Freeside 3.X User Manual

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Freeside 3.X User Manual

Exports (provisioning)

Exports allow you to provision services to remote machines, databases and APIs. Some exports, such as sqlradius and sqlradius_withdomain, enable a feed for retrieving rating/usage data.

Exports can be added and edited under Configuration -> Services -> Provisioning exports

Most exports place jobs in the job queue for new, modified or deleted services. Jobs are run by freeside-queued. This daemon needs to be running before exports are acted upon.

Some exports use SSH, SCP or SFTP to communicate with external machines.

Click on Add a new export to create a new export. Select exports from the dropdown to show more information on each export, including available options, setup and usage.

Exports are activated by associating them with one or more service definitions.

Following is a list of which exports can be associated with each type of service.

svc_acct

  • acct_plesk.pm: Real-time export to Plesk managed mail service
  • acct_sql.pm: Real-time export of accounts to SQL databases .
  • artera_turbo.pm:
  • bsdshell.pm:
  • communigate_pro.pm: Real-time export to a CommuniGate Pro mail server
  • communigate_pro_singledomain.pm:
  • cpanel.pm: Real-time export to Cpanel control panel.
  • cp.pm: Real-time export to Critical Path Account Provisioning Protocol
  • cyrus.pm: Real-time export to Cyrus IMAP server
  • everyone_net.pm: Real-time export to Everyone.net outsourced mail service
  • infostreet.pm: Real-time export to InfoStreet streetSmartAPI
  • ldap.pm: Real-time export to LDAP
  • passwdfile.pm:
  • radiator.pm: Real-time export to RADIATOR
  • shellcommands.pm:
  • shellcommands_withdomain.pm: Real-time export via remote SSH (vpopmail, ISPMan)
  • sqlmail.pm: Real-time export to SQL-backed mail server
  • sqlradius.pm: Real-time export to SQL-backed RADIUS (FreeRADIUS, ICRADIUS)
  • sqlradius_withdomain.pm: Real-time export to SQL-backed RADIUS (FreeRADIUS, ICRADIUS) with realms
  • sysvshell.pm:
  • textradius.pm:
  • vpopmail.pm: Real-time export to vpopmail text files

svc_domain

  • bind.pm: Batch export to BIND named
  • bind_slave.pm: Batch export to slave BIND named
  • communigate_pro.pm: Real-time export to a CommuniGate Pro mail server
  • domain_shellcommands.pm: Run remote commands via SSH, for domains (qmail, ISPMan).
  • domain_sql.pm: Real time export of domains to SQL databases .
  • http.pm: Send an HTTP or HTTPS GET or POST request
  • opensrs.pm: OpenSRS integration
  • sqlmail.pm: Real-time export to SQL-backed mail server

svc_forward

  • artera_turbo.pm:
  • communigate_pro.pm: Real-time export to a CommuniGate Pro mail server
  • forward_shellcommands.pm: Run remote commands via SSH, for forwards
  • postfix.pm: Postfix text files
  • sqlmail.pm: Real-time export to SQL-backed mail server

svc_www

  • apache.pm: Export an Apache httpd.conf file snippet.
  • www_plesk.pm: Real-time export to Plesk managed hosting service
  • www_shellcommands.pm: Run remote commands via SSH, for virtual web sites (directory maintenance, FrontPage, ISPMan)

svc_broadband

  • nas_wrapper.pm: A meta-export that triggers other svc_broadband exports.
  • prizm.pm: Real-time export to Northbound Interface
  • router.pm: Send a command to a router.
  • snmp.pm: Sends SNMP SETs to an SNMP agent.
  • trango.pm: Sends SNMP SETs to a Trango AP.

svc_phone

  • globalpops_voip.pm:
  • grandstream.pm: Grandstream phone and ATA provisioning. This blog article is a start at documentation.
  • indosoft.pm:
  • internal_diddb.pm:
  • netsapiens.pm:
  • phone_shellcommands.pm:
  • phone_sqlradius.pm:
  • thirdlane.pm:
  • vitelity.pm: Vitelity provisioning

svc_external

  • artera_turbo.pm:

svc_dsl

  • ikano.pm:

Services

Generic

Accounts (svc_acct)

Accounts – anything with a username (mailbox, shell, RADIUS, etc.)

Hardware (svc_hardware)

Equipment supplied to customers

External (svc_external)

Externally-tracked service

Access

DSL (svc_dsl)

Broadband (svc_broadband)

Fixed wireless broadband

Cable (svc_cable)

DISH Network (svc_dish)

Telephony

Customer phone number / DID (svc_phone)

Customer PBX (svc_pbx)

Phone circuit (svc_circuit)

Hosting

Domains (svc_domain)

Certificate (svc_cert)

Forwards (svc_forward)

Mailing list (svc_mailinglist)

Site hosting (svc_www)

Colocation

Customer router/switch port (svc_port)

Packages

Template:Freeside:3:Documentation:Administration:pkg category

Price Plans

Common price plans

  • flat
  • subscription
  • prorate
  • sqlradacct_hour
  • voip_cdr
  • prepaid

Wholesale price plans

  • bulk
  • agent
  • cdr_termination

Other price plans

  • flat_delayed
  • flat_introrate
  • prorate_delayed
  • base_delayed
  • base_rate
  • sql_external
  • sql_generic

Price plans of questionable functionality

  • flat_comission_cust
  • flat_comission_pkg
  • flat_comission
  • voip_sqlradacct
  • sesmon_hour
  • sesmon_minute

Resellers

Wholesaler configuraiton

Employees

Employees

Go to Configuration -> Employees -> Employees to view the existing employees and add new ones. It is highly recommended to add a separate account for each person rather than using role accounts.

  • To add a new employee, click on “Add an employee”
  • Or to edit an existing group, click on the employee number or name in the list of employees.
  • Enter or edit the username, password and name. If editing an existing employee and no password change is desired, the password fields can be left blank.
  • Check the “Disable employee” box to disable this employee.
  • In the “Employee groups” section, mark or unmark checkboxes to indicate the access groups for this employee.

Go to Configuration -> Ticketing -> Ticketing users

  • Click on the Create link in the upper right hand corner
  • Enter the same username as the Employee name above
  • Enter any other information (Real name, Email address, etc. )
  • Check both boxes in the access control box
  • Click the Create button

(Be sure to add the ticketing user to the appropriate ticketing groups)

Employee groups and access control

To setup employee access control or agent/reseller virtualization, you need to setup employee groups. Go to Configuration -> Employees -> Employee groups to view the existing groups and add new ones. The system starts with a “Superuser” group which has access to all functionality for the first agent.

  • To add a new group, click on “Add an employee group”
  • Or to edit an existing group, click on the group number or name in the list of groups.
  • Enter or edit the group name.
  • In the “Group limited to these agent(s)” section, mark checkboxes next to the agents this employee group should be able to see. Employees in this group will only see customers of the selected agents in the system and reports.
  • In the “Group access rights” section, mark or unmark checkboxes to indicate the access rights this employee group should have. Rights marked with an “*” are global rights which provide access to global data which is shared among all agents. Their use is not recommended for groups which are limited to a subset of agents.
  • After adding a new group, don’t forget to go back and add or edit employees to place them into the new group.

Installers / Appointments

Installers

  • Designate some employees as installers (Configuration -> Employees -> Employees)
  • Edit their schedules (Configuration -> Employees -> Installer availability)

Ticketing

  • Setup a queue for appointments (installations, removals, etc.), or use existing per agent queues
  • Make sure the installer employees can own / see / edit tickets in this

queue (add them to a ticketing group with OwnTicket / SeeQueue on that queue or global, etc.)

  • not yet XXX future todo some sort of ill-defined thing with configuring a custom field to designate install / recall / service call / removal

Packages

not yet; package(+location)-specific appointments are a future TODO

  • Setup a package category for packages that can schedule appointments
  • In the package category, select a queue for appointments or pick “Agent-specific queue”

Employee rights

  • Upgrade should do this / should be available in a default install, but may not be implemented yet
  • Give one or more employee groups “View appointments” and “Make appointment” (in Customer package rights)

Billing

Billing events

Billing events are the primary mechanism to implement your business rules. Rules such as resend invoices, retry cards, suspend or cancel accounts for non-payment, etc. are all handled by billing events.

At a high level, follow the following steps to create billing events:

  • Add a new Billing Event (Configuration > Billing > Billing events)
  • Name the event
  • Choose the type of event:
    • Package – Packages and associated dates (Including Commissions)
    • Invoice – Invoice status and dates
    • Customer – Customer Balances and Information
    • Batch Payment – Batch payment results
    • Statement – Send statement
  • Choose whether to apply to one or all agents
  • Choose the frequency for the system to check and see if the event should run.
  • Choose appropriate filters.
  • Choose appropriate actions.

The form is dynamic so changing the type of event will change the available filters and actions.

Daily and Monthly Scripts

  • The freeside-daily script should be run daily to bill customers and run invoice collection events.
    • Typically, this is accomplished with an entry in the freeside user’s crontab such as: 0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/freeside-daily
    • If running freeside-daily manually, ensure the TZ variable is set to your timezone with a command such as: TZ=”US/Pacific” freeside-daily fs_daily
  • If any monthly events are enabled, the freeside-monthly script should be run monthly.
  • Invoice events can also be used to implement agent-virtualized invoices. (add more info)
  • Be sure to include the full path of freeside-daily in your cron job.

Invoices

Typeset (LaTeX) invoice templates

Prerequisites
  • Almost all distributions include the necessary prerequisites listed here, manual installation is practically never necessary.
  • Install Ghostscript (gs)
  • Install teTeX or TeX Live
  • Ensure that the pslatex, dvips, and pdflatex command line utilities were installed
Logo setup

The EPS logo is for PDF and printed invoices.

  • For best results, save a vector format logo in EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format.
    • Your graphic artist can create vector image from a bitmap (tracing etc).
    • Converting a bitmap such as a JPG can work (the bigger the better), but it may render in lower quality, blurry or with the “jaggies” (especially when actually printed, not just viewed as a PDF)
  • Resize the logo to 90pt X 36pt: epsffit -c 0 0 90 36 yourlogo.eps >logo.eps
    • (“no %%BoundingBox:” error? Fix with eps2eps)
  • Upload the resized logo as the logo.eps configuration option.
  • Problems? Try bin/strip-eps <oldlogo.eps >trynewlogo.eps

The PNG logo is for emailed and online invoices.

Freeside ships with a logo of 92 x 62. Any logo close to this size should work with the default HTML template.

Template:Freeside:3:Documentation:Administration:invoice layout

HTML invoice templates

  • Convert your logo to PNG format and upload it as the logo.png configuration option.

Template:Freeside:3:Documentation:Administration:invoice templates

Plaintext invoice templates

  • See the Text::Template documentation for details on the substitution language.
  • You must call the invoice_lines() function at least once – pass it a number of lines, and it returns a list of array references, each of two elements: a service description column, and a price column. Alternatively, call invoice_lines() with no arguments, and pagination will be disabled – all invoice line items will print on one page, with no padding (recommended for email invoices).
  • Descriptions of variables are available in invoice_html

Misc

Manually setting next customer number sequence
  • With PostgreSQL, to number customers starting at 5000: SELECT SETVAL(pg_get_serial_sequence(‘cust_main’, ‘custnum’), 4999);
  • With MySQL, to number customers starting at 5000: ALTER TABLE cust_main AUTO_INCREMENT = 5000;
Manually setting next invoice number sequence
  • With PostgreSQL, to number invoices starting at 5000: SELECT SETVAL(pg_get_serial_sequence(‘cust_bill’, ‘invnum’), 4999);
  • With MySQL, to number invoices starting at 5000: ALTER TABLE cust_bill AUTO_INCREMENT = 5000;

Taxes

District based taxes

Payment Receipts

The payment_receipt_email template is used for manually applied payments.

Credit cards and Electronic checks

Misc

These things should probably find a home properly filed in a section above.

Invoicing and Payments

Refunds for automatic payments

A refund to an automatic payment can be made within the time limitation set by the payment gateway by using the refund link next to the payment:

05/19/2015 Payment by fs_queue (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111) applied to Invoice #228 (05/19/15) (view receipt) (refund) (void) (unapply)  - $24.60   $0.00

On the refund page the Amount defaults to the amount of the payment. If only a partial refund is to be made then change this to the proper amount:

Refund
Date 05/19/2015
Amount $10.00 by Credit card
Reason Package amount incorrect

For this example we will only refund a part of the payment as illustrated above. It is usually a good idea to add a Reason that provides additional information for the refund.

Once you have the refund fields filled out click the Post refund button

This will unapply the payment from the invoice leaving the balance of the payment available for application to an invoice:

05/19/2015 Open Invoice #228 (Balance 25.21) (void)
( View invoice events ) $25.21    $25.21
05/19/2015 Payment by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111)
  10.00 refunded on 05/19/2015
  15.21 unapplied
(view receipt) (apply) (refund) (void)  - $25.21   $0.00
05/19/2015 Refund by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111) (view receipt)    $10.00 $10.00

Use the apply link to apply the remaining payment to the invoice. This will bring up the Apply Payment window where you can select the invoice to apply the payment to:

Payment #77
Date: 05/19/2015
Amount: $25.21
Unapplied amount: $15.21

Apply to:
Invoice: #228 - 05/19/2015 - $25.21
Amount: $15.21

After you click the Apply button you are left with the original invoice with a balance due from the refunded payment:

05/19/2015 Open Invoice #228 (Balance 10.00) (void)
( View invoice events ) $25.21    $25.21
05/19/2015 Payment by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111)
  10.00 refunded on 05/19/2015
  15.21 applied to Invoice #228 (05/19/15)
(view receipt) (refund) (void) (unapply)  - $25.21   $0.00
05/19/2015 Refund by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111) (view receipt)    $10.00 $10.00

To balance the invoice you can use the Enter Credit link to issue a credit that can be applied to the invoice:

Enter Credit

Date   05/19/2015 10:03:26 AM
Amount $10.00
Reason Package Error
Additional info Credit for package error
Auto-apply to invoices yes

When entering the credit you can select a credit reason that was previously defined at Configuration -> Billing -> Credit Reasons or you can create a reason on the fly. You can also add a small note in the “Additional info” field which will print on the customers invoice. Please keept this short as long text will get truncated on PDF invoices to prevent formatting issues.

Once the credit is applied the customers account will be balanced out:

05/19/2015 Invoice #228 (Balance 0.00) (void)
( View invoice events ) $25.21    $25.21
05/19/2015 Payment by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111)
  10.00 refunded on 05/19/2015
  15.21 applied to Invoice #228 (05/19/15)
(view receipt) (refund) (void) (unapply)  - $25.21   $0.00
05/19/2015 Refund by nkennedy (Credit card #411111xxxxxx1111) (view receipt)    $10.00 $10.00
05/19/2015 Credit by nkennedy (Package Error Credit for package error) applied to Invoice #228 (05/19/15) (delete) (unapply) (void)   - $10.00  $0.00

If you need to have taxes calculated as part of the refund you can start with issuing a credit using the Credit line items link. This will allow you to select the line item on the invoice and enter the amount to credit that entry. Follow the rest of the instructions for re-applying the payment to the invoice and the left over balance is the amount you need to use after following the refund link on the payment.

Commissions

VoIP

RADIUS

Torrus Network monitoring

Old / uncommon

Template:ContextSensitiveHelp

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