web access names and passwords.
Customer's language.
Customer's account currency.
Billing information, such as:
- The accounting type (balance forward or open item).
- The frequency of the billing cycle.
- The payment method (credit card, invoice, and so on).
- Payment information, such as credit card number or invoice billing address.

The information required by default is the last name, address, city, and country. You can change which information is required by using the Field Validation Editor.

If you create accounts by using a custom application or over the Web, you can create your own account creation fields. To do so, you need to create new fields in Storable Class Editor. The information you collect is stored in account profiles.

Specifying How to Validate Customer Contact Information

You can define the valid formats for your customers' contact information by using the Field Validation Editor. For example, you can require phone numbers to contain 10 digits and a dash (-) character.

You can also specify whether the information is required, whether it's case sensitive, and the minimum and maximum values (for example, the maximum length of a login name).

You can configure this information:

Login name format. The default requirement is at least 1 character but no more than 255.
Password format. The default requirement is at least 1 character but no more than 255.
Telephone number format. BRM includes several standard formats, but you can add your own formats.
US state abbreviation. The default required format is two uppercase letters such as CA.
Salutation. For example, Mr. or Ms.
US ZIP code format. Tax calculation programs validate ZIP codes. If you use a tax calculation package, make sure that your tax calculation program can handle 9-digit ZIP codes.

Specifying Defaults for Account Currency, Country, and Email

You can set up these systemwide defaults that are used by all account creation methods:

Default account currency
Default country
Default customer email domain name

To specify these defaults:

Open the CM configuration file (BRM_home/sys/cm/pin.conf).
Edit these entries:
- To specify the default account currency, enter a currency code in the currency entry. For example, to make the Canadian Dollar the default account currency:
```
- fm_cust_pol currency   124
```
  For a list of currency codes, see BRM_home/include/pin_currency.h.
- To specify the default country, change the value of the country entry. For example, to make America the default country:
```
- fm_cust_pol   country   USA
```
  The country name must conform to the validation rules for country names set in the Field Validation Editor. See "Specifying How to Validate Customer Contact Information".
- To specify the default email domain, change the value of the domain entry. For example:
```
- fm_cust_pol   domain   isp.nz
```
Save the file.

The new values become effective immediately and apply to the next account created. You don't need to restart the CM.

Allowing Accounts to Be Created with Backdated Services or Balances

By default, when you create an account, its associated services and balances must have a creation date on or after the account creation date. You can configure BRM to allow users to create accounts with the service or balance date backdated prior to the account creation date.

To enable this feature, run the pin_bus_params utility to change the SubsDisableBackdatedValidations business parameter. For information about this utility, see "pin_bus_params" in BRM Developer's Guide.

To allow accounts to be created with backdated services or balances:

Go to BRM_home/sys/data/config.

Create an XML file from the /config/business_params object:

pin_bus_params -r BusParamsSubscription bus_params_subscription.xml

In the file, set the <SubsDisableBackdatedValidations> element to enabled:

<SubsDisableBackdatedValidations>enabled</SubsDisableBackdatedValidations>

Save the file as bus_params_subscription.xml.

Load the XML file into the BRM database:

pin_bus_params bus_params_subscription.xml

Stop and restart the CM.
(Multischema systems only) Run the pin_multidb script with the -R CONFIG parameter. For more information, see "pin_multidb" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

Customizing Account Creation

You can customize account creation in the following ways:

To customize how account names are displayed, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_ACCTINFO policy opcode. For example, you can remove spaces from the name or capitalize the first and last name. The default is to store the name as it was entered at account creation.
To change the format of account numbers, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_ACCTINFO policy opcode.

By default, the account number is derived automatically from the account object POID. For example, if the POID is 0.0.0.1 /account 12225 19, the account number is 0.0.0.1-12225.

The account number does not need to include any part of the POID; you can define your own format.
To change the date format, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_PAYINFO policy opcode.

By default, BRM stores expiration dates as four-character strings in the format MMYY. The years from 00 and beyond are understood as the 2000 millennium. Valid formats are MMYY, MM/YY, M/YY, and MM/YYYY, all of which are converted to MMYY.
To check for duplicate account creations, use the customer policy opcodes. For example, you can customize your customer validation policies to check for a duplicate name or credit card number. This allows you to prevent customers from accidentally signing up and getting billed for accounts they do not want. This might happen when a customer loses a connection right after creating an account. Being unsure if the account was created, the customer creates a duplicate account.
To validate account creation numbers, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_VALID_AACINFO policy opcode. When creating accounts, you can offer different packages to different customers by having customers enter account creation numbers. You can also assign account creation numbers to customers to track marketing information.
To return a point-of-presence (POP) list, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_GET_POPLIST policy opcode.
To prepare automatic account creation (AAC) data for validation, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_AACINFO policy opcode.
To export information to a non-BRM database, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_POST_COMMIT policy opcode.
To customize how to select schemas during account creation in a multischema system, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_GET_DB_LIST and PCM_OP_CUST_POL_GET_DB_NO opcodes.
To store information collected when customers create an account by using a website, use the PCM_OP_CUST_POL_PREP_AACINFO policy opcode.

For more information, see "Creating Accounts" in BRM Opcode Guide.