Hi Steve, My suggestion would be to set-up a separate stored procedure 'Expire_WirelessPlans'. You can then add this to the Rodopi Billing Job as the first step using SQL Enteprise Manager (alternatively create a second Job, however inserting it into the Rodopi job will ensure it runs first and completes before the Rodopi Job runs).
What this stored procedure will do is change the next bill date to the current date, or if you don't want to charge each day automatically it should suspend the plan (in essence making it a daily plan). You would then set the usage info up as normal which would allow you to provide 5 hours free. I haven't used the newer versions of Rodopi, but the older ones (5.2 and earlier) would not handle Time based accounts correctly since Rodopi was designed so that additional usage was billed at a surplus charge (ie. Each addition hour would be charged at $1). To overcome this you would need to: 1). Ensure you are using an ODBC compatible Radius Server (we already know you're using Vircom Radius so this is good). 2). Modify the Interface_Vircom radius procedures to use information from the Usage Tables to find the time left for the user and include that in the parameters returned to the Radius Server. Your access server (in this case a Wireless Access Point / Gateway) should know how to read this profile to provide only that amount of time to the user before disconnecting them. You can further enhance this model by setting you Wireless Access System to re-direct the user to a single web site should their time expire allowing them to buy more time. Unfortunately due to the fact that time based models were not really around prior to the development of Rodopi; Rodopi was not really designed to handle this. As usual you can work around it but you need to be aware of modifications so that they can be re-integrated after an upgrade. This will be especially true for this modification since you will be tampering with the way in which Rodopi was designed to bill. With all this said about Rodopi's short-fall, it is always possible to add functionality to it, just be aware of breaking the upgrade possibilities. In addition, be aware that several Stored Procedures are 'Encrypted' and hence you wouldn't be able to modify these unless you have the source. I personally don't know why Rodopi chose to encrypt these after v4.3 since the set-up routines now allow you to capture this source during installation by simply running SQL Profiler and logging to a text file during the installation / upgrade. Prior to version 4.3 the main installation required you to attach the database to the SQL Server and as such no set-up script was included ensuring the 'Encrypted' stored procedures remained encrypted. I do know that Rodopi's fear is that someone might modify these which has the potential of breaking the whole system, so a simple warning is that touching these may invalidate any support. Although personally if you touch these you probably don't need any support since you should have a good enough MS SQL knowledge to solve most of your problems. Regards, Suneel. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve J. Drenner Sent: 01 April 2005 18:34 To: [email protected] Subject: [Rodopi] Let me try this again: Plan Help Importance: High IS ANYONE OUT THERE DOING ANYTHING CLOSE TO THIS USING RODOPI??? OR IF YOU ARE USING RODOPI AND FOUND THAT THIS CAN'T BE DONE WHAT ARE YOU USING TO MAKE THIS TYPE OF PLAN WORK??? I HAVE TRIED MANY THINGS USING USAGE INFO BUT IT DOESN'T SEEM TO WORK. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Steve J. Drenner Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 9:05 AM To: Rodopi Forum Subject: [Rodopi] Let me try this again: Plan Help ALL FIGURES ARE FOR AN EXAMPLE I am trying to make a plan that for example will bill the customer $5.00 for X amount of time, and the plan will close after X amount of time is used. This is going to be a wireless plan: Customer is going to pay $5.00 for a 5 hour block of time to be used in 1 day. So I need a plan that would be selected that will charge a credit card only, $5.00 and have a usage limit of 5 hours and will expire and close the plan at end of day. I hope this explains this enough. Thanks Steve --------------------- To Leave the Rodopi mail list send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word LEAVE as the message body. Please also visit the Rodopi FAQ at http://www.rodopi-faq.com --------------------- --------------------- To Leave the Rodopi mail list send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word LEAVE as the message body. Please also visit the Rodopi FAQ at http://www.rodopi-faq.com --------------------- --------------------- To Leave the Rodopi mail list send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word LEAVE as the message body. Please also visit the Rodopi FAQ at http://www.rodopi-faq.com ---------------------
